Bitter Business (30 page)

“How are things going with you two gentlemen?” I asked.

“We’re on our way to police headquarters to pick some things up, but then we’re headed to Mariette’s for some breakfast. Why don’t you join us if you can spare half an hour?”

“I don’t know how long I’ll be here,” I hedged, wondering whether this was just part of the homicide detective’s ongoing campaign to fix me up with his friend or whether he had fresh information he was willing to share. “Where is the restaurant?”

“Corner of Monroe and Clinton,” he said, beginning to move down the stairs. I could see where he’d double-parked the Cavalier. “We’ll save you a seat,” he tossed over his shoulder. Elliott passed me on the steps. I carried his smile in with me to my meeting.

The past week had turned Jack Cavanaugh into an old man. The fight had gone out of his eyes and he seemed shrunken into the dark folds of his suit. When he poured drinks for the two of us, there was a tremor in his hand. He was too preoccupied to notice that I didn’t even bother to pretend to touch mine.

“I still can’t believe it,” he said after he had drained his glass. The bourbon seemed to have a steadying effect on him. “When they told us, poor Peaches had to go lie down.”

“What happened?” I demanded.

“The police were just here. They found cyanide in a bottle of perfume that was in Dagny’s bathroom at the office.”

“I know,” I said. “But I still think it’s a little soon to be drawing any conclusions.”

“You don’t understand,” Jack Cavanaugh said, his voice twisted in anguish. “That perfume wasn’t Dagny’s. That perfume was a present for Peaches.”

25

“What do you mean, the perfume didn’t belong to Dagny?” I demanded.

“It was sent to Peaches as a gift. Actually it was sent to me to give to Peaches,” Jack replied, obviously still struggling with his own sense of disbelief. “That’s what I’ve just been telling the police. It was a present for Peaches. It came in the mail to the office from one of our vendors—for our anniversary. When Dagny threw us that big party a lot of the guys who couldn’t make it sent gifts.

“You can ask my secretary, Loretta, all about it. She was there, too. So was Philip.... We had just finished our weekly sales meeting when Loretta brought in the mail. There was a box on top. When I opened it there was some fancy kind of perfume inside. Dagny knew the brand right off. She said something about it, you know, I can’t remember, something about it being really expensive, or smelling real good, so I said go ahead, you take it.”

“But it was definitely sent as a present to Peaches?”

“That’s right,” Jack replied miserably. “At first Dagny didn’t even want it, but I told her that Peaches already had enough of that kind of shit—pardon my French—to last a lifetime. I think she has a bottle of every goddamned perfume ever made; you should see the stuff in our bathroom.”

“So tell me about the man who sent it.”

“His name is Chip Polarski. He’s a rep for one of the big chemical supply houses that we do business with. I’ve known him for years. I don’t think he’s even met Peaches.”

“Just because the perfume was originally sent to Peaches doesn’t mean that the poison was necessarily in it when it arrived,” I assured him.

“But that’s why this whole thing doesn’t make any sense. Who would want to kill Dagny?” Jack asked in an anguished voice. “My daughter didn’t have an enemy in the world.”

“The bottle of perfume is the first solid lead that the police have gotten. Who knows? In a few days we may have all the answers,” I replied helplessly.

“And what the hell am I supposed to do in the meantime?” Jack demanded. “I can’t eat and I can’t sleep. I can’t work. I haven’t been to the office in four days. All I do is sit at this damned window and look out at her house. I can’t bear to look at Claire—she reminds me so much of the little girl that I lost. This is killing me. Just killing me.”

I leaned forward in my chair. “The first time I met you, you told me that Dagny was the one person who loved Superior Plating as much as you do. Don’t let its collapse be her legacy. I met with Philip yesterday. He needs your support if he’s going to have any chance of guiding this company through the next generation. I think it’s pretty clear from what Lydia said in that magazine article that she’s determined, for whatever reason, to hurt you as much as possible.”

