The sunken building ran deep into the hill. Samuel Wade, Sr must have used it to store the whiskey he took off boats before transferring it to his construction trucks for delivery.
I eased along the side of the Explorer and came to another vehicle parked in front of it. It was an older Cadillac Eldorado convertible, filthy with dirt silting down from the slatted wood ceiling. Its top was down and a folded wheelchair stuck up from the back seat.
I recognized the car. Theresa and Timothy Wade had been photographed in it at a polo match, the month after Theresa graduated from Northwestern.
I shined my light onto the front seat. Like everything else on the old Cadillac, its cream-colored leather seats were filthy with dirt.
I ran the light forward to a crushed right front fender. The Cadillac was old, built when Detroit iron meant solid steel, but this car had suffered an impact hard enough to push its front headlamp back a full two feet. Yet the car had remained drivable enough to get it up the hill and into the hidden garage.
Beyond the Cadillac, a small workbench was mounted against the slats of the rear wall. Hand tools lay on top of the bench, an old-fashioned brace-and-bit drill, two saws and what looked like boxes of long screws. Dozens of short, cut ends of pine lay on the dirt floor around the bench. They were trimmings, the ends of planks, and all were the same eight-inch width.
I shined my light around one last time. There was nothing else to see. I went out, shut the door and stopped to look up the hill, to be sure of the line of sight. No camera of Jenny’s from across the street could have captured the sunken garage I’d just searched. And I’d seen nothing inside that, at first glance, appeared troublesome.
Yet my gut told me I’d just seen something significant.
I hurried the few yards down the hill to where I’d parked the Jeep.
Even though I was alone, it was only after I’d gotten a solid mile from the Wade estate that I dared to speak to myself.
‘I just got lucky,’ I said. ‘I think.’
FIFTY-SEVEN
There were no Peeps left for breakfast the next morning, so I ate half of Amanda’s spaghetti and one of the meatballs, then took the last of the previous day’s coffee and all of the previous night’s observations up to the roof.
It was chilly, but as always it promised to be my best place to mull and brood. I unfolded one of the two webbed lawn chairs and settled in to think about what I knew and what to do about what I couldn’t yet prove.
After an hour, I called Sergeant Bohler at the county impound garage. ‘Ask Officer Gibbs how much blood was in the street the night of that convenience store killing, and where it was found.’
‘Anything else I can do, Elstrom? Wash your windows, gas up your Jeep, help you toss bodies into your river?’
‘I’m all set to advance your career, Bohler. I’m edging toward the truth.’
‘Do hurry,’ she said. ‘I’m broke.’
Next, I called Galecki’s restaurant and asked to speak to Mrs Galecki. When she came on, I got all the way through saying ‘Dek,’ before she hung up. I redialed, told the woman who answered I was calling only to talk about the cameraman, and that Mrs Galecki would know what I meant.
She came on the line, warily. ‘What?’
‘I want to talk to Jimbo, and only Jimbo,’ I said.
There was a pause, one long enough to make me think she’d hung up. But then she said, ‘Why?’
‘Everyone will be safer.’
I gave her my cell-phone number and hung up faster than she could hang up on me.
I started for the trap door, to head back down the ladders and the stairs, when my cell phone rang. Mrs Galecki had worked fast.
It was Jenny. ‘You called my mom, wanting to speak to Jimbo?’
‘Feeling better?’
‘I hurt like hell, but mostly it’s my eyes from squinting at the footage we got.’
‘Did you see anything?’
‘That first camera was aimed at the left side of the estate, the grounds alongside and not quite half of the house. We didn’t capture the guard shack, drive or the front door. So far, we’ve seen nobody coming into view from the left. Still, we’ll double-check every frame to be sure.’
‘Maybe the help lives in?’
‘I thought about that. I don’t know.’
‘Whoever attacked you seized the second camera?’
‘Jimbo had just taken it down when they were on him. That was the most important one. It was aimed dead center at the guard shack, driveway and the front door.’
‘How about the third camera?’
‘The one we left behind?’
