“Any one of those punks coulda done it. Whoever did do it, I hope they get what’s coming to them.”
Rowan nodded. “So do I, Mr. Thompson. So do I.”
“Are we done? Can I go?”
“Certainly, Mr. Thompson.” Rowan waited until Grizz got to the door. “Oh, just one more thing.” He reached into Lisa’s desk drawer. “You forgot your Chesterfields.”
Rowan ran his fingers over the paper. “Miss Miller, we chose to interview you last for a very good reason.”
Allison nodded. “I figured as much.”
He asked her about the incident in the crossover.
“I thought Lisa needed some encouragement. When I got there, she looked horrified. Maybe she thought I’d break her concentration.”
Walter said, “I’m sorry, Miss Miller, but I saw her face clear as day. Lisa Pluviam was not horrified. The woman was surprised. All three of us were surprised. You weren’t supposed to be there.”
She didn’t respond.
Rowan said, “What were you holding in your hand?”
“I didn’t have anything in my hand.”
Walter scratched his cheek. “I hate to keep interrupting you, but it certainly appeared as if you were holding something. Your hand was clenched.”
“No.” Her face reddened.
Rowan slid the note across the table. “Tell me, what would make you want to kill Lisa Pluviam?”
It was then that Allison confessed.
Grady thought he would invite Rowan to have a little chat with McKinley in regards to the postmortem. It was more than a professional courtesy. Two days had passed since opening night, and he knew his friend had to be suffering over in his quaint little office on Wabash.
Rowan agreed with a matter-of-factness borne from helplessness and, hands wrapped on his aching knees, sat in the back of the police car. He had drawn countless diagrams of the theater and replayed the fall over and over in his head. Perhaps an autopsy would provide him with concrete answers.
Lisa Pluviam’s body lay in the shallow white porcelain tub, stark naked with unsightly blue bulges peppered over her collarbone and thighs. The hands had been flexed into their rightful position and the still-crooked fingers snapped back into reasonable places. The cartilage of the nose had receded deep into the broken nasal bone, forming a cruel snout. Her gray mouth looked like that of an old woman, crumpled and drifting inward. Large black stitches ran down her chest and stomach.
The pathologist, McKinley, had spread her organs in trays positioned next to the body. He used his forceps to point while he talked. “I’ve been top to bottom, Sergeant.”
“And?”
“No poison.”
Rowan folded his arms. “Nonsense.”
McKinley furrowed his brow. “Hey tubby, there are no injection marks on the body. The skin is not unduly stained and there is no erosion inside the throat. The bladder is not distended. That rules out quite a few poisons already.”
Rowan corrected him. “A few poisons, not quite a few.”
McKinley poked his tongue against his cheek. “The esophagus shows no softening. No perforations inside the stomach.” He casually flipped her liver. “The liver has not yellowed. The upper respiratory tract is clean.” He picked up the tray of kidneys and shook it. “These are perfect. The lungs are not congested. Heart’s fine.”
Rowan said, “What of the blood?”
“That’s what I mean. We took a sample directly from the heart. This woman was not poisoned.”
“You found nothing at all?”
McKinley shrugged. “There was some swelling in the brain, but it’s perfectly justifiable, considering the impact.”
Grady said, “So, she died of a broken neck?”
“C1 and C2 fractures. The way she must have landed, I’m surprised her head stayed on. Last week, we got a jumper over on the north side. This guy’s head—”
“So, broken neck?”
“Well…yes.”
The sergeant looked at Rowan. “Satisfied?”
Rowan muttered obscenities under his breath as he left the room. How was she murdered?
Grady caught up with him. “We released Allison Miller today. I held her as long as we could.”
Rowan continued walking at a steady pace as he spoke. “I knew it would amount to nothing. Allison was fiercely jealous of Lisa’s relationship with her boyfriend. The night before the play, Allison put the letter in her office. At the time, she had no idea Lisa had already received a threat.”
Grady jogged by his side. “We can call it all an amazing coincidence now, right?”
