Blood Ties (21 page)

She pulled the directory out of a desk drawer and plunked it on the counter. “Adams is spelled with an
A.
”

“So is Avis.”

He found the appropriate page and began to jot down numbers. “Could I use your phone?”

“This is getting to be like a citizen's arrest.”

“That isn't what it means.”

“Dial nine for an outside line.”

He dialed nine several times, identifying himself and asking each agency if they had rental records there. The answer was always the same. “It's all on the computer.”

At the agency that tries harder, the second he went to, a girl who reminded him of his protégé Agnes Lamb did what Charlene had done at the airline, with the difference that he knew what date he wanted checked. The girl peered at the monitor and shook her head. “Nope.”

“Sure?”

“Yup.”

“Thanks.”

That was the answer he had got at his first stop. He got the same answer at the other agencies. So he was back to the daunting number of hotels. The thought of Agnes suggested that he go back to Fox River and let someone else do the donkey work.

Agnes Lamb just looked at him when he told her what he wanted.

“You want all these hotels called?” He had helpfully opened the yellow pages for her. There were pages of hotel listings. “Even Peanuts could do this.”

“I doubt it.”

“So do I. Can I have help with this?”

Cy rounded up three secretaries, including Phil Keegan's. He thought of putting Zeller on it, too, but rejected the idea. He left the four surly women and went to see if Dr. Pippen was busy.

“You're back to the hit-and-run?” Pippen asked.

“It's a slow day.”

“What about the body in the trunk?”

“It'll keep.”

“Ha ha.”

She went over her report for him in great detail, and he followed carefully, hoping some inspiration would come. It didn't.

“What did you expect, a tire tread on the body?”

All he had was that plastic bag with paint removed from the parking meter the vehicle had grazed after putting Fleck through the window of the coffee shop. But that was useless without a vehicle to match it with.

Agnes Lamb looked in, all smiles. “The Hyatt Regency in the Loop.”

“How long did she stay?”

Agnes glanced at her notes. “Looks like a week.”

“Not even Peanuts could have done better.”

Agnes stuck out her tongue and left.

“Isn't she beautiful?” Pippen said.

“All girls are beautiful.”

“I'm a girl.”

“No, you're not. You're the assistant coroner.”

“Don't rub it in.”

“It's better than being an Ojibwa.”

“Who was staying at the Hyatt Regency?”

“Another beautiful girl.”

That night, he watched television with his wife. After they went to bed, when he was almost asleep, inspiration came. Well, a hunch. He got out of bed, took the printout from his jacket pocket, and went into the bathroom with it. Catherine Adams topped the list. He let his eye run down it and found what he hadn't known he was looking for. Lynch, Maurice. If the list had reflected seating assignments, the names would have been side by side.

“Cy,” his wife called drowsily. “Is anything the matter?”

He went back to the bed, got in, and patted her thigh. Then he lay wondering what the significance of his discovery was. The elation he had felt in the bathroom drained away. It probably didn't mean a thing.

16

“Five hundred,” Tuttle said when Hazel asked him what to bill Bernard Casey.

“You're crazy.”

“Three hundred?”

“A thousand! You can come down if he complains.”

“Then charge Martin Sisk the same amount.”

“With pleasure.”

“Not during office hours.”

“That creep hasn't called me for days.”

“Any more irate girlfriends?”

She ignored him. The hope that Martin would take Hazel off his hands was fading. Maybe he could bargain.

“Make out the bill for Sisk, and I'll deliver it in person.”

“I could do that.”

A tempting alternative, but Tuttle rejected it. Indirection seemed more promising than unleashing Hazel on Martin. She made out the bill, put it in an envelope, and handed it to him. “Tell him it's a letter bomb from me.”

“Patience, Hazel, I told you, you've made a conquest.”

“We'll see.”

