Husbands And Lap Dogs Breathe Their Last (11 page)

“I’ve been meaning to research the requirements. I haven’t lived in the state very long,” Cummings said.

“Just make sure you keep it informal, and don’t get in our business. Thank you for your time.” Officer Bailey handed Cummings his business card and headed for the door. “That’s all for now. We’ll be in touch if anything comes up.”

As soon as Officer Bailey was gone, Cummings located online the statutes governing private detectives in Illinois. Officer Bailey was correct. If he pursued investigation in Illinois, he would have to remain an amateur.

Cummings turned his attention to the making of money, a topic of escalating importance in view of Odin’s loss of a job. He made a few networking phone calls to contacts of contacts, and then he sent his résumé to fifteen additional headhunters, something he was now doing within one hundred miles of Chicago, rather than the fifty-mile radius he had established the previous month.

Sometime later the front door buzzer buzzed “shave and a haircut, two bits.” Cummings found this irritating. Opening the door, he found Otto in a tailored English suit with a huge bouquet of flowers. Mandrake, at his side, snapped photos.

“It’s such a relief to see you again!” Otto said, handing Cummings the bouquet.

“Thank you, but what’s this for?”

“It’s an apology for my rudeness in abruptly terminating our last conversation. It’s also my way of letting you know that I’m happy you phoned. I really do need your services.”

“Come in, please,” Cummings said. “I’m sorry we couldn’t find a time to meet again sooner. I had to go out of town for a funeral.”

“I am sorry for your loss.”

“No need to be. It wasn’t anyone close. Please sit down. You, too, Mandrake. I could make some tea.”

“Don’t trouble yourself. It’s only us,” Otto said. He sat on the sofa. Cummings sat near him. Mandrake sat to the side on an ottoman.

“Why don’t you start by telling me why you threw me out so abruptly the last time we met?” Cummings asked.

“You are direct, aren’t you?” Otto said.

“Yes,” Cummings said.

“I’m afraid my ability to schedule isn’t what it should be.”

“Anything else?”

“It is possible I may not have told all there is to tell.”

“I’ve already determined that,” Cummings responded.

“Have you? You see, you’re exactly what I need. Please help me. I’ll pay you your usual fee.”

“Do you mean help you search for the Craddock Brooch?” Cummings asked.

Mandrake said something unintelligible.

“Oh, dear, Mandrake tells me we must leave now, or we’ll be late for Beatrice.”

“I thought we were going to talk.”

“We are. In the car.”

“Where are we going?”

“Here and there. Appointments. Errands. I couldn’t cancel. You see? Efficiency. Accomplishing multiple tasks at the same time.”

Cummings did not wish to go, but in view of the mention of money he felt he had little choice. He owed it to his household finances.

“Who’s Beatrice?” Cummings asked.

“‘O lady who causes my hope to have life ...’“ Otto replied, quoting the
Divine Comedy
as he led Cummings to the street. There, they got into the back seat of a very old and very large Rolls Royce. Mandrake put a chauffeur’s cap over his yarmulke and climbed into the driver’s seat. He pulled away from the curb recklessly and surged down the street with the thrust of a derecho.

Otto kept up a steady chat about this and that. They drove for some time into the outer reaches of suburban Chicago. Cummings did his best to breathe evenly and not fearfully clutch the armrest in response to Mandrake’s driving.

“Let’s discuss business, shall we? I’ll be happy to work with you as a consultant,” Cummings said finally, interrupting Otto’s stream of small talk. “I’m not a licensed investigator. I am merely providing informal, personal consulting services. You may pay me an honorarium of one hundred dollars an hour. I’ll invoice you every week.”

“Done,” Otto responded.

“What help are you looking for? Are we still taking about a search for the brooch or something else?”

“As I said the other day, the brooch is valuable, and the Society wants to make sure it’s recovered.”

“I see. And why did you leave me a fake blackmail note at the crime scene?”

“What do you mean?” Otto said, startled. “I certainly did not.”

“Yes, you did. I found a letter addressed to you that demanded cash in return for silence about unspecified acts, a letter that miraculously survived the fire. Even if it were genuine, and it somehow had passed through the flames — perhaps by soaking up just enough water from a fire hose to avoid incineration — a careful search must have been conducted by the arson investigators. It would have been seen. You put it there several days after the blaze, assuming I would do my own investigation.”

