Brush Back (43 page)

“Mr. Villard’s house was burgled and some of his Cubs memorabilia were taken. I was going to say, maybe the thieves were looking for these pictures. Well, not these specifically, but the break-in happened soon after the story ran about Boom-Boom being at Wrigley. Maybe I’m wrong—maybe the break-in was random and not connected to Boom-Boom or Stella’s quest for exoneration.”

“These pictures prove the diary!” Bernie cried, cheeks flaming.

“This conversation proves that you cannot have more than one glass of wine, Bernadine,” Pierre said. “You are behaving as if you were with your teammates, not at a dinner party. You and I, we are going up to our room and let these people have some peace and quiet.”

He took my hand and kissed it. “Tomorrow, Bernadine and I will see the sights of Chicago, including a chance to watch the Blackhawks skate against St. Louis. You must come, too. The Blackhawks, they will be thrilled to have Boom-Boom’s cousin in the house. And these gentlemen?”

Mr. Contreras was torn, but decided he needed a night at home. Jake seemed thankful to plead a rehearsal, but I accepted happily.

HIGH AND INSIDE

Between the wine,
my cold and my lingering injuries, I was ready for bed within minutes of getting home. It was a luxury to stretch out in Jake’s clean sheets, not to have my brain on partial alert for Bernie sliding out of the building.

Jake had recently been selected to play the Martinsson Double Bass Concerto with the Chicago Symphony and wanted to practice fingering. I fell asleep to the soft rumbling of his playing and for once managed a full night with no intrusions from Guzzos or mobsters or tar pits.

I woke to yet another cold cloudy day in the city that spring forgot, but finally felt well enough to run the lakefront with the dogs. My muscles were loose, I was moving easily, I was happy.

At the Fullerton Avenue beach, I returned phone calls while the dogs swam after their tennis balls. I was just finishing a conversation with one of Darraugh Graham’s financial officers when Vince Bagby phoned.

“How’s the nose?”

“Almost well enough to smell the peonies you sent.”

“And the girl you’re looking after?”

“Back in Canada with her parents. Why?” I kept my voice friendly, but I didn’t trust him with the truth.

“I’m a friendly guy, Warshawski, who’s trying to make conversation. I’d be glad to show you face-to-face—you free for dinner?”

“Not until after I find Sebastian Mesaline, and even then, no guarantees.” I found myself checking the gun in my tuck holster.

“Come on, Warshawski, you can’t be interested in a wussy kid like him.”

“I’ve never met him,” I said. “Tell me what’s so wussy about him.”

Mitch and Peppy, sensing my attention was elsewhere, started wandering up the beach. I whistled to them sharply.

“You have to do that into the mike? You damn near broke my eardrums.”

“What’s so wussy about Mesaline?” I repeated.

“Word on the street. When you meet him, you can let me know. I hope it happens soon—I’m going to hold you to that dinner date.”

I pocketed my phone while I went after the dogs. Why had Bagby called? To see how much I knew or because he actually had taken a liking to me? I guess there was no reason it couldn’t be both; he was a friendly guy, as he himself agreed: he got along with everyone, from the security manager at the Guisar dock to me.

Mitch was cleaning up after the Canada geese. I brought him to heel and jogged the rest of the way to the car.

It was interesting that Bagby knew about Sebastian Mesaline. I’d never mentioned Sebastian around him, but Bagby also knew Jerry Fugher, Nabiyev and, presumably, the Sturlese brothers, the people on the Virejas Tower project, perhaps even the contractor who had placed Sebastian there.

“Too wide a field to analyze,” I told the dogs, unlocking the Subaru. “But Bagby is definitely playing with a very rough crowd.”

They showed their agreement by shaking hard and covering me with wet sand. I guess that was a good thing—it meant less sand for me to vacuum out of the Subaru before I returned it to Luke.

Back home, I changed into office clothes and brought espressos over to Jake’s. He was still asleep, but when I sat cross-legged on the bed, he stuck a hand out from under the covers for one of the cups.

“Trucker who might have Mob ties invited me to dinner,” I said.

Jake propped himself up on an elbow. “You want me to play while you eat? Those gigs are
so
depressing. You get to measure 113 of the Martinsson, for instance, where the bass goes into an upper register that sounds like a cello, and at table nine, the trucker with the oil under his fingernails starts telling a crude joke, and the detective next to him, who you thought at first had some understanding of you and your music, in fact you were imagining what her skin might feel like under that red thing she has on, this detective laughs so loudly no one can hear—”

“You make it sound so romantic.” I put my cup down and curled up next to him. “I didn’t know the detective had such a disruptive laugh.”

“When she’s genuinely happy, it sounds like champagne fizzing out of the bottle, but when she’s faking it, like laughing at a mobster’s vulgarities, it’s more like a barnyard cackle.”

To protect my relationship, I’d left the gun at my place, but my phone was in my hip pocket. I ignored it when it started to ring, but the terrified voice leaving the message made me forget laughter, whether fizzy or cackling.

“This is Adelaide, you know, from Mr. Villard. Someone shot him, it’s really bad, I’m calling his daughters, I’m calling the hospital, but you’re a detective, I need you to come.”

Jake sat up. “Who was that?”

“Caregiver to an elderly gentleman I met with yesterday.” I rolled over and off the bed, tucking the red thing I had on back into my slacks.

Jake pulled on a pair of jeans and walked me to the door. “Be careful, V.I. Whoever your elderly gentleman is and whatever happened to him, don’t risk your life, please. I hate that way worse than people telling jokes while I’m playing.”

I squeezed his fingers and ran across the hall to put on shoes and collect my gun. While I tied my laces I called Adelaide to let her know I was on my way. Her phone went to voice mail, which sent me to the car at double-speed, worried that if someone had attacked Villard, she might be in danger, too.

