Hunting Sweetie Rose : A Mystery (9781429950879) (9 page)

For the briefest of instants, her features froze. “He died.”

The waitress came back with coffee for Jennifer and a refill for me. Jennifer said something to her in Polish. The waitress smiled, took my menu, and went away.

“What am I having?” I asked.

“The cabbage, but everything's good here.”

“Especially Mama?”

She smiled. “Especially Mama.” She took a sip of her coffee. “If Elvis Derbil is a minion, not a born risk taker, who is telling him what to do?”

“I don't see anyone at city hall telling him to venture past the town limits.”

“Who, then?”

“I can't imagine.”

“Then tell me about the clown's rope.”

“You're the one who wants to go see it,” I countered.

“Work with me, Dek Elstrom. I have resources you can't match.”

“To use for broadcast, unfortunately.”

“OK. Same deal as we have with your zoning story: nothing about the clown for broadcast, until you say—but not for forever, and you must bring me along, every step of the way.”

Her conditions were reasonable, and I did need to see the rope to be sure.

“As you suggested the last time we met, I think the rope was cut,” I said.

“Murder?”

“I have no idea who would have motive.”

Our lunch came. Mine was four cabbage rolls, set on a pile of potato dumplings. Hers was a small cup of broth, clear enough to pack no threat to her exquisitely tailored khakis.

We ate. I was hungry and diligent, and gave up after finishing only a quarter of what I'd been served.

The waitress frowned as she took my plate away.

“The rope?” Jennifer Gale asked.

“Yes?”

“I'll be apprised, every step of the way?”

“Yes.”

She smiled, victorious. “We'll go right now.”

The waitress came back with two square foam containers. I hadn't told her to pack what she'd taken away.

Jennifer leaned forward. “Open them.”

Inside the first was what was left of my cabbage rolls and dumplings. The second contained a stuffed green pepper, some kind of sausage, two potato pancakes, and a thick slice of ham.

“A sampling of what could be in my dowry.” She laughed, and we got up.

At the cash register, I wanted to pay, but Jennifer would have none of it. She wanted to pay, but Mama would have none of that.

“It's not going to work, Mama. His girlfriend is rich, real rich,” Jennifer said.

Mama ignored her, turned to me. “You come back?”

“Thank you. I will.”

Mama wagged a finger. “But not with any rich girlfriend.”

Jennifer grabbed my arm and pulled me out of there.

*   *   *

I followed her south, to the police station I'd visited before. We walked in together. Fortunately, a different desk sergeant was on duty. He took our names, made a call. A minute later, another sergeant came for us.

She was tall, over six feet, and as rail thin as some of the rich women I'd seen at Sweetie Fairbairn's party. Clearly, she'd never dawdled over dumplings at Galecki's.

“Jennifer Gale, it's a pleasure,” she said, sticking out her hand.

Jennifer introduced me simply as an associate, and we followed the sergeant down a tiled corridor to a dark-stained door that had a thick wire-mesh screen screwed behind its frosted glass. The sergeant opened the door, told us to wait by the counter just inside, and walked back between the rows of shelves. She came back holding a plastic tub.

“This lockup isn't staffed full-time?” Jennifer asked.

“We don't keep key evidence in here. Just the ancillary stuff.” The sergeant took the lid off the tub, withdrew a plastic bag big enough to hold a roast, and hefted it onto the counter. Inside the bag was a coiled rope.

“The rope stays in the bag,” the sergeant said.

Jennifer looked over at me. I nodded that it was all right. I was confident that Leo's calculations had been accurate enough to show that the rope had been shortened.

I lifted the bag and held it up to the fluorescent lights. Though the bag was new and clear, I couldn't make out the condition of the ends.

“Could you open the bag enough to let me see inside?” I asked.

The sergeant looked at Jennifer. “You do understand, we're just talking a bad knot here?”

“Accident, no doubt,” Jennifer said. “As I told you on the phone, there are rumors of people suing the owners of the building. For what I don't know, but I want to be ready in case. I have a look at the rope, see for myself to make sure it isn't frayed or anything, so I know, in case I need to know.” She shrugged.

