Breakdown (41 page)

N
IA WAS PACKING FOR A MONTH IN
I
SRAEL, SO EXCITED AT HER
pending adventure that she didn’t bristle at my questions in a way that she might have if I’d asked them while Arielle was still missing. Diane Ovech, the Durangos’ housekeeper, sat in on our interview in the Durangos’ living room, since Sophy was campaigning in Rockford this afternoon.

“Nia, you and Arielle laughed at the thought that Miles Wuchnik might have been a genie. Did that mean you thought he was interested in Arielle’s genealogy search?”

Nia sucked in a breath. “How do you know about that?”

“The websites Arielle visited,” I said. “She was trying to learn something about her grandfather’s boyhood during the Second World War. Did she ever actually meet Miles Wuchnik?”

Nia was a tall girl, almost my height, but she looked very small and vulnerable right now. She started drawing a circle in the living room rug with her big toe.

“If Arielle confided in you, you’re carrying a load you need to share with us,” I said.

“You must answer, Nia.” Diane’s voice was calm but carried an authoritative weight.

“I wasn’t trying to make a joke about a dead person,” Nia said miserably. “I know that’s rude and mean-spirited. We were nervous, that’s all, but, see, one day Ari got this text message, it was from this guy who said he worked at Global News. He said he was really fed up with how the network talked about Grandpapa Chaim, and if we’d get him the truth about what happened during the war, then he’d put it on the teleprompter in the middle of one of Wade Lawlor’s rants, and Wade would find himself reading the truth to the whole world!”

I felt the hair stand up on my neck. “That must have seemed like an exciting idea” was the only response I could come up with.

“We thought it was awesome,” Nia said, her face flushed. “You know the kind of horrible garbage he says about my mom and Ari’s grandpapa, we wanted to pay him back!”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Diane said. “Or talk to your mother?”

“We knew you’d say not to do it, and we wanted Wade Lawlor to look totally stupid and wasted on TV!”

“Is that when Arielle started doing all that genealogy research?” I said.

“First we tried to ask Grandpapa Chaim, because that was the simplest way to find out. We talked to him at the cottage one night—in Michigan, you know, where he’s the most relaxed he ever gets. We said, like, he was our age in the war, and how did he make it without his folks, because we couldn’t imagine it, it’s hard enough for Ari and me, not having our fathers, but if our moms disappeared—and he just got really quiet, and looked at us, like—I can’t even say what his face looked like.”

She looked up at me, her eyes big in her narrow face. “We were so frightened; we thought we’d be in horrible trouble if we ever told another soul. And then, when Ari disappeared, I was really scared, because I thought it was something about Grandpapa Chaim, about what he did in Europe during the war, you know. But when you found Ari in the trunk of the car, I knew Grandpapa Chaim would never hurt her, I mean, he might’ve gotten cross about her asking too many questions, but he wouldn’t leave her to die in the trunk of a car.”

I wondered again about the human heart, Chaim’s heart.

“Did the person who texted Arielle give her a way of checking on whether he really worked at Global?”

“He had to write us anonymously,” Nia said earnestly. “We couldn’t check on him because he was afraid he’d get fired.”

“Nia, these are the typical things that con artists say. If anyone approaches you, or Arielle, again, talk to me, or talk to Diane here. If Arielle had come up with real information about Chaim—about her grandfather—your texter would have used it to hurt him.”

“How do you know?” Nia tried to speak forcefully, but the misery in her eyes told me she knew I was telling the truth.

“Did you ever meet him in person?” I asked.

Nia took a deep breath. “Who we met was the vampire’s victim.”

I took a breath of my own, counting slowly, not wanting to shriek. “Tell me about it.”

“He came up to Ari after school one day. We gave him the brush-off, we looked for the school guard. Maybe we don’t know about con artists, but we’ve been taught since we were two years old about stranger danger, especially Ari, because, you know, how rich her grandpapa is, kidnappers could steal her for ransom.

“But, anyway, the vampire guy, he called out, ‘I know you’re looking for Chaim Salanter’s history,’ so we thought it was the person texting Ari, so we went up to talk to him, and then he said he really needed us to work harder, because they were starting to get suspicious of him at work, and we were like, we’re doing all we can but we don’t know anything, and he said, maybe we should go look in Grandpapa Chaim’s computer. Then Ari said she couldn’t possibly do that, and he said, well, if we gave him Grandpapa Chaim’s passwords, he could do it for us from a remote location.”

