Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 10 (29 page)

“I’ll let you know if there’s anything to change the
verdict. Later, Vic.”

I wondered whether my client had gone around with a
gun to threaten Fepple, but Isaiah Sommers didn’t strike me as the kind of
person who would set up an elaborate trap. If Fepple had been murdered by the
person who called him when I was in the office on Friday, that was someone who
was planning to kill and planning a way to avoid being seen. He had gone in and
out of the building with big enough groups of people to avoid notice. He’d
shown Fepple how to get away from me. It didn’t sound like Isaiah Sommers.

Momentarily forgetting the dogs, I got the Sommers
number from directory assistance. Margaret Sommers answered, her voice heavy
with hostility, but after a moment’s pause, in which she couldn’t think of a
reason not to, she brought her husband to the phone. I told him about Fepple’s
death.

“I searched both the office and his home and couldn’t
find a trace of your uncle’s file,” I said. “The police are labeling this a
suicide, but I think someone killed him, and I’m sort of thinking they killed
him to get that file.”

“Who would do that?”

“It could be that whoever perpetrated the fraud to
begin with left some kind of record behind that they don’t want anyone else to
find. It could be someone got pissed enough at the guy over something else to
kill him.”

When I paused, he exploded. “You accusing me of going
in there to murder him? My wife was right. Alderman Durham was right. You never
had the least—”

“Mr. Sommers, I’ve had a long day. I’m out of finesse.
I don’t think you killed the guy. On the other hand, you’ve clearly got a
temper. Maybe your wife or the alderman pushed you to stop waiting for me to
get results, to go see Fepple yourself. Maybe his smirking do-nothing attitude
goaded you to act.”

“Well, it didn’t. He didn’t. I agreed to wait for you
and I am waiting for you. Even though the alderman thinks I’m making a big
mistake.”

“He does? What does he recommend?”

Peppy and Mitch bounded up to me. I smelled them
before I saw them, darker shapes against the darkness of the clearing where I
stood—they had rolled in something rank. My hand over the mouthpiece, I ordered
them to sit. Peppy obeyed, but Mitch tried to jump on me. I pushed him away
with my foot.

“That’s just it. He doesn’t have a plan I can follow.
He wants me to initiate a suit against Ajax, but like I asked him, who’s going
to pay all those legal bills? Who has that kind of time? My wife’s brother, he
took on a big lawsuit, it dragged through the courts for thirteen years. I
don’t want to wait thirteen years to get my money back.”

In the background I could hear Margaret Sommers
demanding to know why he wanted to tell the whole world her private business.
Mitch lunged at me again, knocking me off-balance. I sat down hard, the phone
still clutched to my ear. I tried to push Mitch away without shouting into the
mouthpiece. He barked in excitement, thinking we were having a wonderful game
together. Peppy tried to shove him out of the way. By now I smelled just as bad
as the two of them. I clipped their leashes on and stood up.

“Am I ever going to get any satisfaction out of this
situation?” Sommers was demanding. “I’m sorry about the agent: that was a
terrible way to die, but it’s no joke to come up with all that cash for a
funeral, Ms. Warashki.”

“I’m going to talk to the company tomorrow, to see if
they’ll offer a settlement.” I was going to pitch it to them as a way of
building PR ammo against Durham, but I didn’t think it would help relations
with the client if I told him that. “If they offer you something on the dollar,
would that be acceptable?”

“I—let me think about it.”

“Very wise, Mr. Sommers,” I said, tired of standing
around in the dark with my smelly dogs. “Your wife should have a chance to tell
you I’m trying to rob you. Call me tomorrow. Oh—do you own a gun yourself?”

“Do I—oh, I see, you want to know if I’m lying about
killing that agent.”

I rubbed a hand through my hair, realizing a second
too late how much it stank of rotten rabbit. “I’m trying to assure myself that
you couldn’t have killed him.”

He paused. I could hear him breathing heavily in my
ear while he thought it over and then reluctantly revealed that he owned a
nine-millimeter Browning Special.

