Windy City Blues

by Sara Paretsky

  Colleagues agreed they’d seen Servino arrive around a quarter of eight, as he usually did. They’d seen the notice and assumed he’d left when everyone else was tied up with appointments. No one thought any more about it.

  Penelope had learned of her lover’s death from the police, who picked her up as she was leaving a realtor’s office where she’d been discussing shop leases. Two of the doctors with offices near Servino’s had mentioned seeing a dark-haired woman in a long fur coat near his consulting room.

  Penelope’s dark eyes were drenched with tears. “It’s not enough that Paul is dead, that I learn of it in such an unspeakable way. They think I killed him-because I have dark hair and wear a fur coat. They don’t know what killed him-some dreary blunt instrument-it sounds stupid and banal, like an old Agatha Christie. They’ve pawed through my luggage looking for it.”

  They’d questioned her for three hours while they searched and finally, reluctantly, let her go, with a warning not to leave Chicago. She’d called Lotty at the clinic and then come over to find me.

  I went into the dining room for some whiskey. She shook her head at the bottle. I poured myself an extra slug to make up for missing my bath. “And?”

  “And I want you to find who killed him. The police aren’t looking very hard because they think it’s me.”

  “Do they have a reason for this?”

  She blushed unexpectedly. “They think he was refusing to marry me.”

  “Not much motive in these times, one would have thought. And you with a successful career to boot. Was he refusing?”

  “No. It was the other way around, actually. I felt-felt unsettled about what I wanted to do-come to Chicago to stay, you know. I have-friends in Montreal, too, you know. And I’ve always thought marriage meant monogamy.”

  “I see.” My focus on the affair between Penelope and Paul shifted slightly. “You didn’t kill him, did you-perhaps for some other reason?”

  She forced a smile. “Because he didn’t agree with Lotty about responsibility? No. And for no other reason. Are you going to ask Lotty if she killed him?”

  “Lotty would have mangled him Sunday night with whatever was lying on the dining room table-she wouldn’t wait to sneak into his office with a club.” I eyed her thoughtfully. “Just out of vulgar curiosity, what were you doing around eight this morning?”

  Her black eyes scorched me. “I came to you because I thought you would be sympathetic. Not to get the same damned questions I had all afternoon from the police!”

  “And what were you doing at eight this morning?”

  She swept across the room to the door, then thought better of it and affected to study a Nell Blaine poster on the nearby wall. With her back to me she said curtly, “I was having a second cup of coffee. And no, there are no witnesses. As you know, by that time of day Lotty is long gone. Perhaps someone saw me leave the building at eight-thirty-I asked the detectives to question the neighbors, but they didn’t seem much interested in doing so.”

  “Don’t sell them short. If you’re not under arrest, they’re still asking questions.”

  “But you could ask questions to clear me. They’re just trying to implicate me.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to ease the dull ache behind my eyes. “You do realize the likeliest person to have killed him is an angry patient, don’t you? Despite your fears the police have probably been questioning them all day.”

  Nothing I said could convince her that she wasn’t in imminent danger of a speedy trial before a kangaroo court, with execution probable by the next morning. She stayed until past midnight, alternating pleas to hide her with commands to join the police in hunting down Paul’s killer. She wouldn’t call Lotty to tell her she was with me because she was afraid Lotty’s home phone had been tapped.

  “Look, Penelope,” I finally said, exasperated. “I can’t hide you. If the police really suspect you, you were tailed here. Even if I could figure out a way to smuggle you out and conceal you someplace, I wouldn’t do it-I’d lose my license on obstruction charges and I’d deserve to.”

  I tried explaining how hard it was to get a court order for a wiretap and finally gave up. I was about ready to start screaming with frustration when Lotty herself called, devastated by Servino’s death and worried about Penelope. The police had been by with a search warrant and had taken away an array of household objects, including her umbrella. Such an intrusion would normally have made her spitting mad, but she was too upset to give it her full emotional attention. I turned the phone over to Penelope. Whatever Lotty said to her stained her cheeks red, but did make her agree to let me drive her home.

