Finally, of course, there was little Caroline. Now that I’d worked out that she was protecting Louisa, I figured I could get her to talk. She might even know what Nancy had seen in the insurance report. She was my best starting point.
I took the blanket from my legs and got up. The dog immediately sprang to her feet, waving her tail-if I stood up, it was clearly time to go running. When she saw me just move to the phone, she flopped down in depression.
Caroline was in a meeting, the SCRAP receptionist told me. She was not to be disturbed.
“Just write the following on a note and take in into her-‘Louisa’s life story on the front page of the Herald-Star?’ And add my name. I guarantee she’ll be on the phone within nanoseconds.”
I had to cajole a little more, but the woman finally agreed. I carried the phone back over to the easy chair. Peppy eyed me in disgust, but I wanted to be sitting down for the coming blast.
Caroline came on the line without preamble. I let her rant at me unchecked for some minutes, shredding my character, expressing remorse that I’d risen unchastened from the swamp, even lamenting that I didn’t now lie buried in the mud.
At that I decided to interrupt. “Caroline, that was vile and offensive. If you had any imagination or sensitivity, you would never have thought such a thing, let alone said it.”
She was silent for a minute, then said gruffly. “I’m sorry, Vic. But you shouldn’t have sent me messages threatening Ma.”
“Right, kiddo. I understand. I understand that the only reason you’ve been behaving more like a horse’s rear end than usual is because someone was gunning for Louisa. I need to know who and why.”
“How do you know?” she blurted.
“It’s your character, sweetie. It just took me awhile to remember it. You’re manipulative, you’ll bend the rules any old way to get what you want, but you’re no chicken. You’d run scared for only one reason.”
She was silent for another long moment. “I’m not going to say if you’re right or wrong,” she finally said. “I just can’t talk about it. If you’re right, you can understand why. If you’re wrong-I guess it’s because I’m a horse’s rear end.”
I tried to will my personality into the phone. “Caroline, this is important. If someone told you they’d hurt Louisa unless you got me to stop hunting for your father, I need to know it. Because it means there’s a tie-in between Nancy’s death and my looking at Joey Pankowski and Steve Ferraro.”
“You’d have to sell me and I don’t think you can.” She was serious, more mature than I was used to hearing her.
“At least let me give it a shot, babe. Come up here some time tomorrow? As you can imagine, I’m not too fit right now or I’d zip down to see you tonight.”
She finally, reluctantly, agreed to come by in the afternoon. We hung up in greater amity than I’d have thought possible ten minutes earlier.
27
An annoying lassitude gripped my body. Even the short conversation with Caroline had tired me out. I poured some more tea and flicked on the tube. With spring training still two weeks away, there wasn’t much doing during the day. I moved from soap to soap to a tearful prayer meeting-Tammy Faye’s sobbing successor-to Sesame Street and turned the set off in disgust. It was too much to expect me to sort papers or pay bills in my enfeebled state; I wrapped myself in my blanket and lay down on the sofa for a nap.
I woke up about twenty minutes before Kappelman was due and stumbled into the bathroom to rinse my face with cold water. Someone had stolen all the dirty towels, scrubbed the sink and bathtub, and tidied up odds and ends of toiletries and makeup. Peeping into my bedroom, I was staggered to see the bed made and clothes and shoes put away. I hated to admit it, but the tidy rooms were cheering to my sore spirits.
I’d hidden Nancy’s documents in the stacks of music on the piano. The elves had carefully put the music inside the piano bench, but the insurance material lay undisturbed between the Italienisches Liederbuch and Mozart’s Concert Arias.
I was picking my way through “Che no sei capace”- whose title line seemed admirably apt, in that I understood nothing-when Kappelman rang the bell. Before I could get to the intercom Mr. Contreras had bounded out to the lobby to inspect him. When I opened my door I could hear their voices in the stairwell as they came up together-Mr. Contreras trying to tamp down the suspicions he felt toward any man who visited me, Kappelman trying to suppress his impatience with the escort.
My neighbor started talking to me as soon as his head cleared the last turn and he caught sight of me. “Oh, hi there, cookie. You have a good rest? I’m just coming to pick up her highness here, get her some air, a little food. You weren’t feeding her cheese, were you? I meant to tell you-she can’t tolerate it.”
He came into the room and started inspecting Peppy for signs of illness. “You don’t want to go walking her alone, now, nor going off by yourself on one of your runs. And don’t let this young guy here keep you going past when you’ve got yourself worn out. And you want any help with anything, me and the dog’ll be at the ready; you just give us a holler.”
With this thinly veiled warning, he collected Peppy. He hovered at the door with more admonitions until I finally thrust him gently onto the landing.
Kappelman looked at me sourly. “If I’d known the old man was going to investigate my character, I’d’ve brought my own attorney along. I’d say you were safe if you kept him with you-anyone attacks you he’ll talk them to death.”
“He just likes to imagine I’m sixteen and he’s both my parents,” I said with more indulgence than I felt. Owing my life to Mr. Contreras didn’t keep me from finding him a little wearing.
I offered Kappelman a drink. His first choice was beer, which I rarely have in the house, followed by bourbon. I finally unearthed a bottle of that from the back of my liquor cupboard.
“An old South Sider like you ought to be ready with a shot and a beer,” he grumbled.
“I guess it’s just one more sign of how much I’ve abandoned my roots.” I took him into the living room, folding up the blanket I’d left on the couch so he could sit there. My place was never going to be the equal of his Pullman showcase, but at least it was neat. I didn’t get any compliments, but then he couldn’t be expected to know how it usually looked.
After a few polite nothings about my health and his day, I handed Nancy’s packet to him. He pulled a pair of glasses from the breast pocket of his shabby jacket and carefully went through the document a page at a time. I sipped my whiskey and read the day’s papers, trying not to fidget.
When he’d finished he put his glasses away with a little gesture of puzzled helplessness. “I don’t know why Nance had these. Or why she thought they might have been important.”
I gritted my teeth. “Don’t tell me they’re completely meaningless.”
“I don’t know.” He hunched a shoulder. “You can see what they are as easily as I can. I don’t know that much about insurance, but it looks as though Xerxes might have been paying more than these other guys and Jurshak was trying to persuade the company”-he looked at the document searching for the name-“Mariners Rest to lower their rates. It obviously meant something to Nancy, but it sure doesn’t to me. Sorry.”
I scowled horribly, causing the kind of wrinkles they warn starlets against. “Maybe the point isn’t the data but the fact that Jurshak handled the insurance. Maybe still does. He wouldn’t be my first choice as either an agent or a fiduciary.”