The Talk Show Murders (31 page)

“Friends don’t threaten friends.”

“That’s not … Dickie explained how that works. It’s not personal. It’s what you have to do to make everything turn out okay.”

“How will my driving with you make that happen?”

“I don’t know. But it will.”

Belmont Harbor was on our right, a giant wall of high-rises to our left. “Is it your house we’re going to?”

He nodded, concentrating hard on the road.

“Your dad going to be there?”

“Maybe. In the big house. Not where Dickie and I live. He never goes there. Cecil and Camilla take care of us.”

“Will Cecil and Camilla be there?”

He smiled. “Of course not. They go to their daughter’s in Wilmette on weekends. Unless there’s a party, which there isn’t tonight.”

“So it’ll just be you, me, and Dickie?”

“And your girl,” Jonny said. “I better not talk anymore. I have to pay attention to my driving.”

I looked at the rearview mirror. Too many cars and too many headlights to see anything more than vague shapes.

Eventually, the four-lane drive curved left and was transformed into a two-lane street called Sherman Road. Low-rise buildings were mixed in with the high-rises. Though the traffic was gradually falling off, Jonny slowed the SUV. A twenty mph warning sign explained that.

At one point, not long after passing Loyola University, a roadside establishment called Leona’s Pizza appeared on our right. “We missed dinner,” I said.

“No talking now. We’re coming to the tricky part where I used to get lost. I need to concentrate real hard.”

He was leaning forward, scowling at the road.

I loosened my seat belt a few inches and casually turned my body, taking a long but careful look at the road behind us. There were only a few cars following us now. The night made it impossible to gauge their colors. The one nearest was an SUV. But behind that was a smaller, sleeker car riding close to the ground.

As it passed near a streetlamp, I saw that it was maroon-colored.

Feeling almost elated, I settled back on my seat and contemplated the road ahead as we drove through what appeared to be a residential area, its sidewalks illuminated by old-fashioned streetlamps.

Jonny turned left down one street, then right on another. He began to mumble, then wailed, as if in pain. He pulled over to the side of the road, stopped, and pounded on the steering wheel in obvious frustration. “Stupid-stupid-stupid,” he said, turning the word into a mantra.

The maroon Nissan Z was caught in our headlights as it passed us by and continued on down the street.

Jonny didn’t seem to have recognized the Z. He had his phone out. He pressed a button and held it to his ear. “Me,” he said. “No. He’s with me. That part’s okay, Dickie. I … got lost.”

He was silent for a few beats, then said, “Evanston, I think … Okay. Don’t hang up.”

He switched the phone to his left hand. With his right, he pressed a button on the dash that turned on the vehicle’s tracking system. Immediately, a colorful street grid filled the little monitor screen. “Okay, now what?” he asked.

Squinting, he reached forward and pressed a button. A series of numbers in yellow circles appeared along the bottom of the screen, along with a circle filled with what looked like the drawing of a Monopoly house. Jonny pressed that button.

A digitized voice, British or faux British, announced that he was to drive forward until the route instructions began. He obeyed, and the British voice issued its first command.

Breathing easier, Jonny said into the phone, “It’s working. We’ll be there soon. I’m sorry, Dickie. I’ll do better.”

I could hear the tone, if not the words, of Dickie’s harsh response.

Jonny put the phone away. He was sniffling, teary-eyed. He did not notice the parked maroon Nissan when we passed it by.

Back on track, Jonny used the sleeve of his jacket to wipe his nose and eyes and asked, “Is it hot in here?”

“Not for us only children,” I said.

As the route took us around and past the seemingly never-ending Northwestern University campus, Jonny said, “That’s where my brother, Dickie, went to school. Studied architecture building and planning, so he could work with our dad. He says he’s lucky I didn’t get much smarts because that left more for him.”

“What a nice, brotherly thing to say.”

“Oh, yeah. Dickie’s the best.”