  When I got back to my place, exhausted enough to sleep round the clock, I found John McGonnigal waiting for me in a blue-and-white outside my building. He came up the walk behind me and opened the door with a flourish.

  I looked at him sourly. “Thanks, Sergeant. It’s been a long day-I’m glad to have a doorman at the end of it.”

  “It’s kind of cold down here for talking, Vic. How about inviting me up for coffee?”

  “Because I want to go to bed. If you’ve got something you want to say, or even ask, spit it out down here.”

  I was just ventilating and I knew it-if a police sergeant wanted to talk to me at one in the morning, we’d talk. Mr. Contreras’s coming out in a magenta bathrobe to see what the trouble was merely speeded my decision to cooperate.

  While I assembled cheese sandwiches, McGonnigal asked me what I’d learned from Penelope.

  “She didn’t throw her arms around me and howl, ‘Vic, I killed him, you’ve got to help me.’” I put the sandwiches in a skillet with a little olive oil. “What’ve you guys got on her?”

  The receptionist and two of the other analysts who’d been in the hall had seen a small, dark-haired woman hovering in the alcove near Servino’s office around twenty of eight. Neither of them had paid too much attention to her; when they saw Penelope they agreed it might have been she, but they couldn’t be certain. If they’d made a positive I.D., she’d already have been arrested, even though they couldn’t find the weapon.

  “They had a shouting match at the Filigree last night. The maître d’ was quite upset. Servino was a regular and he didn’t want to offend him, but a number of diners complained. The Herschel girl”-McGonnigal eyed me warily-“woman, I mean, stormed off on her own and spent the night with her aunt. One of the neighbors saw her leave around seven the next morning, not at eight-thirty as she says.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. I asked him about the cause of death.

  “Someone gave him a good crack across the side of the neck, close enough to the back to fracture a cervical vertebra and sever one of the main arteries. It would have killed him pretty fast. And as you know, Servino wasn’t very tall-the Herschel woman could easily have done it.”

  “With what?” I demanded.

  That was the stumbling block. It could have been anything from a baseball bat to a steel pipe. The forensic pathologist who’d looked at the body favored the latter, since the skin had been broken in places. They’d taken away anything in Lotty’s apartment and Penelope’s luggage that might have done the job and were having them examined for traces of blood and skin.

  I snorted. “If you searched Lotty’s place, you must have come away with quite an earful.”

  McGonnigal grimaced. “She spoke her mind, yes… Any ideas? On what the weapon might have been?”

  I shook my head, too nauseated by the thought of Paul’s death to muster intellectual curiosity over the choice of weapon. When McGonnigal left around two-thirty, I lay in bed staring at the dark, unable to sleep despite my fatigue. I didn’t know Penelope all that well. Just because she was Lotty’s niece didn’t mean she was incapable of murder. To be honest, I hadn’t been totally convinced by her histrionics tonight. Who but a lover could get close enough to you to snap your neck? I thrashed around for hours, finally dropping into an uneasy sleep around six.

 
Lotty woke me at eight to implore me to look for Servino’s killer; the police had been back at seven-thirty to ask Penelope why she’d forgotten to mention she’d been at Paul’s apartment early yesterday morning.

  “Why was she there?” I asked reasonably.

  “She says she wanted to patch things up after their quarrel, but he’d already left for the office. When the police started questioning her, she was too frightened to tell the truth. Vic, I’m terrified they’re going to arrest her.”

  I mumbled something. It looked to me like they had a pretty good case, but I valued my life too much to say that to Lotty. Even so the conversation deteriorated rapidly.

  “I come out in any wind or weather to patch you up. With never a word of complaint.” That wasn’t exactly true, but I let it pass. “Now, when I beg you for help you turn a deaf ear to me. I shall remember this, Victoria.”

  Giant black spots formed and re-formed in front of my tired eyes. “Great, Lotty.”

  Her receiver banged in my ear.

