Madeline Mann

by Julia Buckley

  “That's okay,” I interrupted nervously. “Let's get off the steps.” My eyes made a quick surveillance. I half-expected to see Lyle smirking at me from across the street or Don Paul wagging a warning finger. What I did see was a black Corvette. I wondered if Quinn Paley was around somewhere—keeping surveillance at city hall? I shrugged and turned back to my accomplice.

  Pamela handed me her cleaner's bags and trotted briskly up the stairs. The cold wind ruffled her silky hair, emphasizing its neatness rather than mussing it. I felt myself growing irritated. I just wasn't in the mood for Pamela today. I wondered if I could ask her to scram.

  She turned a key and pushed the door all in one efficient movement, and we were inside.

  “Let me just get the alarm,” she said as a series of warning beeps greeted us. She walked to a little box on the wall and punched in some numbers as casually as she would her ATM code. “There.” She flashed me her brilliant smile.

  “That's pretty impressive that you know the alarm code,” I commented.

  “Oh God, Madeline, I'm here so often I guess I have to. Almost every weekend, I'd say.” She tried to make it sound burdensome but didn't pull it off. “Hey, did I tell you who Don Paul and I sat with at the mayors’ conference last month? Mayor Daley! Richard M. Daley!” Her excitement seemed to fuel her as she clicked to the stairway at our left. “Can you believe it? I still haven't come down from that high.”

  I made noises of approval. Since I voted in Webley, I tended to be an ostrich about Chicago politics. I didn't know much about Richard Daley other than that his father had been mayor too and that he had a wife and kids. That's how political I am.

  “Yeah, can you believe it?” she repeated, still gabbing. “I mean, what an amazing contact. I gave him my business card, and he said Don Paul raved about my work, and I tried to appear loyal but available, you know?”

  I barely heard her. I was growing more and more nervous about our little game of espionage, and Pamela's dry-cleaning bags made me feel hotter than I already was. The air inside the building was close and stuffy.

  We ascended the stairs, and she noticed, finally, what I was carrying. “Oh, let me get those,” she said airily, taking them from me and slinging them over a chair.

  I looked around the office, trying not to see my mother's desk, which I knew would be frowning at me in her place.

  “Gee, I don't know where to start,” I said. What would Kinsey Millhone or Spenser do at a time like this? Take secret pictures, beat someone up? There was only Pamela, who stood smiling with roses in her cheeks, fluffing her perfect hair.

  She walked to her desk and sat on the edge of it. “Listen, Madeline, since you know about Logan and me, there's something I can tell you that I couldn't tell you before. I…know something about why he was fired. Not everything, but something.”

  I glared at her. She'd been playing games with me. I was getting more and more of a sense of how frustrating a cop's job must be. Then again, the cops aren't always honest either, I thought with a nervous feeling in my stomach.

  “Gee, thanks for holding out on me again, Pamela,” I said testily. “Spill.”

  She pouted briefly, then grew reflective. “You were right about the smoking room. Logan would go in there with Blanche and try to get the best gossip out of her. What that old woman knows…I guess every office has a Blanche,” she said dismissively.

  “Anyway, this one day Logan came out with a piece of paper in his hand. He was laughing and saying, ‘Don, you scamp!’ or something like that. I don't think anyone else noticed, but I tended to watch him very closely because we were, uh—”

  “So what then?” I prodded.

  “So he went to his computer and started tapping away, and after about half an hour he was just beaming. Logan was a real computer whiz.” She shook her head sadly.

  “What was it?” I asked.

  Pamela blinked. “Well, I'm not exactly sure. It was something about voting ballots. Logan had found one in a box he was sitting on in that hidden room. He took it in to Don Paul, and he came out fired. Then later Don had Lyle move a couple of boxes out of that room, and Don himself came out and erased some things from Logan's computer.”

  “But Logan must have told you. Later, when you were together?”

  Pamela shrugged. “He said it was best I didn't know if I had to work in the office. He said he'd gather more evidence, and then I could help him expose the mayor. But then the mayor started paying him, I think.”