Once we’d entered the village of Wilmette, Jonny was able to find his way without the help of the grating British voice but blamed me because neither of us could figure out how to silence it.

It was still “recalculating” when he took a left turn onto a lane that led in the direction of the lake. Several feet from the lane’s end, the disembodied Limey voice announced we’d reached our destination.

That wasn’t quite accurate. There was still another left turn and then a lengthy drive through a forest of trees, at the end of which was the lighted gate of a high stone fence. Off the road to our left was a small windowed structure constructed with the same kind of piled stones as the wall. It was dark.

“Usually there’s a guy out here who takes care of the gate,” Jonny said, as he reached across me to open the glove compartment. “Dickie sent him away.” He found a little plastic device, which he clicked twice.

The gate opened smoothly and silently. It remained open only long enough for us to enter the compound, and as it swung shut, I heard an odd bristling, pounding sound. With heart-stopping suddenness, the vehicle was attacked by two snarling German shepherd dogs, their faces inches from our windows, their paws scraping the paint on the door panels. They’d evidently been trained not to bark.

“Adolph and Eva,” Jonny said.

“Cute names,” I said.

Jonny reached into the right pocket of his jacket. Then the left. Then he dug into the pockets of his pants, growing more and more upset. “I know I had … Ah, here it is.”

He’d finally found the object he’d been seeking, a metal whistle.
He placed it in his mouth and blew three times. The only sound I heard was his breath going through the instrument. But as suddenly as the dog attack had begun, it stopped. The two animals trotted off across a lawn the size of a soccer field. They glanced back at us occasionally, as if they weren’t quite convinced that they were doing the right thing by ignoring us.

Jonny put the SUV in drive. As we crunched along the gravel road, I got a good look at the compound by moonlight. There were three buildings that I could see. The biggest, surrounded by a lush garden, was a white two-story colonial home that, by my rough count, beat the house of the seven gables by one. With the exception of a room in the upper-left corner of the building, it was in darkness.

Behind that was a chain-link-fenced tennis court and an almost Olympic-size swimming pool. The smallest building, barely a cottage, was near the pool. Totally dark.

To our left was a large three- or four-car garage with what looked like living quarters above it.

“Chauffeur lives up there?” I asked.

He laughed. “We don’t have a chauffeur. That’s where Cecil and Camilla stay. But they’re not here now.”

“Probably went to visit their daughter.”

He frowned. “You know Ce—” Then he grinned. “Aw, I told you that.”

Our final destination was on a grassy knoll overlooking the lake, a miniature, less-gabled version of the main house. Its ground floor was lit up, and I saw the outline of someone leaning against the jamb of the front door.

“Dickie’s waiting for us,” Jonny said. “I hope he’s not too pissed at me for getting lost.”

He drove the SUV to within a few feet of the coach house, parking it on the lawn.

The man standing in the doorway was of average height, pale, dark-haired, and clean-shaven. He was thin, with a runner’s body. Denim pants. White dress shirt rolled to the elbows. He resembled his brother, but while Jonny’s face was unlined and full, Dickie’s had sharp edges,
prominent cheekbones, and dark smudges under his eyes. He looked tired, arrogant, and, at the least, annoyed.

“Here we are, Dickie,” Jonny said, as we got out of the SUV. “Just like you wanted.”

Dickie showed no response except to turn on his heel and go inside the house, letting the screen door slam back in place.

“This isn’t good,” Jonny said. “Dickie’s angry. And he can be, well, mean when he’s angry.”

Terrific.

The coach house the brothers inhabited was furnished in early American—lots of wood, some chairs with cane bottoms, knit throw rugs on plank floors, walls a creamy off-white decorated with paintings by artists of the Grandma Moses school (maybe Grandma herself), dark beam ceilings, gingham pillows on tufted sofas. Not exactly what I’d have thought appropriate or acceptable for the Baker boys. But the furnishings were probably a decorator’s idea, just as the neat-as-a-pin, fresh-tulips-and-roses-in-vases atmosphere was the work of their caretakers, Cecil and Camilla.

