Bada-BOOM!

by Wally Duff

  The pounding beat from the background rock music made my chest vibrate and my ears ring. None of this seemed to bother Molly. She waved at two men standing behind the reception desk.

  They came out from behind the desk. When they reached us, they walked around me and examined my hair. Molly crossed her arms and stepped back, but she didn’t say anything.

  One of the men was slender and wore a form-fitting, untucked, bright blue, long-sleeved silk shirt which was unbuttoned to his mid-chest. His burgundy slacks had a narrow cut, and his black loafers appeared to be Italian. His brown hair was short and spikey. His narrow eyebrows were elevated slightly at the edges, but there were no wrinkles on his forehead. He had one earring in his right ear.

  The other man was stocky and wore a loose-fitting white cotton shirt buttoned at the neck. He had on billowing tan slacks and tan boots. He had glasses with tinted lenses and hearing aids in both ears but no earrings. His hair was streaked with gray, as was his trimmed moustache. His eyebrows were bushy, and when they were elevated, there were deep wrinkles in his forehead.

  “Oh,” the first man said.

  “My,” the second man said.

  “GOD!” the first man exclaimed. He turned to the second man. “It’s way worse.”

  “Tragic,” the second man said.

  “How can she even be out in public with a mess like this?”

  “Hard to imagine.”

  “Guys, I’m here to talk to you about this,” I said, holding up the documents I’d printed out from the Warren Law Firm file, “not to get my hair done.”

  “And let me tell you, it’s a good thing,” the first man said. “It’d take all day to fix this... this...” He threw his hands in the air.

  “Your sad hair,” the second man said. “Maybe we could begin with a cut. That wouldn’t take too long.”

  “Long?” the first man replied. “My fingers would be positively cramped, it would take so long. No, you start with the color. What she has now is ghastly.”

  “I agree, but the cut has to come first, because I can’t work with hair like this.”

  “Do I know you guys?” I asked.

  “No, sweetie, but we know you,” the first man said. “I’m David and he’s Rick.”

  I stared at them.

  “Rick Carey and David Scott,” the second man said.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “And?”

  “And Molly and Alexis have been talking about your hair for months,” David said.

  “Several months,” Rick said. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

  125

  I’ve always been all about my hair. But now I’m a mommy with a toddler. Taking care of my hair has been way down my list of priorities until Molly pointed out that I was sprouting a crop of gray strands. She’d touted David and Rick to me for the past several months.

  Alexis had been kinder. I almost always had my hair in a ponytail when we played golf or tennis, and she rarely saw it down. But about two months ago she did and suggested that I might need to consider “enhancement,” her term for color to cover up the gray. She also recommended David and Rick.

  “We can’t let you leave our salon looking like this,” David said pointing at my hair. “I can’t imagine what people would think if they thought you’d had your hair done here.”

  “It would positively ruin our business,” Rick said.

  “Okay, I’ll schedule an appointment, but can we please talk about this?” I held up the papers again. “Which one of you is the lawyer?”

  “Was,” David said.

  “Was what?” I asked.

  “A lawyer, dear girl,” he said. “It’s how I met Molly and, through her, Alexis.”

  I turned to Molly and shrugged my shoulders.

  “The corporate attorney for Greg’s restaurants went to law school with you, right David?” she said.

  “Timmy Vitzer, a gorgeous hunk but, sad to say, straight as straight can be,” he said. “Happily married with scads of children.”

  “I was new in town and needed a hair stylist,” she said. “Tim’s wife recommended David and Rick.”

  “You came in and, of course, loved us, and then Alexis followed.” He touched my hair. “Too bad you didn’t.”

  “David gave up the law for this,” Rick said waving his hand around the room.

  “And for you, sweetie,” David said.

  “We’ve never been happier,” Rick said.

  David turned to Molly. “Is this about these grisly murders you and Alexis have been babbling about?”

  “Yep,” she said. “Tina needs your help with the information in the papers she’s holding.”

  “This is exciting,” Rick said. “David and I love mysteries.”

  “We will be the perfect detectives. I’ll be Sherlock to Rick’s Dr. Watson.”

  “Why not the other way around?” I asked.

  “Rick has medical training,” David said.

  “You said you needed that too,” Molly said.

  “I was a medic in the first Iraq war,” Rick said. “And then I went to nursing school but hated it, and here I am.”

  “He also looks atrocious in a deerstalker hat,” David said. “I, on the other hand, with my slender frame, look fabulous.”

