“It’s the mortgage,” she finally whispered to her feet. “We rented for years and years. Then when I started working we could finally save enough to make a down payment. I got a call. A man-I don’t know who he was. He said-he said-he’d been looking into our loan. He thought-he told me-they would cancel it if I didn’t make you stop looking for my father-stop you from asking all those questions about Ferraro and Pankowski.”
At last she looked up at me, her freckles standing out sharply from the pallor of her face. She held out her hands beseechingly and I moved from my chair to put my arms around her. For a few minutes she nestled against me, trembling, as though she were still little Caroline and I was the big kid who could save her from any danger.
“Did you call the bank?” I asked her presently. “See if they knew anything about it?”
“I was afraid if they heard me asking questions, they might do it, you know.” Her voice was muffled against my armpit.
“What bank is it?”
She sat up at that and looked at me in alarm. “You’re not going to go talk to them about it, Vic! You mustn’t!”
“I may know someone who works there, or someone on the board,” I said patiently. “If I find I can’t ask a few questions very discreetly, I promise not to paw up the dirt. Okay? Anyway, it’s a pretty good bet that it’s Ironworkers Savings & Loan-that’s where everyone in the neighborhood has always gone.”
Her big eyes searched my face anxiously. “It is, Vic. But you have to promise, really promise, you won’t do anything that will jeopardize our mortgage. It would kill Ma if something like that happened now. You know it would.”
I nodded solemnly and gave my word. I didn’t think she was exaggerating the effect on Louisa of any kind of major disturbance. As I thought about Caroline’s frantic response to the threat on her mother, something else occurred to me.
“When Nancy was murdered you told the police I knew why she’d been killed. Why did you do that? Was it because you really wanted me to keep an eye on you and Louisa?”
She blushed violently. “Yes. But it didn’t do me any good.” Her voice was barely a squeak.
“You mean they did it? Cut off your mortgage?”
“Worse. They-they somehow figured out-I’d gone to you about her murder. They called me again. At least it was the same man. And said if I didn’t want to see Ma’s medical benefits cut off, I’d better get you away from South Chicago. So I was really scared then. I tried my best, and when this man called me back I told him-told him I couldn’t-couldn’t stop you, that you were on your own.”
“So they decided to stop me themselves.” My throat was dry; my own voice came out harshly.
She looked at me fearfully. “Can you forgive me, Vic? When I saw the news, saw what happened to you, it shattered me. But if I had to do it again, I’d have to do it the same way. I couldn’t let them hurt Ma. Not after everything she went through for me. Not with all her suffering now.”
I got up and paced angrily to the window. “Didn’t it occur to you, if you told me, I could do something about it? Protect her and you? Instead of running blind, so that I almost got killed myself?”
“I didn’t think you could,” she said simply. “When I asked you to find my father I was still imagining you were my big sister, that you could solve all my problems for me. Then I saw you weren’t as powerful as I’d imagined you to be. It was just, with Ma so sick and everything, I needed someone so badly to look after me, and I thought maybe you’d still be that person.”
Her statement dissipated my anger. I came back to the couch and smiled wryly at her. “I think you’ve finally grown up, Caroline. That’s what it is all right-no big people to clean up all the mess around us. But even if I’m not still the kid who could whip the neighborhood to save your butt, I’m not totally ineffective. I think it’s possible to tidy some of the garbage floating around on this one.”
She gave a shaky smile. “Okay, Vic. I’ll see if I can help you.”
I went to the dining room and pulled a bottle of Barolo from the liquor cupboard, Caroline rarely drank, but the heavy wine helped steady her. We talked for a while, not about our current problems, but general things-whether Caroline really wanted a law degree if she didn’t have to play catch-up with me. After a glass or two we both felt able to return to the discussion at hand.
I told her about Pankowski and Ferraro and the conflicting reports on their suit against Humboldt Chemical. “I don’t know what that has to do with Nancy’s death. Or with the attack on me. But it was when I found out about it and started questioning people about them that someone threatened me.”
She listened to a detailed report on my encounters with Dr. Chigwell and his sister, but she couldn’t shed any light on the blood work he’d kept on Xerxes employees.
“This is the first I ever heard about it. You know the kind of person Ma is-if they sent her in for a medical exam every year, she did it without thinking about it. A lot of things people told her to do on the job didn’t make any sense to her, and this would be one of them. I can’t believe it has anything to do with Nancy’s death.”
“Okay. Let’s try another one. Why did Xerxes buy their insurance through Art? Is Jurshak still the fiduciary on their life-health stuff? Why was it important enough to Nancy that she was carrying it around?”
Caroline shrugged. “Art keeps a pretty tight grip on a number of the businesses down there. He might have gotten their insurance in exchange for a tax break or something. Of course when Washington was elected Art didn’t have as many favors to hand out, but he still can do a lot for a company if they do something for him.”
I pulled Jurshak’s report to Mariners Rest from Mozart’s Concert Arias and handed it to Caroline. She frowned over it for several minutes.
“I don’t know anything about insurance,” she finally said. “All I can tell you is that Ma’s benefits have been first-class. I don’t know about any of these other companies.”
Her words triggered an elusive memory. Something someone had said to me in the last few weeks about Xerxes and insurance. I frowned, trying to drag it the surface, but I couldn’t get hold of it.
“It meant something to Nancy,” I said impatiently. “What? Did she collect data on health and mortality rates for any of these companies? Maybe she had some way of checking the accuracy of this report.” Maybe the report didn’t mean anything. But then why had Nancy been carrying it around?
“Yes. She did track all these health statistics-she was the director of Health and Environmental Services.”
“So let’s go down to SCRAP and check her files.” I got up and started hunting for my boots.
Caroline shook her head. “Nancy’s files are gone. The police impounded what she had in her desk, but someone had cleaned out her health files before the cops got them. We just assumed she’d taken them home with her.”
My anger returned in a rush, fueled by disappointment: I was sure we’d reached a break in the case. “Why the hell didn’t you tell the police that two weeks ago? Or me! Don’t you see, Caroline? Whoever killed her took her papers. We could have been looking exclusively at people involved in these companies, instead of trailing around after vengeful lovers and all that crap!”
She heated up just as fast. “I told you at the time she was killed because of her work! You just were on your usual fucking arrogant head trip and wouldn’t pay any attention to me!”
“You said it was because of the recycling plant, which this has nothing to do with. And anyway, why didn’t you tell me that her files had disappeared?”
We went at it like a couple of six-year-olds, both venting our fury over the threats and humiliations of the past few weeks. I don’t know how we would have extricated ourselves from the escalating insults if we hadn’t been interrupted by the buzzer outside my front door. I left Caroline in the living room and stormed to the entrance.