Deadly Interest (35 page)

We jumped when a tap came at the door.
“Excuse me,” the vault girl said in a honey voice as she peered
around the doorway. “The bank will be closing in a few
minutes.”

She’d missed seeing the cash by seconds. I
threw Barton a look that said “I told you so,” and then heaved a
sigh. There was a lot I wanted to sort through, still. “Do you
happen to have a big shopping bag?” I asked. “Maybe a couple?”

She smiled. “I’ll see what I can do.”

While she was gone we sorted through the
rest of the box as quickly as we could, Barton keeping one eye on
the envelope like he was afraid it might jump up and dance away.
When he shouted, “Hey!” I stood straight up, startled.

“
Look,” he said, with a
little catch of excitement in his voice, “it’s Ma’s will. It’s
right here.”

I started to read over his shoulder, but he
thrust the sheaf of papers into my hands. “What’s it say?” he
asked.

The vault girl returned and we started
loading up as much as could be stuffed into the two bags she’d
provided. We shifted positions, and I got Barton to bag while I
continued to read. With the running commentary keeping me vaguely
aware of what he was choosing to take and what he chose to leave
behind, I skimmed enough to get the gist of the disposition Mrs.
Vicks intended.

“
Hang on,” I
said.

He stopped.

“
I want those,” I said,
pointing.

Without questioning me, Barton nodded,
grabbing two more file folders, held together by thick crisscrossed
rubber bands and paper-clipped sides. Mrs. Vicks had written “Maya,
home phone” in pencil on the top folder. That struck me as odd
enough that I wanted to know what was inside.

“
What does the will say?”
Barton asked, standing too close.

All of a sudden, a wave of claustrophobia
hit me. Too tight. Whoever designed these dinky little rooms
certainly didn’t have the patrons’ comfort in mind. “Let’s get
outside first, okay?” I said, brushing past him.

Back in the car, Barton started counting his
money. I locked my doors with the master lock, worried that some
carjacker might decide to target us and not only get away with my
little car, but also Mrs. Vicks’ windfall.

“
How much?” I asked when
he finally came up for air.

“
Forty-two hundred,” he
said in a hushed, disbelieving voice. A big smile broke over his
pudgy face and for a half-second I could see a shadow of the boy
that Theresa might have found handsome all those years ago. Eyes
wide with delight, he said the words again. “Forty-two
hundred.”

“
Okay Bart, I got it. Now
pay attention.” Reading over the will, I summarized. “It looks to
me that your mother had her will drawn up about twelve years ago.
That’d be right after your father died, wouldn’t it?”

Barton looked like he’d
just buzzed in on
Jeopardy!
and had forgotten the answer. “Yeah, I think so,”
he said.

“
I’m guessing,” I
continued. “But the timing seems about right.”

“
Come on,” Barton said,
his voice high with impatience and fists tight around the cash,
“What’s it say about her other money?”

I wondered again how such a perfectly lovely
woman could have birthed such a deplorable son. “It’s split between
you and Diana. Evenly.”

“
What?”

“
Per
stirpes
,” I added.

“
Speak
English.”

“
What that means,” I
explained, “is that if you would have died before your mother did,
and if you didn’t have a will, then your share would have gone to
Diana, too. And it means,” I let my gaze float over till it landed
on the cash sitting in his lap, “half of that belongs to Diana now,
too.”

“
The hell it
does.”

I waved the will. “It says it right here.
Half to you, half to Diana.”

His face went red in the
amount of time it took him to gather the bills into two fat fists.
“This is
my
inheritance,” he said, stuffing the cash into his pockets and
spitting as he spoke. “She was my mother and this is mine. I ain’t
sharing it with nobody. Got that?”

“
Barton, you’re breaking
the law.”

I could tell it was too much information at
once, and he was having difficulty processing it all. “Give me
that,” he said, ripping the will from my hands. He began to read
it, and I could tell from the blank expression on his face that he
didn’t comprehend a word. “I don’t understand,” he said, in classic
understatement.

