“If you’d been killed, I would have carried that responsibility to my grave. Can’t you understand that? Can’t you see when I give you orders it’s out of concern for your safety, because of what I owe Tony and Gabriella? What will it take to pound some sense into you?”
I glowered at the bedclothes. “I’m self-employed just so I don’t have to take orders from anyone. Anyway, Bobby, I did agree not to go to the state’s attorney about Nancy Cleghorn. And I agreed to tell you if I ran into anything that looked like a lead into her death. I didn’t.”
“You obviously did!” he shouted, pounding the bedside table so hard that the water pitcher fell over. That put the cap to his anger-he yelled out the door for an orderly, then shouted at the man until the floor was cleaned to his satisfaction. My roommate turned off The Dating Game and scurried out to the lounge.
When the place was dry again Bobby made an effort to smother his anger. He took me through the details of the episode, waiting patiently at the spots that were hard for me to talk about, prompting me professionally when I couldn’t remember something. The fact that I had a name, even just a first name, cheered him slightly-if Troy was a pro tied to any known organization, the police would have a file on him.
“Now, Vicki”-Bobby was genial-“let’s get to the heart of the matter. If you didn’t know anything about Cleghorn’s death, why did someone try to kill you in the same manner, and in the same place that they murdered her?”
“Gee, Bobby, the way you put it, I guess I must know who killed her. Or at least why.”
“Exactly. Now let’s have it.”
I shook my head, gingerly, since the back was still on the sore side. “It’s just the way you put it. The way I look at it, I must’ve talked to someone who thinks I know more than I really do. The trouble is, I’ve talked to so many people the last few days and all of them have been so unpleasant that I don’t know which I’d choose as my grade-A suspect.”
“Okay.” Bobby was determinedly patient. “Let’s have who you’ve talked to.”
I looked at the water stains on the ceiling. “There’s young Art Jurshak. You know, the alderman’s son. And Curtis Chigwell, the doctor who tried killing himself in Hinsdale the other day. And Ron Kappelman-SCRAP’S counsel. Gustav Humboldt, of course. Murray Ryerson-”
“Gustav Humboldt?” Bobby’s voice went up a register.
“You know, the chairman of Humboldt Chemical.”
“I know who you mean,” he said bitingly. “You want to share with me why you were talking to him? In reference to the Cleghorn woman?”
“I wasn’t really talking to him about the Cleghorn woman at all,” I said earnestly, turning to look at Bobby’s clenched jaw. “That’s what I meant-I didn’t talk to any of these people about Nancy. But since they were all more or less unpleasant, any of them might have wanted to dump me in the swamp.”
“For two cents I’d get someone to put you back there. It’d save a lot of time. You know something and you think you’re going to be a hotshot again, go looking without saying squat to me about it. They almost got you this time. Next time they will, but until they do I have to waste city money by having someone keep an eye on you.”
His blue eyes glittered. “Eileen’s all upset about you being in here. She wanted to send over flowers, she wanted to take you home with her and fuss over you. I told her you just ain’t worth it.”
25
After Bobby left I lay back down. I tried to sleep, but the pain in my shoulders had moved to the foreground of my mind. Angry tears prickled under my eyes, I had almost gotten killed, and all he could do was insult me, I wasn’t worth the bother of looking after, just because I wasn’t a blabbermouth who would tell him everything I knew, I’d tried mentioning Gustav Humboldt’s name, and all I’d gotten for my pains was an incredulous shout.
I twitched uncomfortably. The knot in the hospital gown was digging into my sore neck-muscles. Of course I could have given him chapter and verse on all my activities for the last week. But Bobby just wouldn’t have believed that a big-shot like Gustav Humboldt could be involved in bonking young women on the head. Although maybe if I’d tried giving it to him straight… Was he right? Was I just hotdogging, hoping to thumb my nose at him one more time?
As I lay still, letting images flow through my mind, I realized that this time, at least, wanting to give the powers-that-be a Bronx cheer wasn’t what had kept me quiet. I was well and truly scared. Every time I tried sending my mind back to the three black-slickered men I shied away from the memory like a horse frightened by fire. There were a lot of parts of the assault I hadn’t told Bobby, not because I was trying to hold back on him but because I couldn’t bear to touch the memories. The hope that some forgotten phrase or cadence would give me a lead to who they worked for wasn’t enough to force the memory of that terrifying near-suffocation.
If I spilled everything I knew to Bobby, turning the whole tangled mess over to him, it was a way of saying it out loud. Hey, guys, whoever you are, you got me. You didn’t kill me but you got me so scared that I’m abdicating responsibility for my life.
Once I’d let that little piece of self-knowledge float to the top of my mind, a terrible rage began to seize hold of me. I would not be turned into a eunuch, be driven to living my life in the margins designed by someone else’s will. I didn’t know what was going on in South Chicago, but no one, be it Steve Dresberg, Gustav Humboldt, or even Caroline Djiak, was going to keep me from finding out.
When Murray Ryerson showed up a little after eleven, I was pacing the room in my bare feet, my hospital gown flapping around my legs. I’d vaguely seen my roommate stand uncertainly in the door and move away again, and I mistook Murray’s presence for her return until he spoke.
“They told me you were fifteen minutes from death, but I knew better than to believe that.”
I jumped. “Murray! Didn’t your mother teach you to knock before barging in on people?”
“I tried, but you weren’t anywhere near planet earth.” He straddled the chair next to my bed. “You look like that Siberian tiger in that great open area at Lincoln Park Zoo, V.I. You’re making me nervous. Sit down and let me have an exclusive on your brush with death. Who tried to do you in? Dr. Chigwell’s sister? The folks down at the Xerxes plant? Or your pal Caroline Djiak?”
That stopped me. I pulled up my roommate’s chair to face Murray. I had hoped to keep Louisa’s affairs out of the papers, but once Murray started digging he’d find out pretty much anything.
“What’d little Caroline tell you-that I’d come by my ill deserts honestly?”
“Caroline’s a bit confusing to talk to. She says you were looking into Nancy Cleghorn’s death for SCRAP, although no one else down there seems to know anything about it. She claims she knows nothing about Pankowski or Ferraro, although I’m not sure I believe her.”
Murray poured himself a glass of water from the pitcher the orderly had replaced. “The people at Xerxes keep referring us to counsel if we want to hear about those two. Or about their suicidal doctor. And it does always kind of make you wonder when people only talk to you through their lawyers. We’re working on the plant secretary, the gal who works for the accountant-cum-personnel administrator. And one of my assistants is hanging out at the bar where the shift goes after work, so we’ll get something. But you could sure make it easier, Miss Marple.”
I slid from the chair back to bed and pulled the covers up to my chin. Caroline was protecting Louisa. Of course. That was what lay behind her song and dance. A threat to her mother was the only thing that would scare her, the only explanation consistent with her fierce terrier personality. She didn’t care anything for her own safety-and certainly not enough for mine to grow hysterical over my failure to drop the investigation.