Easy Innocence (13 page)

He pointed to the back of the store. “Back there.”

Georgia turned around. The store was as big as a football field. “Where?”

“That door marked ‘employees.’”

She nodded her thanks and made her way to the back, winding through stacks of books, mostly paperbacks. The dry, flat scent of paper replaced the smell of coffee. Had she missed something by not reading? Kids staffed stores like this. Did they know something she didn’t? Had they entered the secret world of literature? Or were they just here because it was cushier than McDonald’s?

She reached the employees’ door and knocked. Nothing. She knocked again. This time she heard a rustle, and the door opened. Another youngish man in a denim shirt and jeans stuck out his head.

“Are you the manager?”

“That’s right.” He looked harried.

“My name’s Georgia Davis. I’d like to ask you about one of your employees. Well, former employee.”

He frowned. “Yeah?”

“Sara Long. She worked at the café.”

He frowned for a moment. Then recognition lit his face. “The girl who got killed in the Forest Preserve.”

“That’s right.” Why did it take him so long to remember? Didn’t everyone at the store know about Sara’s murder?

He scrutinized Georgia more carefully. “Who are you?”

“Georgia Davis. I’m an investigator working the case. What’s your name?”

“Brian Pucinski.”

She noted it down. “Brian, her mother says she worked here pretty much every day after school and on weekends.”

A frown creased his brow. “She did?”

“Yes.” Georgia looked up.

“That’s weird.”

“Why?”

“I don’t think—well, let me check her file.”

“Good idea.”

He held the door open, and Georgia stepped into a cramped room filled with metal shelves from floor to ceiling. Each shelf was crammed with books or cardboard boxes full with books. Some lay flat, some were stacked vertically. More books were piled on the floor, and even more spilled onto counters and cabinets. If they were arranged in some order, Georgia didn’t catch it—except one that would give a non-book person claustrophobia. She took a breath.

Pucinski bent over a metal file cabinet and pulled out a manila folder. He paged through it slowly, then stopped. After scanning a sheet of paper, he lifted it out of the folder and nodded. “That’s what I thought.”

“What?”

“Sara hasn’t worked here in a while.”

“What’s a while?”

“She quit a long time ago.” He held up a sheet of paper. “It’s here on her sheet.”

“When?”

“Middle of April.” He passed her the sheet. “Last spring.”

SOMETHING WAS
up. Something he wasn’t privy to. It could have happened before he signed on. Or maybe it just happened, and they were keeping him in the dark. He’d witnessed a flurry of private conversations between Lenny, the security chief and the guy who’d hired him, and his employer. He’d overheard a fragment of one— his boss demanding to know when they would move. Whatever was going had to be serious; his superior was more short-tempered and impatient than usual.

He figured they weren’t going to let him in on it, so he was surprised when Lenny came up to him while he was hosing down the Jag.

“Got a job for you.”

“Sure.”

“Surveillance.”

He looked up, twisted off the flow of water.

“With your experience, it should be a slam dunk. Assuming all those references you gave us weren’t bullshit.”

“You checked ’em.”

“Umm.” Lenny hesitated, hands in his pockets, as if he was still deciding whether to give him the job. “I don’t have to tell you how important this is. You come through, you’re on your way up. You don’t, well...” The unsaid threat hung in the air.

He cleared his throat. “I won’t let you down.”

Lenny shot him a glance. “The target is a woman. A P.I. Used to be a cop. She’s been nosing around things we’re not... comfortable with. We want you to find out who she’s been talking to. Where she’s been going. We need to know how much she knows.”

“About what?”

Again Lenny hesitated. Then, “You been watching the news?”

“There’s a lot of stories on the news.”

“The girl who was killed in the Forest Preserve.”

“I heard about it.”

“The target is the PI working the case.”

He started winding the hose, making big loops with his hands. “Why her?”

Lenny shook his head. “Sorry. Need to know basis only.”

He shrugged. “She got a name?”

Lenny gave him an edgy look, almost as if he didn’t want to say the name out loud. “Here.” Lenny scrawled something on a scrap of paper and handed it over.

Matt set the hose on the ground and peered at the name. Then he stuffed the paper in his pocket. He picked up the hose and met Lenny’s cool gaze with one of his own. “When do I start?”