I took another look at the grounds, saw the two dogs stretched out by the pool, facing my direction, and wondered if Dal would be able to handle them, assuming he could make it past the gate.

“This way, Billy,” Jonny urged me on, gesturing with his handgun. Its reappearance at this point was not unexpected. All signs—including the fact that Dickie had dismissed the staff—indicated the sort of night I’d be having. It reminded me of the old Woody Allen line:
“The lion shall lie down with the calf, but the calf isn’t going to get much sleep.”

The others were waiting for us in what appeared to be a den. Ordinarily, it would have been overwhelmed by the giant TV screen that covered a full wall. But the screen was dark, and the two bodies—one on the floor, the other on the sofa—demanded attention in a way TV never would.

Nat was slumped near a cold flagstone fireplace, his body too brutalized and twisted to still be supporting life. His bloody face had a spongy, raw look. One eye was open, but it wasn’t seeing anything.

The other body was very much alive, thank God. A forehead cut near her hairline had leaked blood down the side of her face. But she seemed otherwise unharmed, sitting upright on a wicker couch, her wrists and ankles bound by blue duct tape. Another blue strip had been pasted over her mouth, but a trickle of blood from the head wound had loosened an edge. She struggled against the bindings, watching me. Her dark eyes were full of fury, but I was pretty sure that this time, I was not the object of Kiki’s wrath.

“Your girl can be a real pain in the ass, Blessing,” were Dickie Baker’s first words to me. “She likes to make things difficult for herself.”

“I’m glad she’s not as difficult as Nat Parkins,” I said.

Dickie glared at Jonny, whose eyes dropped to the floor. “That was a mistake my retard brother made,” Dickie said.

“He looked like he could handle it, but he just sort of came apart, Dickie.” Jonny looked stricken. He seemed to have forgotten the gun in his hand.

“There’s the problem, Blessing. Parkins
came apart
before he could tell us where the red files were. We’re kinda hoping he told you.”

“That’s it? You seduce, kidnap, and brutalize my assistant and get me here because you hope I might know something? And you think you’re the
smarter
brother?”

His face darkened. He took a step toward me, drawing back his hand. And stopped. He stared past me, his anger replaced by surprise.

Jon Baker Senior, in white silk pajamas under a black silk robe, was
standing in the doorway. He was not happy. “Why the devil isn’t there a security guard at the gate?”

“I sent him away,” Dickie said.

“You what?” Jon entered the room and blinked when he saw Nat’s body. “For Christ’s sake, Dickie, what the hell … 
Blessing
?”

I shrugged.

“Everything’s under control, Dad.”

“This you call under control? Is that man dead?”

“I told Jonny—”

“Don’t lay any of this cock-up on Jonny. You’re supposed to be calling the shots.” He saw Kiki trussed up on the couch. “Who’s this woman?”

“She works for Blessing. I’ve been using her to find out what he’s been up to. Stupid bitch hadn’t a clue what I was doing.”

“What’s she doing
here
? Why are any of these people here? This is where we live, for God’s sake.”

I’d backed up a few steps until I was standing beside Jonny. His soft face was twisted in anguish. He was totally caught up in the conflict between his father and his brother.

“I’m sorry I’m not a genius like you, Dad,” Dickie said. “Why don’t you tell me where else I should have taken—”

“This is full-out idiocy. A key rule of life: You never put yourself in an indefensible position.”

“I didn’t—”

“What would you call it, if you got caught with a corpse in your own home?” His eyes swept over me and Kiki. “Or in this case,
three
corpses.”

“We’ll get rid of them, Dad. There’s no chance anybody would—”

Jonny’s cry interrupted him.

The comment about my impending corpsehood had been all the encouragement I’d needed. Jonny had forgotten both me and his gun. I just reached out, grabbed it with both hands, and twisted up. Hence the squeal.