  III

  I spent the day doggedly going about my own business, turning on WBBM whenever I was in the car to see if any news had come in about Penelope’s arrest. Despite all the damaging eyewitness reports, the state’s attorney apparently didn’t want to move without a weapon.

  I trudged up the stairs to my apartment a little after six, my mind fixed on a bath and a rare steak followed immediately by bed. When I got to the top landing, I ground my teeth in futile rage: a fur-coated woman was sitting in front of the door.

  When she got to her feet I realized it wasn’t Penelope but Greta Schipauer, Chaim Lemke’s wife. The dark hallway had swallowed the gold of her hair.

  “Vic! Thank God you’ve come back. I’ve been here since four and I have a concert in two hours.”

  I fumbled with the three stiff locks. “I have an office downtown just so that people won’t have to sit on the floor outside my home,” I said pointedly.

  “You do? Oh-it never occurred to me you didn’t just work out of your living room.”

  She followed me in and headed over to the piano, where she picked out a series of fifths. “You really should get this tuned, Vic.”

  “Is that why you’ve been here for two hours? To tell me to tune my piano?” I slung my coat onto a hook in the entryway and sat on the couch to pull off my boots.

  “No, no.” She sat down hastily. “It’s because of Paul, of course. I spoke to Lotty today and she says you’re refusing to stir yourself to look for his murderer. Why, Vic? We all need you very badly. You can’t let us down now. The police were questioning me for two hours yesterday. It utterly destroyed my concentration. I couldn’t practice at all; I know the recital tonight will be a disaster. Even Chaim has been affected, and he’s out on the West Coast.”

  I was too tired to be tactful. “How do you know that? I thought you’ve been living with Rudolph Strayarn.”

  She looked surprised. “What does that have to do with anything? I’m still interested in Chaim’s music. And it’s been terrible. Rudolph called this morning to tell me and I bought an L.A. paper downtown.”

  She thrust a copy of the L.A. Times in front of me. It was folded back to the arts section where the headline read AEOLUS JUST BLOWING IN THE WIND. They’d used Chaim’s publicity photo as an inset.

  I scanned the story:

  Chaim Lemke, one of the nation’s most brilliant musicians, must have left his own clarinet at home because he played as though he’d never handled the instrument before. Aeolus manager Claudia Laurents says the group was shattered by the murder of a friend in Chicago; the rest of the quintet managed to pull a semblance of a concert together, but the performance by America ’s top woodwind group was definitely off-key.

  I handed the paper back to Greta. “Chaim’s reputation is too strong-an adverse review like this will be forgotten in two days. Don’t worry about it-go to your concert and concentrate on your own music.”

  Her slightly protuberant blue eyes stared at me. “I didn’t believe Lotty when she told me. I don’t believe I’m hearing you now. Vic, we need you. If it’s money, name your figure. But put aside this coldness and help us out.”

  “Greta, the only thing standing between the police and an arrest right now is the fact that they can’t find the murder Weapon. I’m not going to join them in hunting for it. The best we can hope for is that they never find it. After a while they’ll let Penelope go back to Montreal and your lives will return to normal.”

  “No, no. You’re thinking Penelope committed this crime. Never, Vic, never. I’ve known her since she was a small child-you know I grew up in Montreal -it’s where I met Chaim. Believe me, I know her. She never committed this murder.”

  She was still arguing stubbornly when she looked at her watch, gave a gasp, and said she had to run or she’d never make the auditorium in time. When I’d locked the door thankfully behind her, I saw she’d dropped her paper. I looked at Chaim’s delicate face again, sad as though he knew he would have to portray mourning in it when the picture was taken.

  IV

  When the police charged Penelope late on Thursday, I finally succumbed to the alternating pleas and commands of her friends to undertake an independent investigation. The police had never found a weapon, but the state’s attorney was willing to believe it was in the Chicago River.

  I got the names of the two analysts and the receptionist who’d seen Servino’s presumed assailant outside his office on Tuesday. They were too used to seeing nervous people shrinking behind partitions to pay much attention to this woman; neither of them was prepared to make a positive I.D. in court. That would be a help to Freeman Carter, handling Penelope’s defense, but it couldn’t undo the damage caused by Penelope’s original lies about her Tuesday morning activities.

