Life Without Parole: A Kate Conway Mystery (21 page)

“I guess he’s fled the jurisdiction,” I said to Vera.

“I think he’s dead.”

I looked over at her. She was staring at the living room window, covered with thick blue drapes that didn’t let in even a sliver of light.

“That would suck,” I said. “He’s our best suspect.”

I pulled on the door handle again. No give. It wasn’t as if I was considering breaking in, but if the door just gave way and I could walk in, that would be another story. But no luck, even on the third try.

“Everything okay there?” I turned and saw a woman around seventy, a small, yappity dog at her feet who began barking and growling. I guess even dog’s can have a Napoleon complex. The woman was standing on the sidewalk, blocking a quick getaway to my car.

“We’re looking for Doug Zieman,” I said.

“He’s not home.”

“I guess not.” I pushed Vera slightly in front of me, and I stood with my back to the mailbox. “Do you know where he is?”

“No,” she said. “Are you friends or something?”

“I’m Vera Bingham. Doug’s girlfriend,” Vera said. “And I’ve been calling him for days and he’s not calling back. I’m really worried about him. It’s just not like Doug.”

“Oh.” The woman seemed a little unsure how to take that information. “I didn’t know Douglas had a lady friend.”

The woman looked up the street, almost as if she were hoping for another neighbor to consult. As she looked away, I reached back, grabbed the mail from the mailbox, and stuck it under my coat.

“Are you his neighbor?” Vera asked.

The woman pointed to a house several doors down. “Going on five years. He’s a quiet man. I didn’t know he…socialized much.”

“We met online,” Vera told her. “We’ve only known each other for a couple of months but we’ve been really close. We’re investors in a restaurant together.”

It was way more information than I would share with a stranger, but it seemed to be working. The woman softened her stance. Even the yappy dog stopped barking.

“I’m glad to see he met someone,” she said. “I thought he might be lonely, in that house by himself. No family or anything.”

“When did you last see him?” I asked the neighbor.

She stood for a moment, thinking. “The afternoon before the storm,” she said finally. “I remember we were talking about the reports that we might get twenty inches. He told me he’d come over in the morning to help shovel my path, like he does after every big snow, but he never showed up. Not like Doug.”

“No it isn’t,” Vera agreed.

I walked down the front steps, nearly slipping a few times, and didn’t stop until I was a few inches past the neighbor. Then I reached in my purse and pulled out my business card.

“This has my cell phone on it,” I told her. “If you hear from him, will you call me?”

She studied the card. “Kate Conway, Producer,” she read. “Who are you to Doug?”

“I’m a friend of Vera’s. I just want to make sure she’s okay, and she wants to make sure Doug’s okay.”

The woman nodded. “It’s very nice of you to care so much about your friend.”

I smiled at the compliment, tightened my arms around my coat so that Doug’s mail wouldn’t fall out and headed to my car.

Vera followed me to the nearest Starbucks, and we sat at the one available table, drinking hot chocolate and going piece by piece through Doug’s mail. I’d expected a lot of flak about stealing it, or cautions
against breaking federal regulations, but Vera didn’t say a word. She just took her half of the pile and went through it.

“There isn’t anything,” she said after only a few minutes. “It’s all junk mail and two bills.”

“For what?”

“Electricity and cable.”

“Either of them late?”

“No,” she said. “He’s current on both. What does that tell you?”

“Nothing, I suppose.”

Vera scowled. “It tells you he pays his bills. He’s lived in the same house for at least five years and he’s nice enough to shovel his neighbor’s driveway. That’s not a con man.”

“Maybe.”

My prospects for pointing Makina toward Doug as the killer were looking grim. Doug was every bit as dull a human being as he’d appeared the day I’d met him. In my pile of mail there was a gardening catalog and an invitation to a book signing at a comic book store. A credit card bill had a zero revolving balance. The current charges were for a half dozen meals at a diner on Addison and a gym membership.

“So what now?” Vera asked.

