The Unspoken

by Smith, Ian K.

  Not that I had any real strategy in mind, but I decided to start in the closet. Like the rest of the room it, too, was painted a powder blue. Racks of clothes had been coordinated according to garment type and further organized by color. There must have been a hundred pairs of sandals and shoes neatly arranged in their individual cubbyholes. The carpet had those patterned streaks as if it had been recently vacuumed. I looked for footprints, but there weren’t any, which told me no one had walked into the closet after the vacuuming. Nothing looked out of place or missing, but what could I tell? There were so many clothes lining the racks that an entire wardrobe could’ve been missing and I wouldn’t have known it.

  I moved into the bedroom area, which was anchored by a four-poster bed draped with custom-made heavy silk curtains with ornate beading that matched several rows of pillows of various sizes. I imagined this was what a bedroom looked like in a royal palace. Every little girl dreamed of sleeping in a bed like this just once in her life, and this is what greeted Tinsley Gerrigan every night.

  The sitting area of the bedroom was tastefully decorated in light, playful colors. It wasn’t a girlie girl’s room, but it was feminine and smelled fresh thanks to the colorful assortment of flowers arranged in a large crystal vase on a side table. I walked across the room to a large mahogany desk. It had a couple of loose papers on it, a letter from Oberlin College’s alumni council, and an invitation from some children’s charity to make a donation and attend a gala at the Art Institute. There was a desktop computer that was still turned on, but the monitor had fallen into sleep mode. A screensaver of Tinsley leaning forward on her poles in a white ski suit and goggles pulled up on her head moved slowly across the monitor. I tapped a button on the keyboard. As I expected, it was password protected and locked. There were three black-and-white photographs elegantly set in silver Tiffany frames. One was of her and Hunter Morgan sitting on a boat out in the water. The second was a perfectly harmonious family photograph taken in front of a fireplace at Christmastime that had probably been sent out to hundreds of friends and business associates. The last one was her in a graduation cap and gown beside an older woman who looked like she could be her grandmother or great-aunt. Other than that, there was nothing else that begged attention.

  I took one last survey of the room. Several pieces of art hung on the walls. I assumed some of them might’ve been her work. They all seemed to be very modern and very abstract. I crossed the plush carpet and entered the bathroom and immediately wondered why someone would need one this large. It was big enough to host a track meet. Everything had been done in salmon-colored marble and gold. A large claw-foot tub anchored the center of the room, and a shower that could fit an entire football team ran along the back wall. Like the rest of the rooms, everything was immaculately organized.

  Just as I turned to leave, something caught my attention. Underneath the vanity was a shiny metal garbage can shaped like a standing turtle. But that wasn’t what stopped me. It was a very small piece of paper sitting in the otherwise empty bin. I knelt beside it, trying to get a look at what it said without touching it. That proved impossible, because it seemed to be turned upside down. I pulled open several of the vanity drawers until I found a pair of tweezers in a makeup bag. Doing my best CSI impression of a forensics specialist, I carefully picked up the piece of paper with the tweezers and turned it over. It was more like thin cardboard, as if it had been part of a carton. The words No Brand were written in simple black letters. The rest of the word or words were missing. I kept the paper firmly in the tweezers, walked over to the desk, and pulled open a few drawers until I found a box of envelopes. I took two of them and placed the torn cardboard in the first envelope. I sealed it and slid it into my coat pocket.

  I then went back to the bathroom and picked up the small silver-handled brush on the back of the vanity. It had been elaborately monogrammed with her initials. I slid it into a separate envelope and slipped that into my coat pocket also.

  I was just about to leave the suite when my cell phone rang.

  “Cayne,” I answered.

  “We just got the call from the Fifth Floor. We’re officially on board.”

  It was Burke. He rarely if ever felt the need to identify himself, and it seemed like he always started his conversations somewhere near the middle.

  “Whoop-dee-doo,” I said. “So, we’ll be on the same team yet again. Crime as Chicago knows it will never be the same.” I wondered if my visit to Gerrigan had prompted him to make it official. Maybe his air of nonchalance had been only a facade.

  “Spare me the sarcasm,” Burke said. “I already have a migraine just thinking about it. But this one is different. They’ve told us in no uncertain terms to be very quiet about this. No press. No missing persons signs. Nothing that will bring any attention to it. The order was simple. Find this girl dead or alive and bring her home.”

  “What’s the inside word?”

  “It’s all over the place. Internally, everyone’s guessing; no one has any real leads yet. We’re getting word she might’ve gotten mixed up with a different crowd, maybe drugs, maybe political activists. We have no idea right now, but we’re trying to run everything down. There’s speculation about a whole revenge angle someone’s taking against her father. Gerrigan has definitely made some enemies on his way to making billions, fucked plenty of people over. Someone could be settling an old score.”

  “I get the part of him pissing off some people, but the kind of people that would take his daughter? The guy lives on the North Shore.”

  “Don’t let Gerrigan’s wealth fool you,” Burke said. “He’s tough as a railroad tie. Always has been. He hasn’t made all his money playing golf at the country club. So, what have you got so far?”

