Deadly Interest (5 page)

“
Broke in,” Aunt Lena
repeated, then stopped herself short with a strangled laugh. “What
a joke, huh? You know she always kept her doors
unlocked.”

Well, most of the time, I thought.
“Yeah.”

She shook her head again. “Someone just
waltzed in, killed her, and took off.” The squads’ blue lights
flashed on my aunt’s face like an uneven strobe, illuminating the
tight pain in her expression. “The bastards.” Though her body faced
me, her attention stayed directed toward the movement in and out of
Mrs. Vicks’ house.

“
A robbery?” I asked. The
rain had slowed enough for me to lower the umbrella. Thank
goodness; I was fighting a sense of claustrophobia. I wanted to
know what had happened. I wanted to know it all. Now.

“
Nobody’s telling us
anything. But, you remember how Russ Bednarski used to be a Chicago
cop?” She gestured with her chin toward a cluster of people. Mr.
Bednarski had his hands out in front, gesturing as he spoke. “Well,
Russ was able to talk to some of the officers over there, and they
said it didn’t look like a robbery to them.”

“
But I just saw her,” I
said, as though my words could somehow change the events of the
evening. With a stab, I remembered the smell of the steaming pork
roast, and the way she’d promised me a special dinner tomorrow
night. I felt my eyes sting, my throat tighten. I pulled my shawl
snug around my body, suddenly craving the warmth and comfort I’d
felt at her house earlier. And then I remembered something else.
“Diana? What about Diana?”

Aunt Lena shifted her weight from one foot
to the other. She wasn’t a heavy woman, but standing out on the wet
cement wearing only house slippers had to be uncomfortable for
someone in her late sixties. “That’s who found her. They’re talking
to her now, inside one of the squad cars. She called 911, and then
she called us.”

“
When did it
happen?”

My aunt shook her head and shrugged,
glancing at me briefly. “Moose picked up the phone around nine. I
could hear the poor girl screaming, and I was all the way in the
bedroom getting changed for bed. I came out to see what was wrong,
but Moose couldn’t get her to settle down. We came over here right
away. I thought she might’ve made some mistake and maybe Evelyn had
just fallen, or something.”

I nodded. “I talked to her,” I said, almost
to myself. “Around six-thirty.”

My aunt made a sympathetic noise. “You never
know, do you? You just never know.” A half-second later, I heard
her sharp intake of breath. One of the squads had moved forward, to
allow passage of a black van with the telltale FH on its license
plates. Funeral Home. A suited man threw open the van’s back doors,
and pulled out a wheeled silver cart that expanded to
body-transporting-size in seconds. “Oh my God,” my aunt said, her
voice cracking. “Oh my God.”

“
I’ll be right back,” I
said, starting toward the police perimeter.

“
Where are you going?” she
asked reaching her hand out as if to hold me back.

I turned, shrugged. “I might have been the
last person to see her alive,” I said, thinking: except for the
murderer, that is. “I think I ought to let somebody know that.”

Another young officer, this one male,
stopped me as I scooted between the bumpers of two squads. His
nametag read: Randall.

“
Hey, there,” he said.
“Hold on a minute.”

“
Who’s running this
investigation?” I asked.

His dark eyes took in my formal dress,
spiked shoes and far-too flimsy shawl. “And you are. . . ?”

Switching into
professional mode gave me more comfort than I had any right to
expect. “Alex St. James,” I said, leaving off the added information
that I worked for
Midwest Focus
Newsmagazine
. That’d get me bounced in a
hurry. “I was here . . . with Mrs. Vicks earlier this evening. I
thought I could be of some help?”

I ended the statement with a question.
Officer Randall nodded once, told me to wait there, and disappeared
into a crowd of uniformed officers standing near the funeral home’s
van. Neighbors I’d known since I was a kid all stared at me with
what seemed a combination of respect for approaching the
authorities, and confusion as to why. I offered them a somber smile
and turned to wait for Officer Randall’s return.

