Madeline Mann (25 page)

“Right,” she agreed, wiping Cal's mouth with the corner of his bib. “Will Jack be there?”

“Oh, he wouldn't miss it for the world,” I said. “He's meeting me there. Jamie, I hope I was of help to you.” I could see that Jamie was tearing up again, and I wanted to make a quick exit. I gave her a hug, promising to come and see her soon and check on their transition to the new place.

“Thanks, Madeline. Thanks for everything,” she said.

Despite the cuteness of the children, it was Jamie's face that stayed with me in the car; hers and that of her husband's lover, Detective Arcelia Perez. I took a few deep breaths and told myself to stop jumping to conclusions. I couldn't prove that Perez was Logan's lover. I couldn't prove that she was the “treasure chest” Logan had been talking about, although my instincts told me she was; I couldn't prove that she had anything to do with Logan's death, even if she had been one of his conquests; in fact, other than giving me a really weird vibe, the revelation about Perez had no significance whatsoever. She hadn't actually lied to me. I'd never asked her if she'd been personally involved with Logan; if I had, she could rightfully have told me it was none of my business.

Still, I felt somehow that I'd been hoodwinked, betrayed. At a red light, I remembered the phone Perez had given me. Impulsively I took it out and scanned the buttons. A large central one said “Auto Dial.” I pressed this just as a horn sounded behind me. I still had some time, I noted, so I crossed the intersection and parked under a shady tree and waited to see what transpired.

A phone was ringing somewhere. I assumed it belonged to Perez. It kept ringing, however, so I hung up and looked back at my phone. There was a button that said “Auto Page.” I guessed this meant that the number of my phone would automatically appear on her pager. I pressed this, then sat huffily in my car, wondering if Perez would actually respond. I stared out my window at an older man wearing a Blackhawks sweatshirt and smoking a cigar as he rocked on his front porch swing. The cigar smoke drifted toward me and through the crack of my open window. Like all smoke, it had a seductive allure at first. After a while, though, it just smelled like a cigar.

I was considering moving on down the road to escape the aroma when the phone rang. I pressed the on button of my own contraption and said, “Hello.”

“Madeline.” As usual, Perez sounded a little bit amused. “What can I do for you?”

The stress of not talking about it for three hours now caused me to burst. “You didn't tell me what your name meant, Perez. Treasure chest. Was that some kind of joke between you and Logan? I had no idea that you were sleeping together. But if Logan went to Saugatuck to pursue you, you can bet that's what his family will assume. In fact, his brother already does. What, did he catch the two of you together in bed?” I paused to catch my breath, knowing I had just burned all of my bridges behind me.

Perez allowed some time for my harsh accusations to float around my own head. Then she said quietly, “I'm not going to discuss this with you.”

“Why?” I asked. “Because it's a conflict of interest? Because you don't want my paper reporting your relationship? Because you killed Logan?” I yelled.

“Whoa there, pardner. Let's get together. I'm sure we can discuss this like two reasonable adults. Up until now I thought you were reasonable, Madeline.”

“I have a bad feeling about this whole thing. I mean, if you weren't involved with Logan, just say so.”

“Let's get together and talk,” Perez said quietly. “Where can we meet?”

To me this sounded vaguely sinister. “Um, I don't think so,” I said. “I need to do some thinking. And I have somewhere important to go right now.”

“Madeline, I really think we should—”

“I'll call you when I think this through,” I said huffily, and pressed the off button.

My thoughts went around in circles as I drove toward the mayor's office. No matter what the involvement of Perez, I still had some things to pursue in the Don Paul arena.

I drove down Webley's main street, appropriately called Main Street, where several restaurants were clustered together. The smell of fried food floated in my window on a cool breeze. I longed to go back to Selby's Diner, where I'd enjoyed the chicken salad so much on Monday, and have a sit-down breakfast with all the trimmings; instead, I drove another block to Burger King and got an egg sandwich and an orange juice. There was no way a healthy young girl like me could concentrate with an empty stomach, I rationalized, as I ate yet another meal at the wheel. I could see Jack in my mind's eye, floating above me like a stern patriarch in a yoga position, frowning at my nutrition and my fast-paced lifestyle. Jack hadn't had the day I'd had, though, and I was sure just this once he would understand.