I looked through my pile again. “I don’t know. All we’ve got so far is that Doug probably hasn’t been home since the murder.”

“I think he’s dead somewhere,” she said, her voice cracking. “It’s the only thing that explains why he hasn’t called or been to his house.”

“So where’s his body? The killer left Erik’s body right where we could find it. Why move Doug’s to a hidden location?” I asked. I glanced down at the credit card statement. “Where’s his office?”

“On Jackson and Wells. Why?”

“He went to a diner called Terry’s near Wrigley Field six times last month.”

“Maybe he’s a Cubs fan.”

“In winter?”

Vera sighed. “So maybe it’s got great coffee.”

“Or maybe he’s meeting someone there and wants to keep it private.” There was a small part of me that was a little pleased that Vera
was now the one unraveling the secret life of a man she trusted. But being pleased only made me feel bad. I knew how much it hurt to love someone who’d betrayed you, and I didn’t want that for anyone, even Vera.

“We’re not going to get anywhere staring at his mail,” I said. “Besides, I have to meet Walt for dinner.”

Vera’s face lit up. “Really?”

“I think he wants to talk about Erik’s murder,” I said. “He probably wants to spin it so he looks good in the final piece. A guy like him could end up a TV host if he plays his cards right. My bet is he’s looking to feel me out about how he makes that leap.”

She seemed to want more details, but I was only interested in what I wanted—another plausible suspect. And that meant asking Walt about his secret meeting with Ilena and Roman.

W
alt had chosen a German restaurant on Lincoln Avenue, one of those places that have been around since the 1950s and haven’t changed anything since opening day. The wallpaper and red leather booths looked a little worse for the wear, but the food was amazing.

“You like it?” he asked, a nervous smile on his face.

“I’ve always been a sucker for bratwurst and spaetzle,” I said. “But this doesn’t seem like the sort of place you would like. Paintings of Bavaria on the wall, lace decorations, framed family photographs—it all seems a little sweet for the chef of the century.”

He blushed a little. “I like good food and this is good food,” he said. “My mom is from Alabama. Her folks owned a little restaurant and she learned to cook all the traditional Southern dishes. And my dad grew up near Taylor Street. His grandparents were from a little town in Southern Italy. They both loved to cook, so I was raised on soul food and pasta. And lots of good conversation. I guess that’s how I relate to people, through food.”

“So you had to feed me before you could talk to me.”

“I suppose so.” He laughed. “I would have cooked for you at my place but I thought that might be a little much for a first date.”

I coughed. “A date?” I tried to say it casually, but all the confusion and surprise I felt came out in my voice.

“Vera said you weren’t seeing anyone,” Walt said. “I guess…well, I thought that you knew I was asking you out.”

“I didn’t,” I admitted. “I guess I just…” I’d embarrassed Walt and felt stupid. “I haven’t been asked on a date in so long I didn’t recognize the invitation.”

“Why did you think I wanted to have dinner with you?”

This was not the time to mention the secret meeting with Ilena and Roman, or my assumption that Walt had ambitions for a TV career. “I
thought you were nervous about what to say about Erik during the interview,” I said.

“Oh.”

“Look, Walt, it’s my fault. And I’m flattered—”

“But not interested.”

“It’s not that.” I wasn’t about to tell him that I’d dated only one man in my entire life. Frank and I had met at sixteen and had been together until Vera came into the picture. I’d noticed that when I’d mentioned to other people I had only been with Frank, I was greeted with the same alarmed expression usually saved for circus freaks. “I haven’t seen anyone since my husband died.”

“I didn’t know,” Walt said, stumbling. “Vera didn’t tell me you were…well, she didn’t say anything about your husband. She just told me you were unattached.”

“She’s trying to help, I guess.”

“People in love are always trying to fix up everyone else.” He shrugged and dug into his sauerkraut.

“You think Vera is in love with Doug?”

“I think she wants to be.”

“Do you think Doug is in love with Vera?”