Rowan whipped around, jabbing an angry index finger into Grady’s chest. “Someone killed Lisa Pluviam in that theater. That someone is not going to get away with it.”
He spread out his arms. “How? How do you make someone fall off a balcony?”
“I am going to find out. And where were you, Grady? I had to fight with your monkey, O’Sullivan, just to get five minutes with them.”
“I woulda done the same thing he did. You heard McKinley. There’s no murder.” Grady pulled out a cigar and stuck it in the corner of his mouth. “I haven’t seen the note. What did the Miller woman write anyway?”
“Something to the effect of, If you don’t stay away from Timothy, I’ll kill you. She even signed her name at the bottom. It is hard enough to believe a murderer makes a death threat, impossible to believe she would sign it. Allison Miller did not plan a murder, certainly not one this cunning and perfectly executed.”
Grady shook his head. “The dame signed it? Christ, women make such awful criminals. Too much damn sincerity.”
“That is not true at all. They often commit quite clever and devious crimes. Have you forgotten Alice Mayburg, who fed her husband to his own dogs? Ursela Randrovich. She stabbed herself three times to hide her murder. That took commitment. If only she had considered the angles of the blade. Irene Roberts committed the most brilliant murders I’ve ever come across. She almost—”
“It was a fucking joke, Manory.”
Rowan stuttered. “Oh…yes, I…I see now.”
“You’re too wound up.” Grady put his arm on Rowan’s shoulder and walked him toward the door. “I’ll wrap it up and you can forget all about it. Not every death requires a solution. No one touched her, no one poisoned her. Unless I type God on the report, we have no murderer. I’ll send someone to meet you out front and drive you back. I’m sorry about this, Manory. I can tell you had a hard-on for the lady.”
“Grady?”
“Yeah?”
“You told me at The Brown Bear that her name was familiar to you. Did you ever recall why?”
“Matter of fact, I did. Lisa Pluviam was a suspect in a murder case.”
“When?”
“Back in 1912. Her boyfriend at the time, Clarence Williams, was found dead. Drowned.”
“If the man drowned, why was murder suspected?”
“He drove from Chicago to Devil’s Lake, Wisconsin to go skinny dipping in the middle of the night. Funny thing for a guy to do when he can’t swim. His car was found abandoned in northern Illinois.”
“How long was Lisa considered a suspect?” asked Rowan.
“About a day,” said Grady, lighting his cigar and puffing it to life. “There’s a town just south of the lake called Baraboo. According to the report, Clarence stopped off at a general store in the town to purchase some cigarettes. A witness, the owner’s wife, saw a woman in his car. The police drove Lisa up to Baraboo to see if the wife could finger her.”
“But she could not?”
“Nope. The witness said she wasn’t the woman in the car. The department wasn’t great at keeping records back then. There’s only a one-sheet report in our files, but it has a bit of the witness’s statement. She said the woman in Clarence’s car was a fat blonde with a cigarette stuck in her mouth.”
Rowan stopped just before the door. “Could you get me the name and address of the witness?”
Grady winced. “Dammit, Manory.”
“Perhaps nothing will come of it, but it will do wonders for my peace of mind.”
Just as Rowan suspected, the first elusive puzzle piece was falling into place.
chapter 6 Six or zero
1:23 p.m. Monday, April 8th
Walter leaned against the fractured black lacquer of the Brown Bear’s bar. “Dave. Dave.”
Dave Bowen was flipping through Grady’s flyers, trying to find the least upsetting pictures to adorn his wall. “I can hear you just fine, Walter. You need another?”
“No, I need two anothers. Manory’s drinking too.”
“Yeah, he’s drinking a lot more than he usually does.” Over Walter’s shoulder, the bartender could see his favorite customer perched in his usual spot at the center of the bar, scribbling furiously on a napkin. “Manory was drinking in the afternoon with Grady last week. You might want to keep an eye on the guy. It’s only Monday for Christ’s sake.”