In any case, my stomach was full and I was ready to don my metaphorical cat-burglar black. I parked down the street from city hall, walked half a block, and tried not to look like I was skulking near the steps. I glanced at my watch: 12:07. Pamela was late. I was ready to start fuming when I saw her running toward me on clicking high heels.
High heels
, I thought with a pang. It was Saturday, for gosh sakes. She looked fresh and lovely in black pants and a lavender sweater under a crisp jean jacket. Her auburn hair was pulled back in a headband à la the early Hillary Clinton. Dry cleaning was slung over her shoulder, and she looked as pretty and unreal as an actress in a Woolite commercial.

She was effusively apologetic. “Madeline! Oh, you look cold standing there! I'm so sorry. I had to pick up my dry cleaning; I didn't know how long this would take, and they close at noon on Saturdays, so—”

“That's okay,” I interrupted nervously. “Let's get off the steps.” My eyes made a quick surveillance. I half-expected to see Lyle smirking at me from across the street or Don Paul wagging a warning finger. What I did see was a black Corvette. I wondered if Quinn Paley was around somewhere—keeping surveillance at city hall? I shrugged and turned back to my accomplice.

Pamela handed me her cleaner's bags and trotted briskly up the stairs. The cold wind ruffled her silky hair, emphasizing its neatness rather than mussing it. I felt myself growing irritated. I just wasn't in the mood for Pamela today. I wondered if I could ask her to scram.

She turned a key and pushed the door all in one efficient movement, and we were inside.

“Let me just get the alarm,” she said as a series of warning beeps greeted us. She walked to a little box on the wall and punched in some numbers as casually as she would her ATM code. “There.” She flashed me her brilliant smile.

“That's pretty impressive that you know the alarm code,” I commented.

“Oh God, Madeline, I'm here so often I guess I have to. Almost every weekend, I'd say.” She tried to make it sound burdensome but didn't pull it off. “Hey, did I tell you who Don Paul and I sat with at the mayors’ conference last month? Mayor Daley! Richard M. Daley!” Her excitement seemed to fuel her as she clicked to the stairway at our left. “Can you believe it? I still haven't come down from that high.”

I made noises of approval. Since I voted in Webley, I tended to be an ostrich about Chicago politics. I didn't know much about Richard Daley other than that his father had been mayor too and that he had a wife and kids. That's how political I am.

“Yeah, can you believe it?” she repeated, still gabbing. “I mean, what an amazing contact. I gave him my business card, and he said Don Paul raved about my work, and I tried to appear loyal but available, you know?”

I barely heard her. I was growing more and more nervous about our little game of espionage, and Pamela's dry-cleaning bags made me feel hotter than I already was. The air inside the building was close and stuffy.

We ascended the stairs, and she noticed, finally, what I was carrying. “Oh, let me get those,” she said airily, taking them from me and slinging them over a chair.

I looked around the office, trying not to see my mother's desk, which I knew would be frowning at me in her place.

“Gee, I don't know where to start,” I said. What would Kinsey Millhone or Spenser do at a time like this? Take secret pictures, beat someone up? There was only Pamela, who stood smiling with roses in her cheeks, fluffing her perfect hair.

She walked to her desk and sat on the edge of it. “Listen, Madeline, since you know about Logan and me, there's something I can tell you that I couldn't tell you before. I…know something about why he was fired. Not everything, but something.”

I glared at her. She'd been playing games with me. I was getting more and more of a sense of how frustrating a cop's job must be.
Then again, the cops aren't always honest either,
I thought with a nervous feeling in my stomach.

“Gee, thanks for holding out on me again, Pamela,” I said testily. “Spill.”

She pouted briefly, then grew reflective. “You were right about the smoking room. Logan would go in there with Blanche and try to get the best gossip out of her. What that old woman knows…I guess every office has a Blanche,” she said dismissively.

“Anyway, this one day Logan came out with a piece of paper in his hand. He was laughing and saying, ‘Don, you scamp!’ or something like that. I don't think anyone else noticed, but I tended to watch him very closely because we were, uh—”

“So what then?” I prodded.

“So he went to his computer and started tapping away, and after about half an hour he was just beaming. Logan was a real computer whiz.” She shook her head sadly.