“And did you?” My mouth was dry as I asked the question.

“We couldn’t; Ari doesn’t know them. And he said if we loved Grandpapa Chaim we’d be more cooperative.” Nia looked up. “When he said that, we got scared, we just took off and ran home.”

“Why didn’t you tell your mother or Aunt Julia, or even me?” Diane burst out.

“We couldn’t!” Nia said. “You’d tell Grandpapa Chaim and we were scareder of him than anyone.”

I thought of Julia, frantic about her daughter, worried about her father. If Arielle had confided in her mother, Julia might have enlisted Gabe Eycks in helping her dispose of a blackmailer.

“Did he come back again?”

“No, but every day until school ended in June, we were, like, totally scared, we’d leave by a side door, we’d run around with girls we usually didn’t talk to just so we were in a group. And then when he got killed, all we thought was how Carmilla had protected us!”

I didn’t know if I felt more like screaming or smiling at the needle-point poise between childhood and adulthood that made girls caught up in a murder imagine that Carmilla might be real.

“You knew when you saw him in the cemetery that he was the man who tried to blackmail you?”

“We didn’t see his face at the cemetery, it was the next day, when you said his name, and we were so happy we didn’t think about the rest of it.”

“How did you know his name?” I asked.

“I told him he couldn’t talk to us if he didn’t tell us. First he gave this stupid made-up name, like we were so stupid we never heard of Sam Spade, and then he said his name, and we told him we had to see a business card.”

The benefits of having a mother in a high-profile position. I hadn’t known what a business card was when I was twelve.

“But why did you choose the cemetery at all?” I asked.

“Arielle suggested it.” Nia picked at a cuticle. “I mean, I’m not trying to get her in trouble, but we knew if we went to a park, we could get busted for being out after curfew, and the cemetery, it’s abandoned, so no one would see us. It’s where her mom’s grandmother is buried, so we’d been there before, we knew about that tomb that’s built like an old temple, you know, falling down in ruins like in our history books.”

Neither Diane nor I spoke for a minute, then the housekeeper gently told Nia to go finish packing, because the car to the airport would be arriving in less than an hour. As soon as her charge was out of the room, though, she turned to me in worry: the police had to know, Sophy had to know, but did it have to be today?

I looked at her unhappily. “I know that making this public will be another blow to Dr. Durango’s campaign. But we can’t sit on it any longer.”

“Do you think Nia was truthful, about not having seen the man again, I mean? I hate having to ask this, she’s always been a very truthful child, but—” Diane clipped her sentence off without finishing it.

I nodded; I’d been turning the question over in my own mind. “Miles Wuchnik was a blackmailer. He had some kind of device for listening in on people’s calls; he might even have loaded something in the girls’ cell phones so that their texts would pop up on his own phone. The technology exists; I just don’t know how to use it.

“The bigger question to me is how he learned enough about Salanter or Arielle to eavesdrop on her in the first place. But I’m beginning to see that his eavesdropping might have led him to the cemetery—he would have known that the girls were going to hold their ritual there. And the biggest question of all is which of his victims was so threatened that he or she needed Wuchnik dead. I hope Carmilla’s protection extends to Julia and Chaim—I don’t want to think either of them was responsible.”

“Maybe I’ll borrow Nia’s Carmilla amulet while she’s in Israel.” Diane smiled weakly. “When will you tell the police?”

“Probably tomorrow.” I got up. “Unless I learn something at my next meeting that will let me keep the girls out of the picture altogether. Are you staying in Chicago when Nia flies out? I’ll call you in the morning, give you enough advance notice that Dr. Durango’s PR team can be ready, if worse comes to worst.”

The housekeeper walked me to the door. “I’ve worked for Sophy ever since Nia was two, when her husband was first diagnosed with lymphoma. She—you know the saying, that no man is a hero to his valet? I’ve seen Sophy in situations that would tax any of us to the limit, but I’ve never seen her take it out on me, students, or staff. She really is a great candidate for any office in this country. I don’t want this murder to derail her. And maybe, like Nia said, that’s heartless, but what if the killer did all this just to embarrass her, to guarantee that that right-wing creep Kendrick gets to the Senate?”

