The Best of Sisters in Crime (34 page)

When he played
for Alabama some reporter said his bald head was as smooth and cold as a piece
of Jade, and went on to spin some tiresome simile relating it to his play. When
he signed with the Bears, I was as happy as any other Chicago fan, even though
his reputation for off-field violence was pretty unappetizing. No wonder
Brigitte LeBlanc hadn’t stayed with him, but why hadn’t she wanted to tell me
who he really was? I wrestled with that while Tom called for reinforcements
over his lapel mike.

“So what were
you doing here?” he asked me.

“His ex-wife
hired me to check up on him.” I don’t usually tell the cops my clients’
business, but I didn’t feel like protecting Brigitte. “She wanted to talk to
him and he wasn’t answering his phone or his door.”

“She wanted to
check up on him?” the fit younger officer, a man with high cheekbones and a
well-tended mustache, echoed me derisively. “What I hear, that split-up was the
biggest fight Jade was ever in. Only big fight he ever lost, too.”

I smiled. “She’s
doing well, he isn’t. Wasn’t. Maybe her conscience pricked her. Or maybe she
wanted to rub his nose in it hard. You’d have to ask her. All I can say is she
asked me to try to get in, I did, and I called you guys.”

While Tom mulled
this over I pulled out a card and handed it to him. “You can find me at this
number if you want to talk to me.”

He called out
after me but I went on down the hall, my footsteps echoing hollowly off the
bare walls and ceiling.

Back to table of
contents

Brigitte LeBlanc
was with a client and couldn’t be interrupted. The news that her ex-husband had
died couldn’t pry her loose. Not even the idea that the cops would be around
before long could move her. After a combination of cajoling and heckling, the
receptionist leaned across her blond desk and whispered at me confidentially: “The
vice president of the United States had come in for some private media
coaching.” Brigitte had said no interruptions unless it was the president or
the pope—two people I wouldn’t even leave a dental appointment to see.

When they made
me unwelcome on the forty-third floor I rode downstairs and hung around the
lobby. At five-thirty a bevy of Secret Service agents swept me out to the
street with the other loiterers. Fifteen minutes later the vice president came
out, his boyish face set in purposeful lines. Even though this was a private
visit the vigilant television crews were waiting for him. He grinned and waved
but didn’t say anything before climbing into his limo. Brigitte must be really
good if she’d persuaded him to shut up.

At seven I went
back to the forty-third floor. The double glass doors were locked and the
lights turned off. I found a key in my collection that worked the lock, but
when I’d prowled through the miles of thick grey plush, explored the secured
studios, looked in all the offices, I had to realize my client was smarter than
me. She’d left by some back exit.

I gave a
high-pitched snarl. I didn’t lock the door behind me. Let someone come in and
steal all the video equipment. I didn’t care.

I swung by
Brigitte’s three-story brownstone on Belden. She wasn’t in. The housekeeper
didn’t know when to expect her. She was eating out and had said not to wait up
for her.

“How about
Corinne?” I asked, sure that the woman would say “Corinne who?”

“She’s not here,
either.”

I slipped inside
before she could shut the door on me. “I’m V. I. Warshawski. Brigitte hired me
to find her sister, said she’d run off to Jade. I went to his apartment.
Corinne wasn’t there and Jade was dead. I’ve been trying to talk to Brigitte
ever since but she’s been avoiding me. I want to know a few things, like if
Corinne really exists, and did she really run away, and could either she or
Brigitte have killed Jade.”

The housekeeper
stared at me for a few minutes, then made a sour face. “You got some ID?”

I showed her my
PI license and the contract signed by Brigitte. Her sour look deepened but she
gave me a few spare details. Corinne was a fat, unhappy teenager who didn’t know
how good she had it. Brigitte gave her everything, taught her how to dress,
sent her to St. Scholastica, even tried to get her to special diet clinics, but
she was never satisfied, always whining about her friends back home in Mobile,
trashy friends to whom she shouldn’t be giving the time of day. And yes, she
had run away, three days ago now, and she, the housekeeper, said good riddance,
but Brigitte felt responsible. And she was sorry that Jade was dead, but he was
a violent man, Corinne had over-idealized him, she didn’t realize what a
monster he really was.

