Stained Glass

by Ralph McInerny

  “Traffic,” Cy said.

  “Doesn’t your siren work?”

  “I never use it.”

  Inside the building they went carefully up the stairs to Borloff’s door. They took up positions on each side before Cy knocked. They exchanged a glance. Maxwell nodded and got out his weapon. Cy’s hand was on the knob. He turned it. The door opened.

  They found the body of Carl Borloff in the bedroom.

  3

  Agnes listened distractedly as the chatter of the police radio filled the car. The monotonous drone of the dispatcher never changed, no matter what incident he was reporting. Traffic accidents, a shoplifter at the mall, a woman dead of a drug overdose in the Pits. That caught her attention, and she slowed the car. Intuition? A hunch? Thank God Cy wasn’t with her. At the next corner she turned and headed toward Dirksen Boulevard. She was tempted to use the siren, but that would have been too much like Peanuts.

  There was a cruiser pulled up in front of the building and a 911 ambulance. Agnes skipped out of the car and hurried toward the building. An officer stopped her.

  “It’s okay, Riley.” She flashed her badge, but it was her face he recognized.

  “Third floor,” he said.

  “Another ritual murder?”

  “Looks more like suicide.”

  Agnes bounded up the steps to the third floor. The building seemed to reek with the odors of hell. Some kind of linoleum made the floor of the hallway sticky to her shoes. Light flooded from an open door. Agnes went in and saw Dr. Pippen hunched next to the body on the bed. She put a hand on Pippen’s shoulder and looked at the lifeless body. “Her name is Louellen.”

  “Was.” Pippen stood and turned to Agnes. “You knew her?”

  “Bobby Newman’s studio is in this building. This girl posed for her.”

  There was a liquor bottle on the table beside the bed, along with a needle and a pipe. Louellen must have gone into the next world in a haze. Agnes tried not to think of the welcome she would have received there. Judgment is mine, saith the Lord. “Suicide?”

  Pippen said, “Well, she didn’t leave a note, but she must have known that the combination of all those things was lethal.”

  “Can we put off calling it suicide until we check out that stuff?” Pippen shrugged. Agnes got out her phone and called Cy. Before she could say anything, he spoke. “Maxwell and I just found Borloff.”

  “Good!”

  “Not so good for him. He’s dead.”

  “Good Lord. Wait.” She handed the phone to Pippen. More intuition. “Tell him what we’ve got here.”

  Agnes went into the hallway and saw a door close. She went to it and knocked. “Police. Open up.”

  It took another pounding on the door before a frousled female looked out over the chain. Agnes showed her badge. “Open up.”

  “What the hell time is it?”

  The door closed, there was the sound of a chain, and the door swung open. The woman was waddling back to her unmade bed.

  “Louellen’s dead.”

  The woman stopped, and for a moment her broad face was full of horror, but that went away. “Yeah?”

  “When did you last see her?”

  “I don’t know. Yesterday. What time is it?”

  “Four o’clock.”

  The woman glanced at the cracked shade that kept the world at bay as if to discover whether it was A.M. or P.M.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Pearl. What happened to her?”

  “Looks like a drug overdose, plus booze.”

  Pearl shook her head. “Louellen didn’t drink.”

  “Never?”

  “Never. She said it made her sick. I think because it gave her an advantage with johns.”

  Pearl tugged her robe more tightly about her. On a far wall was a religious picture.

  “What’s that?”

  “You know.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Our Lady of Guadalupe.”

  “What’s your real name, Pearl?”

  “Rosita.”

  “Tell me about Louellen. When you saw her yesterday, was she alone?”

  Pearl snorted. “She was never alone for long. A skinny little thing like that.”

  Agnes still carried the sketch Louellen had made of Bobby’s mysterious boyfriend. She showed it to Pearl.

  “What’s that?”

  “A drawing Louellen made for me.”

  “Louellen did that?”

  “It’s pretty good, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, that’s him.”

  “Was he with her yesterday?”