I shook my head, not understanding a lot of
this, myself. “David Dewars told me that your mother wrote up a new
will, and that you were the sole beneficiary.”

Barton’s eyes lit up. “Yeah?”

His face suffused with puppy-dog eagerness
now, like I’d just held up a leash and offered him a walk. I
gritted my teeth, but I would have much rather slapped that hopeful
look off his face. “Barton,” I said with a sharpness that got his
attention, “that doesn’t make sense. Why would your mother have
suddenly excluded Diana after all these years?”

“
Maybe because she was
having problems. Didn’t you say that low-life boyfriend of hers
came back?”

He had a point.

“
Maybe,” I agreed. Letting
loose a deep breath through pursed lips, I turned to regard the big
bags in my back seat. “Let me take all this stuff home and go over
it, okay?” Even as I said the words, I cringed, wondering when I’d
have a chance to examine all this as fully as I needed to. Lucy was
counting on a day out tomorrow, and I couldn’t let her
down.

“
Why do you get it
all?”

“
I have the time to go
over it,” I lied.

“
Uh-uh,” he said, his
mouth pushed downward in anger. “I don’t trust you.”

I pressed my fingers into my eye sockets,
trying to force the building aggravation out of my head. There was
no way I was going to give up this stash of information. Not to Big
Bart, anyway, “Okay, how’s this for a compromise?” I began,
thinking it through as I spoke, “We’ll go together to the copy
place down the street. I’ll make a duplicate of everything we
picked up,” shaking my head, I amended, “except for the letters.”
There were too many of them, and I doubted they held much more than
an ongoing narrative of Diana’s life, anyway.

“
You can keep the
letters.” He swung his hand behind us. “It’s the bank account
statements I want to see.”

Never accuse Bart of being a sentimentalist.
Had our situations been reversed, I would have killed to read my
mother’s letters. “Okay, deal,” I said. I’d put in an expense
report for the cost of duplication, looking forward to the look on
Bass’s face when I presented it to him. This would be one hefty
photocopy bill.

“
But I’m keeping this,”
Barton said, ripping his mother’s will from my grasp, with a look
that dared me to object. “And the cash.” As though to underscore
his meaning, he held tight to the document with both hands,
pressing it to his chest. With what seemed to be enormous relief,
he closed his eyes and muttered, “This is just what I need to keep
that loan shark off my back.”

“
Fine.” I bit back both my
disappointment and a more harsh retort. “Just don’t lose
it.”

“
I won’t,” he
said.

I believed him, but he had a peculiar gleam
in his eye that I didn’t understand.

When we got back to his car, Barton took off
with his photocopies right away, crawling back into his hole at the
Tuck Inn to count his money again, I supposed. I watched him go,
then dragged the two shopping bags full of papers into my house,
only to be greeting by the telephone’s shrill ring.

I picked it up in the kitchen without even
checking Caller ID.

“
Hello?”

David’s smooth voice came over the line,
asking how my day had gone.

“
You sound like you’ve
been running,” he added.

Walking back to the living room, I took a
deep breath to center myself. “I have been, in a way. I just came
home. Haven’t even closed the front door yet.” Punctuating that
remark, I pushed it shut with a slam. “There,” I said, smiling.
“Now I’m in.”

“
Where were you all day? I
tried calling you twice.”

I opened my mouth to tell him, then stopped
myself. “I spent a little time with my sister,” I said. It wasn’t
exactly a lie, and I embellished on the truthful parts. “I haven’t
spent nearly enough time with her since she’s been home.”

“
Do anything
special?”

The fact that David had told me Mrs. Vicks
had left her entire estate to Barton still had me rattled. Until I
could sort out the truth here, I didn’t want to share what I knew
with anyone other than Detective Lulinski. Making a mental note to
call him next, I avoided David’s question by deflection. “Not
really. Tomorrow, though, she and I plan to spend the day
together.”

David made a regretful-sounding noise. “The
whole day?”