‘It would have kept recording, right?’
‘You’re thinking it might show our attackers at least moving toward us?’ she asked.
‘The thought crossed my mind.’
‘That third camera was farthest down and pointed at the right side of the house and the grounds next to it. I doubt the attackers came from there.’
‘Can you show me exactly where that third camera is, anyway?’
‘You mean if the guards haven’t found it?’
‘Marking a zoomed-in satellite photo would be perfect.’
‘You can’t go there. It’s too dangerous. Besides, as I said, that third camera might be too far down and aimed at the wrong side of the house. Nowhere near the guard shack, gate or front door.’
‘Mark a photo anyway,’ I said.
At the time, I thought I was grasping at straws and didn’t think it would lead to anything.
FIFTY-EIGHT
Jenny sent me the enlarged satellite photo fifteen minutes later. She’d marked a specific tree.
I called Leo. ‘Feel like danger?’ I asked.
‘Not if it requires taking Ma and her friends swimming.’
‘This could be worse.’
‘Nothing could be worse.’
I told him what I had in mind. He told me it would take him three hours. I said I would be waiting.
Leo rolled up in his shiny silver van two hours and twenty minutes later. Always one to dress appropriately for any ludicrous endeavor, he wore bright red pants, a metallic blue shirt and the shiny, red-and-white striped vinyl vest he wore once a year to serve ice cream at Ma Brumsky’s church. A yellow, fake straw hat, molded several sizes too large, wobbled low on his head like a yard urn dropped from space, upside down.
Ma Brumsky rode up front, alongside her son, and was fully dressed in one of her better floral housedresses, a black fleece pullover, and from what I could see from climbing in the sliding door behind her, fur-topped snow boots. Daring sartorial flair had always been a hallmark of all the Brumskys.
Mrs Roshiska slid over on the middle seat to make room, tugging her walker to rest between us. She wore a pink sweatshirt, pink sweatpants and plastic hair curlers that almost matched the rest of the ensemble.
The other five ladies sat on the two bench seats behind us. The only member of their group that was missing was the lone gent. I assumed he was at home, resting his parts.
‘Ready, ladies?’ Leo shouted.
‘Ready, Leo!’ they yelled back in unison.
He pushed a button, the radio began blasting polka music loud enough for even the deafest of them to sing along to, and we were off.
Fifty ear-ringing minutes later, Leo pulled us to a stop right where we’d planned, directly in between the guard shack and the tree Jenny had marked in the satellite photo. Jumping out, he grabbed a bullhorn I hadn’t noticed, ran around to open the passenger and sliding doors and set out a wood step. I remained crouched down in the van as he helped Ma, and then her friends, down onto the stool and then to the pavement. Mrs Roshiska’s wheeled walker exited second-to-last, followed by the lady in pink herself.
‘This way, lovelies,’ Leo announced through the bullhorn at about a hundred decibels. As instructed, Ma and her friends shuffled around to cluster in the middle of the road, smack between the van and the guard shack.
I didn
’t dare look out the window, but I could well imagine the shocked guard radioing his partner, patrolling elsewhere, to help him disburse Leo and the lovelies milling about in the center of their road.
I jumped out of the sliding door and ran, bent low, into the trees, hoping the van blocked me from the guard’s sight.
‘Behold the magnificent residence of the next senator from the Great State of Illinois,’ Leo blasted through the bullhorn. On cue, the ladies hooted and stomped whatever they could lift to stomp.
I worked through the trees, following the line I’d memorized in the satellite photo. The tree Jenny had marked was clearly standing separate between two copses of several others, but things looked different on the ground. Distances, so clear from the air, were now blurred. There seemed to be a hundred lone trees set between denser clusters.
‘Note the clever clipping of the bushes!’ Leo announced from the road. ‘Each one very round, except for some that are square.’
I ran from tree to tree, looking up. Jenny had told me that the camera was small, no larger than a standard digital reflex model. It was black, exactly the color of most of the tree trunks.
‘The exquisite shutters, all of them glossy and immaculate!’ Leo shouted. He was not at his best, ad-libbing.
