Deadly Interest (19 page)

Boisterous conversation, sizzling eggs,
clanging pans, and constant movement took me aback as he pulled
open the door to the busy restaurant, allowing me to enter. Tall
yellow walls, covered in black-framed Warhol-like lithographs, rose
up to meet the metal-beamed ceiling that did little to ease the
cacophony below.

A small sign immediately inside the door
suggested that we seat ourselves, but it looked to be quite a
wait.

Every fifties-era Formica table was occupied
with clusters of chatting, coffee-drinking people in various stages
of eating. A woman wearing a T-shirt two sizes too small for her
voluptuous frame, held a handful of curly red hair up out of her
face as she made a point to an unimpressed, bulky woman wearing a
baggy denim jacket across from her. At the table adjacent to them,
four white-shirted young men leaned forward, with identical looks
of clean-cut intensity, as one of them held up a Bible and spoke
with an earnestness I could see even from my position by the door.
Next to them, two young mothers juggled coffee and toddlers who
stared mesmerized out the wall-size picture window at the buses and
cars that plodded by through the still-falling snow outside. A
March blizzard in Chicago didn’t slow down its natives.

With its tables tight against one another,
without one extra inch of navigation space, the restaurant should
have felt claustrophobic, but the soaring open ceilings, and
white-painted heating vents kept the place airy, though so noisy,
it felt like the very air clacked.

“
Mr. Dewars.” A young
woman carrying menus broke into a winning smile, her perfect teeth
matching her perfect features. Petite, with shiny brown eyes to
match her straight dark hair, she raised inquisitive eyebrows at my
companion, then shifted her gaze to me in a once-over, skimming
politely over my black eye as though she didn’t notice it.
“Two?”

“
Good morning, Linda,” he
said, as he placed a proprietary hand on the small of my back. “Is
my table ready?”

“
Of course,” she said.
“Follow me.”

She wound through the bustling dining room,
into a small silent passage that opened into yet another part of
the restaurant. These walls were muted shades, and this room’s
tables were spaced much farther apart, and the clientele all
business folks, talking in low-tones, so engrossed in their dealing
that not one pair of eyes looked up as we entered.

Linda held my chair out and placed a tall
plastic-covered menu in my hand. Having seated us at a table for
four in the windowed corner, she attempted to guide David into the
chair opposite mine, but he chose to sit cornered to me instead.
“Cozy,” he said, not noticing Linda’s surprised smile.

“
Enjoy your breakfast,”
she said, with just the right measure of perkiness.

“
They know you here.” I
said when she’d gone. “You must come by a lot.”

“
Good place, great
people.”

A young, jeans-clad waitress wearing a tight
white T-shirt, poured coffee for both of us and left a good-sized
thermal carafe on the table for us to help ourselves.

After we’d ordered, I folded my arms and
leaned forward. With all the busy-ness going around us there was no
need to worry about eavesdroppers, but I kept my voice low anyway.
As far as I was concerned this was a business breakfast, and I was
ready to get down to it. “You’re pretty convinced that Barton
killed his mother.”

David nodded. “Absolutely. The proof is
there.”

“
It isn’t unusual for a
woman to designate her account for her son. And, like I said
before, fifty-thousand dollars isn’t that much money.”

“
This is why I wanted you
to come inspect the files for yourself.” He put down the mug he’d
been sipping from and brought his voice low to dovetail mine.
“Evelyn Vicks made some unusual changes to her account—regarding
her beneficiaries—over the past several months.”

“
What kinds of
changes?”

“
Up until three months
ago, all of Evelyn’s retirement-planning accounts were handled
outside our offices. She had a couple of trust funds, too, and she
had her will.”

“
What happened three
months ago?”

“
She came to us and asked
if we could take over her investment portfolio.”

“
Do you know
why?”