  Caution glazed Pearl’s eyes. “I don’t think so.”

  “I think he was.”

  Pearl’s hand went out to the bedside table for her cigarettes. The first one she shook from the package looked homemade. She palmed it, pulled out another, and started the hunt for matches. Agnes had never smoked. She watched as Pearl inhaled deeply and then sighed forth smoke.

  “You saw him yesterday, didn’t you?”

  “Lady, I don’t know one day from another anymore. What difference does it make to me what day it is?”

  “You could be doing Louellen a favor.”

  Another deep drag on the cigarette. “How?”

  “Do you want them to call it suicide?”

  “It couldn’t have been.”

  “Why?”

  Pearl seemed embarrassed; her eyes went to the picture on the wall. “The way she talked. She wanted to be a good girl again, you know.” The thought saddened her. “Who doesn’t?”

  Agnes went to the door.

  Pearl said, “She’s really dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “May she rest in peace.”

  On that surprising remark, Agnes went back up the hall to Louellen’s room, where Pippen told her Cy was on his way. “The crime lab is busy with Borloff. They’ll come as soon as they can.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That you didn’t think it was suicide.”

  “Did I say that?”

  “You didn’t have to.”

  “You’ll do an autopsy?”

  “That’s my job.”

  Cy came and pretended that Pippen was just another pretty colleague. The 911 crew was downstairs in their ambulance listening to a ball game. When the crime crew finally arrived, Cy gave them the usual instructions. When Pippen had gone, Cy said, “You’re thinking Charles?”

  “Why don’t we go upstairs. You can tell me about Borloff.” When they got there, Cy said, “What’s this tape doing down?” He tried the door. Unlocked. They went inside to discuss Louellen, and that was when they noticed something sticking out of the coverlet on the waterbed. Agnes took hold and pulled, feeling like a magician. It was a T-shirt. There was a name sewn inside the neck. Carl Borloff.

  When they got back downtown, an infuriated Captain Keegan handed them a printout of Rebecca Farmer’s story on the Tribune’s Web site.

  4

  Tetzel walked into Tuttle’s office and stood looking bleakly at the little lawyer. Hazel followed him in, standing at his side.

  “Scooped,” cried the reporter.

  He moved toward a chair, lost his balance, and was eased into it by Hazel, who sniffed disapprovingly. “You’re drunk.”

  “Not yet, my dear, but that is my hope.”

  “What’s this all about?” Tuttle asked, lifting his tweed hat, then settling it on his head again.

  For answer, Hazel sailed the Tribune at him and wheeled to go. Tuttle tried to catch the flying newspaper and almost toppled from his chair. Hazel closed the door on this sordid scene.

  Tuttle read Rebecca Farmer’s story, his little eyes widening. He whistled tunelessly. The phone rang, but he ignored it. Let Hazel take it. “Who the hell is her ‘authoritative source’?”

  “Menteur has finally lost it. He’ll be sued out of his shoes for running that.”

  The thought of prospective legal work caught Tuttle’s attention. “H
e’s libeled my client,” he cried.

  “The quirky serial killer?” He was quoting the perfidious Rebecca.

  Tuttle read aloud. “It is not often that a major story walks into the pressroom and all but writes itself. On Wednesday afternoon, your reporter …”

  “Please,” Tetzel begged. “Not while I’m still sober.”

  “Tetzel, she accuses my client Carl Borloff of two murders, without a shred of evidence.”

  Even if Rebecca was right, Borloff would need to be defended at the trial. This was a win-win situation.

  The door opened, and Hazel looked in. “A nut call.”

  Tetzel turned. “Present.”

  Hazel ignored him. “Some nut just called. He was breathing heavily, and I braced myself for an obscene phone call. He said one word and hung up.”

  “What word?”

  “Peoria.”

  “Thank you, Hazel.”

  “For what?”

  For bringing Tuttle the hint he needed as to where his client had gone. He rose from his desk chair, squared his tweed hat, and looked doubtfully at Tetzel. “You coming along?”