  “Paying him?” I squeaked.

  “Yeah, you know. To be quiet. And Logan liked the setup, so he stopped his ‘investigation.’ That's when he and I sort of parted ways.” She seemed disgusted, still, at the memory of Logan's vice.

  “But Logan was broke. His family was really struggling.…”

  “Yeah, his family, not him. Logan liked having secrets. And he was a real bastard about money, if you'll excuse my French. He told me his dad had always been rich, but Logan lived with his mom and brother, and Mom wouldn't take handouts from Dad. It made Logan angry. He'd started hoarding as a kid.”

  I remembered, suddenly, that Logan never treated me to a cafeteria cookie, even though I often did treat him. And Logan “going Dutch” on dates. Logan wearing a suit to prom because he said the tuxedo industry “preyed on teens.”

  I sat open-mouthed as Pamela's words arranged themselves in my head.

  “Anyway,” Pamela continued briskly, turning on her computer, “Don probably erased the file you need, but here's my computer. You can zip around on the hard drive; all the terminals are networked.”

  I sat down dumbly and clicked on File: Open. My computer knowledge could fit into a thimble, and I was feeling a strong sense of futility as I stared at the screen. A gigantic list of files and folders appeared before me in luminescent green. “This will take forever,” I complained. “I should get Bill in here; he knows more than I do. Or Gerhard, even.” I was scrolling down as I talked, looking at files with such revealing names as xrzo.doc and demo/ut.doc. A better woman than I might make sense of it all.

  Pamela had wandered over to the coffee machine and turned it on. “Hey, did your landlord tell you I stopped by yesterday?”

  “What?” I asked, staring at the screen. “I thought it was—I mean, yeah, I guess he did.”

  “I wanted him to let me in and wait for you, but he didn't think he should.”

  I wasn't really listening, so I just made an “Mmm” sound as I sorted through pages.

  Pamela said, “Well, you've got an hour or two to play. I'm going to get some work done.”

  I nodded and continued surfing through the files. Pamela seated herself at Blanche's desk and started typing something. Even her typing had a happy rhythm.

  I looked at a couple of random files, then exited and entered a different folder. This looked more promising. There was one called elec.doc and another that read ablt.doc. I opened the first and found a series of letters soliciting donations for Don Paul's re-election campaign. Many were written by Pamela; some were written by Logan. They all seemed on the up-and-up despite the sugary-sweet falsity of their content. I opened the second file and what appeared to be an absentee-ballot form flashed on the screen. The name at the top was Andersen, Mark. Apparently I'd come upon actual ballots that would be sent to those who'd requested them. I flicked idly through the forms: Apling, Arliss, Arthurs, Astor, Attenborough, Avila. It reminded me of the Big Book of Baby Names and stumbling across the dreaded truth. What hidden truth was in the mayor's balloting system? Or was Pamela wrong about that? Nothing seemed unusual here. I was almost ready to close the file when I saw the name Baker, Millicent.

  I froze. I checked the address. I checked the date. The ballot was to be sent out in November. It had been prepared last December.

  I feared I knew why Logan was blackmailing the mayor. Millicent Baker had been a friend of my parents. She'd been a professor of history at St. Fred's in Webley. And she had died of cancer five years before, when I'd be
en a senior at Fred's.

  Apparently Don Paul's generosity extended to the dead; he was going to let Millicent vote for him in the next election.

  My hand, which was shaking slightly, bumped a key, and the letter z appeared on the screen after Millicent's name. I quickly put my hands in my lap.

  Impossible! I told myself. Too risky! And yet it would guarantee Don Paul a victory against his eager young opponent, Wendy White. White already had the liberal vote in town.

  My mind was racing. I had to get this information to Bill. I had to try to print it out. And yet…inexplicably I didn't want to share the discovery with Pamela, who sat typing her endless press release. Sending a surreptitious glance in her direction, I closed the file.

  A message appeared on the screen. “Do you want to save changes made to your file?”

  “I haven't made any—,” I started to mumble, and then I stopped.