“They can’t turn
it off when they come off the field, you know. As for who killed him, he
probably killed himself, drinking too much. I always said it would happen that
way. Corinne couldn’t have done it, she doesn’t have enough oomph to her. And
Brigitte doesn’t have any call to—she already got him beat six ways from
Sunday.”

“Maybe she
thought he’d molested her sister.”

“She’d have
taken him to court and enjoyed seeing him humiliated all over again.”

What a lovely
cast of characters; it filled me with satisfaction to think I’d allied myself
to their fates. I persuaded the housekeeper to give me a picture of Corinne
before going home. She was indeed an overweight, unhappy-looking child. It must
be hard having a picture-perfect older sister trying to turn her into a junior
deb. I also got the housekeeper to give me Brigitte’s unlisted home phone
number by telling her if she didn’t, I’d be back every hour all night long
ringing the bell.

I didn’t turn on
the radio going home. I didn’t want to hear the ghoulish excitement lying
behind the unctuousness the reporters would bring to discussing Jade Pierce’s
catastrophic fall from grace. A rehashing of his nine seasons with the Bears,
from the glory years to the last two where nagging knee and back injuries grew
too great even for the painkillers. And then to his harsh retirement, putting
seventy or eighty pounds of fat over his playing weight of 310, the barroom
fights, the guns fired at other drivers from the front seat of his Ferrari
Daytona, then the sale of the Ferrari to pay his legal bills, and finally the
three-ring circus that was his divorce. Ending on a Murphy bed in a squalid
Uptown apartment.

I shut the Trans
Am’s door with a viciousness it didn’t deserve and stomped up the three flights
to my apartment. Fatigue mixed with bitterness dulled the sixth sense that
usually warns me of danger. The man had me pinned against my front door with a
gun at my throat before I knew he was there.

I held my shoulder
bag out to him. “Be my guest. Then leave. I’ve had a long day and I don’t want
to spend too much of it with you.”

He spat. “I don’t
want your stupid little wallet.”

“You’re not
going to rape me, so you might as well take my stupid little wallet.”

“I’m not
interested in your body. Open your apartment. I want to search it.”

“Go to hell.” I
kneed him in the stomach and swept my right arm up to knock his gun hand away.
He gagged and bent over. I used my handbag as a clumsy bola and whacked him on
the back of the head. He slumped to the floor, unconscious.

I grabbed the
gun from his flaccid hand. Feeling gingerly inside his coat, I found a wallet.
His driver’s license identified him as Joel Sirop, living at a pricey address
on Dearborn Parkway. He sported a high-end assortment of credit cards— Bonwit,
Neiman-Marcus, an American Express platinum— and a card that said he was a
member in good standing of the Feline Breeders Association of North America. I
slid the papers back into his billfold and returned it to his breast pocket.

He groaned and
opened his eyes. After a few diffuse seconds he focused on me in outrage. “My
head. You’ve broken my head. I’ll sue you.”

“Go ahead. I’ll
hang on to your pistol for use in evidence at the trial. I’ve got your name and
address, so if I see you near my place again I’ll know where to send the cops.
Now leave.”

“Not until I’ve
searched your apartment.” He was unarmed and sickly but stubborn.

I leaned against
my door, out of reach but poised to stomp on him if he got cute. “What are you
looking for, Mr. Sirop?”

“It was on the
news, how you found Jade. If the cat was there, you must have taken it.”

“Rest your soul,
there were no cats in that apartment when I got there. Had he stolen yours?”

He shut his
eyes, apparently to commune with himself. When he opened them again he said he
had no choice but to trust me. I smiled brightly and told him he could always
leave so I could have dinner, but he insisted on confiding in me.

