AWOL with the Operative (21 page)

The address they were delivered to was a handsome, two-story brick row house from an earlier era. Eve paid the fare from the dwindling funds in her bag. She didn’t mention her concern about that to Sam. She could only suppose, now that he was back in Chicago, he would have ready access to his own money.

Climbing the steps to the front door, with Sam directly behind her, she rang the bell. The door was answered a moment later by an elderly, stoop-shouldered man with scant, gray hair and a benign face. He wore a soiled apron tied around his waist and carried a long-handled wooden spoon as though it were a baton.

Servant or lawyer? Eve wasn’t sure. “We’re looking for Mr. Peterman.”

“You’re speaking to him.”

“Mr. Peterman, I’m—”

“I know who you are. Charlie had a photo of you in his condo. I’ve been expecting you. Come in.”

The lawyer gazed at Sam with a direct curiosity after he had closed the door behind them. Eve quickly introduced him. “This is Sam McDonough.”

She wasn’t certain whether Sam would want her to add an explanation to his name, but he took care of that when he shook Alan Peterman’s free hand.

“I’m the FBI special agent who escorted Eve back here from the Yukon.”

The lawyer didn’t seem surprised by Sam’s identity. How much did he know? Eve wondered.

“Let’s go back to my office,” he said, leading the way down a broad corridor.

Eve’s brief impression of the house was of an understated elegance, where comfort took precedence over formality. She was more interested in the delectable odor in the air, something that included onions. They had clearly interrupted the lawyer as he was preparing something in the kitchen.

He verified that when they arrived at the door of his office. “Go on in and make yourselves at home. I’ll just be a minute. I’ve got spaghetti sauce on the stove that needs stirring.”

Eve found herself seconds later seated in a leather-covered chair with Sam next to her in a matching one. Both chairs faced a massive mahogany desk behind which were floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with books. Legal volumes, she supposed.

“I think he must already know Charlie Fowler is dead,” Sam said.

Before they could speculate about what else Alan Peterman might know, he returned. He had rid himself of both the apron and the spoon.

“I turned the heat low under the sauce and left it simmering,” he said, settling himself in an office chair behind the desk. “It’s always better when it cooks a long time. But you’d know all about that.”

Her father must have told his friend about her culinary ambitions. Maybe a great deal more than that.

The lawyer switched his attention from Eve to Sam. “The FBI has already been here to interview me. They told me Charlie is dead. No details, of course, and I didn’t ask for them. I’m assuming it wasn’t the cancer.” His gaze went back to Eve. “We both have a reason to grieve.”

Sam hunched forward in his chair. “The FBI. Did you hand anything over to them?”

His expression sober now, the lawyer glanced at Sam. He has to be thinking, Eve thought, that, as an FBI agent, Sam should already know the answer to this. But the lawyer didn’t pursue it.

“Yes,” he said. “A copy of this.” Opening a drawer, he produced a document that he placed in front of them on the blotter. “It’s Charlie’s will. This is another copy you can take with you. The original is in my safe. I think you know its contents, Eve, since he was planning to tell you.”

“Yes, he did.”

“Then you understand that his entire estate goes to you. The will will have to go through probate before you can collect anything. I’ll handle that for you.”

Eve saw no reason to tell him she had no intention of touching the money, that she planned to donate all of it to cancer research.

“There’s also this,” he said, extracting a key from the same drawer and sliding it toward her across the desk. The key had a tag attached to it. Eve could see an address printed on the tag. “It’s a spare key to Charlie’s condo. The condo and all its contents are part of the estate, so they belong to you now. As long as you don’t take away any of those contents until the will is settled, there’s no reason you can’t visit the place. I understand the FBI is finished with it.”

Yes, Eve realized, they would have searched the condo. And DeMarco’s people, too, had probably found a way to get in there, all of them hunting for those tax records.

She and Sam also wanted the elusive copy of the records. Maybe it didn’t exist, although Charlie had promised the FBI he would hand it over when he returned from the Yukon. But so far their meeting with Alan Peterman had not gained them any knowledge of the records. She glanced at Sam, wondering if he was disappointed in the outcome of their visit. If so, there was no evidence of this on his face.

“I’ll be in touch when the will has been cleared,” the lawyer said, indicating an end to the meeting. “Do you have a phone number where I can reach you?”

“Uh, not yet.”

“Why don’t you call me when you do?” Removing a business card from another drawer, he got to his feet and came around the desk to hand it to her.

Eve accepted the card, tucking it into her bag along with the key and the will. She and Sam stood, prepared to be conducted out of the office.

“I assume there’s nothing else then?” Eve said, making a last effort before they thanked the lawyer and left.

“That’s it for now, but as I said—” He stopped, holding up a hand. “Ah, I almost forgot. There is something else.” He chuckled softly. “At my age, the memory isn’t always as sharp as you’d like it to be. But still good enough, I hope, to recall where I…”

Eve watched the lawyer cross the room to a file cabinet, afraid to believe this was anything important.

“Yep, I was right. Here it is,” Peterman said, scooping a plastic bag with whatever it contained out of one of the drawers. “Charlie made me promise to give this to you if you came to see me.”

He returned with the bag and placed it in Eve’s hand. From the shape and weight of it, she realized it was a book. When she looked inside the bag, she saw that it was a children’s book. The jacket was so fresh it had to have been newly purchased. What on earth—?

Her eyebrows must be registering puzzlement, Eve thought, because the lawyer shrugged. “Charlie’s gifts, bless his heart, didn’t always make sense. I know I got some odd ones from him every Christmas. Well, if we’re finished…”

Chapter 12

T
hey stood on the sidewalk outside Alan Peterman’s house, Eve clutching the plastic bag.