  I quickly brought him up to speed on all that I had detected. I did, however, leave out the last phone call Tinsley had made to Dr. Brad Weems and her interactions with Patel. I wanted to shake that tree first to see if anything fell out. But I knew I wouldn’t have a lot of time. It wouldn’t be long before Burke’s team would run down the phone logs.

  “So, what’s next?” I asked Burke.

  “We need to press hard on this,” he said. “It’s been over a week. The odds aren’t in her favor or ours. The last time some rich girl went missing, her body washed out of the lake after three months.”

  I remembered the case well. The daughter of two Northwestern surgeons had last been seen leaving her Gold Coast apartment building for an early evening run. She never returned home, and her parents reported her missing two days later. Everyone pointed at the boyfriend, who it had been discovered was secretly dating her best friend. Despite an abundance of circumstantial evidence, nothing was ever proved and no one convicted. Two kids fishing on the lake found her body in the Fifty-Ninth Street Harbor.

  “You don’t find it a little suspicious that the daughter of one of the city’s wealthiest families goes missing, and instead of making an easy call upstairs, the mother shows up at a local station to make a report. She hires me, and it takes over a week before they put the real call in.”

  “I never pretend to guess how rich people behave or how they think,” Burke said. “They can do some crazy shit. Gerrigan was adamant that you still work the case. He likes that you’re unorthodox with less restrictions and protocol. Thinks you might be able to get some answers faster.”

  “Piling these accolades on me is gonna make me blush.”

  “Don’t fuck me on this one, AC,” Burke said. “Your legion of haters is just waiting for you to make a wrong move. The last thing I need is the Fifth Floor crawling up my ass.”

  And just like that the master of manners was gone.

  14

  GERTIE COLLINS SAT ACROSS my desk, the wing chair dwarfing her tiny frame. Her silver-white hair had been neatly tucked back into a bun, and her translucent eyes looked watery and tired. The Morgans’ housekeeper had the resilient countenance of a woman who had seen a lot in her years. The sunlight coming through the wi
ndow made her dark skin appear blue.

  “I don’t know if there’s anything I can do to help find her, but I want to do everything I can,” Gertie said. “That’s why I asked to see you.”

  “How long have you known Tinsley?”

  “Since she was nothing but a little girl. Those families been friends forever.”

  “Do you think something bad happened to her?”

  “Dear God, I hope not,” Gertie said, shaking her head. “That young lady has a heart of gold.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I never seen nothing like it,” Gertie said. “She’s not like the rest of them. She has an innocence and purity about her that’s a special blessing. She don’t care about the money or all the other stuff. She cares about people and what’s right.”

  “Have you ever known her to get into any trouble?”

  “None I ever heard about.”

  “Did you know she had a boyfriend?”

  “Course I did.”

  “Did you know he was a black kid from the South Side?”

  “Course I did. Everyone knew.”

  “What do you mean by everyone?”

  “Her parents. The Morgans. Everyone knew. Tinsley was not shy or embarrassed that she was dating Chopper. She would never hide that. She was her own person and proud of it.”

  “Her parents weren’t exactly overjoyed she was dating him.”

  “None of them were. But the more they tried to push her away from him, the tighter she held on.”

  “That’s what I figured.”

  “What I came to tell you was about an argument they had the night before Tinsley went missing.”

  “Argument?”

  “You will keep my name out of this, right?” Gertie said. “I’ve been with the family for thirty years, and I have three grandchildren in high school I need to help support. I need my job.”

  “I never talked to you,” I said, winking.

  Gertie nodded. “That night the Gerrigans came over for dinner. They were using the formal dining room in the back of the house. I’m usually not there that late on account of my grandchildren. I need to get home to make sure they’re doing what they’re supposed to do. Anyway, Margaret, who works at night, couldn’t be there because her older child was in the hospital, so they asked me if I could stay late and help out with the dinner. All seemed to be going well, but by the time they were halfway through with the entrées, a big fight broke out. I was between the kitchen and the dining room, so I didn’t catch all of it, but I caught enough of it to know it was really upsetting to Tinsley. It seemed like it was her against everyone else. Except for Hunter. She stayed quiet.”

  “What were they arguing about?” I said.

  “I don’t know for sure,” she said. “Like I said, I only caught part of it. But it had something to do with a real estate deal and some charity. I didn’t understand the specifics, but they was really ganging up on poor Tinsley.”

  “Did you catch the name of the charity?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Did you hear what real estate they were talking about?”

  “All I heard them say was ‘the mall.’”

  “The name of the mall?”

  “Didn’t hear that neither,” she said, nodding. “There was a lot of yelling and fist pounding. All I know is something wasn’t right.”

  “How did the evening end?”

  “They usually have drinks in the front salon after dinner,” she said. “But everyone was so upset they skipped it, and the Gerrigans went home.”

  “Did they leave together?”

  “Tinsley left first. Her parents left a few minutes after.”

  This was a problem. A big argument like this happened the night before Tinsley disappeared and absolutely no one who was there had come forward with the information. It wasn’t a coincidence. What was it they didn’t want me to know? They were hiding something. And nothing spoke louder than the unspoken.