  “What was that?” asked Pamela, her typing silenced.

  “Nothing,” I assured her. “I figured it out.”

  I was looking at the box that normally said "My documents." Instead, it said “File F Removable Disk.” The ballots were on a USB. Not the networked hard drive, but a flash drive with saved information. A drive someone had inserted in advance with carefully placed evidence for dumb little Madeline to find. That's why it had all been so easy.

  I clicked “Yes” and reached around to pull the USB out of the computer, coughing to cover the telltale sound.

  It was pink and tiny and may as well have said Pamela Fey all over it. With another glance at the busy Pamela, I dropped it in my pocket, next to the phone from Perez. Whatever Pamela was up to, I didn't want to be involved. If she was double-crossing Don Paul for her own political aims, then I needed to separate her from my investigation.

  I shut down the computer. Then I put on a regretful face and turned to Pamela. “I'm not going to find anything, so I guess I'll just get going.”

  Pamela's mouth opened, then shut again. She seemed unhappy with my decision. Finally she said, “Oh, how disappointing. Why don't you let me have a look? Maybe I can find something.”

  I was sure she could. “No, really. I need to get out of here before the mayor comes. And I have to get to the festival. Fritz is performing in about an hour.”

  She struggled to hide her displeasure, then looked around Blanche's desk as if she might stow it there. “The mayor has a full agenda for today. He's making a speech, dedicating a statue, singing with one of the bands. He won't be back.”

  “No, I guess not. But I'll be leaving anyway.” I headed for the stairs and bumped Pamela's dry-cleaning bags, which had still been lying across a chair but were now slithering to the floor. I bent to pick them up with fumbling fingers.

  “Gee, they didn't do the greatest job,” I said, attempting to distract her from her computer, which she still eyed hopefully. “There are still stains on here. Looks like you had a bloody nose.”

  I turned to Pamela, who had stood up behind Blanche's desk. “I know,” she said sulkily. “They told me they'll never come out.”

  “Out, damnéd spot,” I joked feebly. “Blood is tough to treat.”

  “It's not blood. Why do you keep saying blood?” snapped Pamela, her sensibilities offended. “It's berries. Some kind of stupid berries, and I slipped and sat in them.”

  Berries. I stared at her without seeing. I saw, instead, a woman running out of Logan's house. Saw her slipping with her high heels, skidding on a mulberry-lined drive, falling on her bottom, and staining it red-purple. If I checked the mayor's car, would I find more stains on the seat?

  I felt for the flash drive in my pocket. My mouth was dry. I was, I discovered, a coward. “Well, I've got to run. Let me just set down your stuff.” I put the dry cleaning back on the table. I hoped Pamela couldn't see my hands shaking.

  She was trotting back to her computer, not looking at me. Obviously she wanted me to return to it and find her evidence against Don Paul. “Madeline, let me just see if I can…” The mouse was under her hand. I made it to the stairs before I heard her voice, rather tonelessly, make a discovery.

  “Oh, my USB is gone. Madeline, did you take my flash drive?” she asked.

  I turned around, trying to play dumb. “You said I was looking at the hard drive,” I said.

  “Well, I lied,” she said crisply. Her face looked pinched. “You're ruining this for me, Madeline.”

  “Ruining what?” I asked. “Your plans to take down the mayor?”

  “He's doing that to himself. I was just trying to facilitate things. You said you wanted to get to the bottom of it. I don't have time for you to go fumbling around—”

  “You're right,” I said. “I am fumbling around. So I'm going to leave it to you now, Pamela. You know more than you're telling me, so you'll have to take it to the police.”

  She smirked. “Oh, I'll do that. Give me the USB, Madeline.”

  “I don't know what you're talking about.” I knew that I should run down the stairs. She couldn't chase me in her silly high heels. I thought it, but I didn't do it. Jack would probably tell me it's because of my slow mind-body coordination, which could be accelerated through yoga.

  She who hesitates is lost. Pamela opened her dainty shoulder bag and pulled out a little gun. She held it awkwardly, with her long nails protruding, like Cher holds a microphone.