Walter shrugged. “He’s a little depressed.”
“He’s always depressed. The cheese fell off that guy’s cracker a long time ago. Tough case?”
“Oh, the worst, Dave. It’s the worst.”
Dave propped a forearm onto the bar. “What happened?”
“We were hired to protect a woman. She got killed.”
“Well done. Now I know who not to hire. Any suspects?”
Walter bent his head. “Six. Or zero. I don’t know. It’s complicated.”
“How was she killed?”
“She fell.”
“Someone pushed her?”
“Not exactly.”
“She trip?”
“No. She just…” Walter held up his hand and let it drop onto the bar with an ugly splat. “…fell.”
“It don’t sound like much of a mystery. People fall all the time. I fell in the doorway today. No investigation was necessary.”
“Yeah, but no. This woman was definitely murdered. She received a death threat before it happened.”
“A-ha. Now I understand.” Dave polished a glass. “Don’t it stand to reason that the person who made the threat is the one who killed her?”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” said Walter.
“Maybe someone will confess. Guilty conscience.”
“Someone did confess.”
Dave spread his arms out wide. “Case closed then.”
“No. The woman who confessed didn’t kill her. Or maybe she did, but we can’t be sure.”
“Why’s that?”
Walter let out a frustrated breath. “Because the victim got a separate death threat.”
“Two death threats?” Dave sighed. “Doesn’t sound like a very popular woman.”
“I know, right?”
“But you said someone confessed?”
“No, she didn’t confess to killing her. She only confessed to sending her one of the death threats. We have to find out who sent the other one.”
“I see.” Dave leaned over on the bar with his head resting on both palms. “Maybe I’m stupid—”
“A distinct possibility.”
“—but doesn’t it sound like she wasn’t murdered. If this person who threatened her—”
“Allison.”
“If Allison didn’t kill her, then wouldn’t it be possible that the other person who threatened her didn’t kill her either? I mean, why put stock in one threat if you’re not gonna put stock in the other? You said yourself she fell. What am I not getting?”
Walter tried to put the reason together in his head. “Yeah, but….You don’t…I told you it was complicated. It’s even more complicated when I say it out loud.”
“I’m just trying to help.”
Walter feigned offense. “Hey. Hey! I can’t discuss the case with you. This is official detective business. You know what, give me two beers and two gin and tonics. That way I won’t be tempted to come back and reveal anything more.”
A shrill, pitiless voice came from the back room. “David! It’s time for your shot.”
Dave’s stomach tightened before he realized his wife was right. Just the sound of her voice caused a painful cramp to overtake his body. He loved the woman, he just didn’t want her to say anything to him. “Thank you, sweetie.” He reached under the bar, pulling out a wooden box and a black rubber tube.
Walter stood on his toes to get a look. A neat row of syringes lined along the box’s edge with a bottle of clear liquid squat in the center. He watched in fascination as Dave wrapped the tube around his arm and drew the liquid into a needle. “Is that for the syph?”
“No, dummy. I’m diabetic. It’s insulin”
“Don’t you have to go to a hospital for that stuff?”
Dave looked at him and smiled.
Walter gave a slow nod with a cracked grin. “You don’t ask me anything more about the case, and I won’t say anything about the personal pharmacy you got back here.” He negotiated his way around a line of fake palm trees and then maneuvered the four drinks onto Rowan’s table. “I think Dave just solved the case. For a bartender, that guy’s really smart. What are you writing?”
Rowan dropped his pen on the table. “It’s nothing.”
Walter rotated the napkin.
1912–Clarence Williams murdered
19??–Pluviam sisters move to New York
1933–They return to Chicago
Timothy Edward Allison Maura-born 1912ish
Grizz-What is Lisa’s connection to Grizz?
“Still on that, huh?”
“We need a motive.”
“Revenge for the murder of this Clarence Williams character twenty years ago? That’s the motive?”
“Lisa told us she had no skeletons in her past. We now know this to be false. At least it is something to go on. In any event, it is better than what I had been considering.”