He considered the question. “Doug’s kind of a geek. Not that it’s a bad thing. But he’s the kind of guy who eats spaghetti on Tuesday. Every Tuesday for the last thirty years.”

“A creature of habit.”

“Yeah. Someone who thinks ordering the chef’s special is taking one of life’s big risks. I just don’t see him being the kind of person who suddenly changes his life to include a free spirit like Vera.”

“But they were dating.”

He didn’t seem convinced. “They’re what my mother likes to call ‘keeping company.’ I don’t see it leading to marriage,” he said. “Is that what Vera wants?”

“I have no idea,” I said. “But why does a guy who plays it safe invest a lot of money in a restaurant? Erik said it would take a long time, if ever, before anyone saw any profit from it.”

“I wondered that myself. I even asked Roman about it.” Walt put
his fork down and signaled the waitress. “You want dessert, Kate? They make a great
bienenstich
. It’s a cake with honeyed almonds baked onto the top and then filled with vanilla custard.”

“Sounds delicious. What did Roman say?” I asked.

The waitress came over, and Walt chatted with her about the cake, ordered us two slices and coffee, then asked how business was. It felt like the seasons were changing while I waited to get Walt’s attention again.

When he finally turned back to me, he said, “You’re going to love this cake.”

“What about Roman?”

“What?”

“Before you ordered dessert, you said you asked Roman about why Doug invested.”

“Yeah.”

“What did he say?” If I had been interested in dating, this would have been the moment when I pulled the plug. On the slim chance I ever let a man into my life again, he would have to be capable of getting to the point.

“He said Doug had made a low-risk investment.”

“What does that mean?”

“Who knows? Roman likes to be opaque.”

The waitress, a tall, slim blonde of about thirty, arrived with our cake and coffee, and while I had to admit the cake was delicious, I didn’t want to waste time eating it. I wanted to ask questions.

“Did you ask Ilena about what Roman said? You two are close.”

Walt’s eyes widened slightly, then relaxed. “Not really. Personally, I like to stay away from both of them.”

“So you don’t socialize with them at all?”

“Why would I? Erik was my contact at the restaurant. We were the ones who were actually going to be working there. The rest of them were just investors.” He bit into his cake. “It’s good, isn’t it? I’ve tried a couple of recipes but I can’t seem to make my Bienenstich as good as this place.”

He smiled, and I smiled back. I wanted to push further, but I’d decided that I’d
like to have his reaction on tape. “You must be sad about Erik,” I said instead.

“I am. He was a good guy,” he said, hesitating before finishing his thought. “Not to be disrespectful to his memory, but restaurant managers are a dime a dozen. It’s the chef people talk about.”

“But Erik had a vision for the place.”

He scowled. “He was all caught up in bringing glamour back, but I think he lost sight of the fact that this is a new era. When people think of movie stars they don’t think of Clark Gable. They don’t even know who he was. Erik’s plan had us running uphill with bricks on our back.”

“Excuse me?”

“He was making everything harder than it had to be.”

“So the place is better off without him?”

Walt shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. But Erik thought the restaurant experience wasn’t about the food. What kind of thinking is that? If you don’t want great food, then go to a bar, go to the movies.” He waved his arms around. “He wanted to be the star of the show.”

“And that’s your job.”

I’d ruffled him. “I just think we can simplify matters and make the place profitable,” he said.

“So the restaurant is still opening?”

“You really are bad at dates, Kate. This feels more like another TV interview than a conversation.”

“Sorry about that,” I said. “But it is an interesting question.”

Walt signaled the waitress for more coffee. When she brought the pot over to us, it created another opportunity for the two of them to chat about the restaurant business, and an invitation for Walt to meet the chef.

Walt excused himself quickly with a tepid invitation to join him in the kitchen, which I declined. I waited until my cake was finished and my coffee had gone cold, but there was no sign of either Walt or the waitress. When he didn’t return after about fifteen minutes, I left the restaurant alone.