Hard Case Crime: Deadly Beloved (6 page)

“Maybe,” I allowed. “Now the question is, whose window are they climbing in?”

*

The three of us continued our discussion over dinner, since it occurred to me I hadn’t eaten for nine or ten hours.

Mike Ditka’s was as upscale as its namesake’s image wasn’t, a male bastion of rich wood, polished brass, and sports memorabilia displayed with just a little more pomp than religious relics at the Vatican. We were tucked into a leatherette booth where we were enjoying after-dinner coffee, having disposed of a filet (me), Da Pork Chop (Rafe) and roasted chicken (Chic).

Chic was saying, “We’ve looked under every rock in town, trying to show the Muertas are still connected to organized crime—to establish that the ‘new leaf’ Dominique turned over is strictly cosmetic.” He shrugged. “Nada.”

“They’re going to hide it deep,” I said. “There’ll be more layers than an onion.”

The OCU captain made a face. “So far, peeling ‘em has only made me weep...plus earned me more new orifices than I know what to do with.”

Rafe frowned. “How so?”

“I’ve had the brass warn me off the Muertas three times in the last six months. Twice orally and, most recently, in writing.”

I swallowed a sip of black coffee. “Maybe more than just the Muertas are connected.”

But Chic shook his head. “No. That’s not it. It’s not that the brass are bent, any of ‘em; it’s more that the Muertas’ attorneys have stopped just short of filing official complaints about harassment. Dominique was a big contributor to the mayor’s campaign, last go-round, y’know....”

“I rest my case,” I said.

Rafe’s eyes were tight as he said to Chic, “Isn’t there one thing you’re leaving out, buddy?”

Chic didn’t seem to follow that. “What?”

“You know.”

“Oh....Hell, you’re not starting
that
again.”

I asked, “Starting what?”

Chic waved a dismissive hand. “It’s a theory Homicide came up with. But OCU can’t get any traction on it, Ms. Tree...though God knows we’ve tried.”

Rafe leaned forward, insistent, his eyes going from me to Chic and back again. “Not a theory. These are
real
deaths.”

Chic nodded and sighed, then said, “Yes, the deaths are real enough. But there’s no sign that this so-called ‘Event Planner’ is—”

“Event planner?” Now I was sitting forward. “What, like weddings?”

Rafe said, “More like funerals.”

Chic drew in a breath and let it out and, reluctantly, explained. “Idea is the Muertas have a sort of...hitman once removed, who arranges for people to be eliminated in such a way that no mob involvement is indicated or even suspected.”

Rafe picked it up. “Clean hits that don’t seem to be hits at all, ‘cause they are tidy and tied up...leaving nothing for us poor public servants to investigate.”

“Why ‘Event Planner?’ ” I asked.

“Because these aren’t standard hits, they don’t even look like hits at all—accidents, even murders, but not professional killings. A local politician with national potential—and a strong anti-organized crime background—commits suicide because of an affair. A lawyer in a major civil case gets struck down in traffic at a most convenient time for certain parties. And on and on, including a certain accountant who suddenly starts cheating again, getting himself knocked off by whack-job wifey. There’s more, and I’d bet a year’s pay the seven or eight we know about are just the tip of the goddamned iceberg.”

I returned my attention to Chic. “You obviously aren’t buying into this. Why?”

But I didn’t get a straight answer from Captain Steele until ninety minutes or so later, at my apartment, without Rafe Valer around.

“It’s bad police science,” Chic said. “No offense to Rafe, who is a hell of a detective, but you don’t
start
with a theory. You develop a theory
from
evidence... and there isn’t any.”

*

“At your...apartment, Ms. Tree?”

“Uh, yes, Doctor. That’s what I haven’t told you. Over these last few months, I should have been more forthcoming about this.”

“About
what
exactly?”

As we spoke, Chic was sitting on the edge of my bed in his boxer shorts, getting a cigarette going. He had a nice tan, or what was left of it from our week on Maui, and he was clean and smooth, not like Mike, who’d had hair not just on his chest but his back, a burly bear, whereas his former partner on the PD had a cat-like sleekness.

I was on the bed next to him, sitting up with a pillow behind me. I was wearing a little black nightie, the wispy kind that doesn’t need to come off to accomplish what we’d just done not so long ago.