OUTSIDE, INDIAN
summer was at its peak, the bright October sun igniting flames of reds, yellows, and oranges. Droves of people would abandon Chicago for Michigan and Wisconsin this weekend, all of them converging on the
Chicago Tribune’s
“Best of Autumn” leaf-viewing sites. They’d trample through decomposing forests, click their digital cameras, and scold their kids who’d be whining about missing TV or the mall. Then they’d drive back on Sunday afternoon in bumper-to-bumper traffic, satisfied that they’d “done fall.”

Relieved she didn’t have to do things like that, or even pretend to like them, Georgia went back to her car. Sara was supposed to be working at the café in the bookstore. Except she wasn’t. Why had she lied? Did she have another job? If not, how was she getting the money to pay for her cell phone, iPod, and those clothes in her closet?

Something had shifted. Georgia didn’t know what, but the ground under her feet felt less firm. And the most disturbing part was that she might be the only one who knew it. Before leaving the bookstore, she’d casually remarked to the manager, “I guess the police are all over this, huh?”

Pucinski’s brow furrowed. “They haven’t been around.”

Now she tried to recall if she’d read anything about Sara’s job in the police reports. She didn’t think so. She could see Robby Parker letting it slide. Especially when he could reap the fame that came with sewing the case up fast. But this was a homicide. Why didn’t someone follow up? She would have. O’Malley would have, too. Unless his hands were tied.

Driving home, she decided it was time to question Jill Beaumont, Sara’s advisor at Newfield. Advisors knew the child from a more or less long-term perspective. Some became a surrogate parent, some were pals, and some—the good ones—made themselves the adult ally kids needed as they ventured into the world. But she couldn’t meet Beaumont at Newfield. The Walchers had reported her subterfuge to the school; no one would be rolling out the welcome wagon for her. They might even forbid her from going inside.

Back in her apartment, she checked the time. Noon. There was nothing more she could do now. She sighed, booted up her computer, and started the skip trace she’d promised another client.

Jeraldo Gutierrez, a mechanic from the West Side, had made off with twenty thousand of his employer’s hard-earned dollars. His employer, Hector Montoya, was most interested in getting the money back but knew the police wouldn’t be much help. He’d called his lawyer, a kid Georgia had grown up with from the old neighborhood. The lawyer referred the matter to her.

Luck was with her. After searching the Cook County Assessor’s records online, she discovered a bungalow owned by Gutierrez’s wife. Two hours after that, after culling through two more subscription websites, she called a number in Tucson, Arizona belonging to Maria Rodriguez, Gutierrez’s wife’s cousin. Georgia told the woman who answered the phone that she was calling from Mr. Gutierrez’s bank in Chicago, and that a substantial sum of money had just been wired into his account. Was he by any chance there? The woman on the phone said he wasn’t but was expected later that afternoon. Georgia said she’d call back, then called her client with the information.

As she logged off, she felt the ripple of satisfaction that comes with cracking a case. She loved feeling that—it’s what had attracted her to becoming a cop in the first place. The notion that she—ordinary Georgia Davis from the West Side—could actually right a wrong, mete out justice. She and Matt used to talk about what had brought them into law enforcement. For her it was the need for that affirmation. Recognition. For him, it was the need for redemption. Or so he claimed. But when she asked what sins he’d committed, he’d press his lips together and go quiet.

Suddenly she felt a twinge of what—regret? Loneliness? Pain? Time had made these pangs almost second nature, but she still couldn’t quite identify them. That must be part of the process, she guessed. You go on, one day at a time, and for a while the fog of misery thins, even lifts for a moment or two. Then, without warning, tiny knives reappear and slash their way through your psyche.

She and Matt had talked about leaving the force one day. Setting up shop as the “Nick and Nora Charles of the North Shore,” Matt said. Georgia wasn’t sure who Nick and Nora Charles were and had to sneak online to find out. They were different that way. Matt was well-educated. Georgia barely finished Oakton. Matt was Jewish; she was a lapsed Catholic. That didn’t seem to bother him. She didn’t see a problem either. Then.

