Agnes was waiting for Cy when he got to his office. She rattled off an account of her visit with Madeline Schutz. “Should I look into Argyle House?”
“Isn’t that pretty far-fetched?”
“Yes, but what’s near-fetched?”
“Remember when the lawyer suggested to Amy Gorman that she shouldn’t go home? Who did she stay with?”
Agnes consulted her notes. “Susan Devere.”
“Of the Devere family?”
“Hence the name.”
“What does she do?”
“Let’s find out.”
Barrington, Illinois, has become a large area of new homes surrounding the town of that name. Susan Devere lived in the town, in a modest trilevel the upper level of which had been converted into a studio. She came to the door in a smock, her hair pulled back on her head, a look of annoyance on her face. They showed her their ID.
Agnes said, “We’re looking into the body found in your friend’s garage.”
A mouth opened in surprise is seldom attractive, but in Susan’s case it erased the annoyance and made her look beautiful. She fiddled with the lock and opened the door.
“She still staying with you?” Agnes asked as they went in.
“Would you want to go back to that house?”
“You’re a painter,” Cy said.
She made a face. “You’re a detective.” Her tone was somewhere between sarcasm and teasing. Her smock was smeared with paint; there was a daub on the side of her nose.
“Where do you work?”
“Come on.”
She led them upstairs into a large room lighted by skylights. It was a mess. An easel stood at an angle to catch the light; there were little tables around it covered with tubes and bottles, and brushes galore standing handles down in what looked like a Ball canning jar. Rags. A plume of smoke rose from a huge ashtray. Along the walls several pictures in various stages of completion were propped. The canvas on the easel was a portrait.
Cy studied it. “Amy Gorman?”
“You are a detective.”
“And you’re quite an artist.”
“That, unfortunately, is still a minority opinion.”
“What made you an artist?”
“Affluence. My family has more money than any family ought to have. But I was damned if I was going to become a patron of this or that.”
“Like your grandmother?”
“Our tainted family’s solitary boast. Is that sacrilegious?”
“Why would it be?”
“Wordsworth was referring to the Blessed Virgin. Our tainted nature’s, etc., etc.”
Neither Agnes nor Cy had anything to say to that.
Cy said, “The murdered woman was a painter, too.”
“How do you know that?”
“There was paint under her fingernails.”
Susan examined her own nails, then nodded. “It’s hard to get out. Hence the nail polish.”
“Has Amy Gorman any idea why her garage was selected?”
“We never talk about it. What’s there to say?”
“How did you come to know her?”
“Through her son, the one now in Iraq.”
“Do artists ever get together?”
“How do you mean?”
“Meetings, whatever.”
“There are clubs. Those who work in pastels sometimes meet together to criticize one another. So do watercolor people. Oils? We’re a pretty solitary group. About the only time we meet is for art shows.”
Cy said, “I wonder if you would do us a favor. The paint under the fingernails is about all we have to go on. Would you take a look at the body and see if it’s anyone you ever saw?”
“A dead body!”
“It is pretty gruesome,” Agnes said. “Think of it as a favor to Amy Gorman.”
“I’m already providing her with a hideout.”
“Isn’t she back at work?”
“Yes. I couldn’t do what you ask.”
It took fifteen minutes to convince her that if Agnes could stand a visit to the morgue, so could Susan Devere. “The coroner is a woman,” Agnes added. “A very pretty woman.”
Cy glanced at Agnes as if she had revealed his secret.
Pippen met them as if she were a hostess, and in her presence Susan Devere relaxed.
“I’ve never been in a morgue before.”
“Most are here on a first visit,” Pippen said cheerily. “Let’s go. If ’twere done well ’twere done quickly. Is that right?”
“Close,” Susan said.
Down some steps and into a storage room, where Pippen went humming to a drawer, grabbed the handle, and slid the body out. Head first. Agnes wheedled Susan around to the side.
“My God, it’s Bobby!”
“I’ve never fainted before in my life,” Susan said when they got her to Pippen’s office and a cup of coffee was put in her hands. “Can I smoke here?”
“It’s not going to harm any of my customers.”
Susan lit up. “Bobby who?” Agnes asked.
Her name was Roberta Newman. That was enough to get Agnes going, and soon they had not only a name but an address, a list of traffic violations, an application for a fishing license, and the tag number of her automobile.
Meanwhile, Cy took the still shaken Susan back to Barrington. “How well did you know her? Bobby?”
“I didn’t know her at all. I knew who she was. Our family foundation gave her a grant. She kept winning prizes.”
“You’ve been a great help.”
“Don’t ever ask again.”
18
Roberta Newman had lived, apparently alone, in a loft a block off Dirksen Boulevard in downtown Fox River, and it was there she produced the pictures that, as Susan had said, kept winning prizes, even if these had been awarded from the lower rungs of the ladder of success. On the wall that seemed to prevent the skylight from falling into the loft was one of her awards, a plaque whose metal legend had been removed, making for a much more usable dart board. Below it, also the recipient of darts, was a photo cut from the paper, Bobby flanked by the sponsors of the Fox River Art Show, 2007. Well, success hadn’t gone to her head.
