I switched on my computer, typed in my billable hours for Wendell’s final invoice, wrote a check to refund the balance on his retainer, and printed out two copies of the invoice. One went with the check into an envelope addressed to Wendell. The other was for me. Opening the case folder, I saw again the photocopy of Benno Barberi’s obituary.
This time, though, the date of his death the previous autumn danced on the paper like it was lit by a strobe: October 11.
I grabbed the notes I’d made just that day. Jim Whitman had scrawled a ‘C’ in his calendar across the same Tuesday evening Benno Barberi had come home, furious, to die.
I spilled the rest of the file onto the card table, pawing for the newspaper article about Grant Carson’s hit-and-run. My hands shook as I read it. He’d been killed on February 15th. It had been a Wednesday, but very early in the morning.
My cell phone rang again. I glanced over. It was Amanda. I let it ring.
I read all the obituaries again, double-checking the dates with my vinyl calendar to be sure. There was no doubt. Benno Barberi, Jim Whitman and Grant Carson had all died on, or just an hour or two following, the second Tuesday of an even-numbered month.
I got out of the chair and went up the stairs to the third floor. I wanted a sweatshirt.
Suddenly, I was cold.
NINETEEN
I called Anne Barberi at eight-thirty sharp the next morning.
‘No, I can’t remember where Benno went that evening,’ she said. ‘He attended so many dinners.’
‘Who has your husband’s appointments calendar?’
‘His secretary, I would imagine.’
‘Can you arrange for me to look at his appointment books for last year and the year before?’
‘What have you learned, Mr Elstrom?’
‘I’m casting a wide net, trying to gather as much information as I can.’
‘What do you suspect?’
‘I’ll tell you when what I suspect becomes what I believe. For now, tell me, was your husband taking much medication?’
‘Of course; several prescriptions. You’re wondering why they were ineffective, that last night?’
I was wondering if they’d been too effective, for a killer, but I couldn’t dare say that yet. ‘Sort of,’ I said instead. ‘Can you arrange for me to talk to his primary physician?’
‘As part of that mysterious wide-net business?’
‘Yes.’
‘Benno’s doctor is a close friend. I’ll have him call you.’
And he did, fifteen minutes later. ‘What’s this about, Elstrom?’
‘Was Benno Barberi taking any medication that, in larger than prescribed doses, could have killed him?’
The doctor paused, as he must have often, in this modern era of high-buck medical malpractice suits. And then he evaded. ‘Aspirin, taken in large doses, can kill you.’
‘Could Barberi have overdosed?’
‘The cause of his death was obvious to the EMTs: massive heart attack.’
‘He wasn’t autopsied?’
‘No need.’
‘If there were sufficient grounds, can he be autopsied now?’
‘Elstrom, you’re inferring something untoward? The EMTs would have noticed anything suspicious about Benno’s death, as would the emergency room personnel who pronounced him dead.’
‘Maybe they didn’t probe because his heart condition was well documented.’
‘My God, man; you’re insinuating he was deliberately overdosed?’
‘For now, it’s something to rule out.’
‘Who would benefit from his death? I don’t believe Benno had any enemies.’
There was no answering that yet, just as there seemed to be no reason to overdose Jim Whitman, a dying man.
‘I need your support to exhume Benno Barberi,’ I said.
‘Summon divine intervention instead. Benno was cremated and his ashes were scattered off his boat in Lake Michigan.’
Benno Barberi’s former secretary called twenty minutes after the doctor slammed down his phone. She was as crisp and as efficient as she’d been the first time we’d spoken. She told me I could come anytime. I left immediately.
She was waiting in the lobby. She was an austere but attractive brunette in her late thirties. If she’d been briefed by Barberi’s two sharply barbered assistants about my first visit, she didn’t show it. Certainly she did not glance down to see if any varnish or mustard remained on my blazer sleeve.
We went to the same small conference room where I’d met Jason and Brad. Two red leather appointment books sat on the small table.
‘I recorded all of Mr Barberi’s appointments,’ she said. ‘What are you looking for?’
‘Symmetry,’ I said.
‘I’m afraid I don’t understand,’ she said, ‘but that’s not necessary. Where shall we start?’
‘The day and evening of his fatal heart attack.’
She opened one of the books and started turning pages. ‘That would be October eleventh,’ she said, stopping at the page. She turned the book around so I could see.
The page was crammed with entries, beginning at seven-thirty in the morning and ending with a notation at five-thirty that read: ‘Emerson.’ Nothing was posted for the evening.
‘What’s Emerson?’ I asked.
‘Emerson is a fitness trainer. Three times a week, Mr Barberi took light exercise, as prescribed by his physician.’
I pulled out my note pad. ‘Where’s the health club?’ I asked.
She smiled. ‘In the basement here. Mr Emerson is on staff for our senior executives.’
‘Of course,’ I said, like I had the lifestyle that would have presumed that. I pointed to the bottom of the calendar page. ‘There’s nothing written for the evening, yet his wife told me he’d gone out to dinner.’
‘I wondered about that.’ She looked down at the book. ‘He didn’t tell me of a dinner engagement, and that was a rarity. His evenings were as busy as his days, and he expected me to keep track of his after-hours obligations as well.’
I started turning the pages backwards. She was right; every one of his evenings, Monday through Saturday, had a notation penned in her handwriting. I didn’t find a blank, working-day evening until I’d gone back to August 9.
It, too, had been the second Tuesday of the month.
I turned the book to show her. ‘Nothing here, either.’
‘I guess he forgot to tell me his plans then, as well.’
I continued backwards through the book quickly, growing more certain. And all were there. Or rather, they were not: The evenings of the second Tuesdays in June, April and February had been left blank. I picked up the calendar for the preceding year. It was the same. Benno Barberi had listed no evening appointments for any second Tuesday in February, April, June, August, October or December for two years.
Second Tuesdays, even-numbered months. I closed the second calendar and stood up.
‘Did you find what you were looking for?’
‘I don’t-’
‘I know: you don’t know.’ Her smile was tight and telling. She knew I’d spotted something.
I could only smile back. She walked me downstairs to the fitness center in the basement. Rudy Emerson, dressed in gray sweats, could have been forty or sixty, and looked like he’d never gotten outside a Twinkie in his life.
He remembered his last session with Benno Barberi. ‘Of course I knew about his heart. Like always, there was no unusual exertion that day. I started him with easy stretching exercises, we moved to the light weights, and finished with more stretching. Thirty minutes, easy does it. He left here feeling good, looking good.’
‘Looking good?’ I asked.
‘Same suit, but a fresh shirt and a different tie.’
‘He sounded good, too? No disorientation, no signs of physical distress?’
‘Whatever he ate that night might have killed him, but I guar-antee it wasn’t the exercise he got here.’