“Mother’s not guilty, you know.”
“Really.”
“I confessed, but they didn’t believe me. I confessed five times.”
“Cops figured you were trying to clear your mama.”
“Yes. I’m afraid so. I rather botched it, as a liar.”
It was good rum. “Then you didn’t kill your wife?”
“Kill Rheta! Don’t be silly. I loved her, once. Just because our marriage had gone…well, anyway, I didn’t do it, and Mother didn’t do it, either.”
“Who did, then?”
He smirked humorlessly. “I think some moron did it. Some fool looking for narcotics and money. That’s why I called you, Nate. The police aren’t looking for the killer. They think they have their man in Mother.”
“What does your mother’s attorney think?”
“He thinks hiring an investigator is a splendid idea.”
“Doesn’t he have his own man?”
“Yes, but I wanted you. I remembered you from the fair…and, I asked around.”
What did I tell you? Am I detective?
“I can’t promise I can clear her,” I said. “She confessed, after all-and the cops took her one confession more seriously than your five.”
“They gave her the third-degree. A sixty-three-year-old woman! Respected in the community! Can you imagine?”
“Who was the cop in charge?”
Earle pursed his lips in disgust. “Captain Stege himself, the bastard.”
“Is this his case? Damn.”
“Yes, it’s Stege’s case. Didn’t you read about all this in the papers?”
“Sure I did. But I didn’t read it like I thought I was going to be involved. I probably did read Stege was in charge, but when you led this morning, I didn’t recall…”
“Why, Nate? Is this a problem?”
“No,” I lied.
I let it go at that, as I needed the work, but the truth was, Stege hated my guts. I’d testified against a couple of cops, which Stege-even though he was honest and those two cops were bent even by Chicago standards-took as a betrayal of the police brotherhood.
Earle was up pouring himself another sherry. Already. “Mother is a sensitive, frail woman, with a heart condition, and she was ruthlessly, mercilessly questioned for a period of over twenty-four hours.”
“I see.”
“I’m afraid…” And Earle sipped his sherry greedily. Swallowed. Continued: “I’m afraid I may have made the situation even worse.”
“How?”
He sat again, sighed, shrugged. “As you probably know, I was out of town when Rheta was…slain.”
That was an odd choice of words; “slain” was something nobody said, a word in the newspapers, not real life.
“I went straight to the Fillmore police station, when I returned from Kansas City. I had a moment with Mother. I said…” He slumped, shook his head.
“Go on, Earle.”
“I said…God help me, I said, ‘For God’s sake mother, if you did this on account of me, go ahead and confess.’” He touched his fingertips to his eyes.
“What did she say to you?”
“She…she said, ‘Earle, I did not kill Rheta.’ But then she went in for another round with Captain Stege, and…”
“And made that cockamamie confession she later retracted.”
“Yes.”
“Why did you think your mother might have killed your wife for you, Earle?”
“Because…because Mother loves me very much.”
Dr. Alice Lindsay Wynekoop had been one of Chicago’s most esteemed female physicians for almost four decades. She had met her late husband Frank in medical college, and with him continued the Wynekoop tradition of care for the ill and disabled. Her charity work in hospitals and clinics was well-known; a prominent clubwoman, humanitarian, a leader in the woman’s suffrage movement, Dr. Wynekoop was an unlikely candidate for a murder charge.
But she had indeed been charged: with the murder of her daughter-in-law, in the basement consultation office in this very house.
Earle led me there, down a narrow stairway off the dining room. In the central basement hallway were two facing doors: Dr. Wynekoop’s office, at left; and at right, an examination room. The door was open. Earle motioned for me to go in, which I did, but he stayed in the doorway.
The room was narrow and wide and cold; the steam heat was off. The dominant fixture was an old-fashioned, brown-leather-covered examination table. A chair under a large stained-glass window, whose ledge was lined with medical books, sat next to a weigh-and-measure scale. In one corner was a medicine and instrument cabinet.
“The police wouldn’t let us clean up properly,” Earle said.
The leather exam table was blood-stained.
“They said they might take the whole damn table in,” Earle said. “And use it in court, for evidence.”
I nodded. “What about your mother’s office? She claimed burglary.”
“Well, yes…some drugs were taken from the cabinet, in here. And six dollars from a drawer…”
He led me across the hall to an orderly office area with a big rolltop desk, which he pointed to.
“And,” Earle said, pulling open a middle drawer, “there was the gun, of course. Taken from here.”
“The cops found it across the hall, though. By the body.”
“Yes,” Earle said, quietly.
“Tell me about her, Earle.”
“Mother?”
“Rheta.”
“She…she was a lovely girl. A beautiful redhead. Gifted musician…violinist. But she was…sick.”
“Sick how?”
He tapped his head. “She was a hypochondriac. Imagining she had this disease, and that one. Her mother died of tuberculosis…in an insane asylum, no less. Rheta came to imagine she had t.b., like her mother. What they did have in common, I’m afraid, was being mentally deranged.”
“You said you loved her, Earle.”
“I did. Once. The marriage was a failure. I…I had to seek affection elsewhere.” A wicked smile flickered under the pencil mustache. “I’ve never had trouble finding women, Nate. I have a little black book with fifty girl friends in it.”
It occurred to me that a real man could get by on a considerably shorter list; but I keep opinions like that to myself, when given a hundred-buck retainer.
“What did the little woman think about all these girl friends? A crowd like that is hard to hide.”
He shrugged. “We never talked about it.”
“No talk of a divorce?”
He licked his lips, avoided my eyes. “I wanted one, Nate. She wouldn’t give it to me. A good Catholic girl.” Four of the most frightening words in the English language, to any healthy male anyway.
“The two of you lived here, with your mother?”
“Yes…I can’t really afford to live elsewhere. Times are hard, you know.”
“So I hear. Who else lives here? Isn’t there a roomer?”
“Yes. Miss Shaunesey. She’s a high school teacher.”
“Is she here now1;
“Yes. I asked if she’d talk to you, and she is more than willing. Anything to help Mother.”
Back in the library, I sat and spoke with Miss Enid Shaunesey, a prim, slim woman of about fifty. Earle lurked in the background, helping himself to more sherry.
“What happened that day, Miss Shaunesey?”
November 21, 1933.
“I probably arose at about a quarter to seven,” she said, with a little shrug, adjusting her wire-frame glasses. “I had breakfast in the house with Dr. Alice. I don’t remember whether Rheta had breakfast with us or not…I don’t really remember speaking to Rheta at all that morning.”
“Then you went on to school?”
“Yes,” I said. “I teach at Marshall High. I completed my teaching duties and signed out about three fifteen. I went to the Loop and shopped until a little after five and went home.”
“What, at about six?”
“Or a little after. When I came home, Dr. Alice was in the kitchen, preparing dinner. She fried up some pork chops. Made a nice salad, cabbage, potatoes, peaches. It was just the two of us. We’re good friends.”
“Earle was out of town, of course, but what about Rheta?”
“She was supposed to dine with us, but she was late. We went ahead without her. I didn’t think much of it. The girl had a mind of her own; she frequently went here and there-music lessons, shopping.” There was a faint note of disapproval, though the conduct she was describing mirrored her own after-school activities of that same day.