We talked until Louisa fell into her gasping sleep. She clearly knew nothing of Caroline’s worries. I had to hand it to the little brat-she did protect her mother.
22
Mr. Contreras was waiting anxiously on the front walk when I came home. The dog, picking up his worried state, yawned nervously at his feet. When they saw me each expressed his joy: the dog leapt around me in little circles while the old man scolded me for not leaving him my day’s route.
I put an arm around him. “You aren’t going to start breathing down my neck, are you? Repeat twenty times a day-she’s a big girl, she can fall on her butt if she wants to.”
“Don’t joke about it, cookie. You know I shouldn’t say this, I shouldn’t even think it, but you’re more family to me than my own family. Every time I look at Ruthie it beats me how Clara and I coulda had a kid like that. When I see you it’s like looking at my own flesh and blood. I mean that, doll. You gotta look after yourself For me and her royal highness here.”
I gave a wry smile. “I guess I take after you, then-I’m real hardheaded and stubborn.”
He thought it over a minute. “Okay, doll,” he agreed reluctantly. “You gotta do things your way. I don’t like it but I understand.”
When I went in the front door I heard him saying to the dog, “Takes after me. You hear that, princess? She gets it from me.”
Despite my bravado with him, I’d been watching my back off and on all day. I also checked my apartment carefully before sitting down with my mail, but no one had tried getting past the reinforced steel in the front door or the sliding bars on the back.
I couldn’t face another evening of whiskey and peanut butter. Nor did I want my downstairs neighbor feeling he had the right to hover over me. Carefully locking up once more, I headed over to the Treasure Island on Broadway to stock up.
I was sautéeing chicken thighs with garlic and olives when Max Loewenthal phoned. My first thought on hearing from him out of the blue was that something had happened to Lotty.
“No, no, she’s fine, Victoria. But this doctor you asked me about two weeks ago, this Curtis Chigwell-he tried to kill himself You didn’t know that?”
“No.” I smelled burning olive oil and reached my left hand the length of the cord to turn off the stove. “What happened? How do you know?”
It had been on the six o’clock news. Chigwell’s sister had found him when she went to the garage for some gardening tools at four.
“Victoria, I feel most uncomfortable about this. Most uncomfortable. Two weeks ago you ask for his address and today he tries to commit suicide. What was your role in this?”
I stiffened immediately. “Thanks, Max. I appreciate the compliment. Most days I don’t feel that powerful.”
“Please don’t turn this off with your flippancy. You involved me. I want to know if I contributed to a man’s despair.”
I tried to control my anger. “You mean did I go throw his ugly past in his face to the point where he couldn’t stand it and turned on the monoxide?”
“Something like that, yes.” Max was very grave, his strong Viennese accent heavier than usual. “You know, Victoria, in your search for the truth you often force people to face things about themselves they are better off not knowing. I can forgive you for doing it with Lotty-she’s tough, she can take it. And you don’t spare yourself But because you are very strong you don’t see that other people cannot deal with these truths.”
“Look, Max-I don’t know why Chigwell tried to kill himself I haven’t seen a medical report so I don’t even know that he did-maybe he had a stroke as he was turning on the car engine. But if it was because of the questions I was asking, I don’t feel one minute of remorse. He’s involved in a cover-up for Humboldt Chemical. What or why or how serious I don’t know. But that has nothing to do with his personal strengths and weaknesses-it has to do with the lives of a lot of other people. If-and it’s a mighty big if-if I’d known two weeks ago that my seeing him would make him turn on the gas, you’d better believe I’d do it again.” By the time I finished speaking I was breathing hard, my mouth very tight.
“I do believe you, Victoria. And I have no wish to talk to you in such a mood. But I do have one request-that you not think of me the next time you need help in one of your chases.” He hung up before I could say anything.
“Well, damn you anyway, you righteous bastard,” I shouted at the dead phone. “You think you’re my mother? Or just the scales of justice?”
Despite my rage I felt uneasy-I’d sicced Murray Ryerson on the guy in the middle of the night. Maybe they’d hounded him and his imagination had converted a minor peccadillo to murder. Hoping to ease my conscience, I tracked the crime editor down at the Herald-Star’s city desk. He was indignant-he’d sent reporters out to question the doctor about Pankowski and Ferraro, but they’d never been allowed in.
“Don’t give me hounding, Miss Wise-ass. You’re the one who talked to the guy. There’s something you’re not telling me, but I’m not even going to speculate on what it is. We’ve got some gofers down at that Xerxes plant and we’ll get on it faster without mixed signals from you. We’re running a lovely human-interest story on Mrs. Pankowski tomorrow, and I expect to have something from that lawyer, Manheim, who represented them.”
Murray did finally part grudgingly with more details about Chigwell’s attempted suicide. He had disappeared after lunch, but his sister didn’t miss him since she was busy around the house. At four she decided to go to the garage to check over her gardening gear so she’d be ready for spring. Her comments to the press did not include any mention of me or Xerxes, just that her brother had been troubled the last several days. He was prone to depression and she hadn’t thought much about it at the time.
“Is there any doubt he did it himself?”
“You mean did someone come into the garage, bind and gag him, strap him into the car, then undo the ropes when he was unconscious, assuming he’d die and it’d look like suicide? Give me a break, Warshawski.”
When I finally finished the conversation I was in a worse mood than I’d been at the start. I’d made the cardinal sin of giving Murray far more information than I’d received in exchange. As a result he knew as much about Pankowski and Ferraro as I did. Since he had a staff who could follow a range of inquiries, he might well untangle what lay behind Humboldt’s and Chigwell’s lies before I did.
I’m as competitive as the next person-more than many of them-but it wasn’t just fear of finishing behind Murray that upset me. It was Louisa’s right to privacy-she didn’t deserve the press pawing through her past. And it kept bugging me-irrationally, I agree-that I’d never been home when Nancy tried calling the day she died.
I looked balefully at the partly cooked chicken. The only scrap I hadn’t given Murray was the letter to Mariners Rest I’d found in Nancy’s car. And now that young Art had gone missing I wasn’t sure who I could talk to about it. I poured myself a drink (one of the ten warning signs-do you turn to alcohol when you’re upset or frustrated?) and went into the living room.
Mariners Rest was a large life and health insurer based in Boston, but they had a big branch office in Chicago. I’d seen their TV ads a million times, with a confident-looking sailor leaning against a hammock-rest with the mariners and sleep with their peace of mind.
It would be tricky explaining to a corporate actuary where I’d gotten the data. Almost as hard as trying to explain it to Big Art. Insurance companies guard their actuarial data with the care usually associated with the Holy Grail. So even if they’d accept my word on having a right to the documents, it would be hard to get them to tell me if they meant anything-like were the data accurate. They’d have to get clearance from their home office in Boston and that could take a month or more.