It was an effective performance. Jennifer had said nothing, but she'd said it in a Chicago neighborhood-speak so effortlessly that the sergeant had begun nodding along, in time with her cadence.

The sergeant put on blue plastic gloves and opened the bag so I could see in.

One end was immediately visible. It had been dipped in some kind of gluelike substance. It was a factory-sealed end.

“Can I see the other end, please?” I asked.

“For frays?” the officer asked, unconvinced.

“For frays,” Jennifer said quickly.

The sergeant maneuvered the opening in the bag until the other end was visible.

That end was raw, unsealed. Freshly cut.

Jennifer thanked the sergeant, and we left.

“Someone cut that rope,” Jennifer said outside, on the sidewalk.

“No doubt.”

“Your client, that security guy? Or someone he's fronting?”

“I can't imagine,” I said.

CHAPTER 13.

I called Duggan after Jennifer pulled away.

“Nice note,” he said, right off.

“It didn't get me a meeting with your client, Sweetie Fairbairn.”

He covered the mouthpiece of his phone. A minute later, Sweetie Fairbairn came on the line.

“Thank you for your note, Mr. Elstrom.” Her voice was soft, tentative.

“Thank you for a lovely party.”

“What put you onto me?”

“You didn't question me enough about my relationship with Amanda.”

“Can you drop by?”

I told her I could, and would, and pointed the Jeep toward the Gold Coast.

*   *   *

It must have been a fine day for bargains—perhaps thousand-dollar shoes were being dumped for nine hundred—because Michigan Avenue was packed solid with shoppers. Great throngs of them choked the sidewalks and the crosswalks, swinging bright bags filled with things sure to improve their lives.

A different valet was on duty at the Wilbur Wright. This one came right over to take the Jeep, but his narrowed eyes betrayed his concern that I'd be hunting under the floor mats for a quarter to tip him when I came out.

Again, a guard stood by Sweetie's private elevator. The previous evening, I'd wondered if the elevator guard had been hired special for the party—to keep out riffraff, or perhaps to quell a riot, should the swells spill down from the penthouse, ginned up, and start spoon-flicking bits of caviar at guests in the lobby. Those thoughts had disappeared when I'd gotten upstairs. There'd been more guards, too many more for ordinary security, in the penthouse. Sweetie Fairbairn had mysteries. What I couldn't figure was why those mysteries needed full-time protection.

I gave the guard my driver's license before he could ask. He took a careful look at the beaming face I'd presented to the Illinois secretary of state's photographer, before the secretary of state had become governor and then gone on to prison, and announced my arrival into a small walkie-talkie.

Timothy Duggan's frown was waiting up in the foyer.

“You're something, Elstrom,” he said.

“I, too, marvel at myself.”

He told me to sit on an orange velvet settee just inside the living room. I supposed that was so he could keep an eye on both the elevator and myself.

I looked around the room. Just the night before, it had been filled with a hundred rich people, drinking and chewing. Yet now every piece of furniture—the two dozen sofas, settees, and chairs, all upholstered in sunny summertime yellows, greens, and oranges—along with the endless expanse of beige carpet, appeared spotless. I could not spy the slightest pink remain of cocktail weenie or black speck of caviar anywhere. Either rich people were very careful chewers, or someone had come along with a Shop-Vac, much as I did to clean my clothes.

“Are you terribly angry with me, Mr. Elstrom?” Sweetie Fairbairn asked softly.

I hadn't heard her enter. She looked wan. As she took my arm, I had the suspicion that Sweetie Fairbairn wasn't guiding me toward the hall so much as she was hanging on to me, for support.

“Not yet, but there's still time.”

“Yes,” she said.

We went into the kitchen. It, too, was large, obviously outfitted to feed as many people as the living room could hold. There were two stainless steel refrigerators, a gas stove with many burners and ovens that looked like an antique but probably wasn't, and several long counters. The four dainty white chairs set at a small table in the corner looked like an afterthought, incongruous in such a large room.

