I held out my arms for one of the grocery bags.
She shook her head. ‘There’s another bag in the car, and two gallons of milk. And slam the back lid.’
I went back for the bag and the gallons, closed the tailgate and followed her to the front door.
She led me through a living room that smelled faintly of old cigarette smoke. Pictures in gold frames of her with two young boys were on a spinet piano against the wall. ‘My boys are six and ten,’ she said as we walked into the kitchen. I set the milk and the last of the groceries on the counter and stood by the door as she put them away.
Without asking if I wanted any, she poured coffee into two yellow mugs, nuked them for twenty seconds and, after turning on the kitchen exhaust fan, brought them to the table. She lit a Camel from a crumpled pack and dropped the match in a cheap black plastic ashtray. ‘When I heard Chernek’s messages on my answering machine, I thought, “I’m not doing this crap anymore.”’
‘What crap?’
‘Trying to get deaf people to listen.’
‘About your father being murdered?’
She blew smoke towards the exhaust fan. ‘I was in an abusive marriage, Mr Elstrom. My husband took off, leaving me dead broke. My father bought me this house, so I would have a place to raise my sons. He was a very wealthy man, but he expected me to make my own way in the world.’
‘Yet he bought you this house,’ I said.
‘He drew the line at his grandsons doing without.’ She took a long pull on the Camel. ‘My father had pancreatic cancer; he knew he was dying for quite a while. He had plenty of time to get his affairs in order. He’d arranged for his stocks to be donated to various charitable causes in which he was involved, and had just finished cataloguing his art collection for museums. That, too, is set to be donated.’
‘Nothing for you?’
‘Not true.’ Her face was defiant. ‘Insurance was for me. He told me he had a two-million-dollar life insurance policy, naming me as sole beneficiary.’
‘He died from painkillers,’ I said.
Her eyes tightened, daring me to say the word.
‘Suicide,’ I said.
She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘No payout for suicide.’
‘Bad pain can make anyone desperate for relief.’
‘I was his only child. We didn’t get along great, but he adored his grandsons. If he’d been in the kind of pain where he needed to end his life, he would have changed his other bequests to make sure I got money for my sons.’
‘Still, sometimes pain-’
‘Please,’ she said, lighting another Camel. ‘His pain was being managed. He went to the office every day, kept up his schedule. For him to come home and swallow a bottle of pills is too much to believe.’
‘What do you know about the day he died?’
‘I was told he got to the office about ten in the morning, looked at his mail, and went out to lunch with his attorney. He had nothing pressing because, by this time, my father had shifted his responsibilities to others within the firm. Like I said, he had plenty of time to take care of things.’
‘Time enough to make sure there would be money for his grandsons.’
‘You got it. After lunch, he talked briefly to a few of his managers about small things and was driven home about three o’clock.’
‘Your father had a chauffeur?’
‘A hired driver was on standby for the last months, in case his pills made him woozy.’
‘And when he got home that day?’
‘He took a nap. According to Mrs Johnson, his housekeeper, he got up at six, watched the news as he got dressed to go out to one of his dinners. He left about seven.’
‘Do you know where he went?’
‘No.’
‘What time did he get home?’
‘Eleven-thirty, according to Mrs Johnson. And then he went into his study and died, still in his evening clothes.’
‘Not in bed?’ It was a wrinkle. I’d always assumed pill swallowers laid down, for the wait.
She’d caught the question behind my eyes. ‘At his desk,’ she said, a little too loudly.
‘There was no note?’
‘A pill bottle in his pocket doesn’t have to mean suicide,’ she said. ‘He didn’t even pause to take off his suit jacket, if the bullshit is to be believed.’
‘A medical examiner must have conducted an investigation.’
She stabbed the ashtray with the Camel. ‘Haven’t you been listening? What the hell kind of person sits at his damned desk, writes no note, and swallows pills knowing his adored grandsons won’t get one damned dime?’
I asked if she knew the name of Whitman’s chauffer.
‘We can get it from Mrs Johnson.’ She looked at the clock on the wall. ‘I have to pick up my boys from school,’ she said. ‘Be here tomorrow morning at eleven. I’ll take you to her. She’ll tell you about my father and my boys.’
At the front door, she said, ‘I’ll give you a hundred thousand dollars if you can prove it wasn’t suicide.’
‘I already have a client,’ I said, ethical purity spilling from my mouth like gospel washed in Listerine.
‘So you said. And just who the hell is that?’
I shrugged.
She smiled, softening the wrinkles at her eyes. ‘Tomorrow morning, eleven o’clock. Mrs Johnson will tell you.’
I walked to the Jeep morally intact, true to my first responsibility, my client Wendell Phelps.
And all the way to Rivertown, I fantasized about what I could do with a hundred grand.
TWELVE
The next morning, before heading off to meet Debbie Goring, I drove across Thompson Avenue to Leo Brumsky’s house. Leo has been my friend since grammar school. He is brilliant, and eccentric. He makes upwards of five hundred thousand dollars a year authenticating items for the big auction houses in New York, Chicago and LA; he drives Porsche roadsters that get jettisoned at the ten-thousand-mile mark; he wears designer suits when he must, and he dates a beautiful research librarian who is younger and taller but has the same genius IQ. All that could fit him into a rare, high social niche except he lives with his mother in her brown brick bungalow. He has an aversion to anything smelling of social snobbery, and buys his casual clothes at the Discount Den, a place where thirty bucks acquires a whole outfit, so long as one is not picky about color, style or size. Since Leo is barely five feet six inches tall, and weighs a spare one-forty, his casual attire is invariably several sizes too big, and makes him look like a malnourished dwarf with an oversized pale bald head, wearing someone else’s clothes.
He is the smartest person I know, but more importantly that morning, Leo knew the art market in Chicago. Likely enough, he knew of Jim Whitman.
I noticed the black BMW as soon as I pulled away from the turret. It was parked on the short road that leads from my street to the dingy string of honky-tonks, hock shops and liquor stores that is Thompson Avenue. It was one of the smaller BMWs, the sort junior pretenders drive until they can afford one of the more dramatic models.
A car parked on the stub road was no oddity after dark; lots of johns looking to enjoy fast, last-of-the-night bargains often linger in that exact spot. Never, though, had I seen a car parked there in sunlight.
Odder still was the speed with which the driver’s head slid from view, as if it belonged to someone who did not want to be seen watching me.
I did not continue on toward Leo’s. I swung left on Thompson and headed east toward Chicago. The BMW appeared in the rear-view mirror two times, hanging far back, but by the time I got to the health center lot and parked next to the doorless Buick, it seemed to be gone.
Still, to be certain, I went straight into the exercise room. It was too early for Dusty and Frankie and the rest of the regulars to be roosting; too early for the Amazonian Pur Due to be stretching her magnificent bulk as well. Except for one poor soul in stained street clothes sleeping on the barbell press bench, I was alone. I walked to the window that looked out over Thompson Avenue and watched for fifteen minutes. No black BMW came into sight. I gave it up and motored over to Leo’s.