“You don’t think…”

“We won’t know until we examine it,” Sam said.

She started to open the bag.

“Not here,” he said, his hand covering her own.

She wished he wouldn’t touch her like that. Innocuous though he meant it, any physical contact from him stirred longings in her that couldn’t be satisfied. Maybe he understood this and that’s why he immediately withdrew his hand.

“Look,” he said, gazing up the street in the direction of Lake Michigan, “Lincoln Park is just a block over. Let’s go there and find someplace private.”

He was still being careful, she realized. That’s why he kept a sharp lookout as they headed toward the park.

They found a bench screened by tall lilacs that would soon come into flower. At present, though, the lilacs meant nothing more than a safe spot where they could not be easily observed.

“All right,” Sam said when they were seated on the bench. “Let’s see what that book has to offer.”

Eve had already identified the volume as an anthology of favorite fairy tales when she peeked inside the bag back in the lawyer’s office. Now Sam could see that for himself when she removed the book from the bag.

“This have any meaning for you?” he asked her.

“I haven’t a clue.”

“Is there anything else inside the bag?”

“Nothing. Not even a store receipt.”

“Then whatever he wanted you to know must be inside the book.”

Eve upended the book by its spine and shook it vigorously. Had there been something like a letter or a note tucked between the pages, it would have dropped into her lap. There was no evidence of either.

“Maybe he wrote something directly on one of the pages.”

The book flat on her lap now, she began to turn the pages over one by one with Sam looking on closely. They discovered no message scrawled on any of those pages. Nor had any passages that might have conveyed a meaning been underlined.

“Sam, this is useless,” she said when they reached the last page. “There’s nothing here.”

“Try the back of the jacket. Maybe he wrote something there.”

She peeled the jacket from the book and turned it over. It was blank.

“Face it, Sam. The book is as clean as when it left the store, not even an inscription on a flyleaf. Charlie couldn’t have been using it to tell me where I could find a copy of those tax records. The book is just another one of those whimsical gifts he was forever sending me. You heard what Alan Peterman said—how Charlie was always giving him presents that didn’t make sense.”

Sam shook his head stubbornly. “No, I’m not convinced of that. I think Fowler wanted you to know something, and he used this book to do it.”

“Is this just that FBI insight of yours again?”

He didn’t answer her. He was silent for a long moment, presumably lost in thought.

“Check the titles of the stories,” he urged her. “You never know. Maybe one of them will trigger something.”

Hardly likely, she thought, but she humored him, turning to the Table of Contents. “You see, just the usual, classic fairy tales a little girl might enjoy, which he should have realized I stopped being long ago. ‘Rumplestiltskin,’ ‘Cinderella,’ ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ ‘Hansel and—’”

She broke off there, seized by a sudden memory. Was it possible?

“What?” Sam demanded.

“I don’t know. Maybe…”

“You’ve got something. Tell me what it is. ‘Hansel and Gretel,’” he prompted her.

“I used to collect salt and pepper shakers. I still do.”

“And?”

“I must have been about nine years old. Even then I was interested in cooking, and Charlie knew that. I wrote him about it and my collection.”

“Go on.”

“Well, he sent me this pepper shaker, a ceramic Hansel. There was a note with it. A very sweet note. How he was keeping the Gretel salt shaker for himself, and that way we’d always have a reminder of each other. I still have the Hansel at home.”

“And if he hung on to the Gretel all these years—Eve, that’s it! It’s got to be! Come on, let’s find a cab. You and I are going to use that condo key Peterman gave you.”

The afternoon was lengthening when the taxi set them down at the address printed on the tag attached to the key. The building, a high-rise, was in one of those affluent areas between Michigan Avenue and the lake. Though not as tall or as grand as its neighbors, it was impressive enough.

Charlie had lived well, Eve thought, gazing up at the building as she climbed out of the taxi. And why not? As Victor DeMarco’s accountant, he would have earned an enviable salary.

She hated to think that the man who had been her father, who had been so generous and loving to her through the years, had made his money working for a crime lord. Pointless of her to mind this so much now that he was dead, but she did.

As vigilant as always, Sam had kept a sharp eye through the rear window of the taxi on their way to the condo, making certain there was no suspicious vehicle tailing them. He was just as careful when they emerged from the cab, checking up and down the street before they headed for the entrance.

The building was the kind of place that should have had a doorman, but there was no one on duty. Nor did anyone challenge them when they crossed the lobby to the elevators.

According to the tag on the key, the condo was on the twentieth floor. Sam was silent while they waited for an elevator, and equally quiet as they rode up in the elevator that finally arrived.

Eve wondered if he was occupied with thoughts similar to her own. Like questioning the point of this errand. Things such as Charlie having used such an obscure method to tell her where a copy of the tax records could be located. Trusting her to get that copy to the FBI, if anything happened to him.

It was all so unlikely. Because if the FBI had thoroughly searched the condo, and they would have, they could have already found the copy in whatever form it existed. Or, if not the FBI, then DeMarco’s people.

No, she was wrong, Eve decided when they left the elevator. Sam wasn’t sharing any of her uncertainties. A quick glance at the resolute expression on his face told her he knew they were in the right place and why.

“This way,” he said, after comparing the number on the key she handed him against the numbered doors of the other condos on the floor.

They turned to the left, making their way along a wide, lushly carpeted corridor. Sam halted them in front of the last door.

“Let me have your bag.”

Turning the shoulder bag over to him, she watched him withdraw the pistol. Did he think it was possible someone could be lurking in there, waiting to ambush them? Evidently he did, because after returning the bag to her, he nodded toward the door across the hall marked Fire Exit.