“That’s reassuring, Mr. Sommers. Fepple was killed
with a Swiss model, different gauge. Call me tomorrow about whether you’ll take
a deal from the company. Good night.”

As I yanked the dogs toward the car, a forest-preserve
deputy pulled into the clearing behind my Mustang, shining his searchlight on
us. He demanded over his bullhorn that I come over. When we got to the car, he
seemed disappointed to find that we were a law-abiding trio, with both dogs
hitched up: the deputies love to ticket people for disobeying the leash laws.
Mitch, incurably friendly, lunged toward the man, who backed away in disgust
from the stench. He seemed to be looking for some grounds for a ticket but finally
said only that the park was closed and he was going to watch to see that we
moved on.

“You are an evil animal,” I said to Mitch when we were
back on Dempster, the deputy ostentatiously tailing us. “You not only stink
yourself, but you’ve gotten that gross smell all over me. It’s not like I have
clothes to burn, you know.”

Mitch stuck his head over the backseat, grinning
happily. I opened all the windows, but it was still a tough ride. I had
intended to stop at Max’s, to find out how they were doing and to see what Max
could tell me about Lotty’s history with the Radbuka family. Right now all I
really wanted was to fling the dogs into a tub and dive in after them, but to
be prudent, I swung past Max’s house before going to Morrell’s. Leaving Mitch
in the car, I took Peppy and a flashlight and walked through the park across
the street from Max’s. We surprised several bundles of students tied up in love
knots, who backed away from us in disgust, but Radbuka at least didn’t seem to
be hovering nearby.

At Morrell’s, I chained the dogs to the back-porch
railing. Don was out there with a cigarette. Inside, I could hear Morrell
tinkering with a Schumann piano concerto, too loudly to hear my arrival.

“Warshawski—what’ve you been doing?” Don demanded.
“Arm-wrestling skunks?”

“Don. This is great. You don’t get enough exercise.
You can help me wash these wonderful animals.”

I went in through the kitchen, taking a garbage bag to
wrap my clothes in when I stripped. I put on an old T-shirt and cutoffs to
bathe the dogs. My suggestion that he help wash them had made Don scuttle. I
laughed as I scrubbed Mitch and Peppy, then went into the shower myself. By the
time the three of us were clean, Morrell was waiting in the kitchen for me with
a glass of wine.

Pre-departure nerves had turned Morrell edgy. I told
him about Fepple, and the depressing life he seemed to have led, and how the
dogs had rolled in something so rotten that they’d scared off a sheriff’s
deputy. He expressed shock and amusement in the right places, but his mind
wasn’t with me. I kept the news of Radbuka’s stalking the Loewenthals, and
Lotty’s disturbing behavior, to myself—Morrell didn’t need worries about me to
take with him into the Taliban’s world.

Don was going to stay on at Morrell’s while he worked
on his project with Rhea Wiell, but Morrell said it wasn’t cowardice over dog
bathing that had driven him away but Morrell’s own orders: he’d sent Don to a
hotel so we could have this last evening alone together.

I made up little bruschette with pears and Gorgonzola,
then put together a frittata, taking elaborate care, even caramelizing onions
for it. I’d laid by a special bottle of Barolo. A meal of love, a meal of
despair: remember me, remember that my meals make you happy and return to me.

As I should have expected, Morrell was completely
prepared, with everything packed into a couple of lightweight bags. He’d
stopped his paper, forwarded his mail to me, left me money to pay his bills. He
was nervous and excited. Although we went to bed soon after eating, he talked
until close to two in the morning: about himself, his parents—whom he almost
never mentioned—his childhood in Cuba where they had come as emigrants from
Hungary, his plans for his upcoming trip.

As we lay next to each other in the dark, he clung to
me feverishly. “Victoria Iphigenia, I love you for your fierceness and your
passionate attachment to truth. If anything should happen to me—not that I
expect it to—you have my lawyer’s name.”

“Nothing will happen to you, Morrell.” My cheeks were
wet; we fell asleep like that, clutched in each other’s arms.