“Do you know
cats, Ms. Warshawski?”

“Only in a
manner of speaking. I have a dog and she knows cats.”

He scowled. “This
is not a laughing matter. Have you heard of the Maltese?”

“Cat? I guess I’ve
heard of them. They’re the ones without tails, right?”

He shuddered. “No.
You are thinking of the Manx. The Maltese—they are usually a bluish grey. Very
rarely will you see one that is almost blue. Brigitte LeBlanc has—or had— such
a cat. Lady Iva of Cairo.”

“Great. I
presume she got it to match her eyes.”

He waved aside
my comment as another frivolity. “Her motives do not matter. What matters is
that the cat has been very difficult to breed. She has now come into season for
only the third time in her four-year life. Brigitte agreed to let me try to
mate Lady Iva with my sire, Casper of Valletta. It is imperative that she be sent
to stay with him, and soon. But she has disappeared.”

It was my turn
to look disgusted. “I took a step down from my usual practice to look for a
runaway teenager today. I’m damned if I’m going to hunt a missing cat through
the streets of Chicago. Your sire will find her faster than I will. Matter of
fact, that’s my advice. Drive around listening for the yowling of mighty sires
and eventually you’ll find your Maltese.”

“This runaway
teenager, this Corinne, it is probable that she took Lady Iva with her. The
kittens, if they are born, if they are purebred, could fetch a thousand or more
each. She is not ignorant of that fact. But if Lady Iva is out on the streets
and some other sire finds her first, they would be half-breeds, not worth the
price of their veterinary care.”

He spoke with
the intense passion I usually reserve for discussing Cubs or Bears trades.
Keeping myself turned toward him, I unlocked my front door. He hurled himself
at the opening with a ferocity that proved his long years with felines had
rubbed off on him. I grabbed his jacket as he hurtled past me but he tore
himself free.

“I am not
leaving until I have searched your premises,” he panted.

I rubbed my head
tiredly. “Go ahead, then.”

I could have
called the cops while he hunted around for Lady Iva. Instead I poured myself a
whiskey and watched him crawl on his hands and knees, making little whistling
sounds—perhaps the mating call of the Maltese. He went through my cupboards, my
stove, the refrigerator, even insisted, his eyes wide with fear, that I open
the safe in my bedroom closet. I removed the Smith and Wesson I keep there
before letting him look.

When he’d
inspected the back landing he had to agree that no cats were on the premises.
He tried to argue me into going downtown to check my office. At that point my
patience ran out.

“I could have
you arrested for attempted assault and criminal trespass. So get out now while
the going’s good. Take your guy down to my office. If she’s in there and in
heat, he’ll start carrying on and you can call the cops. Just don’t bother me.”
I hustled him out the front door, ignoring his protests.

I carefully did
up all the locks. I didn’t want some other deranged cat breeder sneaking up on
me in the middle of the night.

Back to table of
contents

It was after
midnight when I finally reached Brigitte. Yes, she’d gotten my message about
Jade. She was terribly sorry, but since she couldn’t do anything to help him
now that he was dead, she hadn’t bothered to try to reach me.

“We’re about to
part company, Brigitte. If you didn’t know the guy was dead when you sent me up
to Winthrop, you’re going to have to prove it. Not at me, but to the cops. I’m
talking to Lieutenant Mallory at the Central District in the morning to tell
him the rigmarole you spun me. They’ll also be able to figure out if you were
more interested in finding Corinne or your cat.”

There was a long
silence at the other end. When she finally spoke, the hint of Southern was
pronounced. “Can we talk in the morning before you call the police? Maybe I
haven’t been as frank as I should have. I’d like you to hear the whole story
before you do anything rash.”

Just say no,
just say no, I chanted to myself. “You be at the Belmont Diner at eight,
Brigitte. You can lay it out for me but I’m not making any promises.”