“And this ‘Event Planner’ idea,” I said, “it’s a notion Rafe came up with himself?”

“Yeah.”

Chic stood. He crossed to a nearby chair where his clothes were draped and began to put them on. He moved with easy grace and confidence, completely unselfconscious.

“In the past five years,” he said, stepping into his trousers, “there have indeed been seven or eight deaths, linked in one way or another to the Muertas.”

“Linked?”

He shook his head. “Not in that way, Michael—these are deaths that have
benefited
the Muertas...but don’t lead back to them.”

“Oh. Like Richard Addwatter’s wife hearing voices and killing her philandering husband? When the Muertas are Addwatter Accounting clients?”

Chic’s chin came up. “Rafe’s working that? The Addwatter killing?”

I nodded. “And so am I. And I
can
buy the theory that somebody manipulated this poor woman into—”

“Michael.” He was buttoning his shirt now. “Listen to yourself—you’re buying into a theory and you don’t have a shred of evidence. Investigate,
then
build your damn premise.”

I watched him as he continued dressing. Finally I asked, “Why do you call me ‘Michael’ only in the bedroom?”

He shrugged. “I dunno. Professional respect, I suppose.”

“Why? We don’t work together. What’s with the ‘Ms. Tree’ this, ‘Ms. Tree’ that?”

He frowned in confusion. “I thought you
preferred
‘Ms.’ to—”

“That’s not what I mean,” I said, “and you know it.”

He was seated on the edge of the chair pulling on his socks now. His face was a study in awkward embarrassment, a rarity for this graceful, self-confident man. “I guess I just don’t wanna...I don’t know....You think
Rafe
knows?”

I shrugged. “Maybe. He made an excuse to leave us alone tonight, didn’t he?...It
has
been a year.”

He was dressed now, and came back over to the bed and sat on its edge, swiveled my way. “I just....How will it look? Your husband’s old partner, his best friend, his best
man
...shacked up with—”

My eyes widened. “Shacked up? Is that what we’re doing? That would suggest you ever spent the night here.”

“Michael....”

“Look, I don’t give a rat’s ass about what people say. You were there for me, when I really, really needed you.”

I leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth. A little kiss but warm. Wet.

“Yeah,” he said breathlessly, “and how many people would say I was just a goddamned vulture, waiting there to swoop in and take advantage of my partner’s wife’s, you know, vulnerability.”

I laughed a little. “Vulnerability? Are you kidding? Who is it that knows me and thinks I’m vulnerable, anyway? What fool are we talking about?”

He smiled shyly. His smile only got shy in the bedroom, by the way.

“And as for what people think?” I said. “Screw them. Screw people. Screw what they say.”

I leaned forward and nibbled at his ear.

“For that matter,” I whispered, “screw me.”

His laugh was barely audible. “Hey, my name may be Steele, but I ain’t made of it.”

I slipped my hand down until it got to its destination.

“Based on the evidence,” I said, “speaking strictly police science? I’m building a theory otherwise....”

The doctor was writing on his pad now, quickly—but I could feel his eyes on me.

“Good,” Dr. Cassel said. “This is healthy—your urge to come forward, into the light, with your relationship.”

“After Chic left, I got to thinking....”

“About accepting responsibility...and consequences.”

“No, that wasn’t what I was thinking about.”

“Oh?”

“I was mulling this crazy idea of Rafe’s...an Event Planner...Death Planner...some caterer of murder. Far-fetched as it sounded, it got me thinking, really thinking.”

“Thinking about what?”

I drew in a deep breath and let it out slow.

“About an ‘event,’ ” I said, “in my own life...that might have been planned....”

The motel near the airport seemed retro at a glance, with its ’50s deco neon sign and squared, one-story U of rooms making a courtyard around a swimming pool covered for the winter. But really it was just old.

This was December, cold, but not yet snowy. Judging by the cars in the lot on this late evening, the motel was at about fifty percent capacity.

The kind of honeymoons that happened here were usually not attached to actual weddings and seldom required spending the night.

And yet that was where my new husband Mike Tree had arranged for us to spend the first night of our marriage. He explained it by saying he wanted to be near the airport, as if his apartment—our apartment, now—on the North Side was a world away from O’Hare.

