“Got a minute or twelve?” Rutledge asked, lifting the beer toward Cork as enticement.
“Depends on what you’ve got on your mind, Simon.”
“Beer. What else do you need to know?”
Cork waved him to the front porch, and the two men settled in the swing. Rutledge handed Cork a bottle, then took one for himself. They unscrewed the caps and sat for a minute, letting the brew wash their throats.
“Nothing better than a cold beer on a hot summer afternoon,” Rutledge said.
“Agreed.”
Two boys of maybe ten or eleven rode by on bicycles, carrying tennis rackets, heading, Cork figured, to the courts in Grant Park.
“You know, tomorrow’s my son’s birthday,” Rutledge said.
“Yeah? How old?”
“Thirteen.”
“Teenager. Tough times ahead.”
“He’s a good kid. I’m not worried. I’d love to be there.”
“Why can’t you?”
“Because we’re close to an end here. I can feel it. I don’t want to leave until I know we can shut the lid on this one.”
“This isn’t just one thing, Simon. It’s a whole bunch of things.”
“Yeah, but they’re all tied together somehow, Cork. And you know what?” He laid his arm on the back of the swing and gave Cork a long look. “I think you’ve got an idea how.”
Cork smiled despite himself. “Gonna Simonize me?”
“I was kind of hoping the alcohol might loosen your tongue.”
Cork laughed. He heard Trixie barking and said, “Be right back, Simon.” He went through the house and out the patio door to where he’d tethered Trixie. He freed her, and she followed him eagerly to the front porch. She jumped on the porch swing beside Rutledge and nuzzled his hand.
“You spend a lot of time with this dog,” Rutledge noted.
“Nobody else around to see to her these days. Same goes for me.” Cork sat on the swing, so that Trixie was between him and Rutledge. He patted her head gently. “This isn’t exactly how I’d envisioned spending my time once the nest was empty, Simon. I figured Jo and me, we’d do the things we were always talking about doing. She wanted to spend a month in Italy, rent a villa in Tuscany, you know? Me, I never had much interest in Italy, but if that’s what she wanted.” Trixie looked up at him with affectionate brown eyes. “What do you say, girl? Want to go chase some Italian rabbits one of these days?” He glanced at Rutledge and apologized. “Sorry. Off topic.”
“No problem,” Rutledge said quietly.
Cork told him much of what he’d learned that day, including his speculation that someone other than Hattie Stillday had killed Lauren Cavanaugh. He kept Ophelia’s name out of it. For the time being.
“Okay,” Rutledge said, nodding tentatively. “So who did kill Cavanaugh? What about Broom?”
“He’s copped to the graffiti and to the first notes but swears he had nothing to do with the murder or the second round of notes. If he’s telling the truth, then someone else sent them.”
“You believe him?”
“I do, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been fooled.”
“Okay, if not him, then who?”
Cork sipped his beer and stared at the shadow on his lawn cast by the big elm. “I’ve been thinking about the timing of Lauren Cavanaugh’s murder. Someone visited her after Hattie left and before she returned, and that person probably killed her. So was this person’s visit an unfortunate accident? Or did this person know an opportunity existed and took it?”
“How would they know?”
“A couple of possibilities. Either they responded to the shot fired by Hattie or they came because Lauren Cavanaugh called them.”
“Maybe she had another appointment that evening?” Rutledge offered.
“I don’t think so. According to Ophelia, she was all set to spend the night with Huff, but he crapped out on her.”
“So,” Rutledge said, clearly skeptical, “you’re saying she’d been grazed by a bullet and was still looking for someone to sleep with?”
“More probably someone to take care of her, to bind her wound, to sympathize.”
“Who would that be?”
“Didn’t Ed say that the last call from her cell phone was made a little after eleven?”
“That’s right,” Rutledge replied.
“Do you know who she called?”
He shook his head. “We can phone Ed and find out. But what about the possibility that someone heard the shot and used the opportunity?”
“It would most likely have been someone at the center, but the center was empty that night. All the staff had gone home, and the new residents didn’t come until the next day.”
Rutledge thought it over. “All right. What say we find out who she called before she died?” He set his bottle on the porch and pulled his cell phone from the pocket of his sport coat. He tapped in a number, put the phone to his ear, and waited. “Ed. Simon here. A question for you. Who did Lauren Cavanaugh call the night she died?” He listened. “Uh-huh. That’s it? Just the one call, you’re sure? Thanks, Ed.” Rutledge slipped the phone back into his coat pocket. He reached down, picked up his beer, and took a long draw.
“So?” Cork said.
Rutledge ran the beer around in his mouth, then swallowed. He looked at Cork and said, “Her brother.”
FORTY
Dross sat at her desk, listening, her face unreadable. Larson leaned against a wall, arms crossed, expression neutral.
“Think about it,” Cork said. “It fits. The second round of threats referenced his sister’s death. He was the only one outside of our investigators who knew that his sister was among the bodies in the Vermilion Drift.”
“Why the second round of threatening notes?” Larson asked.
“To throw us off, maybe. Make it look like her death was about the mine stuff, not about-hell, whatever it was about.”
“What was it about?” Dross said.
“I don’t know. I do know that he was bleeding money to support his sister and the Northern Lights Center.”
“Money?” Larson said. “You really think he’d kill his sister over money? He’s a very rich man, Cork. And I suspect anything he loses to the center is simply a tax write-off.”
Dross got up, walked to a window, and stood looking out with her hands clasped at the small of her back. “You found the second We die. U die. notes shoved under the Kufus woman’s windshield wiper and pinned to Cavanaugh’s door. How did he do that, with the woman there?”
“Slipped away from the dock while she was swimming in the cove,” Cork said. “Maybe he went inside, ostensibly to get drinks or to use the head, and he did it then. It wouldn’t have been that difficult. If we can get a look at his computer, we can check to see if he’s accessed the website for the From Hell font. That would be pretty damning.”
Larson shook his head. “Not necessarily. He could simply have wanted to check it out for himself once he knew where the font had come from. At least that’s how I’d argue it if I were his attorney.”
“We have to walk carefully here,” Dross said, not turning from the window.
“We come back to why,” Larson said. “Why would a man kill his sister?”
Simon Rutledge, who’d been sitting quietly, said, “In many of the homicide investigations I’ve been involved in, Ed, it’s ended up being about family.”
“There’s a big problem with thinking of Cavanaugh as a suspect,” Larson responded. “He was at a reception for Genie Kufus and her team the night his sister was killed.”
“You confirmed that with Kufus and the others?”
“Not Kufus, but Lou Haddad, who was there, too.”
“The reception was at the Four Seasons?” Cork asked.
“Yeah.”
“Which is five minutes from the center. Is it possible Max left and came back? Said he was going out for a smoke or something?”