“
I asked her that myself.”
David picked up his coffee cup again, pondered it. “She seemed to
have difficulty explaining her actions. I assured her that I would
take care of it.” Alert eyes captured mine. “To be frank, her
accounts are so small that it doesn’t affect our bottom line at
all. But I was worried for her because she’s one of my people, and
there are unscrupulous folks out there who would take advantage of
elderly women. I wondered if that’s what was going on.”

“
So you don’t know why she
made the change.”

“
Not precisely. At the
same time, she told Owen Riordan—the loan officer you met at the
wake Sunday night . . .” he raised his eyebrows in question until I
nodded my acknowledgement that I remembered him, “that she needed
to update her will.” Weighty gaze. This part was going to be
important, it seemed. “Owen had his own law practice before coming
to the bank. Mind you, he’s not our corporate attorney. We refer
all our legal matters to O’Shea Associates.”

“
Why would she have
approached Owen with any of this?”

“
Mostly because Evelyn
liked Owen,” he said with a shrug. “She confided in him, often. To
her, he was more than just a boss. On top of that, Owen writes up
wills for bank employees for free. It keeps my people happy since
they don’t have to drop a few hundred bucks on legal work, and it
keeps Owen happy, because I figure that goodwill into his annual
bonus. Win-win situation. Anyway, she told him she had changes that
she wanted to make, and he wrote it up for her.”

“
Nothing suspicious about
that.”

“
Except,” he leaned even
closer and his voice dropped to a whisper, “she made Barton the
sole beneficiary.”

I didn’t understand. “Wasn’t he always the
beneficiary?”

“
We have no way of knowing
that. But consider this: why would she need a new will if that
hadn’t changed? According to Owen, she seemed extremely unwilling
to offer explanation.”

“
That doesn’t sound like
Mrs. Vicks.” I said.

“
Exactly.” The brown eyes
lit up and David pointed a triumphant finger at me.

The waitress arrived bearing our steaming
breakfast platters. I’d chosen a ham, green pepper and mushroom
skillet with scrambled eggs over the top and David decided on a
butterflied filet mignon, done medium rare, with eggs over-easy on
the side.

It was delicious. Already I was gauging how
much I could finish. The platter was huge; if I had three hours, I
might be able to make a dent in it.

“
You think it wasn’t Mrs.
Vicks’ idea to change her will?” I prompted, to start the subject
again.

“
No, I don’t. I think she
was acting on Barton’s direction.”

“
You think. You don’t
know.”

Chewing, he acknowledged my point with a
nod.

“
That’s pretty sketchy,” I
said. “And you don’t even know what the terms of the prior will
were.”

He shook his head as he chewed.

“
Who drew up the prior
will?” I asked.

He shrugged.

“
Any way to find out?” I
asked. I poured coffee for myself, then realized that his cup was
empty too. I raised the carafe in question.

“
Thank you,” he said,
pushing his mug forward. “I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t have the
answer to that. But what difference would it make now? The new will
is in effect, and has been for several months. Barton gets it
all.”

I nodded, thoughtful. I’d love to get a look
at the old will. Maybe Mrs. Vicks had a copy at home somewhere. Or
maybe in that safe deposit box that Barton couldn’t access.

As I refilled David’s cup, he smiled.
“Business aside, I’m very much enjoying our breakfast this
morning,” he said.

Surprised to find that I was enjoying myself
too, I smiled. “Cream?”

When the waitress finally came to clear our
plates, I resisted the overwhelming urge to ask for a doggie bag
for the remainder of my food. If I’d been going back to my own
office, I would have jumped at the chance to save some of the
platter for tomorrow, but seeing as how my next stop was Banner
Bank, and I was getting there in a chauffeur-driven car, I decided,
this time, to let my more ladylike tendencies win out.

* * * * *

“
Your home away from
home,” David said with a sweeping arm gesture that made the small
office seem even smaller. He followed me in, his solid presence
making the cramped quarters immediately claustrophobic. “I’m sorry
it isn’t more luxurious, but we’re undergoing an audit from the
FDIC and they claimed all the decent free space we had.”

My ears perked up. “Audit?”

