“No one, Vic.” The gentian eyes were awash with tears. “No one. You just don’t understand anything about life in South Chicago anymore, you’ve been away so long. Can’t you just take my word for it, take my word that you should quit already?”
I ignored her. “Ron Kappelman? Did he call you this afternoon?”
“People talk to me,” she said. “You know how it is down there. At least you would if-”
“If I hadn’t been a chicken shit and run away,” I finished for her. “You’ve been hearing little rumblings around the office that someone-you don’t know who-has it in for me, and you’re here to save my butt. Thanks a bundle. You’re scared out of your little mind, Caroline. I want to know who’s been frightening you, and don’t tell me it’s some street snitch with tales of drowning me, because I just won’t buy it. You wouldn’t be beside yourself if it was just that. Lay it out for me. Now.”
Caroline jerked herself to her feet. “What do I have to do to get you to listen to me?” she screamed. “Someone called me today from the Xerxes plant and said they were sorry I’d gone to all the expense of hiring you. They said that they had proof that Joey Pankowski was my father. They told me to get you to believe me and get off the case.”
“And did they offer to show you this remarkable evidence?”
“I didn’t need to see it! I’m not as untrusting as you are.”
I put a restraining hand on Peppy, who was starting to growl. “And did they threaten you with mayhem if you didn’t force me to withdraw?”
“I wouldn’t care what anyone threatened me with. Can’t you believe that?”
I looked at her as calmly as I could. She was wild, manipulative, unscrupulous in getting her own way. But I would never in my remotest imagination think of her as a coward.
“I can believe it,” I said slowly. “But I want to hear the truth. Did they really tell you they’d hurt me if I didn’t stop looking?”
The gentian eyes turned away. “Yes,” she muttered.
“Not good enough, Caroline.”
“Believe what you want to. If they kill you, don’t expect me to show up at your funeral, because I won’t care.” She burst into tears and stormed out of the apartment.
20
Mr. Contreras finally left around one. I slept fitfully, my mind thrashing over Caroline’s visit. Caroline didn’t fear anything. That’s why she confidently followed me into Lake Michigan’s pounding surf when she was four years old. Even a near-drowning hadn’t scared her-she’d been ready to go right back again when I’d gotten her lungs cleaned out. If someone had told her my life was on the line, it might’ve made her mad, but it wouldn’t terrify her.
Someone had called to tell her Joey Pankowski was her father. She couldn’t have pulled that out of the blue. But had they added a rider about hurting me, or was that an inspired guess? I hadn’t seen her for a decade, but you don’t forget the mannerisms of the people you grow up with: that sidelong glance when I asked her directly made me think she was lying.
The only reason I believed her at all-about the threat, that is-was because I’d gotten my own call. Until Caroline showed up I’d been assuming my threat came from Art Jurshak because I’d accosted his son. Or because I’d talked to Ron Kappelman. But what if it came from Humboldt?
When the orange clock readout glowed three-fifteen I turned on the light and sat up in bed to use the phone. Murray Ryerson had left the paper forty-five minutes earlier. He wasn’t home yet. On the chance, I tried the Golden Glow-Sal shuts down at four. Third time lucky.
“Vic! I’m overwhelmed. You had insomnia and you thought of me. I can see the headline now-‘Girl Detective Can’t Sleep for Love.’”
“And I thought it was the onions I had for dinner. Must’ve been what was wrong with me the day I agreed to marry Dick. You know our little conversation yesterday?”
“What little conversation?” he snorted. “I told you stuff about Nancy Cleghorn and you sat with Velcro on your mouth.”
“Something came back to me,” I said limpidly.
“Better make it good, Warshawski.”
“Curtis Chigwell,” I said. “He’s a doctor who lives in Hinsdale. Used to work at a plant down in South Chicago.”
“He killed Nancy Cleghorn?”
“As far as I know he never met Nancy Cleghorn.”
I felt rather than heard Murray sputter. “It’s been a tough day, V.I. Don’t make me play Twenty Questions with you.”
I reached down next to the bed for a T-shirt. Somehow the night was making me feel too exposed in my nakedness. As I leaned over the lamplight highlighted dust in the corner of the bedroom. If I lived past next week, I’d vacuum.
“That’s what I’ve got for you,” I said slowly. “Twenty questions. No answers. Curtis Chigwell knows something that he doesn’t want to tell. Twenty-four hours ago I didn’t think it had the remotest possible connection to Nancy. But I got a threatening phone call tonight telling me to bug out of South Chicago.”
“From Chigwell?” I could almost feel Murray’s breath through the phone line.
“No. I thought it had to come from Jurshak or Dresberg. Only thing, a couple of hours later I heard the same thing from someone who knows me only through the Xerxes side -the plant that Chigwell used to work for.”
I explained the discrepancies I’d gotten between Manheim and Humboldt’s version of Pankowski and Ferraro’s suit-without telling him about hearing it from Gustav Humboldt himself “Chigwell knows what the truth is and why. He just doesn’t want to say. And if the Xerxes people are threatening me, he’ll know why.”
Murray tried a thousand different ways to get me to tell him more about it. I just couldn’t give him Caroline and Louisa-Louisa didn’t deserve to have her unhappy past spinning around the streets of Chicago. And I didn’t know anything else. Anything about what possible connection there could be between Nancy’s death and Joey Pankowski.
Murray finally said, “You’re not trying to help me, you’re getting me to do your legwork. I can feel it. But it’s not a bad story-I’ll send someone out to talk to the guy.”
When he hung up I managed to sleep a little, but I woke again for good around six-thirty. It was another gray February day. Sharp cold with snow would have been preferable to this unending misty chill. I pulled on my sweats, did my stretches, and ruthlessly roused Mr. Contreras by knocking on his door until the dog barked him awake. I took her to the lake and back, stopping now and then to tie my shoes, to blow my nose, to throw her a stick-gestures that let me subtly check my rear. I didn’t think anyone was on it.
After depositing the dog I went to the comer diner for pancakes. Back home to change, I’d just about made up my mind to visit Louisa, see if she could shed any light on Caroline’s panic, when Ellen Cleghorn called. She was most upset: she’d gone over to Nancy’s house in South Chicago to collect her financial records and found the place ransacked.
“Ransacked?” I repeated foolishly. “How do you know?”
“The way you always do, Victoria-the place had been ripped to shreds. Nancy didn’t have much and she’d only been able to fix up a couple of rooms. The furniture was pulled apart and her papers strewn all over the place.”
I shuddered involuntarily. “Sounds like housebreakers gone mad. Could you tell if anything was missing?”
“I didn’t try to see.” Her voice caught a little on a nervous sob. “I looked at her bedroom and ran out of there as fast as I could. I-I was hoping you might come down and go through the house with me. I can’t bear to be alone there with this-this ravaging of Nancy.”
I promised to meet her in front of her house within the hour. I’d wanted to go directly to Nancy’s, but Mrs. Cleghorn was too nervous about the intruders to hang around her daughter’s house, even outside. I finished pulling on jeans and a sweatshirt, and then, not too happily, went to the little wall safe I’d built into the bedroom closet and took out the Smith & Wesson.