  “Then maybe both of you can look at his information, because it involves doctors and hospitals,” I said.

  “We can’t wait,” David said.

  “Maybe we can ‘do’ drinks at our condo after we peruse what you have here,” Rick said, as he took me by the arm. “But would you please leave by the back door. We don’t want anyone to see you.”

  126

  Tuesday night, Alexis and the Irregulars — minus Linda, who was still pouting about our mishap in the parking garage — were scheduled to meet with David and Rick at their condo in North Halstead, the village adjacent to Wrigleyville. Carter was still at the office, so I left Kerry at Alicia’s.

  David greeted me at the front door. “Please come in,” he said. “Everyone else is already here. Would you like a drink?”

  “Water would be fine,” I said. “I need to be sharp for this.”

  “I think you’re right, considering what I found.” I followed him into a large great room with a two-story ceiling.

  “This room is amazing,” I said, as I looked around at the eclectic furnishings.

  “You can thank Rick for that,” David said. “I love to buy beautiful things, but Rick is the only person I know who can pull it all together. Otherwise, this room would be,” he waved his arm around the room, “a cluttered mess.”

  There was no central decorating scheme or color. The room had everything from an Oriental screen, which covered one wall, to floor-to-ceiling elephant tusks by the fireplace on the adjacent wall. It was almost too much to absorb in one glance. A faint aroma of incense floated in the room.

  And David was right; it was a little cluttered but it all flowed together.

  “I love it,” I said. “Where’s Rick?”

  “Showing the girls around. Would you like to join them?”

  “If it’s not too much trouble.”

  “They’re in the master bedroom. It’s down the hallway there to your left. I’ll be at the bar in the library preparing the drinks.”

  The tour took twenty minutes, but it could have lasted for two hours because there were many different art objects and paintings to look at. The only reason we stopped was because David wanted to present his findings.

  We met in the library.

  I crossed my fingers. If they couldn’t help me, my chance at another front-page story was finished.

  127

  “Sit, sit,” David said. “We have a lot to cover.” He put on gold reading glasses and opened his laptop. “Except for a piddling income from doing a few wills and trusts, ninety-two per cent of the earnings at the Warren Law Firm come from billing MidAmerica Hospital as the hospital’s in-house law firm.”

  “You would think the board of directors of the hosp
ital would object to costly charges like this,” Cas said.

  “They probably should, but the board is comprised of prominent male and female Chicago socialites,” Rick said.

  Like Carter told me.

  “Sounds like a rubber stamp board,” Alexis said.

  “The power is with the actual owner of the hospital,” David said.

  “Who is that?” Cas asked.

  “The ownership is hidden in shell corporations,” Rick said. “Whomever it is, they are being sneaky for a reason. We have to be more thorough in our research.”

  “Ultimately, the money flows into the hospital from the work done by Dr. Fertig,” Rick said. “He brings in over seventy-eight percent of the hospital’s total income.”

  “What about the MidAmerica Foundation?” I asked.

  “Most of that money comes from Fertig’s patients,” David said.

  “The Warren Law Firm oversees it for a hefty fee and provides legal counsel to Bear Investments, which manages the foundation’s investments,” Rick said.

  “And here’s where it gets good,” David continued. “According to its tax returns, Bear Investments charges a one percent fee per year to manage the one hundred million dollars of investments in the MidAmerica Foundation and then, on top of that, charges for each transaction to buy or sell the stocks or bonds.”

  “With over one hundred million in assets, the board of directors of the MidAmerica Foundation should be able to beat Bear Investments down to lower fees,” Rick said.

  “Who’s on that board?” Cas asked.

  “Diane Warren and Dr. Fertig,” Rick said. “Chummy, don’t you think?”

  “And they are extremely overpaid for their time on the board.”

  “Who owns Bear Investments?” Cas asked.

  “We are attempting to find out, but like with the hospital, we’ve been unsuccessful in that quest,” David said.

  “What does the board of directors do with the money in the foundation?” I asked.

  “The board has authorized the purchase of the jet plane Fertig flies and homes in Aspen, Palm Desert, and New York City for their foundation meetings.”

  “Is that legal?” Cas asked.

  “Probably not, but the foundation board pays the Warren Law Firm to keep the IRS off their backs,” Rick said. “Less than ten percent is spent each year on charitable giving. The rest is used for foundation expenses.”

  “Like the jet and the homes,” Molly said.

  “You got it, sweetie,” David said.

  “With the way the money is being spent, if Fertig stops working, the foundation will go broke,” Rick said.