She walked to a cabinet. “Wine, Mr. Elstrom?”

“I try to avoid it.” I saw no need to add that I'd had whiskey in my coffee that morning.

“Good idea.” She took out a bottle and poured three inches into a glass on the counter.

“You have guards on staff?” I asked.

“None on staff. Tim hires them, as needed.” She walked us to the table. “In fact, I no longer have any live-in help.”

“Neither do I,” I said, to be sociable.

Her eyes widened for only a second, until she realized I was having her on. She offered a faint smile. “Most of my life was spent being the help, not having it,” she said.

Part of me wanted to like her for that, as I had for the Velveeta and her tacky office with its crummy furniture and worn postcard of a covered bridge. First, though, I needed to know she wasn't a killer.

We sat across from each other, in the strong light of a low overhead fixture. Just like on the previous night, her age was impossible to determine, even in the bright light. She could have been forty, she could have been fifty.

She noticed my scrutiny. “Fifty-eight,” she said.

“Wow,” I said.

“Wow for not looking that old? Or wow for not looking that young?”

“Wow for your ability to read minds.”

“Excellent, and very diplomatic.” She took a slow sip of wine and asked, “Was the clown murdered, Mr. Elstrom?”

“His name was James Stitts—”

“I know that. Was he murdered?”

“It would be tough to prove, but yes.”

Her hand shook, just a little, as she set down the glass. “You're certain?”

I told her the safety rope had been cut, its severed end taken away. It was information she'd paid for.

Her face had paled. “Murder, no doubt.”

“Stitts's widow said it was a woman who'd hired her husband to go up on that roof. She came to their home in a chauffeured limousine.” I watched her face.

“The woman was blond, of course?”

“Bea Stitts couldn't see inside the car.”

“She was blond, Mr. Elstrom. That detail would not have been overlooked.”

“You're being set up?”

She put her hands on the arms of her chair and pushed herself up like she weighed a thousand pounds. “Thank you, Mr. Elstrom.”

I didn't get up. “You're being blackmailed?”

She started out of the kitchen as though she hadn't heard me. I'd been dismissed. I got up and followed her across the living room because there was nothing else to do.

Duggan already had the elevator door open.

Sweetie Fairbairn turned around and walked away.

I went into the elevator. The door closed, and I was sent descending.

I thought, then, of an old comedian's slurred, confused retort in a drunk-at-a-tavern routine. “I've been thrown out of better places than this,” the drunk had bragged, looking around confused but proud, as he'd been tossed onto the sidewalk.

I doubted I'd ever been tossed from classier digs.

Still, I was as confused as the drunk, not at all sure what had just happened.

CHAPTER 14.

Amanda surprised me later with a call. “You doing anything this evening?” Her voice sounded small.

“Nothing I like.”

“Dinner?”

“You told me last night you were booked up until the next millennium, or at least until our date next week.”

“I canceled for tonight. I'm craving simplicity.”

“So you thought of me.”

She laughed. It wasn't much of a laugh, but it offered promise.

“Actually, we have something to celebrate. You must have impressed Sweetie Fairbairn. She called, asked very few questions about the children's wing at Memorial Hospital, and then said she'd be sending a donation. She hinted it might be larger than what we'd discussed.”

“What time?”

“I'm thinking around eight.”

“No, I meant what time did Sweetie call?”

“An hour ago. Why?”

“Did she mention me?”

“Mention you? What's going on, Dek?”

“Our trattoria, at eight?” I asked, sidestepping.

“Somewhere else.” She named Rokie's, a barbecue sandwich place nestled next to a forest preserve, northwest of the city. We'd been there once, after a movie or something. It had no history for us.

History or not, it was a start. Or maybe a restart. Whatever it was, I decided to think of it as progress.

*   *   *

Amanda was already there, waiting in her white Toyota at the far corner of the lot. I pulled up alongside and got out.

“Shall I slip the maître d' a twenty for a table away from the window?” When we'd last been there, we'd laughed about the grease on the windows.