Tuttle drove to St. Hilary's and parked by the former school. What had once been the playground was filled with the elderly, moving slowly from one basketball net to the other. Tuttle pushed through the door and into a large room where a variety of games were being played. There was the click of billiard balls and the slap of cards, a rattling from the shuffleboard game. It seemed an argument against growing old. Martin was leaning over the billiard table, lining up a shot. The reaction to Tuttle's entrance communicated itself to him. He looked up; his cue moved involuntarily, and he missed his shot. His opponent chortled, then noticed Tuttle, too. Good God, it was Henry Dolan.

The doctor strode toward him.

“What do you want now?” he asked with controlled anger.

Suddenly Dolan's wife was at his side. Tuttle felt like cast off gum they had stepped in. Tuttle looked past them to Martin and beckoned to him. Martin shook his head frantically. A little silver-haired woman came and took his cue, and he darted away from her and headed for the door. Tuttle followed. Martin scampered across the parking lot. Tuttle caught him as he was trying to unlock the door of his car.

Martin wheeled on him. “Are you crazy, coming here?”

The Dolans, too, had come outside, with the little silver-haired woman. Tuttle went around Martin's car and pulled open the passenger door. Martin was behind the wheel.

“We better get out of here, Martin.”

This advice was taken. They drove past the three witnesses at the door, and Tuttle tipped his hat. He was retrieving calling cards when Martin bumped out of the parking lot and drove up the street out of sight, then stopped.

“What the hell is this, Tuttle?”

“I bring a message from Hazel.”

“I don't want any message from Hazel!”

“I can hardly tell her that. After what's happened.”

“What do you mean?”

“Gentlemen never tell, Martin. But ladies do.”

“It's a lie.”

“Gallantry will get you nowhere.”

“The Dolans told me you had been to their house. What I had to endure! But everything was back to normal, and now you show up.”

“Who is the little lady with the silver hair?”

“She is none of your business.”

“I ask, of course, on behalf of Hazel.”

Martin turned. “Tuttle, you have to call her off. Please.” There was desperation in Martin's popping eyes.

“She sent you this.”

Martin looked at the envelope with dread. “I won't accept it.”

“Better read it before you decide.”

Martin tore open the envelope and extracted its contents. He looked at Tuttle. “This is a bill.” He looked at it again and then became earnest. “If I pay this, will you call her off?”

“That seems reasonable.”

“I'll send you a check.”

Tuttle smiled and shook his head. “Hazel would never forgive me if I returned empty-handed.”

“Damn it!” But he brought out his checkbook and opened it. “Do you have a pen?”

Tuttle handed him a ballpoint. Martin balanced the book on the steering wheel and wrote as swiftly as this permitted. He signed his name with savage finality, then tore out the check.

“Here.”

Tuttle accepted it in his doffed tweed hat, which he then returned to his head.

“My car is in the parking lot by the school.”

“I can't go back there.”

“Do you think it will be easier later?”

Martin made a U-turn and headed back to the senior center, creeping in at 20 mph. But the trio was no longer outside the entrance. When Martin had parked, Tuttle hopped out.

“Thanks for the lift, Martin.”

“Go to hell.”

Tuttle went whistling to his own car. He sat in it for a moment, watching Martin approach the entrance warily.

When he was inside, Tuttle got out his cell phone and put through a call to Peanuts. “What do you say to the Great Wall?”

“Now?”

“Ten minutes.”

The phone went dead. Tuttle put his car in gear and set off. Describing the recent scene to Peanuts would be as nothing to telling Hazel.

When he and Peanuts were settled in a booth at the Great Wall, he got out his phone again and called his office.

“Martin wants you to call him at the senior center at St. Hilary's. Just have him paged.”

He signed off.

The humiliation of his visit to the Dolans seemed at last behind him. Of course, he had blamed that fiasco on Martin Sisk.

17

Henry Dolan was so furious that the lawyer Tuttle had shown up at the senior center at St. Hilary's, he swore to George that he'd never go back. “That fool Martin Sisk went off with him. To think he had hired such a charlatan. He came to the house and tried to hold me up.”