  128

  “I’ve heard the name Bear before,” I said. “Janet and Tony said the Bear Corporation owns the condo building where Denning lived.”

  “And they would be correct,” David said. “The same corporation owns the doctor’s building at MidAmerica Hospital, the actual hospital building, and the building where the Warrens have their law offices.”

  “The hospital doesn’t own the building?” I asked.

  “No, they lease it from the Bear Corporation,” David said.

  “Who owns the Bear Corporation?” I asked.

  “We’re working on that too,” Rick said.

  “There sure is a lot of money floating around,” Molly said.

  “Which ties into what Carter mentioned to me,” I said.

  I told them about Fertig flying his plane to Switzerland on a regular basis.

  “I can confirm what you said about the plane business,” Cas said. She reached in her bag and handed each of us a packet of computer sheets. “A guy Joe knows works in executive aviation. These are the planes flying out of the Chicago Executive Airport in Wheeling.”

  “What are these numbers in the first column?” David asked.

  “The tail numbers of the airplanes,” Molly said.

  “How do you know that?” Cas asked.

  “Look at the first page,” she said. “111 WT is a plane Greg is trying to buy from a friend of his.”

  “And 915 RF is Fertig’s Gulfstream G550, the plane he flies to Switzerland,” Cas said.

  I didn’t mention that Linda had already told me that.

  “What about the other columns?” Rick asked.

  “In the column next to the tail numbers you see PWK,” Cas said. “This is the airport Fertig flies out of, and the next column is the destination.”

  “There are only three destinations,” Alexis said.

  “Switzerland, Brazil, and central Africa,” Cas said.

  “Carter told me Fertig has flown to Switzerland once a month for the past year,” I said. “And to Brazil at least quarterly. But, according to this, he’s only been to Africa once in the last fourteen months.”

  “Guys, you’re missing something,” Molly said.

  We waited.

  “He flies to Switzerland the same time of the month, and that means he’s scheduled to fly to Switzerland four days from now.”

  129

  Yikes!

  “Fertig will be gone in four days?” Alexis asked.

  “If he stays on this schedule, he will,” Molly said.

  “And if he discovers we’re on to him, he might fly away and never come home,” I said. “He probably has plenty of money stashed in a Swiss bank and can live in luxury the rest of his life.”

  “If that’s true, why doesn’t he leave now?” David asked.

  “Because Janet and Tony still don’t have any solid evidence against him,” I said. “They can’t arrest him.”

  “Hold on,” Cas said. “I think we do have evidence. When did Linda shut down the hospital’s security cameras?”

  “Right before Alexis and I went into the doctor’s locker room,” I said.

  “Did they record Gary entering the OR?” Cas asked.

  “They did,” I said.

  “Then they had to have recorded Fertig going in there too,” Cas said. “That should be all the evidence cops need to arrest him.”

  “A problem with that,” I said. “The cameras didn’t record Fertig walking into the OR, because he has his own private entrance to go into his personal operating rooms.”

  “And there aren’t any cameras in that hallway?” Cas asked.

  “Nope,” I said. “The OR supervisor told me no one sees him enter or leave because he’s the only one allowed to use it.”

  “What about the hair we got from Fertig’s locker?” Alexis asked. “Didn’t it match the hair you said the CSI guys found at Demarco’s?”

  “It did,” I said. “And they found more hair under Gary’s body at the crime scene.”

  “Hair?” David asked.

  “What hair are you talking about?” Rick asked.

  I told them about the hair Tony and Janet found at the scene of the last two murders and the hair Alexis stole from Fertig’s locker.

  “And here’s the weird part,” I said. “The lab found that all those hair samples came from a young Chinese female.”

  “What?!” Alexis exclaimed. “How can that be? I took that hair from Fertig’s locker myself, and it’s not from a Chinese female.”

  “Lex, the hair you found in his locker might have come from passive transfer from the female. Fertig’s a player with many women, and it could happen.”

  David put his glass down. “It’s obvious, kids.”

  “I agree,” Rick said.

  “It’s a wig,” David said.

  “Fertig wears a wig?” Alexis said. “I can’t believe that.”

  “Maybe it isn’t Fertig who is wearing the wig,” Rick said. “Women wear wigs more frequently than men.”

  I looked around the room. “Diane Warren. She could be the one wearing the wig.”

  130

  I picked up Kerry from Alicia’s and put her down for the night. Carter arrived home an hour later, and from the sour look on his face when he walked in, I knew something was wrong.