The look of annoyance he wore when he’d
first mentioned the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation smoothed
to one of reassurance toward me. “Scheduled audit. Nothing
unusual.”

I nodded, in absent-minded fashion, taking
the two steps into the room that brought me to the far corner.
Ten-by-ten at best, with a table and a chair, it was windowless,
pictureless, and the walls were a shiny russet color that clashed
with the flattened orange carpet. An uneven hum droning above me
promised air movement, but provided none. From its stale smell, I
guessed that no one had used this space in a very long time.

It had been designed as a privacy room for
patrons to open their safe deposit boxes in seclusion. Four other
similar rooms lined the vault area, but this one, the farthest down
the dark corridor, and the largest, evidently got the least amount
of use.

“
Right now,” David
continued, pointing to a scarred wooden table snug up against the
west wall, “that’s the best we can do for a desk.” Two small
cardboard boxes sat atop it, my name scribbled on them. “But the
chair should be comfortable.”

“
Thanks,” I said, putting
my hand on its black leather backrest and giving it a twirl. He
stood close enough that his chest skimmed the side of my left arm.
Leaning past me, he indicated a call button I hadn’t seen
earlier.

“
This will summon Lorna,
our vault clerk. You need anything, she’ll contact me or Owen. One
of us will take care of you.”

I’d assumed I would have free access to the
entire bank. Horrified at the thought of spending long hours in
this cheerless enclave, I blurted my disappointment before I formed
polite phrasing. “You mean I’ll be stuck back here the whole
time?”

“
I am sorry, Alex. There
were twice as many auditors this time as we expected, but I’d be
happy to share my office with you,” he said. “Of course there may
be some instances where I’d need you to step out if—”

“
No.” I stopped him.
Sharing an office with a bank president—not my idea of
comfort.

He looked around the room again. “The
auditors should be gone by Monday. We can find you a better space
then.”

Monday? I couldn’t imagine Mrs. Vicks’
records would take that long to pore through. “Well,” I said
clapping my hands together in a gesture of dismissal. “Let me get
started then.”

The moment he left, I took off my hem-length
suit jacket, draping it over the back of the chair, and fanned the
neckline of my sleeveless dress, hoping to create a little breeze.
The room wasn’t hot exactly, but the static feel coupled with the
fusty smell made me want to bolt outside and breathe in some of the
snowy air.

I’d given the boxes a once-over and had been
about to sit down with the first one when I realized I had no pen
and paper. I probably should’ve brought them myself, but the
breakfast meeting had taken me out of investigative mode. I hit the
call button.

An older woman came around the corner
moments later. Dark-haired and large, possibly of Romanian descent,
she smiled through blood-red lips. “You must be Miss St. James,”
she said, with a smile and crusty smoker’s voice. “I’m Lorna. You
and Mr. Dewars passed me on the way in, but I was busy with a
customer. What can I do for you?”

I explained what I needed.

Lorna had the biggest eyes I’d ever seen.
They bulged in such a way that I could see the white all the way
around her dark pupils. She shook her head, making a clucking
sound. “I can’t believe they’re sticking you back here.”

“
I heard about the
audit.”

“
Yeah.” She rolled those
big eyes. “I say, stick one of those pests down here. Maybe they’d
be out of my hair sooner, then.”

“
They’re
pests?”

“
Every year it’s the same
thing. ‘Get me this file,’ ‘Get me records for the past ten years
on that,’ ‘Write up your procedures for me.’ Yadda, yadda, yadda.
It’s a safe deposit vault, for crissakes. My procedures are just
the same as last year’s.”

Her delivery made me grin.

Casting a glance around my little room again
she said, “Let me see what I can do for you.”

“
Did you know Mrs.
Vicks?”

Nod. “A little. She worked up on twelve, in
the loan’s bookkeeping department. I saw her once in a while if we
had break at the same time. When we did, we talked some. Nice lady.
Real nice.” Lorna tightened her lips and looked away. “It’s a damn
shame.”