A moment later, he did, stopping at Mrs.
Vicks’ tiny front yard and gesturing me closer. Her home had been
roped off with bright yellow crime scene tape that caught the light
in snatches as the wind tilted it back and forth. As I walked past
her house, I looked down at the foot-high white plastic chain she
always kept strung around her lawn to prevent kids from trampling,
I felt yet another pang. Mrs. Vicks was part of my life, and I’d
blown her off this evening when she needed to talk to me.

“
This way,” he said,
leading me toward a squad. “Detective Lulinski wants to see
you.”

* * * * *

I’d never been in the back seat of a police
car before, and while the warmth from its idling engine was a
welcome change from the wet chill of the night, I couldn’t help but
feel uncomfortable. I’d landed in a cloud of aroma, not at all
good. It was such a combination of odors, ones I could imagine and
others I’d prefer not to, that I blinked, hoping I could get used
to it fast.

The entire seat was one piece of gray molded
plastic. My backside slid as I got in, and I wound up accidentally
pinning the long edge of my shawl under my butt. Officer Randall
waited patiently for me to get myself settled, but I must have
looked like the most uncoordinated passenger he’d ever had. Digging
my heels into the floor, I lifted myself enough to loosen the
shawl.

“
You okay?”

“
Yeah,” I answered,
realizing I would have been happier waiting for the detective in
the drizzle.

Randall looked as though about to close the
door, but my left foot still hadn’t cleared. All this took mere
seconds, but in that time, I watched Mrs. Vicks’s roommate, Diana,
being helped from the back seat of the squad across from us.

Both her hands gripped the car’s doorframe
in an effort to pull herself out. A man I assumed was Detective
Lulinski alighted moments before. He held out his hand, offering
assistance, but with her face positioned downward, Diana didn’t see
it. Her stringy dark hair fell forward, and I could imagine the
look of concentration she wore as she struggled to make her way
outside. I couldn’t see her face, but her large build and lumbering
manner made her identity clear.

I put Detective Lulinski in his late forties
or early fifties. He was tall, with a thin build; his gray suit
pants hung so loosely that I was glad he wore a belt cinching them
at the waist. He had on white long-sleeve dress shirt, the collar
opened, tie loosened. His hair was crew-cut short, and he scratched
at gray eyebrows while he waited for Diana to step out.

“
Thank you, Ms. Grady,” he
said, finally able to grip her hand and help her as she
stumbled.

She righted herself and stood, blinking in
the blue flashes. Her lips moved, working as if to say something.
She opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again, her eyes
wide with childlike terror. “I . . . don’t have nowhere to go.”

Diana had pulled her thick arms around her
waist, in an effort to close a too-small sweater around her large
frame. She lifted one hand to smooth damp hair behind her ear, and
her drooping lips trembled.

The detective held her elbow, scanning the
crowd. “Who were those people who came to help earlier? Maybe you
can stay at their house tonight.”

Like a little child who realized she has the
right answer for a trick question, she straightened, her eyes
suddenly alert. “Lena Szatjemski,” she said.

I wiggled back out of the car’s smooth seat.
“That’s my aunt,” I offered, moving toward them. “She’s over there,
Diana.” I made an exaggerated “come here” gesture with my arm and
Aunt Lena swooped in to take Diana safely away.

“
We’ll need to talk to you
again, later,” the detective said to her departing figure. I
doubted she or my aunt heard him.

He turned to me and gestured toward the car
that Diana had just vacated. “I’ll be just a minute. Have a
seat.”

I did. The backseat of this squad was
identical to the other, and the smell pretty close, too, though a
bit less intense.

The detective conferred briefly with Officer
Randall and then returned to me.

In the short amount of time he was outside
the car, he pulled a cigarette from a pack in his shirt pocket, lit
it and smoked it down to the filter, faster than I’d ever seen
anyone do that before. The entire time, he maintained conversation
with the uniformed officer, mouthfuls of expelled smoke
accompanying his crisp directives.

He lowered himself into the back seat next
to me. Up close, I could smell the freshness of the cigarette he’d
just finished.

