Joe Peters, a member of the District Attorney's Investigating Squad in Queens, NYC, solves the murder of two young boys who disappear from their apartment and are found dead in a park six blocks away. In The Investigation, Dorothy Uhnak describes how Joe Peters, the narrator and main character, solves the murder of two young brothers who are taken from their apartment in the middle of the night. Joe is a member of the District Attorney's Investigating Squad in Queens, NY,
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The boys, Terry and Georgie Keeler, are the sons of George and Kitty Keeler, a mismatched pair if ever there was one. George is middle-aged and sloppy; Kitty is decorated fashion plate.
The call that the boys are missing comes in at 7:30 am. Since there is no answer at the 107th precinct, the call is relayed to the District Attorney's Investigating Squad. Joe had an appointment with his boss, Captain Tim Neary, but Tim is late. He is alone with Sam Catalano; since Sam picks up the telephone the case, according to procedure, it is his. Joe and Sam go to the Keeler apartment together.
Kitty Keeler claims that, when she awoke at 7:30 am, the boys were missing. Her husband had slept elsewhere – in the apartment over his bar – because they had been quarreling. Kitty feels that George has the boys, which is the reason she did not call the police when she first realized that they were missing. George says that he does not have them.
According to George, when Kitty first called him, he rushed over to their apartment; when he realized they were missing he called the police.
As the four of them - Kitty, George, Joe and Sam – speak in the apartment, Joe notices Kitty. Despite the fact that her children have vanished, she is dressed to the nines and made up perfectly. According to Joe, Kitty knows how to emphasize her best features. “She had large, dark-blue eyes, carefully decorated with a pale-beige shadow and heavy dark liner, and very thick, very long eyelashes which may or may not have been real”. She is wearing a blue knit jersey pants suit, silver rings on many fingers, and matching silver and turquoise bracelets on both arms.
Of course, she says the boys are OK. She's not worried because, she says, George has them.
Apparently, on a previous occasion, Kitty left the boys with a baby sitter for several days when she went on a business trip to the Bahamas [she works in a spa]. George had a hunch that all was not well. Early one morning, a cold snowy day, he went to the apartment to check on them. He found both his sons, unsupervised, in the playground building a snowman. They had robes over their pajamas and boots on their bare feet. The baby-sitter was in bed with a man. George took the boys to his apartment over the bar and, for several days, did not tell Kitty that he had them.
Since the tension is very high, Joe suggests that he and George go for a walk. Joe wonders how Kitty and George could be a couple.“George Keeler was a badly preserved forty-nine, fifty; more than twenty years his wife's senior. He was an obese, sloppy, middle-aged man who was well aware of his own shortcomings. It must have been tough having to measure up to a twenty-six- or twenty-seven-year-old wife who looked like Kitty.”
[As we, later, find out, they knew each other from the time that Kitty was a girl. George had always been infatuated with her. When she became pregnant by another man, he agreed to marry her.]
George emphasizes, to Joe, that this time he has not seen the kids.
According to Kitty, she had been planning to go to Phoenix with her colleagues at the Health Spa for the star-studded opening of a new venue. Then, the younger boy, Georgie, became ill and she had to cancel the trip. She was very annoyed. Since Georgie had a high fever she called the doctor. When he came, he diagnosed measles and, although Kitty still wanted to go to Phoenix [taking the boys with her!], the doctor, emphatically, nixed the idea. She claims that Georgie vomited and wet the bed many times during the night. At 1:30 am, she claims that she took a sleeping pill and fell asleep, awakening at 7:30 a.m. At that point she realized that the boys were missing.
After Joe and George return from their walk, the phone rings. The bodies of two young boys, fitting the description of the Keeler boys, have been discovered in a park on Peck Avenue, six blocks from the Keeler apartment. Joe takes George to the site; George identifies his sons. He is completely devastated.
Kitty is the main suspect. Everyone, with the possible exception of Joe, is sure that she killed Terry and Georgie. The only question they have is how she got the boys out of the apartment since she had lent her car to the babysitter.
George, who is still head-over-heels in love with his wife, writes a note confessing to the murders, and commits suicide. Joe doesn't believe that George killed the boys.
After many twists and turns, and much doubt and confusion, Joe finally works out what happened. Georgie had been throwing up and wetting the bed many times and, each time, Kitty had to clean him up and change the sheets. Finally, she snapped. When he started crying the last time, she shook him, trying to get him to be quiet. When that didn't work, she grabbed him by the throat, choking him to death [accidentally according to Kitty]. Terry, the older boy, seeing all of this, became very upset. To quiet him down, Kitty gave him two sleeping pills. It seemed as if he, too, was dead.
In a panic, Kitty called her old boss, Alfredo Veronne, who still runs a huge crime ring although he is bedridden. Alfredo instructed one of his guys to pick up the children and place then in a park nearby, so it would seem as if they were kidnapped. Then, Alfredo and Kitty cooked up the story that Kitty told the police.
Meanwhile, Jay T. Williams, a famous, high priced attorney, known to get his clients acquitted, has been hired for Kitty. Because of the doubt in the case, the DA has offered Kitty a deal – plead guilty to manslaughter and serve three to four years. However, Jaytee [as he likes to be called], thinks that there's enough doubt that the case will “go away” and that Kitty doesn't have to plead guilty.
Joe's eyes are opened. He has found enough evidence to get Kitty convicted of two counts of murder one, and recommends that she take the deal. We never find out what she does.
Best part of story, including ending:
The story started out being very good and very engrossing. However, it was much too long. It would have been vastly improved if it had been shortened by 20%. Also, it was confusing.
Best scene in story:
In my favorite scene Joe tells Kitty to call her lawyer and take the deal for manslaughter.
Opinion about the main character:
I like Joe Peters because he is hard working, has excellent intuitive instincts, and is devoted to his job. I dislike the fact that he sometimes gets caught up in the devious tactics attributed to the police, and that he becomes intimately involved with the prime suspect in the murder case.