George had heard the story from Vivian. He was always the recipient of news that concerned Martha, Sheila's reaction being what it was. She had gone into the bedroom and slammed the door when George told her again she must meet with Madeline Lorenzo. At least she hadn't locked it.

He went in and sat on the bed. “Putting your head in the sand won't change anything.”

“I don't want to talk about it.”

“It's beyond talk, Sheila. You should talk to her before Martha does.”

“Martha.” She lifted her head from the pillow into which she had been crying.

“A meeting has been arranged.”

She sprang from the bed. “That ungrateful child!”

You're only thinking of yourself.
He didn't say this aloud, of course. His mission in life was to pacify Sheila, as it had been to devote himself to Martha. Sometimes he half feared that there was something unwholesome in his love for the child he had brought from the delivery room and put in Sheila's arms, making them parents of a sort, mother and father. Pathology is an impersonal specialty, a matter of running tests on biopsies in the course of an operation or performing autopsies. He had chosen the residency in pathology over several others just because it would protect him from dealing with living patients. That had left him free to devote himself exclusively to Sheila and Martha. Of course, Sheila was devoted to Martha, too, but he had come to see that his was a more selfless love than hers. Martha's curiosity had from the beginning seemed a threat to Sheila, whereas George had always been sympathetic. Of course she would want to know the woman who bore her. If Sheila thought that belated meeting could destroy the long years they had had with Martha, then she was very much mistaken. Increasingly, it became clear that it was of herself she was thinking, not Martha.

George recognized this without condemning his wife. He expected that others would be weak while he was strong. He could hardly have felt as deeply as Sheila the news that she would never herself carry a baby to term, but he had felt it. During her unsuccessful pregnancies, he had scarcely dared dream of the joys of fatherhood that lay ahead, so moved was he by the prospect. Acquiring Martha had been their salvation. How could Sheila imagine they could lose her love now?

“What is she like?” Sheila asked.

“Martha.”

“Oh, stop saying that!”

It was as if no father had been involved in the making of Martha, so like Madeline was she. He had never told Sheila who the father was. At the Women's Care Center they had spoken to George more as a doctor than as the prospective father, telling him that Madeline's pregnancy was the result of an affair with a fellow student. “Of course, he refuses to take responsibility.” Irene made a face. “Men!” In the circumstances, her misogyny seemed justified. Irene had gone on: The father was a big man on campus, despite his ridiculous name.

“Ridiculous?”

“Fleck.” She spat the name. Perhaps that was why he never forgot and why he had been startled to see the name on a book Sheila was reading.

“What's this?” he'd asked.

“Just a novel.”

George had learned not only the name but to hate it as well. It was all he could do not to rid his house of a book by the author who was Martha's father. Sheila had wanted to expunge memories of the Women's Care Center from her mind, the better to forget how Martha had come to them. George's gratitude led him to continue to volunteer to counsel young women there once a week, a secret he kept from Sheila. He felt that he was paying both their debts to the place. Irene had passed away, rest her soul, but the work went on. George had been at the center when Nathaniel Fleck came, making inquiries.

“What did he want to know?” George asked Louise, who had succeeded Irene.

“Nothing I could tell him.”

“Something about a child?”

“What else?”

“Did he know the mother's name?”

“Doctor, I wouldn't even listen to him. As you know, everything here has to be kept completely confidential. We owe it to the young women.”

George had informed himself of Nathaniel Fleck's career since coming on that novel of his. The Internet is a marvelous device. He entered Fleck's name in Google and pressed
SEARCH
, and almost instantaneously he had his choice of sites devoted to the author. Eventually, he checked them all. They were repetitious, of course, but uniformly laudatory. When Fleck showed up at the center, George felt he already knew him.

He caught up with Fleck in the parking lot. “I'm Dr. Lynch, a counselor here.”

“I just got the bum's rush.”