I slid over, making room, taking in this
entire backseat experience. A clear Plexiglas panel separated us
from the front seat, and a small handle at its center could be used
to push it closed. Open now, I heard flat voices repeating
information on the radio, but I couldn’t make out all the
words.

“
You were in the house
today?” Detective Lulinski asked me, jerking his head and eyes
toward Mrs. Vick’s home.

I nodded.

“
What time?”

“
I left about six
twenty-five.”

He’d flipped open a notebook—the kind with
the silver wire spiral at the top. From the looks of its bent
shape, and the leftover shreds of paper where he’d pulled sheets
out, he’d had this one for a while. “And the victim was alive to
the best of your knowledge?”

My words caught in my throat. I wanted him
to call her Mrs. Vicks. Not “the victim.”

Outside I watched raincoated young men lead
a black-zippered bag on the silver cart toward the open back doors
of the dark van. Next they’d be calling her “the body.” At what
point does death change a vibrant living person into “remains?” I
shuddered, and blinked. “I’m sorry,” I said. “This had been too
much of a shock. Can you repeat your question?”

He did. He asked me several questions about
my relationship to Mrs. Vicks and then he asked me about Diana’s. I
focused my attention on him. Despite being a thin man, he had
paunch in his face. His jowls drooped ever so slightly, bringing
his mouth into a downward scowl. Close up I could tell this was
more a force of nature than of personality. His eyes were alert and
he asked me again about Mrs. Vicks being alive when I was
there.

“
Yes, very much so,” I
said, willing my voice to steady itself. “She was grateful to me
because she’d locked herself out and I helped her back
in.”

His hand stopped moving and he glanced up at
me. “Neighbors have been telling me all night that she never locked
her doors.”

I nodded, a presage to my answer. “That’s
true. She never did. But Diana . . .” it was my turn to gesture
into the dark outside, “she always would lock the doors, even when
Mrs. Vicks asked her not to. And sometimes she did it when Mrs.
Vicks would forget her key . . .” I let the sentence hang.

“
And that’s what happened
today?”

I nodded, again.

“
How did you get
in?”

I told him. He’d stopped writing and was
watching me as I spoke, his eyes expressionless. Somehow that
encouraged me to tell him more. I did. I told him about how
grateful she’d been, and how I’d smelled the food and how she’d
promised to make me dinner tomorrow night.

Out of habit I glanced at my watch. “It’s
tomorrow, now,” I added.

“
Where did you go
afterward?”

I opened my mouth, reluctant to let on that
I was part of the media. “A big dinner,” I said finally. “From
work.”

His eyes took on a skeptical look as though
he knew I’d held back. Again I felt a gaze taking in my outfit,
heels and shawl.

“
How was she killed?” I
asked. “What were the circumstances?”

Back to scribbling, Detective Lulinski
didn’t look up. He held up a finger, indicating I should wait. A
few seconds later he asked me for my address, date of birth, and
home, work and cell phone numbers, jotting them all down as fast as
I spoke. Then, remembering my question, he finally answered, “We’re
not releasing any details yet.”

“
Did someone actually
break in, or did she let them in?”

His expression impassive, his eyes blank, he
repeated, “No details.”

Exasperated, I sat back, and let out a long
sigh.

He had another question for me. “You said
you picked up some papers in her house. Papers that fell?”

“
Bank statements,” I said.
“Yeah.”

“
We’re going to need to
fingerprint you. For elimination purposes.” He gazed at me with
that flat expression, pulled out a business card and handed it
over. “Come down to the station tomorrow.”

I nodded. I was being dismissed.

He got out of the car and looked at his
watch. “Or, like you said—today.”

I took the stairs, as
usual, up to the second floor of our building. Constructed during
the prohibition-era, the thirty-five-story edifice was home to
our
Midwest Focus
staff. I loved the place. I loved walking up the marble
stairs with their center carpet of deep red print, the kind I’d
expect to find in a British nobleman’s castle. The effect wasn’t
dispelled by the rest of the lobby. Gold-leaf paint trimmed the
crown moulding above, and the gold elevator doors
gleamed.