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Title
: Laura (Crowe’s Point Movie Challenge)
Author
: Tina
Rating
: PG
Character
: Multiple
Disclaimer
: The following story has been written with no intention of claimingownership or solicitation, nor does the author claim the movie character(s) as his/her own. The movie character(s) have been borrowed solely out of a love of the particular movie and is not intended for any other purpose but amusement and entertainment.
Introduction
 
New York City
 
Summer, 1941
 
The Second World War is not quite that yet. It is still the Second War in Europe, and theaggression of the Japanese Empire in the Pacific.
 
The War has been in progress for nearly two years.
 
Winston Churchill has been Prime Minister for over a year.
 
The evacuation at Dunkirk was the year before.
 
 
 
The continent of Europe has collapsed under the Nazi steam roller, until only Great  Britain remains, and that ‘finest hour’ – the Battle of Britain – was also the summer before.
 
 Africa and the Middle East are now battlefields.
 
The United States and Great Britain have their Atlantic Charter; the United States hasthe Lend-Lease Agreement, but the U.S. is “officially” neutral.
 
The Siege of Leningrad will begin in September.
 
 And the attack of the tropical base of Pearl Harbor – the day that will live in infamy -- is still a few months in the future.
 
 And yet numerous lives, seemingly untouched by all that is happening in Europe and the Pacific, manage to continue, almost oblivious....
 
Part One
 
 I shall never forget the weekend Savannah died.
 The stark pronouncement slammed into his brain -- that brilliant brain of his -- with theintensity of a lightning bolt, startling him from his relaxing bath, and he immediately satstraight up, coming to attention, alert to everything around him...the heat, the noises fromthe streets, the movement....Someone was moving about in the drawing room, someonehis butler had obviously admitted only a short time before...Someone with questions.More questions. Always more questions.And again the mind wandered as he deeply inhaled the sandalwood and myrrh in thewater...wanting to forget:
 A silver sun burned through the sky like a huge magnifying glass. It was the hottest Sunday in my recollection. I felt as if I were the only human being left in New York. For with Savannah's horrible death, I was alone.
 
 I, Sidney Sixpointven Lydecker...was the only one who really knew her...
 
The only one.
 **********Others might be fooled into thinking otherwise, into believing they knew everything thatmade her "tick," if one wanted to use that vulgarity, but how mistaken they were. She had been as much a cipher as he was...and now more questions. More questions, when hewanted so desperately to be left alone.
 
 
 And I had just begun to write Savannah's story when...another of those detectives came to see me.
 Quite unintentionally, Sid's aristocratic nose went into the air and he sniffed once, twice,as if the very odor from the stranger had penetrated the perfection of his apartment. Verylikely the imagined odor was some cheap after shave or cologne the detective had pickedup at the Five and Dime store, and as with most men of his status, had used most of the bottle in the hopes of attracting the opposite sex to his scent. They were suchanimals....No, cavemen. This one -- just from Sid's glimpse of the cut of the off-the-rack suit hanging off a muscular form -- had barely evolved out of the cave. Rough-hewn yes;a high school or college football player in a past life, most likely, but the word 'cheap'came to mind again, and he nearly snickered. Sid knew the type all too well.
 I had him wait.
 
 I could watch him through the half-open door.
 The suit: probably Sears, Roebuck or Montgomery Ward. The fedora: typical of a copwith its' shades of Gable, Bogart and other "manly" Hollywood stars. Sid imagined hecould smell the stench of the cologne, overpowering his bath oils, the freshness of thetowels warming on the heated rack, the very class of what he considered his own littleroyal Privy Chamber. Based on what he had seen from the other policemen, he wassurprised this one was not still walking on all fours! But no...there was somethingmore....He noticed....What the devil was the Neanderthal doing? The baroque grandfather clock – the pendulum keeping a steady rhythm – had chimed the half-hour.
 I noted that his attention was fixed upon my clock.
 And it was not stupid curiosity, Sid realized. It was a sense of study, as if the man wasanalyzing the very perfection of the Mona Lisa itself!
There was only one other in existence...and that was in Savannah's apartment...
 
 In the very room where she was murdered.
 But now he felt the need to call out. The man, the cop, had from time to time paused before Sid’s jade Buddha, or wall-mounted African tribal masks, but most of all, the glasscabinets containing the costly pieces which were the pride of his
objects d’art 
. But nowthe Faberge egg had the man’s attention, then taking a second step, he stopped again, hisface moving closer as something else caught his eye. Sid took a deep breath as the policeman picked up one of his beloved vases, a small piece yes, but one of the prizes of the carefully built Eastern portion of his envied collection. If anything should happen toit…“Careful there! That stuff is priceless.”
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