The first time Agnes saw the loft it was with Cy Horvath and the lab crew, searching the studio for some clue as to why Bobby had been found hanging in Amy Gorman’s garage. No one seemed to expect to find anything, and that is what they found. Nothing that could help.
“That was just routine, Cy,” Agnes complained as they drove away. “Can’t you make them go at it again?”
“Would you like someone telling you you don’t know your job?”
“Is that what you’re telling me?”
How could you pick a fight with the Rock of Gibraltar? Cy just didn’t react the way other people did.
“You keep at it, Agnes.”
“You mean that?” She could have hugged him. “Of course you mean that. Thank you, I will.”
“No need to tell Keegan.”
“Who’s Keegan?”
Was that the first time she had ever heard Cy laugh?
Before going back to the loft, Agnes had a long talk with Pippen, tugging her sweater close around her to fend off the chill of the morgue. How in God’s name did Pippen stand her job? “You going for the pension or what?”
Pippen laughed. “I think of it as a public service.”
“If I was a doctor …”
“You’d be worried about malpractice suits.” Pippen told her about her husband, who was being sued by a patient who’d been shown the wrong pictures by his nurse and was furious when she didn’t have twins.
“She’ll be laughed out of court.”
“We’ll see. So what about Roberta Newman?”
“Susan Devere keeps asking when we will know who killed her fellow artist.”
“Tell her about unsolved crimes.”
“I keep thinking, what if she had been a friend of mine.” Agnes inhaled. “Can you give me any idea what I shoul
d be looking for?”
Dr. Pippen got out her autopsy report and flipped through the pages. After a minute, she looked at Agnes. “What I think was used to cut her? I think artists use them.” She paused and frowned. “And terrorists. A half razor blade in a holder. I don’t know what they’re called. You find that and something might be done.”
On her visit to the studio, Agnes did find a couple of safety razor blades, apparently used to cut art board, but there was nothing like the box cutter Pippen had described. She sat in a chair and stared at the tilted drafting board before her on which a number of sketches were pinned. The easel was just a few steps away flanked by little tables filled with paint and bottles and brushes and rags. Agnes rolled the chair over to them and inspected them. Nothing. She got up and went to the canvases propped against the wall. One was of a nude black woman, standing, skinny, her right hip angled as she demurely crossed her legs, the expression on the face making her look like someone out of hell.
There was a tap on the door, and Agnes sprang to her feet. She had her weapon in her hand and stood next to the door. “Who is it?”
“It’s Louellen, Bobby.”
Agnes opened the door, keeping out of sight. A woman looked in. When she turned her head and saw Agnes, she jumped, but Agnes caught her wrist before she could head for the stairs. “Come on in, Louellen.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“A friend of Bobby’s.”
Even clothed, miniskirt, scooped blouse, a huge bag over her shoulder, the woman had the expression in the painting.
“I never saw you before.”
“Well, I never saw you, either.”
“I have a room downstairs.”
Louellen entered and pushed the door shut. She stood and looked around. “How about this place?”
“How well did you know Bobby?”
The woman’s eyes narrowed. “What you getting at?”
Agnes felt she owed it to Louellen to show her ID. The woman let out a yip. “Don’t tell me Russell missed a payment again.”
“Don’t worry about Russell.”
“Humph. I’ll worry about him when he starts worrying about me.”
Louellen glided across the studio, glanced at the canvas Agnes had been struck by, and shook her head. “If I looked that bad I’d go broke.”
“I asked you how well you knew Bobby.”
Louellen dipped her head and made a face. “Nothing like that. She had her man.”
“I’m going to make coffee.”
“I’m going to help you drink it.”
Louellen got her bag off her shoulder and dropped it on the floor, where it gaped and then sagged into itself. Agnes didn’t want to know what Louellen carried around in her bag, but before turning away she saw it. She reached in and pulled it out. She pressed the release, revealing the blade. She looked at Louellen. “Where did you get this?”
“It’s for protection. In case anyone gets rough.”
Agnes took it with her when she put water in the pot and put in coffee. She longed to tell the woman that she was on the sure path to hell but wasn’t lost yet. Come on down to the tabernacle and listen to Preacher Lester and feel your heart move. Get saved, girl, while there is yet time. That’s what she would have liked to say, but she was here in another capacity, and that had to come first. “You want to put this on the stove, Louellen?”
There was a hot plate in the part of the studio where there was a table and chairs. There was a huge bed, too, hardly a foot off the floor. Having put on the coffee, Louellen came and placed her pointed shoe on the edge of the bed and jiggled. They waited until the coffee was done, and then they sat at the little table and stared across at one another.
“Bobby give you this?” Agnes held up the blade.
She shook her head.
“Who?”
“How’d you come to be a cop?”
“How did you come to be …” She couldn’t say it. At the tabernacle, they had lots of ways of saying it, Jezebels, lost women, sisters of Satan, others.