When the alarm woke us a few hours later, I quickly
took the dogs around the block while Morrell made coffee. He had talked himself
out in the night; we were silent on the drive to the airport. In the backseat,
the dogs, sensing our mood, whined nervously. Morrell and I share an aversion
to long farewells: I dropped him at the terminal and quickly drove off, not
even staying to see him go inside. If I didn’t see him leave—perhaps he
wouldn’t be gone.

Walrus Duty

A
t
eight-thirty in the morning, traffic into the city was at a standstill. After
last night, I couldn’t face another horrible commute. Don wasn’t coming back to
Morrell’s until later this afternoon—I could rest there for a bit. Avoiding the
expressways altogether, I entered the alternative morning rush hour—kids going
to school, people arriving for jobs at the little shops and delis that dot the
area. They accentuated my sense of instability: Morrell gone, a hole in the
middle of my life. Why didn’t I live in one of those tidy white-sided houses,
with children heading off for school while I went to some orderly job?

As I sat at the light at Golf Road I phoned in for my
messages. Nick Vishnikov wanted me to call him. Tim Streeter had said he would
be happy to provide some security for Calia and Agnes until they left on
Saturday.

In my personal turmoil over Morrell’s departure, I’d
forgotten Radbuka’s odd behavior. I stopped dawdling along with my maudlin
thoughts and drove over to Max’s as fast as I could. By this time of day, he’s
usually already in meetings, but when I reached his house, his LeSabre was
still in the driveway. His face was heavy with worry when he answered the door.

“Victoria. Come in. Has Morrell left?” Before shutting
the door he peered anxiously across the street, but only a lone jogger was
visible, a silhouette moving along the lakeshore.

“I just dropped him at the airport. Did Agnes tell you
I can arrange a little security for you?”

“That would be a help. If I had known what a chamber
of horrors I’d open by participating in that Birnbaum conference, putting Calia
at risk—”

“At risk?” I interrupted. “Has Radbuka been back? Did
he make an overt threat against her?”

“No, nothing that concrete. But his obsession with
being related to me—I can’t understand it. This hovering around here—”

I interrupted to ask again if Radbuka had been back.

“I don’t think so, but of course this house is so
exposed, with a public park across the street— You think I’m blowing my worries
out of proportion? Maybe so, maybe so, but I’m not young, and Calia is
precious. Still, if you can arrange for someone reliable to be here—and of
course I will pay the fee.”

Max took me back to the kitchen to use the phone.
Agnes was sitting there, drinking coffee, anxiously watching Calia, who was
alternating spoonfuls of cornflakes with pleas to go to the zoo.

“No, darling. We’re going to stay inside and paint
pictures today,” Agnes repeated.

I took a cup of coffee to the phone with me. Tom
Streeter promised to have his brother Tim at Max’s within the hour.

“With Tim on the case, you can be pretty secure going
anywhere you want,” I told Agnes.

“Is he the big bad wolf?” Calia demanded.

“No, he’s a big good teddy bear,” I said. “You’ll see:
you and your mama will both find him irresistible.”

Max sat next to Calia, trying not to let his anxiety
shine through as obviously as Agnes’s. When I asked him what he could tell me
about the Radbuka family he’d known in London, he got up again, taking me away
from the eating alcove. He kept turning to look at Calia while he spoke.

“I didn’t know them. Lotty has always claimed they
were an acquaintance merely, and I have acquiesced in that.”

Calia climbed down from the table, announcing she was
through with breakfast, she was tired of the house, she was going outside
now
.

“When your grandpapa and I are through talking we’ll
go across to the park with the dogs,” I said. “You hold tight for ten more
minutes.” I mouthed “television” at Agnes, who made a sour face but took Calia
upstairs to the universal baby-sitter.

“You think the Radbukas were relations or close
friends of Lotty’s?” I said to Max.

“It’s what I said Sunday night. Lotty always made it
clear that one didn’t discuss the Radbukas with her. I assume that’s why she
gave me the information about them in writing, to preclude any discussion. I
don’t know who they were.”