“Let me tell you Dave’s idea ’cause it really got me to thinking.”
Rowan’s eyelids drooped. “God help us.”
“Imagine this. All those years ago, Clarence Williams…Hey, he had my name. Williams is a popular name. Anyway, Clarence got drunk and pulled a brodie. He went into the water and drowned. No murder. And Lisa just lost her balance and fell. Now we’re in a bar agonizing over two perfectly reasonable deaths.”
Rowan burped. “Et tu, Williams?”
“How was she killed?”
“If I hear that question one more goddamn time.”
“We have to answer it, don’t we? Do you have any ideas?”
Rowan didn’t. He only had contempt for doubt. This murder, this elegant, perfect murder only seemed not to exist.
Walter drank half his beer in one swig. “No one thinks it was foul play but us, and I have to be honest with you, my faith isn’t the strongest.”
“When we learn why she was killed, we will discover how she was killed.”
Walter pulled back from the table. “You’ve told me the exact opposite before.”
“Poppycock.” Rowan burped again.
“I’m sure of it. You used to say if we knew how it was done, we would learn why. I remember, clearly.”
“That’s because you don’t listen. At the moment, we have six suspects. Way too many. Three would be a far more manageable number.”
“Agreed. Let’s knock it down. Filius seems honest.”
Rowan cackled. “Edward says the right things. The killer always says the right things because he knows the right things to say. Edward works for a hospital, which means he may have access to poisons.”
“Lisa wasn’t poisoned.”
“He was the closest to her at the time.”
“You mean he was the closest one to do nothing. No one touched her. Let’s focus on what we know. Lisa got two threats. We know Allison wrote one of them.”
Rowan stared off into the distance, stroking his stubbly chin. “What is more interesting is that Lisa did not tell us about the second note. Think about that. She receives the fi
rst threat and immediately comes to see me, a perfectly rational response. Then, the day we come to protect her, she finds Allison’s threat in her office—the very office where she had found the previous one. What does she do? Nothing. She stuffs it in a bottom drawer without a second thought. Does not even bother to mention it to us. Why? Because she knew it to be cock and bull the moment she read it.”
“So, we cross Allison off the list.”
“Not until we find out what she was up to in the crossover. However, the others interest me more. Timothy comes to mind.”
“Passion, unrequited love, he’s a solid suspect. I mean, besides the total lack of evidence.”
“I must find out from Jenny what Lisa thought of her relationship with Timothy. Was he delusional? Was he not ready to give up the affair?”
“Speaking of Jenny Pluviam. Blonde hair, smoker, pleasantly plump…filthy, filthy mouth.”
“It fits perfectly. Why would she kill Clarence? Because of jealousy. Why would she wait twenty-three years to murder her sister? The inheritance.”
“I’m a sucker for filthy broads. Just imagine the thoughts going through her mind.”
“Williams.”
“Sorry. What?”
“I will go to see Jenny tomorrow to offer my official condolences along with some carefully worded questions.”
“What do you make of Grizz?”
“The gun staged under the light board was not for protection nor was the problem with the light genuine. Indeed, our communist friend troubles me—especially now that Grizz is a wanted man.”
“Wanted for what?”
“You should read the paper. Our man Grizz was seen at the Federal Building before it exploded. His picture is everywhere.”
Walter held up the napkin. “What’s this about the connection between Lisa and Grizz?”
Rowan sneered, his fat cheeks smashing his eyes into slits. “Suicide.”
Walter nearly choked on his beer.
“I do not like it either, but everything must be considered. Lisa was not poisoned and there was no physical injury before the fall. What are we left with? Electricity, hypnosis, a strong wind? Reasonable explanations are thinning fast. If there was some ideological connection between them, then perhaps she would have killed herself for the cause. It’s nonsense, mind you. I cannot conceive a way in which her death would be beneficial to Grizz. Yet, I know there was something between them. He was smoking in her office.”
The Opening Night Murders Page 8