Not that I was questioning this decision, still a little high on wedding reception champagne, as Mike pulled his red Jaguar into the lot, the pricey vehicle adorned with soap-scrawled just married wishes (he’d stopped to remove the shoes and tin cans from the tail).

He was stone sober where I was giggly, but even without the bubbly I’d have had an awkward time of it, climbing from the sports car in my wedding gown. Mike helped me out, then got two small bags from a trunk heavily loaded with suitcases. We were headed for a week in Nassau, leaving at five AM.

I carried my bag and he carried his, arm in arm as we made our way to the motel room door, where he set his bag down and removed the bag from my hand and set it down, too, then gave me a look that consisted of his mouth hiking at left and an eyebrow arching at right.

“What?” I asked.

He held his arms out, palms up.

“You gotta be kidding me,” I said, and laughed.

“So I’m a traditional slob,” he said. “Sue me. Come on....”

Laughing some more, I consented to this nonsense, cooperating as he lifted me up into his arms.

What followed was worthy of a silent comedy as he held me like a load of laundry while trying to maneuver with the key in his right hand, getting the door unlocked despite his satin-wrapped cargo.

Finally we made it inside, into a motel room that had surely seen its share of happy couples, if rarely married ones; but we had to be among the happiest, laughing our asses off as he carted me over and dumped me unceremoniously on the bed. Should have busted the damn thing, but at a motel like this, one thing that was likely to be kept in top-notch working order was the bedsprings.

The door was still open, sending a slant of reddish neon light into the room; Mike was cast in that devilish shade as he went out to get the bags from just outside the threshold he’d so recently carried me over.

Then he closed himself and his wife—me—inside the wonderfully drab little room.

He gestured with an open hand to the furnishings that would have made any Sears showroom circa 1980 proud, including a matador print above the bed, the sword in the red-vested hombre’s grasp having a less than subtle phallic tinge.

“Do I know how to treat a woman,” he said, “or do I know how to treat a woman?”

He looked a little like a maitre d’ or maybe a classed-up bouncer at the kind of restaurant where gangsters went to die face-down in their pasta.

“What
is
this place?” I asked. “Where you stake out cheating spouses?”

“What this place is...” Mike was undoing his tuxedo pants. “...is close to the airport.”

“You said that before.”

He was stepping out of the pants now. “Five am’s gonna come early.”

“Sure will. Right after four fifty-nine am.”

He kicked off his shiny shoes. “Who’s wearing the pants in this marriage anyway?”

“Not you!”

And he was looking pretty silly, in his boxer shorts and tuxedo jacket, the tie loose like a bad lounge singer doing Sinatra or Darin.

He said, “Tomorrow night, we’ll be in our honeymoon suite in Nassau. And I guarantee you it will be twice as nice as this.”

I shook my head, laughing harder at that than it deserved; with me, if champagne’s involved, I’m an easy audience.

“Fair enough,” I said.

I got up off the bed—the spread was blue and nubby, perfect for a teenage girl’s room in 1972—but doing so wasn’t easy, because of the tight-fitting wedding dress.

“Help me out of this,” I asked, turning my back on my husband.

“Uh,” he said, right behind me, “what do you women do with these things, once you’re done with them?”

I glanced over my shoulder at him. “If you mean, what do ‘we women’ do with old wedding dresses, well, we put ‘em in a trunk and don’t take ‘em out till the next wedding comes along.”

“Really.”

“Really.”

“Well, you’re never wearing that thing again.”

And I saw him grinning but not in time to stop him as he ripped the dress at the shoulders.

I wheeled, both shoulders bare, and stood looking at him, astounded and indignant and, goddamnit, amused.

“No you
didn’t
,” I said.

His head tipped to one side. “I’m pretty sure I did.”

He took me in his arms, firmly but not quite roughly, and kissed me.

I kissed him back, the lovable brute, and was still in his embrace when he dropped with me to the bed as if we were one, and I squealed and fought, but not much, as he fumbled and yanked and tore and finally worked what was left of the dress up over my legs and the old-fashioned garter belt that held up the sheer white nylons, exposing white panties.