I found a tree in a perfectly clear line with where I guessed was the right side of the house, obscured now by the van. There was a small black mass tight against its trunk, about seven feet up. I reached for it and touched a bird’s nest. There was no camera. Either the guards had found it or I’d found the wrong tree.
‘Notice the front walk and how smooth the cement is. And look! No bird poop here. I’ll bet they power wash it every day,’ Leo intoned from the other side of the van. His voice was getting weaker.
Another lone tree was four feet ahead, lined up in what might also have been another straight camera shot to the right side of the house. I ran to it and pulled down two lower branches so I could see. No camera.
‘You can’t be here!’ a different male voice yelled, just as loud as Leo. Leo, ever right thinking, was keeping the button down on the bullhorn so I could hear what was going on.
‘It’s a public place!’ a woman screamed, maybe Ma Brumsky or maybe one of her friends.
‘Public place! Public place!’ Leo shouted through the bullhorn. ‘All together now: public place, public place!’
The ladies joined together to scream in unison, ‘Public place, public place.’ It must have been deafening to the guard’s ear.
I ran to a new tree, and then another.
‘Move the damned van!’ the same guard yelled.
‘Public place! Public place!’ the ladies shouted.
And then it was there – the camera, fixed to the trunk of a tree. Quickly, I undid the notched strap, tugged the camera down and ran low, for the van.
‘Out now!’ the guard yelled.
‘Public place! Public place!’ the ladies screamed.
I jumped through the open sliding door, dropped to the floor and reached to tap the horn for one brief second. Incredibly, Leo and I had forgotten to arrange a way to signal when I got back to the van.
‘Sing, lovelies, sing!’ Leo shouted through the miracle of severe amplification, and broke into one of the polkas they’d sung, interminably, on the way up to Lake Forest.
The lovelies joined in, and sing they did, those septuagenarians and octogenarians, belting in Polish as they marched back around to the open sliding door, happy as children on a field trip.
I huddled lower behind the driver’s seat as Leo opened the front passenger door and helped Ma crawl up onto the front passenger seat. Leo then came to the sliding door and stood as best he could to partially block the opening as the first of Ma’s friends climbed in.
A guard came up along the right front fender to hurry Leo along. Leo stood firmly between him and the opening as he helped the second of the ladies up onto the wood step and into the van. I worried that if the guard nudged Leo back just a little he’d spot me crouched behind the driver’s seat. I wasn’t sure what might happen after that.
‘Back off!’ Leo shouted at the guard. ‘We’re hurrying; we’re hurrying.’
‘Hurry faster, damn it!’ the guard yelled back, loud, just inches outside Ma Brumsky’s window.
Ma’s friends, no dummies, bunched up tight against one another at the side of the van, edging the guard back a foot. And they stayed tight as the third woman clambered up and in, followed by the fourth. None dared look directly at me, crouched tight behind the driver’s seat, as they got in.
‘You, driver, get yourself behind the wheel,’ the guard said. ‘I’ll help the last ones.’
He muscled diminutive, 140-pound Leo aside. Suddenly, the sleeve of guard’s uniform and the gold of his bright Rolex watch were inside the sliding door opening.
The second-to-last woman pushed up against him as she got up onto the step and pulled herself into the van. She stopped, to teeter, to stall, to block the guard’s view until the last woman outside, the formidably wide Mrs Roshiska could press in closer to the van.
And press she did, in the next instant. Looming up sudden and large was the substantial pink bulk of Mrs Roshiska, shifting from side to side behind her walker as she pushed against the woman teetering in the opening.
‘Move it, lady,’ the guard shouted at the woman who had remained crouched resolutely just inside the van. Both she and Mrs Roshiska knew that when the woman moved to the back I’d be exposed in the seconds, maybe a full minute, before Mrs Roshiska, the heaviest of them all, could haul herself in.
Mrs Roshiska said something in Polish to the woman teetering just inside the van. The teetering woman laughed. As did the other ladies, including Ma Brumsky.