“Not becoming it would have been hard.”
“Tell me how you got this.”
“You gonna tell Bobby?”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“I don’t keep a calendar.”
“Guess.”
“A week. More. I don’t know.”
“So you took this before then?”
Louellen lit up, and Agnes was relieved that it was a cigarette. The girl tipped back her head and blew smoke upward. She looked at Agnes and then around the studio. “It was seeing me when she painted me that turned him on. I wasn’t surprised when he started dropping by. Couldn’t bring himself to just say it, you know? His story was he was worried about me. Did I realize what a dangerous life I led. I needed him to tell me that? So he gave me that.”
“And then?”
Louellen smiled. “You want the details?”
“He was Bobby’s boyfriend?”
“While she had him.”
“What do you mean?”
“He came and went.”
“What’s his name?”
“Ask Bobby if you’re so interested.”
“Louellen, Bobby is dead. Why do you think I’m looking around here? We’re trying to find who did it.”
“Dead!”
“She was found hanging in a garage, and someone had cut her open. I think with this. Or one just like it.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“Invoke his name, girl. That’s the first step.”
Louellen laughed a frightened laugh. “You think Charles did it.”
“Do you know how I could find him?”
“How would I know a thing like that? He came to my place.”
“What did he look like?”
“You’ll find a picture of him over against the wall.”
“Show me!”
Louellen searched for ten minutes before giving up. “It was here.”
“Now it’s gone. Describe him for me.”
“I’ll draw you a picture.”
“You’re an artist?”
“Well, I can draw a picture. Bobby said I could be an artist myself.” Louellen pulled the little wheeled chair up to the drafting board and tacked a piece of paper to it.
Before she began, Agnes asked her what the sketches pinned to the board were.
“For a book. She did pictures for books, too,” Louellen replied.
While Louellen with a frown began to move the pencil across the paper, Agnes went to the two-drawer file cabinet, on whose top more art paraphernalia lay. She opened the top drawer. A series of lettered tabs on folders, all of them full of papers, letters, whatnot. She ran her fingers along them from back to front, but found nothing. When she got to A. Argyle House. The folder was empty.
“This is pretty close, I think,” Louellen said. She untacked the sheet and held it out to Agnes.
“This is good!”
“How can you tell if you never saw him?”
Agnes looked at the sketch. The face was almost cherubic, the eyes rounded in innocent surprise, a beatific smile on his full lips. “He looks like an angel.”
Louellen lit another cigarette. “Oh, he has a lot of devil in him, too.”
19
Father Ladislaw Sledz could hardly contain himself when he called Father Dowling. “Did you get a letter, Roger?”
“I never even made the team.”
“From the chancery! Our Lady of Chestakowa is spared. Wilenski called first, and I asked for it in writing. Now the letter is here.”
“Good for you, Lad.”
“I didn’t do a thing. All those Poles who moved to the suburbs got through to Wilenski. What could he do? He’s related to half of them. It turns out he’s some sort of cousin of mine, however removed. Well, he’s not going to remove Our Lady of Chestakowa.”
It would have been churlish to begrudge Seldz his good news, but of course it implied bad news for St. Hilary’s. N
o call or letter from Bishop Wilenski had been received by Father Dowling, and he rather doubted now that the threat to the parish could be lifted.
The following morning, Amos called, excited by a story in the Chicago Tribune about the sparing of Our Lady of Chestakowa. Roger Dowling tried to make light of the fact that he himself had had no further word from the chancery office.
“I will call on the cardinal myself.”
“I wouldn’t do that, Amos.”
How could Father Dowling not think that the formation of Save St. Hilary’s and the injunction Amos had filed against the archdiocese had worsened matters? The injunction now lay in some legal limbo, waiting for there to be an overt threat to St. Hilary’s for an injunction to stop. Newspaper stories apparently did not provide a sufficient basis for an injunction. Still, the proposed injunction became an item of local news.
“Let me know as soon as you hear, Father.” Amos paused. “Good news or bad.”
When Father Dowling returned to the rectory after saying his noon Mass, he was surprised to find Bishop Wilenski waiting in the front parlor. Marie told him of his guest, her eyes wide with hope.
“I wanted to see the parish, Father. I should have warned you I was coming.”
“Warned me?”
“Let you know in advance.” The bishop seemed to regret his choice of words. “Is this a bad time?”
“Lunchtime? It’s perfect. Come, let’s see what Mrs. Murkin has prepared for us.”
Anyone who drops by in midday can scarcely be surprised to be asked to stay for lunch.
“I don’t know when we last had a bishop at this table,” Marie said.
“Have you been here long, Mrs. Murkin?”
“Since the glacier.”
“Marie had been here for years before I came, Bishop.”
“There were Franciscans … ,” Marie began, but decided not to call up those awful memories. “It was so good to have a diocesan priest assigned here again.”
Off she went to the kitchen to fetch the tuna casserole that had filled the house with a delicious aroma.
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