When I reached the cul-de-sac in Evanston where the mansion sat, police sawhorses were blocking the road. I didn’t bother trying to argue my way past the cops, but turned left, away from the lake, and found parking on a through street a block away. I jogged back to Sheridan Road and cut across the garden of a house north of the barricade. This section of Evanston sits twenty or thirty feet above Lake Michigan. A high rock fence runs about a quarter mile up the coast here, more to keep kids and dogs from tumbling down the bluff to the water than to keep out miscreants like me.

I scrambled to the top of the fence and started walking down toward Villard’s place. The top was only about as wide as one of my feet, and there were places where a thin iron rail had been inserted. As I skirted the grounds of Villard’s neighbor, a woman came to the door, shouting at me. I smiled, waved, which made me teeter and grab the overhanging branch of a tree. The woman opened the door and let out one of those Hungarian hunting dogs, which roared over to me, yelping in a high-pitched, indignant tone. Using the branch, I swung over the edge of the wall into a corner of Villard’s garden.

“Nice doggie,” I said as it stood on its hind legs to bark across the wall at me. Probably playful, since it was a house pet, but you never know.

I was screened from the road by a thicket of bushes and spiky prairie grasses, but I could make out a clutch of Evanston squad cars, as well as an officer at the bottom of the marble steps. I watched the woman who’d sicced the dog on me cross the drive and begin talking urgently to the officer on duty.

I did not need to be picked up by the Evanston cops. I faded behind a giant ash to text Adelaide. Mercifully, she came out through the back door a moment later. Her skirt and shirt were stained with blood.

“What happened? How badly is Mr. Villard hurt? Did they get you, too?” I demanded.

Her usually calm face was crumpled with worry and fear. “He was alive when the ambulance came, I hope he still is. I didn’t know, if I’d known I’d never have left him on his own, but my gentlemen and ladies, they need respect, you shouldn’t treat them like they’re little children, only the daughters don’t believe me.”

“Of course they need respect,” I assured her, “and I’ve watched you with Mr. Villard. He told you to leave him on his own because he was meeting someone he wanted to be private with?”

She nodded, miserable.

“After you left last night, he was very troubled. I was blaming you, to say the truth, for upsetting him in his mind. He sat looking at his old pictures from the baseball team for hours, letting his food get cold. When I came in to help him up the stairs to his bedroom, he was on the phone and motioned to me to leave, so I only heard a little bit of the conversation.”

“Which was?” I prompted.

“Something about of course he’d listen to the other person’s side of the story. Then this morning he told me someone would be coming to see him. He asked me to help him out to the garden and then to leave him on his own. I brought out a tray with coffee and cups and the little cookies he likes, but I went inside, only I stood with the door open, so I could hear him if he needed me. I could only see his back, or the back of the chair where he sat, but not the driveway, or anyone who might be sitting with him.”

She took me through the kitchen to an enclosed porch that opened onto the garden. I saw what she meant: only one chair and a bit of the wrought-iron table where Villard had been sitting could be seen from here. The scene looked peaceful, no overturned chairs or coffee cups, none of the blood that Adelaide had gotten on her clothes. I started down the steps so I could see the rest of the setup, but an officer held up a hand, warning us to stay inside.

I went back to Adelaide, who was twisting her hands over and over. “The police, they act like I knew these people, like I could have stopped them, but it happened so fast, I couldn’t see them, just heard their voices.”

“How many were there?” I asked.

“I think it was two, I think they were both men, but I can’t be sure. Anyway, one of them talked to Mr. Villard, and Mr. Villard, he played this recording you gave him, and the one man tried to laugh, but the other—he—I couldn’t believe it—he shot Mr. Villard, then the two of them ran around to the front. I could hear the car taking off, but I was in the garden helping my gentleman and calling for help and calling you.”

As if on cue, a plainclothesman came into the sunporch. “Who are you?” he demanded of me.

“V. I. Warshawski. A private investigator.”

“Let’s see some ID.”

I hate being cooperative, but the law has so much enforcement going for it these days I didn’t want to protest enough to be detained for questioning—I didn’t have time today for heroics. I showed my licenses, driver’s, investigator’s, gun permit.

“You follow the sirens?” he asked.

“You mean, am I cruising the streets, hoping for clients? No, Officer. Mr. Villard was sharing some of his old photos of Wrigley Field with me.”

“You the woman who climbed the fence next door? That how you always arrive at your contacts’ houses?”

“When the cops are blocking access I have to get to my clients as efficiently as possible.”

“And how do you know this gal?” He jerked a thumb toward Adelaide.

I was white, so I was the woman who climbed the fence. Adelaide was dark, which made her a gal. Was that a step up or down from being a girl?

“This
woman
is a professional caregiver whom I’ve talked to when I’ve met with Mr. Villard. Did anyone get a look at the car that the shooters drove?”

“We’re taking care of canvassing the neighbors and asking questions. We’re looking for this
woman
’s contacts.”

“Mr. Villard made an appointment with someone for coffee this morning. Rather than wasting your time harassing people who never heard of him, you might check his phone records, see who he called last night at—what time was it?” I asked Adelaide.

“It would have been around ten o’clock, right before I came to help him get ready for bed.”

“It’s a good story,” the detective said, “and the two of you have had plenty of time to rehearse it.”

Instead of answering him, I called Murray Ryerson, who fortunately picked up. I cut short his sarcastic greetings. “A situation in Evanston. Stan Villard, used to be head of media relations for the Cubs, has been shot, taken off to the hospital. Evanston cops are trying to frame his caregiver, but smart money is wondering where Boris Nabiyev or Vince Bagby were when the shots were fired. Also, call Freeman Carter for me, in case we get too crowded here.”

The detective took the phone from me. “Call is over.” He pressed the off button.