Jack raised his hand in protest, but I cut him off. “I’m not saying that her reasons are good ones, I’m not even sure that they exist outside of her imagination. But I think the time has come, for the sake of the rest of the family and for the health of the company, to accept the fact that Lydia doesn’t want to be a part of the business anymore. Jack,” I implored him, “you’ve got to just let her go.”

“No!” he said, his face turning an ugly shade of red. “This is my family, goddammit! This isn’t some sales manager we’re talking about who’s not performing. This is my only daughter. I want you to go to her, talk to her... beg her if you have to. Find out what it is that she really wants.”

Personally I suspected that Jack’s pain was what Lydia really wanted, but I felt as though I’d already been as forthcoming as I dared. So I said nothing and instead let Jack Cavanaugh finish saying his piece.

“I’ve been thinking things over the last couple of days, reflecting on my life. Nothing can take the place of family,” he announced solemnly. “Nothing. Life is so short and so precious.” He looked me straight in the eye. Some of the old fire seemed to have returned. “I want you to go to my daughter and I want you to tell her that there is nothing more important to me than the love of my children. If it’s the company that is keeping us apart, then I want the company to be sold. Go out if you have to and hire a team of investment bankers, get the paperwork started. I want them all to know that if I have to put Superior Plating on the block in order to keep my family together, then believe me, I’m going to sell.”

* * *

Mariette’ s was a twenty-four-hour coffee shop on the ground floor of a seedy office building on the fringes of the loop, and was obviously a haunt of cabbies as well as cops, since my driver needed no directions to deliver me to its doors. I found Joe and Elliott comfortably ensconced in a comer booth, breakfasting handsomely on pancakes and bacon.

“I’m glad you’re still here,” I said as Elliott slid across the ancient vinyl to make room for me beside him.

“Are you kidding?” said Blades. “Of course we waited. Elliott told me you were picking up the check.”

Elliott grinned hugely and motioned to the waitress that I needed coffee.

“Breakfast is a small price if you tell me what’s going on with this bottle of perfume. Jack Cavanaugh is busy beating himself up over the fact that it was originally sent to Peaches and he decided to give it to Dagny. But what I want to know is whether there’s any evidence that the cyanide was already in the perfume bottle when it arrived?”

A waitress appeared and filled my cup with coffee. I took a sip. It was surprisingly good.

“Here’s the lowdown,” said Blades, laying down his fork and knife and briefly applying his napkin to his lips. “The lab turned up cyanide in a one-ounce bottle of perfume taken from the medicine cabinet of the bathroom in Dagny Cavanaugh’s office at Superior Plating and Specialty Chemicals. The brand of the perfume is Forever, and according to Jack Cavanaugh, it was sent to him at the office by a sales rep named Chip Polarski as a present for his wife, Peaches. When we dusted the bottle for prints we came up with a partial that might belong to Jack Cavanaugh, but it’s such a small fragment the lab says they can’t be sure. But they lifted clear prints from both of the dead women.

“According to Jack Cavanaugh’s secretary, the perfume arrived in a cardboard box. I’ve got a couple of uniforms over there right now turning the place upside down in case by some miracle the box wasn’t thrown out. Not that I’d hold out much hope of it being of much use as evidence after it’s been kicked around the plant for a couple of weeks.”

“Fortunately,” interjected Elliott, offering me a piece of his pecan roll, “the secretary kept the card that arrived with the perfume. It was just this guy Polarski’s business card with ‘best wishes’ scribbled on the back.”

“No signature?” I asked.

“Nope,” Blades replied, “and no prints on the card. Not that you’d expect any. Paper is a shitty surface for lifting prints.”

“But you’re leaving out the best part,” Elliott complained.

“I was going to let you tell her.”

“That’s okay—you tell her.”

“Are you sure?”

“Would one of you just spit it out already,” I demanded. The two of them together were no better than a couple of little kids.

“We just stopped and paid a call on Mr. Polarski, the chemical rep who supposedly sent the perfume in the first place,” Elliott replied.

“And?” I prodded.