‘Ho, boy!’ Mrs Roshiska shouted in what might have been English. It was a signal. The teetering woman stepped toward the back as instantly the pink of Mrs Roshiska rose up on the wood step to fill the void. The gray sleeve of the guard’s arm reached to grab Mrs Roshiska’s elbow, to hurry her up into the van.
At which time I’d be exposed, if he looked in.
Mrs Roshiska froze at the guard’s touch but only for a second before she raised one hand from her walker to slap the guard’s hand away. ‘Hands off, pervert!’
The shiny brightness of Leo’s vinyl vest reappeared below the open sliding door. His hand grabbed Mrs Roshiska’s walker, folded it and set it aside, ready to slide the door shut in a hurry.
Mrs Roshiska swayed on the wood step, one hand steady on the grab handle behind Ma Brumsky, the other on the leading edge of the sliding door, readying to lunge inside.
‘Damn it, lady,’ the guard screamed. He moved closer alongside her.
Mrs Roshiska let her left hand drop from the edge of the sliding door, but instead of using it to grab one of the outstretched hands reaching to help pull her in, she reached behind her to grab the elastic waistband of her pink sweatpants.
‘Hurry, hurry!’ the guard yelled, moving behind her to push her in.
‘Ho, boy!’ Mrs Roshiska shouted. I froze. As soon as she lumbered up and in, the guard would see me.
Steadying herself now with only the one hand on the grab handle, Mrs Roshiska stared straight at me, gave me a wink and tugged down hard with the hand behind her. ‘Ho, boy!’ she yelled as the left side of the pink sweats dropped a good twelve inches, presenting the guard with a close-up, authentically puckered Polish moon.
The guard jumped back as if he’d been Tasered and fled around to the front of the van. The other ladies whistled and clapped as Mrs Roshiska tugged her sweats back up and reached to be pulled in by welcoming hands. Leo threw her walker and the wood step in and slammed the sliding door.
Mrs Roshiska collapsed on the seat next to me. ‘Ho boy!’ she shouted.
‘Ho, boy!’ they all shouted as Leo jumped in behind the steering wheel and started the engine. Pulling away, he pushed a button on the dash to fill our ears with the screeching of a hundred discordant accordions a
nd we sped, laughing, down the road.
After that, the last act of the day was anticlimactic.
I called Jenny from Leo’s van. She yelled for me to speak up. I yelled back that I was in the middle of a concert. She said she could tell; she knew Polish songs, too.
She understood enough of what I’d shouted to have a guy who said his name was Ralph waiting when we rolled up to the turret, voices singing, ears ringing.
‘I’m a friend of a friend,’ he murmured, proving he was no slouch at mumbling the Chicago way. I handed him the camera and he was gone.
What I couldn’t have guessed was that I’d just given him something no one could have foreseen.
FIFTY-NINE
I’d just switched on my computer the next morning, braced for intimate messages from the usual alternative energy suppliers, orthopedic shoe peddlers and western wear clothiers – all of whom thought I had interest, and money – when the little computer dinger signaled a new bit of incoming email.
It was from Jenny, and it was short. ‘This clip from third camera. Up all night squinting. No attackers, no day workers. Attached are two minutes Rick enhanced. Upper right window. Nothing, or something?’
I emailed back. ‘Who’s Rick?’
She answered instantly. ‘Guy who picked up camera from you.’
‘His name is Ralph,’ I sent back.
‘Goes by Rick, too. Paranoid about secrecy.’
I opened the attachment. It showed a close-up of the rightmost, second-floor bedroom window. I recognized the window and the curtains. It was the same window through which Theresa Wade had been purportedly photographed some months or years earlier, probably seated in her wheelchair, by a photographer using a long lens. Other than her big hair, none of her features had been recognizable.
There was movement behind the window. Someone with the same big hair, no doubt a woman, was moving behind those lace curtains now.
The person’s head was too high for someone seated.
I emailed Jenny. ‘Any new evidence that the Wades have live-in help?’
Hidden Graves Page 19