“All right,” Otto conceded. “I suppose I owe you an explanation.”

“I’d say so. In fact, I’d say the number of explanations you owe me is rising.”

They turned off the highway into Chicago’s suburbs. This farmland that once surrounded the city is now mostly shopping centers. These are nestled between treeless housing tracts with cul-de-sacs and bucolic names referencing displaced Indian tribes or eighteenth-century English aristocracy or the creeks and rivers that fed the farmland that was subsumed to build the homes.

They turned onto a road leading to an oasis of acreage that appeared to be a horse farm, an assumption confirmed by a sign that read “Paradise Equine Center.” Mandrake parked the car beside a barn.

“Is Beatrice a horse?” Cummings deduced.

“Of course,” Otto said, getting out of the car. He began to strip off his clothes. Mandrake took several wooden hangers from the trunk and neatly hung them.

“I run with her three times a week,” Otto explained. “It’s how I stay in shape.”

Once naked, Otto scurried over a low metal fence and into a meadow. A brown mare with lustrous locks and a dappled coat snorted in his direction and turned and trotted away. Otto chased after her.

Mandrake first hung the hangers neatly from a hook in the car’s rear interior, and then he removed a flask of coffee from a picnic hamper nestled on the floor on the front passenger side. He poured a cup for Cummings.

“Wad ye be awantin rugelach dos morgn?” Mandrake asked.

Since Cummings had no idea what Mandrake was saying, he smiled blankly in response.

About a half hour later,Otto returned to the car, breathless and sweating. Mandrake picked up a nearby hose, thoroughly drenched Otto and then handed him a plush bath towel. Otto dried himself and dressed.

As Mandrake sped them to their next destination, Cummings attempted to resume the conversation.

“You were going to explain the note you left for me,” Cummings began.

“Please,” Otto said, “give me a few moments to catch my breath.”

Cummings observed they were headed from the western suburbs to the northern ones. There, they pulled in front of a chocolatier. Mandrake went in and returned with what Cummings gleaned from the conversation was several pounds of an obscure Belgian chocolate.

They headed west and north, driving into a less populous area. Mandrake turned into a long driveway marked by a sign that read Old MacDonald’s Farm. There, Mandrake loaded a case of organic sheep’s milk into the trunk.

“I use it to bathe Barbara Cartland,” Otto explained to Cummings.

Next they went due north, where they visited four florists in search of two bunches of sufficiently fresh calceolaria.

Finally they headed south to the Magen David Pet Cemetery, where Mandrake distributed yarmulkes to Otto and Cummings.

“It’s the anniversary of Charlotte Bronte’s death,” Otto explained as they walked through the main gate. “She was a Canaan dog from an Israeli breeder.”

They came to a small mausoleum at which Otto recited the Kaddish from a transliterated printout while Mandrake donned a prayer shawl and davenned, swaying and chanting with great enthusiasm in what Cummings assumed was Scotchified Hebrew.

Cummings had had enough.

“If you want me to work with you on this matter, you must answer my questions,” Cummings said at the conclusion of the prayers. “Why did you leave that letter at the crime scene?”

“I’m being blackmailed,” Otto explained. “I thought you’d be more likely to believe me if you discovered this for yourself.”

“Why wouldn’t I believe you?”

“Because, though I’ve never understood why, people rarely seem to take me seriously.”

“Did you make up that story about the Craddock Brooch? I mean, that the Society wants it back?”

“It is valuable, and it is missing. The brooch wasn’t on Surendra’s body when she was removed from the building. I looked for it in the rubble. Mandrake did, too. It wasn’t there. You see, I think the brooch may have something to do with my circumstances.”

“And what circumstances are those?”

Otto reached into his coat and pulled out two ornately calligraphed envelopes. He handed them to Cummings. Inside, Cummings found handwritten note cards of the finest manufacture, edged with black in the manner of Victorian mourning stationery.

The first note read:
Need we remind you of the consequences if the truth becomes known? We demand $25,000 now and subsequent payments to be announced later. We will be in touch with instructions
.

The second note read:
This is not a friendly game of chess. You must comply or there will be consequences. We will be in contact soon
.

“When did you receive these?”