“And he denies sending it.”

“I don’t know what that proves,” I replied, disappointed. “If you had sent someone poisoned perfume, wouldn’t you deny it when the cops came calling?”

“In the first place, I believe him.”

“And in the second place?” I asked. I couldn’t believe it—this was like pulling teeth.

“In the second place Jack Cavanaugh remembers receiving the perfume a few days after the anniversary party that Dagny threw for them on the tenth of February. Not only that, but we checked with his secretary and Jack dictated a thank-you note to this guy Polarski on the sixteenth. Well, according to Polarski, he was in the hospital having hip-replacement surgery from February sixth through the twenty-fourth. According to his wife and his doctor, there is no way he could even go to the bathroom without help during the entire month—not to mention go out, buy, and mail a bottle of perfume. Of course we’ll follow it up, but I’m inclined to believe him.”

A beeper went off and both men instinctively went for their belts. The page was for the homicide detective. While he excused himself to use the phone Elliott cut me off another piece of pecan roll.

“I don’t know if I told you,” he said, “but a check of personnel records at Superior Plating turned up diddly. No litigation, no likely cause for a grudge, and no obvious psychopaths. Also, Joe and I both did a thorough background check on both women—Cecilia and Dagny. Dagny checks out completely. As far as I can make out, she was exactly what everyone thought she was. Did you know that she was pulling down two hundred and ten thousand dollars a year in salary? Joe got her financials. She was a sharp investor, too.”

“I got a letter from the lawyer Cecilia Dobson’s family hired,” I said, mentally kicking myself. I had wanted to mention the possibility of a lawsuit to Jack Cavanaugh, but in the face of his distress, I’d forgotten. “They’re threatening a wrongful-death action.”

“What did you expect?”

“I guess I just didn’t expect it quite so soon.”

“There’s nothing like the promise of big bucks to spur people to action.”

Detective Blades came back to the table.

“Guess what, boys and girls?” he inquired genially. I couldn’t help but notice that there was a spring in his step and mischief in his eyes.

“What?” Elliott and I chorused.

“They found the box. Cavanaugh’s secretary put it away in a closet in case she ever had to mail something small. According to the uniform, she hasn’t touched it since.”

“Now what?” I demanded excitedly.

“Now the uniforms wait for the guys from the crime lab to get off their coffee breaks and get their asses over to Superior Plating to dust it for prints,” Blades reported, calmly helping himself to a piece of toast and starting to butter it. “Then they’ll bag it and tag it and dump it on my desk. Haven’t you ever heard the phrase ‘the wheels of justice grind slow, but...’ hey, Elliott, how does the rest of it go?”

“Stop giving the lady a hard time,” said Elliott with mock severity, “especially since she’s paying for your damned breakfast.”

“Before we get too excited over this whole perfume thing,” I said, cutting into the little Laurel and Hardy routine they were getting going, “would someone kindly tell me how we can even be sure that the poison in the perfume is the same poison that ended up killing the two women? I was talking this over with someone I know who is a chemist.” I felt Elliott stiffen beside me at this reference to Stephen. “He says that it wouldn’t be fatal if it was absorbed through the skin. Since it strikes me as unlikely that the two of them were drinking it, where does all of this evidence about who did or did not send the perfume get us?”

“Maybe nowhere. But right now it’s all we’ve got. I talked to Dr. Gordon at the medical examiner’s office about it. She wants to send the perfume to the FBI lab in Quantico for testing, see if maybe there’s something else in it in addition to the cyanide.”

“How long will that take?” I demanded.

“Three to six weeks, but she says she’ll sit on them and see if she can get them to turn it around faster.”

“I don’t believe it,” I groaned, my frustration mounting. “What the hell are they going to do with it that takes three weeks?”

“From what Dr. Gordon tells me, the test only takes a couple of minutes, but it’s done on a very expensive, high-tech piece of equipment called a G-mass spectrometer that the FBI has only one of. It’s the waiting list to use the machine that runs the three to six weeks.”