  15

  THANKS TO A TIP from a gorgeous raven-haired nurse who could take my blood pressure any time she wanted, I was waiting in the hallway directly outside of the doctors’ lounge at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Dr. Bradford Weems’s last case for the day was a hernia repair scheduled to begin in operating room eight at ten thirty that morning. Nurse Veronica had informed me that as surgeries go, this was as easy as they come. She predicted that barring any complications, they would be wheeling the patient into recovery by eleven thirty at the latest. Not too long after that, he should be walking out of the doctors’ lounge.

  Just before the clock struck noon, the lounge door swung open and out walked Dr. Bradford Weems. Tall and handsome with honey-colored skin and close-cropped black hair and a little gray starting to make its presence known around the temples, he was buttoning his stiff white coat and walking at a pace that made it clear there were places he needed to be. He carried himself like a man of importance.

  “Dr. Weems,” I said, stepping in front of him.

  For a second, I thought he was going to run into me, but he stopped.

  “Who wants to know?” he said. His voice was the sound of sandpaper against concrete. I imagined he smoked imported cigars and drank really expensive wine.

  “Ashe Cayne,” I said. “I know you’re a busy man, but I was hoping to have a few minutes with you.”

  “The private investigator,” he said, without any real feeling. “You were at my wife’s office a couple of days ago. She said you were knocking around for information on Tinsley Gerrigan.”

  “Still knocking,” I said. The doctors’ lounge door swung open, and a group of young doctors who didn’t look old enough to be out of college walked out noisily. They were laughing about a patient who’d woken up in the middle of surgery and asked the anesthesiologist if he could have a beer.

  “Maybe we could go someplace a little quieter, a little more privacy,” I said. “I really don’t need much of your time.”

  Weems looked at his watch impatiently. A stainless steel Rolex with a metallic-blue oversize face.

  “I really don’t have time right now,” he said. “I need to grab something to eat, then head to a meeting in my lab. Some other time would be better. Give my office a call to set it up.”

  He turned sideways to get by me. His shoulder slightly brushed mine. It seemed unintentional.

  “I’m not sure if this can wait for some other time,” I said to his back.

  He kept walking. Very confident.

  “If you’re too busy, maybe my friends at CPD can get you to explain why you were the last call Tinsley Gerrigan made before she disappeared. A call that went directly to a landline inside your house.”

  Dr. Weems stopped as if he had walked into a brick wall and turned around. “Follow me,” he said.

  A short walk later and we were settled at an outside table in a sunny courtyard on East Huron Street. Large potted plants had been set up around the perimeter in a rectangular formation to shield us from pedestrian traffic and noisy cars.

  “So, how can I help you?” Dr. Weems said. There were still traces of irritation in his voice, but he appeared less confrontational.

  I decided not to waste any time.

  “Why did Tinsley Gerrigan call your cell phone seventy-four times over a span of three months?” I asked.

  “Tinsley’s a very complicated girl,” Dr. Weems said cautiously. “She also tends to be very needy. I met her at the hospital’s annual fundraising ball about a year ago. She placed a bid and won a painting of mine that I put into the silent auction. Her winning bid was excessive by any standards, but part of her stipulation for paying so much was that she get the chance to meet the artist and spend an hour or two watching the process.”

  “Process?” I asked.

  “She wanted to see me paint,” Dr. Weems said. “Tinsley was an amateur painter and wanted to see my technique.”

  “I didn’t know you were such an accomplished painter,” I said.

 
; “I’ve been painting for a long time,” he said. “It’s always been a passion of mine. Creative expression is a great way to relieve stress. When I’m not in the OR lab, I steal as much time as I can to get into my studio.”

  I nodded. “But seventy-four times in just three months,” I said. “Isn’t that a bit excessive, even if you are the next undiscovered Van Gogh?”

  “Van Gogh was a postimpressionist,” Dr. Weems said in a snobbish tone I didn’t exactly appreciate. “I’m what would be considered an abstractionist. And no, I don’t think it’s excessive. Tinsley is serious about her art, both in what she likes to paint and what she likes to collect.”

  “Thanks for the genre clarification,” I said. “I’ll remember that the next time I’m in a bidding war at a Christie’s auction. But my point remains. Seventy-four calls in such a short period of time for someone like yourself who’s so busy. That seems a bit much even for ardent lovers of art. Were you giving her lessons over the phone?”

  “You’re not getting it, because you don’t understand the process of creating art,” he said. “The process is a journey and one that’s never perfect. Artists are always exploring new ways to express themselves. Tinsley is still in the infancy of her development, but she’s a very passionate person about the things that interest her. She wanted to improve her craft. I was willing to help.”

  “For free?”

  “I don’t paint to make money,” he said with a smile. “That’s why I have a day job.”

  I had to separate his tone from what he was saying, and I was half believing him. But I was getting that old tingling in my gut again. Something wasn’t right. An old man sat down at a table next to us. His body hunched forward while an oxygen tank fed a tube into his nose. A half-smoked cigarette stuck out of the corner of his mouth. Determination or stupidity. Arguments could be made for both sides.