I puzzled over the entries a few more minutes, but this was work for Lotty. I stacked the books. Time for me to do something I could understand: I asked her how the intruders had gotten into the house.
“I presume Curtis let them in,” she said stiffly.
I leaned back in the chair and looked at her thoughtfully. Maybe no one had been in the house this afternoon. Maybe she was seizing the opportunity offered by her brother’s disappearance to avenge herself for his bungling their father’s practice all these years. Or perhaps in the confusion of the last few days she’d forgotten where she’d hidden the typed notes. She was, after all, nearly eighty.
I tried probing, but not very skillfully. She frowned ferociously.
“Young lady, please do not treat me like a senile old woman. I am in full possession of my faculties. I saw Curtis trying to bum his notes five days ago. I can even show you the spot where the wastebasket burned through to the carpet.
“Why he wanted to destroy them I have no idea. Nor why he should sneak in here to steal them. But both of these things occurred.”
My face felt a little hot. I got up and told her I’d check out the premises. She was still a little frosty, but she took me on a tour of the house. Although she said she’d tidied any disarray among her books and silver, she hadn’t vacuumed or dusted. After a painstaking search worthy of Sherlock Holmes, I did find traces of dried mud on the stairwell carpeting. I wasn’t sure what that proved, but I could easily believe it wouldn’t have come from Ms. Chigwell. None of the locks showed any sign of forcing.
I didn’t think she should stay the night here alone-anyone who came in once in such a way could easily return, with or without her brother. And if they had seen me arrive, they might easily come back to demand why in ways that an old lady-however tough she might be-would be unable to withstand.
“No one is forcing me from my home. I grew up in this house and I am not leaving it now.” She scowled at me fiercely.
I tried my best to dissuade her, but she was adamant. Either she was scared and didn’t want to admit it, or she knew why her brother was so desperate to get his hands on the notebooks. But then she wouldn’t have given the originals to me.
I shook my head in irritation. I was exhausted, my shoulders ached, my head was throbbing slightly where I’d been hit. If Ms. Chigwell wasn’t telling the truth, tonight wasn’t the night for me to figure it out-I needed to go to bed. As I was leaving, though, something else occurred to me.
“Who did your brother go to stay with?”
At that she looked a little embarrassed-she didn’t know. “I was surprised when he said he was going to stay with friends, because he doesn’t have any. He did get a call Wednesday afternoon about two hours after he got out of the hospital, and it was a little after that that he announced he was going away for a few days. But he left when I was doing my volunteer stint at the hospital, so I don’t have any idea who might have come by for him.”
Ms. Chigwell also had no idea who had called her brother. It had been a man, because she had picked up an extension at the same time Curtis had. Hearing a man say her brother’s name, she’d immediately hung up. It was a pity, really, that her sense of moral rectitude had been too great for her to eavesdrop on her brother, but you can’t have everything in an imperfect world.
It was close to eleven when I finally left. Looking back, I could see her gaunt frame silhouetted in the doorway. She lifted a hand in a formal gesture and shut the door.
29
I hadn’t realized how tired I was until I got into my car. The pain in my shoulders returned in a wave that swept me back limply in the front seat. Little tears of hurt and self-pity pricked my eyelids. Quitters never win and winners never quit, I quoted my old basketball coach grimly. Play through the pain, not against it.
I rolled the car window down, my sore arm moving slowly to the commands of my brain. I sat for a while, watching the Chigwell house and the surrounding street, dozing a bit, finally deciding the indomitable old lady wasn’t under surveillance before putting the car into gear and heading for home.
The Eisenhower is never really clear of traffic-trucks thunder into the city throughout the night, some people are getting off late-night shifts, others heading for the action that begins only after dark. I joined the sweep of anonymous vehicles at Hillside. The steady stream of lights, red from the cars, orange on the sides of the trucks, the rows of street-lamps stretching into the distance as far as the eye could see, made me feel isolated and alone. A little speck in the great universe of lights, an atom of dust who could merge with the mud of Dead Stick Pond without leaving a trace behind.
My fragmented mood stayed with me as I drove slowly along Belmont to my apartment on Racine. I was hoping with the bottom half of my mind that Mr. Contreras and Peppy would be up to greet me-the top half sternly said I didn’t want the old man breathing down my neck all the time.
That secret yearning may have saved my life. I had paused outside Mr. Contreras’s ground-floor apartment, putting down the diaries to tie my shoes, seeing if my presence might rouse the dog so that I’d have a little companionship before going to bed.
The silence on the other side of the door told me the apartment was empty. Peppy certainly would have made herself known when she heard me, and the old man would never leave her outside alone this late at night. I looked up the stairs, foolishly wondering if they might be waiting for me at the top.
My unconscious mind realized something was wrong. I forced myself to stand motionless, pushed my tired brain to thought. The upper stairwell lay in darkness. One landing light might burn out, but both in the same evening stretched coincidence too far. Since the well of the lobby was lighted, anyone coming up the steps to the second or third floor would stand well framed in a pool of light.
From the topmost landing came a faint murmuring, not the sound of Mr. Contreras talking to Peppy. Picking up the notebooks, I eased my way to the lobby floor. I tucked the stack under one arm, pulled the gun out, flipped the safety off. Turned to face the street. Crouching low, I opened the outer door and slid into the night.
No one shot at me. The only person on the street was a moody-looking young man who lived down the block. He didn’t even glance at me as I hurried by him toward Belmont. I didn’t want to take my car-if someone was waiting for me outside the apartment, they might be keeping an eye on my Chevy: let them think I was still hanging around. If someone was waiting. Maybe fear and fatigue were making me jump at fantastic interpretations of light and street sounds.
At Belmont I tucked the Smith & Wesson back into my jeans and flagged a cab to Lotty’s apartment. It was only a mile or so away, but I was in no condition to walk that far tonight. I asked the cabby to wait until I knew whether anyone was going to let me in. In the helpful style of today’s drivers, he snarled at me.
“You don’t own me. I give you ride, not my service for life.”
“Splendid.” I pulled back the five I’d been about to hand him. “Then I’ll pay you after I know whether I’m spending the night here.”
He started shouting at me, but I ignored him and opened the passenger door. That prompted him to get physical; he turned full around in the seat and swung at me. I slammed the stack of journals down on his arm with all the force of the pent-up frustrations from the last few days.
“Bitch!” he snarled. “You leave. You get from my cab. I don’t need your money.”