“Who is it?” came a voice from beyond a pair of locked narrow doors, only it wasn’t the voice of a he, but a she.
“Are you L. Clarke?” I said as I stepped closer. “I’m looking for Jason Harnisch who used to have your apartment.”
“Are you police?”
“Nope.”
A latch snapped, then one of the doors drew back and a round-faced, blond, female head appeared in the opening, followed by a plumpish female body, on the short side, dressed in gray sweats. I wasn’t good at guessing ages, but she looked to be in her early twenties.
“Wow — you’re tall,” she said.
At six foot six and a half, it was something I couldn’t deny, so I just said, “Yep. Are you L. Clarke?”
“Yep,” she said back in a mocking way. “L for Liz. Who are you?”
“Steve Carr. Could I ask you some things about Jason Harnisch?”
“You’re definitely not a cop, so — sure. Is he really dead?”
“What?”
The truth is, I almost said Who? But in the last nanosecond I realized that she was referring to Harnisch, and in another nanosecond my brain kicked in with the equation STUD GUN x DEPRESSED EMOTIONS = SUICIDE. Not exactly a pleasing piece of math. Plus, the girl’s expression as she watched me was hard to read, almost excited by the fact that I was staring at her without a clue.
“It’s a rumor, that’s all,” she said, stepping out into the foyer. “Who are you, anyway?”
Here at least was a question I’d come prepared for. “Steve Carr. A friend of mine in Chicago e-mailed me last night that this other friend of his named Jason was acting weird, phone’s disconnected and some other stuff, and so here I am checking it out — I hope not too late. Does this rumor have any details?”
“Read for yourself.” She pointed a finger at a homemade sign on the wall opposite the doorbells:
INVITATION TO A CAR FIRE
11:00 PM FRIDAY JAN. 8, 1999
ONE PERFORMANCE ONLY
ORCHARD ROAD WEST OF KANE, NORTH SIDE
COME ONE COME ALL (BUT YOU ESPECIALLY, KIRSTEN!)
FOR THE BLAZING FIRST EVENT OF THE LAST OF MILLENNIUM YEAR
BROUGHT TO YOU COURTESY OF
YOUR FORMER FELLOW TENANT
WHO MAKES HIS BRIEF FAREWELL APPEARANCE IN THIS LOCALE
I read the sign through twice and then untacked it from the wall, probably just to show the girl I could be decisive. “Mind if I take this?”
“Go ahead. He shoved a copy under practically everyone’s door.”
I folded it and put it in my coat pocket, then asked, “Do you know Jason at all — I mean, did you, while he lived here?”
“Uh-huh. I used to be in number eleven, but when he got tossed out I laid a claim. Eight’s a lot larger.”
She had a different expression on her face now, sort of calculated and curious. I was your original novice detective, but I’d heard the Master’s voice two million times on the subject of questioning people, and one thing I remembered him saying was, “Some people want to tell you things just because you show up. A lot of times it’s only about them, but you never know if you don’t listen.”
Except while I stood there dreaming up a conversational gambit, Liz Clarke made one of her own. “Don’t you even want to know if there was a car fire?”
“You mean there wasn’t? I sort of took it for granted. And besides... I heard someone talking about it on campus, only I didn’t make the connection.” A judicious lie goes a long way — more words from the Master.
“Really? Wow!” She shook her head. “Say, listen, why don’t you come up for a minute.” Then she whispered, “A busybody’s coming down the hall behind me. You’re Steve, right?”
“Steve Carr.”
So I followed her in and up a sagging staircase after being introduced on the fly as her friend Steve, and thirty seconds later we were passing through a kitchen with an old porcelain sink and a stove that smelled of gas. “I’m no corrupter of youth, honest,” she giggled to me over her shoulder. “Just an apple-cheeked Appleton maid who likes beer for breakfast.”
Beyond the kitchen was a small sitting room and we landed there, but she bounced up as soon as she’d plopped down, saying, “Scat, cat,” as she shooed a kitten past me through a door three quarters closed. “Bedroom. Avert your eyes — it’s a mess.” She pulled the door to and turned with an embarrassed look. “So there goes my image as a woman of the world. Hard to keep up anyway when you teach preschool. How about some coffee?”
“None for me, thanks. But as long as I’m here, an answer or two would be good. You didn’t happen to go to that car fire, did you? And who’s Kirsten?”
She sat down again before saying, “Kirsten... is a kind of a witch, I think. Rhymes with bitch — but we mustn’t be like that stupid cat.” A feline noise came from her as she grinned across toward the bedroom door. “Kirsten occupies number twelve up yonder. A man magnet. If she could bottle it and sell it, she’d make millions and I’d be her first customer. The trouble is — meow, meow — she just wants to be ‘friends’ and she can’t understand it when the guys get the wrong idea.”
“Jason Harnisch?”
“Yep — just one of the guys. Kirsten works in the office at the park district and picks up extra money as a scorekeeper for the over-twenty basketball league. Well, one night last fall, just after the league started up, the regular timekeeper wasn’t going to make it, and Kirsten hates doing double duty. How do I know? I’ve been her sucker a couple of times myself. But this time she cornered Jason with that sweet, innocent smile, then goofed around with him between games and went for pizza and beer and necked a little with him in the hall outside her apartment when they got back. I was in eleven then, and sound gets sort of trapped back there.” She sighed. “And that was all for poor Jason.”
“Jason didn’t see it that way, though.”
“How very true, Steve Carr. You have the makings of a detective.”
“And the fire?”
“Oh, it happened, all right, and I was there. Kirsten would have gone too, just out of curiosity, if she hadn’t been committed to a friend’s party. It’s January and it’s Appleton, remember, so a car fire advertised in advance is almost as good as free beer.” She stared away toward the bedroom. “Well, anyhow, there were three of us in my car, and we drove out on Kane Road wondering, you know, what kind of mischief Jason really had planned. Nobody’d seen him around here — not officially — since December first when he was booted for nonpayment, and I know he went to Chicago for Christmas to stay with relatives. I also know he sneaked up one last time just before he left, poor sucker, and cried real tears talking to Kirsten, and she was so, so sympathetic about telling him to get over it. To her that sort of thing happens all the time.
“The fire — when you turn off Kane onto Orchard Road, what you see is a big open shoulder that angles up a hill, and that’s where the fire was. It was only five to eleven when we got there, but Jason’s car was already backed in, up away from the road, shooting flames about twenty feet into the air. And it wasn’t fun, actually. It was scary.
“There were two or three cars there ahead of us and people standing around, but nobody wanted to go very close. We got out to watch, and pretty soon everyone started looking around asking, ‘Where’s Jason? Where’s Jason?’ More cars pulled up, and then there were sirens and police cars and fire engines, and after a few minutes some cops came over and told us to leave — didn’t even ask questions, but we’d all decided not to rat on Jason anyway.
“Only... I’d been talking to a couple of people who’d gotten there early, before the car was burning that bad, and they swore, Steve, that they’d seen a body in it stuck behind the wheel! And — and so that’s why I’m wondering if Jason isn’t dead.”