***

It wasn’t hard to find out where Jill Beaumont lived, so that night Georgia drove down to Andersonville, a neighborhood on the north side of Chicago. Andersonville used to be mostly Swedish, working class and quiet. Now ethnic restaurants and shops elbowed the blander, blonder haunts. As she cruised down Clark Street, she caught a glimpse of a second-story gym in a regentrified building with blue fluorescent lighting. Two guys were lifting barbells, sweat slicking their torsos.

She searched for a legal parking spot and found one two blocks away. Before she was a cop, she parked wherever she wanted, tickets be damned. If a summons showed up in her mailbox, she’d pay a visit to Max, her father’s friend in the Corporation Counsel’s office. She’d bring a copy of the Sun-Times, making sure two hundred dollar bills were nestled between Page Four and Five. Her tickets disappeared.

Then she became a cop and realized she couldn’t be beholden to anyone. Nor did she want to line anyone’s pockets. So she stopped. Max eventually ended up doing two to five in East Moline, and the city’s new computer-generated ticket system was incorruptible. Still, on nights like these, when everyone in the world seemed to have snagged a spot except her, she missed the old days.

She hiked back to Farragut, a quiet block north and east of Foster and stopped in front of a three-story greystone that looked like it had been renovated. Scanning the mailboxes inside a tiny vestibule, she spotted the names Beaumont and Podromos on #3A. She pressed the buzzer.

A tinny female voice replied through the speaker. “Yes.”

“Hello. My name is Georgia Davis, and I’d like to talk to Jill Beaumont.”

“Who are you?”

Georgia squared her shoulders. “I’m a private investigator.”

Nothing happened for a long moment. Georgia imagined Beaumont running through the possibilities, weighing whether to talk to her. It could be she was ordered not to. The Newfield administration might have insisted. They were under enormous pressure, not to mention liability, should Sara’s parents or any of the others decide to sue. She’d met the superintendent during the first hazing investigation. He was a spineless, nerdy type who tried to come on strong but capitulated at the first sign of conflict. When the buzzer finally sounded, she let out a breath.

The woman who opened the door was small and round and wore a curious expression.

“Ms. Beaumont? Thank you for seeing me. I was hoping you—”

“I’m not Jill. I’m her roommate.”

“Oh.” Georgia gave her a flustered smile. “Is Jill here?”

The roommate shook her head. She kept her hand on the doorknob, letting the door stay open just a crack. Even so, the tantalizing smell of pot roast seeped into the hall. Georgia’s mouth watered.

“Does she know you?” She asked.

Georgia tensed. “We—we haven’t met.”

“Does this have anything to do with Sara Long?”

This woman was the gatekeeper, Georgia realized. She needed to play it straight. “Yes.”

“I thought so.” The woman continued to hold the door slightly ajar as though she was using it as a shield. “Jill’s been under a lot of pressure. She was hoping to get away from it for a while.”

“I wouldn’t have come if it wasn’t important.”

“I don’t know if she’ll talk to you.”

Georgia nodded. The tension in her neck and shoulders mounted.

The roommate’s gaze swept over her. “But I guess you can try.” She sighed. “She’s at A Woman’s Place for a poetry reading.”

TWO BOOKSTORES
in one day.
Was this some kind of sign,
Georgia wondered as she walked back to Clark Street. Sister Marion would have said “of course” and would have quoted something appropriate from
Hamlet
or
Macbeth
to prove it.

A Woman’s Place was sandwiched between Ann Sathers and a Greek restaurant, but it had started out on Lincoln Park, a few miles south. Within two years, however, it outgrew its space and moved up to Andersonville. Inside was the same cramped, cheery chaos she remembered from Lincoln Park. Books crowded on shelves and counters; colored flyers were tacked on the walls, announcing everything from lost pets and want-ads to spiritual counseling and yoga for same-sex couples. The only concession to modern technology seemed to be the electronic cash register in the front which was operated by a woman who looked familiar—a little grayer, perhaps, but surely the same owner as in Lincoln Park.

Unlike the bookstore this morning, A Woman’s Place was warm and welcoming, and Georgia felt the tension drain out of her as she browsed. She wound around shelves labeled by subject: cookbooks, women’s issues, best-sellers, mysteries, and a gay/lesbian section. At the back was a raised platform with chairs in front. A cardboard sign in block letters said that Red Sladdick would recite poetry at seven thirty. A table with a jug of white wine, Diet Coke, and a plate of cheese squares sat nearby.