  Absurdly, my first thought was that Jack had been right. If you went around confronting people, you got killed. Now he would be playing the guitar at my funeral, and Fritz and Gerhard would have “Madman” carved into my tombstone.

  “I need the drive,” she hissed. “And I need the tape, please.”

  I stared at her, half afraid, half surprised. “The tape?”

  “The tape Logan gave you. The one with the information about me. About everyone, he said. He had dirt on everyone in the office, even Blanche. I tried to get it myself, but—”

  “The tape is no—” I stopped myself before I managed to get myself murdered on the spot. Of course Pamela didn't know that my beloved brother had taped over anything that may have been said about her on Logan's tape. Let her continue to think it was mandatory that she hold it in her hand.

  “He gave you a tape, he told me so. He said it was his protection. It didn't protect him enough, as it turns out.”

  “You killed Logan,” I said.

  “Duh,” she said. She actually said that. “I need the tape. Where is it?”

  “And you tried to break into my apartment. Mr. Altschul showed me the scratches on the lock. You lied to me.”

  “I tried to get in yesterday too, but your landlord wouldn't let me in. And you decided not to let me pick you up for the wake. You made it hard, Madeline. I warned you not to trust anyone.” She almost smiled.

  “So you put that note on my windshield at the funeral?” I asked.

  “You threatened me,” she hissed.

  I had no idea what she was talking about, but I wasn't going to argue about it at this juncture. I had one hand in my pocket. I fingered Perez's phone and pressed a random button. I wasn't able to concentrate on what I was doing. All I could think of was that Pamela had committed murder.

  “You killed Logan,” I said again. “You got the berry stains at the cabin. But I don't know why.”

  She pursed her lips. “You're a lot like Logan. Smart, but nosy.”

  “But you loved him,” I suggested, backing away.

  Her eyes moistened. “I did. And I never did break up with him, like I told you I did. I went out there because I saw Lyle, and he told me he saw Logan outside the White Hen, and he was going away somewhere. I knew where he was going; I'd been there with him before. I decided I was going to let him spend some quality time with me. Hold still, Madeline. It's not like I don't see you trying to creep away.”

  I held still. I was poised for flight at the top of the stairs. “So didn't he spend enough time with you?” I asked.

  Her face showed signs of strain as she pointed t
he gun at me. “I knew right away that he had someone else. He was very distant, very mean. Do you know what it feels like, Madeline, to see the man you love looking at you like you're a stranger? We got into a fight. And then he got personal. He was a low fighter. Cruel, even. He called me unforgivable names, and he threatened to—well, to reveal something about me. Something I'd confided. Something that would interfere with my political plans.”

  Immediately I thought of Bill's surmises about the “missing year” of Pamela's life. “You were in the loony bin,” I guessed, using Bill's terminology.

  Pamela's eyes widened. “I knew that you knew. You implied as much on the phone. I figured you'd listened to the tape already.”

  “No,” I said. “And I don't know what you mean—”

  “When you called to confront me about our affair. You said people would trace my secrets back to California. I figured you might be implying that you knew.”

  I gulped. “I meant that California is where you hail from. You know, reporters going back to the place of origin, that kind of thing.”

  She shrugged, her hands shaking slightly. “In any case, Logan knew about my time in the Langley Institution. It was something I foolishly confided, and something he implied he'd be willing to share with the world at large. He said he'd made a tape about me and everyone else, as I told you, but he made the mistake of saying he'd left it with an old friend, and later he said ‘she’ when referring to that old friend. Well, guess what? Logan didn't have too many female friends. All his ex-girlfriends hated him. He wouldn't have called his wife his ‘friend.’ And that left Madeline. I knew it was you. So he no longer had protection. I carry the gun for my own protection. In the heat of the argument, I slipped it out. I am sorry, Madeline. This has gotten me into a lot of trouble. But with the contacts I've been making, I can't afford to risk my good name. I need the tape, and then I'll have to deal with you.”

  My mouth felt dry. “My God, you are Lady Macbeth.”