  “The Jury Box?”

  “Not yet, Tetzel. We are going to Peoria.”

  “Not me.”

  “You don’t want to interview the man who has been libeled and pilloried in your colleague’s story?”

  Tuttle had to spell it out for the addled reporter. Carl Borloff, under instruction, had made himself scarce, as a safety precaution. That enigmatic phone call alerted his attorney as to where he would be found.

  “Peoria’s a big place,” Tetzel said.

  “Not if you know where you’re going. Angelo Menotti, my client’s hero, lives in Peoria.”

  It was the thought of countering Rebecca’s story with his own on the man she had accused in print that got Tetzel to his feet. The prospect seemed to have sobered him. “I’ll settle her hash, Tuttle.”

  “I’ve never understood that phrase.”

  The two men went through the outer office.

  “Hazel,” Tetzel said, “in case of obscene phone calls.”

  “Yes?”

  “Comply.”

  Something heavy hit the door that Tuttle closed behind them. On the way down the stairs, he considered calling Peanuts and making the trip to Peoria at taxpayers’ expense. On the second flight of stairs, he decided against it. If Borloff had read that story, the sight of a police cruiser would send him into a panic.

  “Where’s your car?” he asked Tetzel. Maybe they could put the trip on the Tribune’s tab.

  “Let me think.”

  “We’ll go in mine.”

  There was a threatening note from the manager under the windshield wiper of Tuttle’s car. He removed it, got behind the wheel, and handed the note to Tetzel. “Put that in the glove compartment with the others.”

  To his surprise, he saw that his gas gauge read FULL. Once they were under way, Tuttle had Tetzel call the paper to get the address of Menotti’s studio in Peoria. The reporter wrote down the information with a shaky hand and filed the slip behind the sunshade on the passenger’s side.

  “We’ll never find it,” Tetzel said.

  “Ha.”

  On any other occasion, even such a city boy as Tuttle might have enjoyed the fruited plains of Illinois turned golden in the setting sun, but for him the journey was merely a matter of following the concrete, keeping to the right lane of the interstate, allowing maniacs to barrel past at eighty and more.

  “Is there a governor on this thing?” Tetzel grumbled. “Can’t you keep up with the traffic?”

  “Take a nap,” Tuttle advised.

  “With all this noise?”

  Tuttle found the roar of his motor and the rush of wind soothing. It concentrated the mind. His thought in the office returned. No matter which way this thing went, Tuttle would be representing Carl Borloff. Say the guy was a killer; killers had a constitutional right to a vigorous defense. On the other hand, if he was innocent, something that was more difficult to think now, the Tribune would pay through the nose. Images of himself humbling the Tribune while a crowded courtroom followed his every word started him whistling.

  “I’d rather listen to the motor,” Tetzel said.

  Tuttle had another thought. “Call Cy Horvath, Tetzel.”

  “What for?”

  “Tell him I am on my way to Peoria to meet with my client.”

  “Isn’t that kind of finky?”

  “We’ll beat him there. If he comes.”

  “He could call the Peoria police.”

  “You’re right. Postpone the call. We’ll make it when we cross the bridge into Peoria.”

  “He’ll tell me to go to hell.”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  When Tetzel made the call, it kept breaking up, but he got through to Horvath. “Tuttle wants you to know that he is on his way to Peoria to talk with Carl Borloff.”

  “Funny.”

  “You’re easily amused.”

  “Borloff’s dead, Tetzel. He was found dead on the floor in his apartment.”

  “What did he say?” Tuttle asked eagerly.

  “Find a bar and I’ll tell you.”

  5

  Madeline found it difficult to write in Susan’s studio and had switched to the kitchen table, a table now in use as Amy Gorman ate her breakfast.

  “Have you eaten?” Amy asked, forking scrambled eggs into her mouth. She had made toast, which she loaded with butter and strawberry jam.

  “All I’m going to.”

  “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”

  “What do you do, skip lunch?”