Making my tone sounds just as regretful, I
said, “Pretty much,” then added, “She wants to go downtown. I’m
there every day, but for her it’s something exciting and new. We’ll
find plenty to keep us busy, I’m sure.”

“
She might enjoy Navy
Pier,” he suggested. “I know I did.”

“
Actually,” I said, almost
to myself. “She might. Thanks. That’s a good idea.”

“
I could always meet you
both there. For lunch, perhaps?”

I’d been about to reply that Lucy wanted
time alone with me, but he interrupted.

“
Tell you what,” he said
in a hopeful voice, “I’ll call you tomorrow after I get a few
things squared away. Don’t rearrange any plans on my account, but
let’s keep our options open, okay?”

“
Sure,” I said, knowing
I’d probably decline. Lucy needed one-on-one time.

“
Wonderful,” he said.
“I’ll look forward to seeing you.”

I left a quick message on Lulinski’s
voicemail and then glanced at the kitchen clock. The lunch Aunt
Lena had prepared was long gone and I was starting to feel hunger
pains again. No doubt I could stop by to pick up Lucy and scrounge
some dinner over there, but the bagged files clawed at my
consciousness. I couldn’t ignore them.

After a quick phone call to my aunt, I
pulled out the files and tried to make sense of the copies of bank
records and hand-written notes Mrs. Vicks had seen fit to keep
under lock and key.

Two hours later, the phone jarred me out of
my concentration.

“
What’s up?” Lulinski
asked.

I hadn’t gone into deep detail in my phone
message, but I did so now. I told him about the letters, the will,
and now the files I was sorting through.

“
What do you make of it?”
Lulinski asked. “You haven’t seen the more recent will, have
you?”

“
No,” I admitted. “I’m
going on David Dewars’ recollections. I have no idea if he’s got
the story straight or not. Maybe she did change her will. My gut
tells me she didn’t. But . . .”

“
But?”

“
There’s more here.” I
scratched my head, vaguely aware that it’d become dark outside.
“What time is it?” I asked, even as my gaze strayed to my
clock.

“
Eight-thirty,” Lulinski
answered. “Why. What’s on your mind?”

“
Honestly,” I said,
hesitating. “I’m not sure.”

“
You found something else
in the safe deposit box.” He didn’t phrase it as a question. “Want
me to come by?”

“
It’s late. You’ve been at
this all day.”

“
So have you.”

“
Yeah,” I answered,
acknowledging his point. “But Mrs. Vicks was a friend and I have a
personal interest in finding answers here.”

Lulinski was silent.

“
You there?” I
asked.

When he answered, he spoke in a low voice.
“Don’t you think I have a personal interest in solving all my
homicides, too?”

I winced, grateful he couldn’t see me.
“Sorry.”

“
The offer still stands.
You want me to come by tonight?”

“
There’s someone I really
need to talk to first.” I hedged telling him more, since all I had
were questions, and only guesses at their answers. “How about I
call you after that, and we’ll go over everything.”

“
Okay. You have my number.
Oh, and Alex . . .”

“
Yeah?”

“
We got a line on Grady.
He’s been spotted in Michigan.”

“
I thought you didn’t
suspect him in the murder.”

“
What I said was that we
didn’t find his blood type at the crime scene,” Lulinski said.
“There’s the possibility he was working with an accomplice and
that’s whose blood we found.” He grunted. “Keeping our options
open.”

David had used that exact phrase with me
earlier in a totally different context and the echo of his words
coming from Lulinski felt odd.

“
Plus,” Lulinski
continued. “I’m planning to nail him for accosting you in the
parking lot. The sooner we bring him in, the better.”

* * * * *

For some reason, I’d anticipated getting
Maya Richardson’s answering machine, when I called her at home. I
hesitated contacting her, particularly since I didn’t want to do
anything to upset the FDIC investigation currently going on at the
bank, but the records in front of me appeared to deal with a
different matter entirely. With her name penciled onto the top file
by Mrs. Vicks, Maya seemed like my best bet.