“What was it?” I asked.

Pamela blinked. “Well, I'm not exactly sure. It was something about voting ballots. Logan had found one in a box he was sitting on in that hidden room. He took it in to Don Paul, and he came out fired. Then later Don had Lyle move a couple of boxes out of that room, and Don himself came out and erased some things from Logan's computer.”

“But Logan must have told you. Later, when you were together?”

Pamela shrugged. “He said it was best I didn't know if I had to work in the office. He said he'd gather more evidence, and then I could help him expose the mayor. But then the mayor started paying him, I think.”

“Paying him?” I squeaked.

“Yeah, you know. To be quiet. And Logan liked the setup, so he stopped his ‘investigation.’ That's when he and I sort of parted ways.” She seemed disgusted, still, at the memory of Logan's vice.

“But Logan was broke. His family was really struggling.…”

“Yeah, his family, not him. Logan liked having secrets. And he was a real bastard about money, if you'll excuse my French. He told me his dad had always been rich, but Logan lived with his mom and brother, and Mom wouldn't take handouts from Dad. It made Logan angry. He'd started hoarding as a kid.”

I remembered, suddenly, that Logan never treated me to a cafeteria cookie, even though I often did treat him. And Logan “going Dutch” on dates. Logan wearing a suit to prom because he said the tuxedo industry “preyed on teens.”

I sat open-mouthed as Pamela's words arranged themselves in my head.

“Anyway,” Pamela continued briskly, turning on her computer, “Don probably erased the file you need, but here's my computer. You can zip around on the hard drive; all the terminals are networked.”

I sat down dumbly and clicked on File: Open. My computer knowledge could fit into a thimble, and I was feeling a strong sense of futility as I stared at the screen. A gigantic list of files and folders appeared before me in luminescent green. “This will take forever,” I complained. “I should get Bill in here; he knows more than I do. Or Gerhard, even.” I was scrolling down as I talked, looking at files with such revealing names as
xrzo.doc
and
demo/ut.doc
. A better woman than I might make sense of it all.

Pamela had wandered over to the coffee machine and turned it on. “Hey, did your landlord tell you I stopped by yesterday?”

“What?” I asked, staring at the screen. “I thought it was—I mean, yeah, I guess he did.”

“I wanted him to let me in and wait for you, but he didn't think he should.”

I wasn't really listening, so I just made an “Mmm” sound as I sorted through pages.

Pamela said, “Well, you've got an hour or two to play. I'm going to get some work done.”

I nodded and continued surfing through the files. Pamela seated herself at Blanche's desk and started typing something. Even her typing had a happy rhythm.

I looked at a couple of random files, then exited and entered a different folder. This looked more promising. There was one called
elec.doc
and another that read
ablt.doc
. I opened the first and found a series of letters soliciting donations for Don Paul's re-election campaign. Many were written by Pamela; some were written by Logan. They all seemed on the up-and-up despite the sugary-sweet falsity of their content. I opened the second file and what appeared to be an absentee-ballot form flashed on the screen. The name at the top was Andersen, Mark. Apparently I'd come upon actual ballots that would be sent to those who'd requested them. I flicked idly through the forms: Apling, Arliss, Arthurs, Astor, Attenborough, Avila. It reminded me of the
Big Book of Baby Names
and stumbling across the dreaded truth. What hidden truth was in the mayor's balloting system? Or was Pamela wrong about that? Nothing seemed unusual here. I was almost ready to close the file when I saw the name Baker, Millicent.

I froze. I checked the address. I checked the date. The ballot was to be sent out in November. It had been prepared last December.

I feared I knew why Logan was blackmailing the mayor. Millicent Baker had been a friend of my parents. She'd been a professor of history at St. Fred's in Webley. And she had died of cancer five years before, when I'd been a senior at Fred's.

Apparently Don Paul's generosity extended to the dead; he was going to let Millicent vote for him in the next election.

My hand, which was shaking slightly, bumped a key, and the letter
z
appeared on the screen after Millicent's name. I quickly put my hands in my lap.

Impossible!
I told myself.
Too risky!
And yet it would guarantee Don Paul a victory against his eager young opponent, Wendy White. White already had the liberal vote in town.