Her words echoed some conspiracy fears of my own; they shaped my conversation with my ex-husband, when he finally descended from his forty-eighth-floor office to Crawford, Mead’s reception area. After our barbed banter about who got to bill whom, he took me to the same conference room where we’d spoken last week.

He looked at his Journe watch: I’m important, don’t forget it. “I’ve got fifteen minutes, Vic, then I’m due at the Pottawatomie Club.”

I was supposed to be impressed: the Pottawatomie is one of a handful of social clubs around the country where who gets to do what to America is decided. “I’ve eaten there, Dick—I don’t think you’ll regret skipping the appetizer.”

“Was there some reason you wanted to see me other than to taunt me?” Dick demanded.

I helped myself to the red grapefruit juice on the drinks cart. “You know, this is the only place in town I ever see this juice, and it’s the perfect hot-weather refresher. You told me last week that Crawford, Mead doesn’t take political positions, but of course everyone knows that Eloise Napier is one of Helen Kendrick’s lawyers.”

“You know I can’t comment on our client list.”

“I’m not asking you to, I’m telling you. When Eloise Napier flaunts Kendrick’s jewel-crusted gold corncob flag, I know that she, if not the firm itself, is working for Helen Kendrick. So I’m picturing a dinner party in Lake Bluff with the Reapers, I think that’s what they’re called, the people who bundle together quarter-million contributions to the Kendrick campaign.”

“Gleaners,” Dick corrected me without thinking, then glared when he realized I’d gotten him to betray his involvement in the campaign.

“Right. So we’re at a dinner party with the Gleaners. Sewall Ashford and his mom are there, among others, and so is Kendrick’s lawyer, Napier. Or was it you?”

I paused, but Dick wasn’t going to betray himself any further.

“And word comes in that Leydon Ashford, the dirty laundry or the blazing light of the family, depending on your viewpoint, is acting as a lawyer for a guy in Ruhetal’s forensic wing. Sewall and his mom want it stopped, and Eloise tells them she has a PI she uses for odd jobs, and what could be odder than this one? So she says she’ll send her PI out to Ruhetal to find out what Leydon’s up to and he’ll make her stop.”

Dick shrugged. “Could be. We do a lot of things for our clients that they don’t cover in Introduction to Client Relations courses.”

“So when Miles Wuchnik was found dead, Eloise must have raised those perfectly painted eyebrows of hers. Despite her pretense of not knowing what Wuchnik had been doing for months and months.”

“Vic, that smacks of cattiness.” Dick pretended to be shocked.

“You’re right: meow. Now, here’s an interesting thing that Eloise may or may not have shared with her managing partner. Wuchnik’s contact at the hospital was killed this past Tuesday. Suffocated in the front seat of a shiny new Camaro that he’d plunked down fifteen thousand for in cash. Yesterday, the dead man’s girlfriend phoned Crawford, Mead. Whatever she learned from that phone call made her flee the country. I’m assuming she wasn’t seeking green-card advice.”

Dick frowned, drumming his long fingers on the table. It was those hands that must have attracted me twenty-five years ago—surely I’d never been drawn to that petulant mouth.

“What’s the name?” he said.

“Jana Shatka. Her dead partner was Xavier Jurgens.”

“Spell,” he demanded.

I printed the names on one of the pads of paper laid out helpfully for clients. Dick used the phone in the middle of the table to call into the bowels of the firm. He identified himself, gave a number that I presumed was his secret password, and then asked about Shatka and Jurgens.

When he hung up he frowned some more. “We don’t have any record of a call from Shatka. She might not have identified herself, of course. She wasn’t a client.”

He paused.

“But Jurgens was?” I asked.

“No.” He paused again. “Can I count on your discretion?”

“Not if it’s a lead in a murder case, you know that, Dick.”

He bit his lower lip. “Oh, damn you, anyway, Vic. Ten days ago, we got a packet of money. Sixteen thousand two hundred dollars in cash, to be exact. A typed note asked us to deliver the money to Jurgens, less twelve hundred as our fee for ninety minutes of work.”

41.

A STEP AHEAD

T
HAT WAS ALL
D
ICK COULD, OR MAYBE WOULD, TELL ME.
H
E
didn’t know if the money had been delivered by messenger, FedEx, or dropped by Carmilla’s beak from the clouds, and he refused to call his mail-processing center to see if they had a record of the sender’s address.