“I just don’t know, dear.” Her voice trembled and she struggled to control it. “Don’t let it worry you. You couldn’t have done anything to help her, I’m sure.”
“I wish I could agree with you. Look, I’m not trying to be a ghoul, or pressure you when you’re so upset. But I feel responsible. I’m an experienced investigator. I might have been able to help her if I’d been home when she called. The only thing I can do to assuage my conscience is try to find who killed her.”
“Vic, I know you and Nancy were friends, and I’m sure you think you’re helping by getting involved. But can’t you just leave it to the police? I don’t want to have to talk about it or think about it anymore. It’s bad enough having to get ready for her funeral with all these children screaming through the house. If I have to worry about-about why someone wanted to kill her-I keep thinking of her in that marsh. We used to go bird-watching there when she was in Girl Scouts and she was always so scared of the water. I keep thinking of her in there being alone and afraid-” She broke off and struggled against her tears.
I knew Nancy was afraid of water. She had never joined our surreptitious swims in the Calumet and she had to get a written statement from a doctor to excuse her from the swimming requirement in college. I didn’t want to think of her last minutes in the marsh. Maybe she’d never regained consciousness. It was the best I could hope for.
“That’s why it matters to me to find out who put her through such torment. It makes me feel that she was a little less helpless if I can go to bat for her now. Can you understand that and tell me who Nancy might’ve talked to? If not to you, I mean?”
She and Nancy had always had a kind of careless camaraderie, which I’d envied. Even though I loved my mother, she was too intense for an easy relationship. If Nancy hadn’t told Ellen Cleghorn what was going on with the recycling center, she’d certainly have talked to her about friends and lovers. And after a few more minutes of coaxing, Mrs. Cleghorn started speaking about them.
Nancy had been in love, been pregnant, had an abortion. Since she and Charles broke up five years ago there hadn’t been any special men in her life. And no close women friends down here, either.
“It wasn’t really a good place for her to meet people. I hoped maybe after she bought that house-South Shore is a little livelier neighborhood and lots of university people live down there now. But there wasn’t anyone in this area she would’ve been close enough to talk to. Except maybe Caroline Djiak, and Nancy thought she was such a hothead, she wouldn’t have told her anything she wasn’t dead certain about.” The unconscious phrase made her wince.
I rubbed my eyes. “She talked to one of the state’s attorneys. If it had something to do with SCRAP, she might’ve talked to their lawyer too. What’s his name? She mentioned it that night she came by Caroline’s and I can’t remember it”
“I guess that would be Ron Kappelman, Vic. She went out with him a few times but they didn’t really click together.”
“When was that?” I asked, suddenly alert. Maybe it was a crime of passion after all.
“It must have been two years ago, I guess. When he first started working with SCRAP.”
Maybe not. Who waits two years to revenge himself on love gone sour? Outside Agatha Christie, that is.
Mrs. Cleghorn couldn’t tell me anything else. Other than the date of the funeral, set for Monday at Mount of Olives Methodist Church. I told her I’d be there and left her to the ministrations of her grandchildren.
Back at the car, I slumped dejectedly against the steering wheel. Except for the financial searches I’d done on Tuesday, I hadn’t had a paying customer for three weeks. And now, if I was really going to look into Nancy’s death, I’d have to talk to the state’s attorney. See if Nancy had revealed anything when she told him she was being followed. Talk to Ron Kappelman. See whether he might’ve felt like a man scorned or, failing that, if he knew what she’d been up to the last few days.
I rubbed my head tiredly. Maybe I was getting too old for gestures of bravado. Maybe I should just call John McGonnigal, tell him about my conversation with Caroline, and go back to what I know how to do-investigate industrial fraud.
On that sensible, even rational, note, I started the car and took off. Not toward Lake Shore Drive and common sense, but to the south, where Nancy Cleghorn had died.
13
Dead Stick Pond lay deep in the labyrinth of marsh, landfill, and factories. I’d been there only once, as part of the Girl Scout bird-watching expedition, and wasn’t sure I could find it again. At 103rd Street I headed west to Stony Island, the street that threads the maze. North of 103rd it’s a major thoroughfare, but down here it turns into a gravel track of indeterminate width, worn to potholes by the giant semis chewing their way in and out of the factories.
The heavy rain had turned the track to a muddy glaze. The Chevy bounced and slid uneasily in the ruts between the high marsh grasses. Passing trucks splattered the windshield with mud. When I swerved to miss them the Chevy bucked dangerously and headed for the drainage ditches lining the road.
My arms were sore from wrestling with the steering when I finally saw the pond to my left. Parking on a patch of high ground next to the road, I donned my running shoes for my expedition. I followed the road to a posted track on the east rim of the pond, then picked my way gingerly through the marshy ground and dead grasses. Mud squelched up under my feet and slid inside my running shoes.
The pond was part of an overflow of the Calumet River. It wasn’t very deep, but its murky waters covered a vast expanse of the marsh. Close up I read conflicting signs tacked to the trees, one proclaiming the area a federal clean-water project, the other warning trespassers of hazardous wastes. Some oversighted agency had made a haphazard attempt to enclose the pond, but the low wire fence had fallen down in a number of places, making it easy to breach. Gathering my skirt in one hand, I stepped over one of these collapsed sections to the water’s edge.
Dead Stick Pond used to be a great feeding area for migrating birds. Now the water was a dull black, with stark tree stumps poking surreal fingers through its surface. Fish have been returning to the Calumet River and its tributaries since the passage of the Clean Water Act, but the ones that make their way into the pond show up with massive tumors and rotted fins. Even so I passed a fishing couple trying to find dinner in the dirty water. The two were shapeless, ageless, sexless in their layers of worn garments. I could feel them watching me until I disappeared around a curve in the marsh grasses.
I followed a track to the south end of the pond, where the papers said Nancy had died. I found the spot easily enough -it was still marked with yellow police tape and the big yellow signs declaring the area off limits as the site of a police investigation. They hadn’t bothered to leave a patrolman-who would have agreed to such a posting? Anyway, the rain had doubtless washed away anything the evidence team hadn’t picked up last night. I ducked under the yellow tape.
The killers had parked where I left my car. Or near there. They had dragged her along the path I had just traversed. In broad daylight. They’d gone past the fishing couple, or past the place where the two stood. Just lucky that no one had seen them? Or relying on the furtive lives of those who frequent the swamps to protect them from idle curiosity?