  Amy licked her lips and looked hungrily at the piece of toast she had picked up. “You’re kidding.”

  “Is lunch the second most important meal of the day?”

  “Are you on a fast or something?”

  Madeline smiled. She felt awful wishing that Amy would finish and go off to work so Madeline could plunk down her computer on the kitchen table and get going. She was just a guest, but then so was Amy, two refugees. Things were popping out in her galaxy, though, and she was anxious to get at them.

  Finally Amy was done. She took her dishes to the sink and rinsed them before putting them into the dishwasher. “When I get old I’m going to sleep the day away like Susan.”

  “She’s up half the night.”

  Amy turned. “Was he here last night?” Amy herself had gone yawning off to bed before nine.

  “Who?”

  “Adonis. The beautiful one. Haven’t you met him yet?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Susan treats him as if he were a mere mortal.”

  “She’s never mentioned a man to me.”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  After Amy left, Madeline got ready to go to work. The newspaper lay on the counter. It had been ignored by Amy, and Madeline resisted distractions at this point of the day. Mornings were her most productive times. She settled down, brought up her manuscript on the screen, and soon was plinking away at the keyboard. What is more absorbing than writing fiction? Madeline seemed to drift out of the present, losing all sense of time except that measured by the oddly crimson sun that circled the planet Photon. It was eleven o’clock Earth time when Susan came yawning into the kitchen and broke the spell. Madeline saved her text and closed the top of her computer. “I’ll get out of your way.”

  “Did you see Amy this morning?”

  “I watched her eat.”

  Susan laughed. “She really packs it away, doesn’t she? I think her tapeworm has a tapeworm. She says she never gains weight.” Susan tightened the belt of her robe.

  “She asked if I’ve met your boyfriend.”

  Susan looked blank, then made a face. “Fulvio? He’s a protégé of my aunt’s. When he was here the other day, you were napping, or you would have met him.”

  “Amy seems gaga over him.”

  “I know. His lo
oks are his cross. He told me he has considered going to a plastic surgeon to get an ugly face.”

  “What does he do?”

  Susan thought about it. “I don’t know. He’s between ships, I guess. Want to see what he looks like?”

  “Sure.”

  “Come on.” Susan led the way to her studio, holding a cup of coffee out before her as if it were a divining rod. She went to an easel and threw back the cloth.

  “Oh my God,” Madeline cried. “That’s him.”

  “That’s my line.”

  “Susan, he’s the one I’m hiding from.”

  “Fulvio? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “What do you know about him?”

  “Not much more than my aunt told me. He likes to talk about my family, don’t ask me why.”

  Madeline dropped the subject. She was a guest here, and she shouldn’t be commenting on Susan’s friends, but she had a strong urge to leave this house, go somewhere else. She remembered the way the reporter had spoken; she remembered Mintz with his air gun. Maybe it was safe to go home now.

  They went back to the kitchen, where Susan ate standing up, just toast, juice, and coffee. She opened the newspaper. “My God,” she cried.

  “What is it?”

  “Fulvio! He’s being sought by the police.”

  Madeline jumped up and stood beside Susan, mouthing the words as she read. Tetzel? That was her reporter.

  “Why do they call him Charles Ruskin?” Susan asked.

  “That’s his name.”

  “He told me he was Fulvio. My Aunt Margaret calls him Fulvio. That amateur sketch could be anybody. Madeline, it’s some awful mistake.”

  Madeline said nothing. In the story, Charles Ruskin was tied to all the dreadful events of recent days—Bobby Newman, Madeline’s editor in Kenosha—but the heart of the story was the fact that Charles Ruskin was the last man to have seen Carl Borloff alive. Susan read it all with her mouth hanging open. She turned from the paper with determination on her face. “I’m calling Margaret.”

  Madeline listened to Susan summarize the story in the Tribune. “Don’t you read the local paper? Well, you ought to. Margaret, have Amos Cadbury do something. You and I know Fulvio couldn’t have done these things.”