  She was free on $100,000 bond. Swinging between depression and a kind of manic rage, she didn’t tell a very convincing story. Still, I was committed to proving her innocence; I did my best with her and trusted that Freeman was too savvy to let her take the witness stand herself.

  I got a list of Paul’s patients, both current and former, from a contact at the police. Lotty, Max, and Greta were bankrolling both Freeman and me to any amount we needed, so I hired the Streeter brothers to check up on patient alibis.

  I talked to all of them myself, trying to ferret out any sense of betrayal or rage urgent enough to drive one of them to murder. With a sense of shameful voyeurism, I even read Paul’s notes. I was fascinated by his descriptions of Greta. Her total self-absorption had always rubbed me the wrong way. Paul, while much more empathic, seemed to be debating whether she would ever be willing to participate in her own analysis.

  “How did Paul feel about your affair with Rudolph?” I asked Greta one afternoon when she had made one of her frequent stops for a progress report.

  “Oh, you know Paul: he had a great respect for the artistic temperament and what someone like me needs to survive in my work. Besides, he convinced me that I didn’t have to feel responsible-you know, that my own parents’ cold narcissism makes me crave affection. And Rudolph is a much more relaxing lover than poor Chaim, with his endless parade of guilt and self-doubt.”

  I felt my skin crawl slightly. I didn’t know any psychoanalytic theory, but I couldn’t believe Paul meant his remarks on personal responsibility to be understood in quite this way.

  Meanwhile, Chaim’s performance had deteriorated so badly that he decided to cancel the rest of the West Coast tour. The Aeolus found a backup, the second clarinet in the Chicago Symphony, but their concert series got mediocre reviews in Seattle and played to half-full houses in Vancouver and Denver.

  Greta rushed to the airport to meet Chaim on his return. I knew because she’d notified the local stations and I found her staring at me on the ten o’clock news, escorting Chaim from the baggage area with a maternal solicitude. She shed the cameras before decamping for Rudolph’s-she called me from there at ten-thirty to make sure I’d seen her wifely heroics.
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  I wasn’t convinced by Greta’s claims that Chaim would recover faster on his own than with someone to look after him. The next day I went to check on him for myself. Even though it was past noon, he was still in his dressing gown. I apologized for waking him, but he gave a sweet sad smile and assured me he’d been up for some time. When I followed him into the living room, a light, bright room facing Lake Michigan, I was shocked to see how ill he looked. His black eyes had become giant holes in his thin face; he apparently hadn’t slept in some time.

  “Chaim, have you seen a doctor?”

  “No, no.” He shook his head. “It’s just that since Paul’s death I can’t make music. I try to play and I sound worse than I did at age five. I don’t know which is harder-losing Paul or having them arrest Penelope. Such a sweet girl. I’ve known her since she was born. I’m sure she didn’t kill him. Lotty says you’re investigating?”

  “Yeah, but not too successfully. The evidence against her is very sketchy-it’s hard for me to believe they’ll get a conviction. If the weapon turns up…” I let the sentence trail away. If the weapon turned up, it might provide the final caisson to shore up the state’s platform. I was trying hard to work for Penelope, but I kept having disloyal thoughts.

  “You yourself are hunting for the weapon? Do you know what it is?”

  I shook my head. “The state’s attorney gave me photos of the wound. I had enlargements made and I took them to a pathologist I know to see if he could come up with any ideas. Some kind of pipe or stick with spikes or something on it-like a caveman’s club-I’m so out of ideas I even went to the Field Museum to see if they could suggest something, or were missing some old-fashioned lethal weapon.”

  Chaim had turned green. I felt contrite-he had such an active imagination I should have watched my tongue. Now he’d have nightmares for weeks and would wait even longer to get his music back. I changed the subject and persuaded him to let me cook some lunch from the meager supplies in the kitchen. He didn’t eat much, but he was looking less feverish when I left.