“During the last ten days. They were slipped under my door. Nothing else has occurred. I haven’t been contacted by anyone.”

“Do you have any idea who these might be from? Why would someone wish to blackmail you? And what information would they blackmail you with?”

“I cannot imagine.”

Cummings didn’t believe him but pressed on. “They have a rather historical look about them. Do you suspect someone in the Mathers Society?”

“No one I can think of.”

“Do you have any particular friends in the Society — or particular enemies?”

“I don’t have any enemies, but I do have one friend, Tom Daniels. We met in college. Most of the other students thought I was terribly odd, but Tom was always kind and loyal. That means a lot to me. Other than Tom, I don’t see anyone in the Society outside of meetings. I haven’t socialized with any of them, not in the twenty years I’ve been a member. My schedule is so hectic, I rarely even see Tom.”

“What do you know about the victim?”

“I barely knew her. She was Rutley Paik’s ex-wife. He’s one of the members. She and Crandall Hobbs had some kind of altercation a few months ago. I don’t know about what. I saw them arguing after a meeting.”

“When?”

“I don’t remember. During the winter perhaps?”

“Why did you come to me with these letters rather than the police?”

“I can’t go to the police.”

“Why not?”

“I just can’t.”

“You’re being evasive.”

“It’s true. I am. A bit. But I promise I’ll tell you the rest soon. Very soon. You must trust me. And you must investigate. I’ll pay you one-and-a-half times your usual fee. How’s that?”

Cummings knew he was being lied to, and he didn’t like it. However, given his present financial circumstances, the offer was difficult to turn down.

“I suppose I could interview the members of the Society.”

“Yes! That is just the right way to begin!”

“Very well. I’ll speak with the members and see if I can learn anything of interest. Then we’ll talk again. You will have to give me a contact list and tell me whatever you know about the various individuals—everything you know about them.”

As might have been anticipated, Otto knew hardly anything about anyone, or if he did, he didn’t share it with Cummings. However, the contact list was useful. It contained both the Steampunk names by which members were known at Mathers meetings and their actual, usually lackluster, birth names.

Later, Cummings was on the Internet searching for information on Surendra Hickok, whose birth name turned out to be Therese Hickok. He read a few facts he already knew: Therese had co-authored a biography of Evangeline Adams with her sister, whose name was Cosima. Subsequently she had been the sole author of a biography of Wilhelm Reich. The occult publishing house, Trismegistus, published both books.

He also learned some new information.

Therese had been an account manager in a large public relations firm in downtown Chicago. A search of real estate records revealed an address in a modest Western suburb, Forest Park.

Then there was this: Cosima Hickok had been dead for about a decade. A brief obituary in a local newspaper,
The Samaria Journal
, noted that she had died suddenly but did not specify the cause.

As Cummings remembered from his time living in Maine, the village of Samaria was very near Horeb. In fact, it was the next town over.

Cummings was uncertain about the best strategy for interviewing the members of the Mathers Society. Dropping in unannounced is sometimes an advantage. It throws people off, which can lead to revelations. However, people find it unsettling, which irritates them, and thus they are as likely not to say anything as to reveal what they know. He set the timer on his wristwatch, and when it went off, he decided to make appointments.

For geographic convenience, since they lived nearby, Cummings began his interviews with with Crandall Hobbs and Winky Carmello, and with Rothwell Falconer and Lolita Gobble, all of whom lived in the same apartment building.

Unlike most of the other members, Crandall Hobbs and Winky Carmello were, if not actual birth names, names used at Mathers as well as in their day-to-day lives. The couple lived in the Old Irving Park neighborhood, which was close to Cummings in Jefferson Park. Rothwell Falconer and Lolita Gobble were known outside of Mathers as Mary Collins and Glen Smith.

The building in which the two couples lived was an old and stolid residential structure from the 1920s, built on an unusually large lot for Chicago. The building was bounded in front by an iron fence and gate surrounding an expanse of lawn of perhaps half an acre. This was neatly mowed, but no effort had been made to expand the landscape by so much as a single rose bush. Along the right side of the lawn, a concrete pathway led to the building’s front steps, which in turn led up to a large, leaded glass door framed with oak. The entrance was adorned with two concrete griffins, corroded by decades of Chicago winters.