Bitter Business

by Hartzmark, Gini

  “Fluorad is a halogenated hydrocarbon, which is just a generic term for fluorinated hydrocarbon, which is related to chlorinated hydrocarbons. Those are the agents that environmentalists are currently going apeshit about— you know, things like PCBs which are supposed to harm the ozone layer, but I don’t think that Fluorad is one of the ‘bad’ fluorinated hydrocarbons—”

  “You’re losing me with all of this. Tell me, what exactly is Fluorad used for?”

  “I had to make some calls to find out exactly,” he confessed. “As far as I can tell, it’s a kind of surfactant.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You can think of a surfactant as a penetrating agent; it works kind of like a very powerful water softener that’s used to decrease surface tension. Most often Fluorad is added to embalming fluid. I’m sure you realize that embalming fluid is injected into arteries and veins to preserve a dead body. Well, in this case the Fluorad lowers the surface tension of the body fluids as well as the body surface linings—like the lining of the arteries—which allows for better penetration of the embalming fluid out to the capillary beds.”

  “So what would be the point of putting it in the perfume?”

  “No point, unless you also happened to mix it up with cyanide first.”

  “I still don’t get it.”

  “Think of Fluorad as a messenger, a carrier molecule that picks up another molecule and carries it through a barrier—like skin.”

  “Are you telling me that someone mixed Fluorad with cyanide so that when it was put in with the perfume, the

  Fluorad molecules would carry the cyanide molecules through a person’s skin? Is that possible?”

  “Oh, it’s possible all right,” Dr. Dorskey replied. “And it wouldn’t take too much Fluorad either. It’s very powerful stuff.”

  “How powerful?”

  “Let’s put it this way: If you put a drop of Fluorad in a martini and then stuck your finger in the glass, you’d get drunk.”

  28

  I met Elliott Abelman and Detective Blades at Flannagan’s, a comer tavern three blocks from police headquarters. It was a cop bar and well patronized despite the fact that it was only three in the afternoon. I’d immediately phoned Joe Blades after I’d hung up with Dr. Dorskey and told him of the chemist’s findings. I offered to bring him the copy of the doctor’s preliminary report, which I’d asked him to fax to my office. Blades was just coming off of his shift and on his way to meet Elliott for a drink.

  The entire way to Flannagan’s, all I could see was the bottle of perfume laced with Fluorad and cyanide. All I could think of was the level of hate or pathology that must have possessed whoever was behind the crime. I was haunted by images of Cecilia Dobson sneaking a dab of her boss’s expensive new perfume and paying for it with her life. Of Dagny brushing her hair and putting on fresh perfume to go to the funeral and ending up in agony, collapsed on her own floor, as she crawled toward the phone for help.

  I found the two men at a table in the back. Both had bottles of Old Style in front of them, but neither was drinking. I took a seat and laid copies of the spray-mass-spec tests and the material safety sheets on Fluorad on the table.

  “I don’t see how the ME’s office will be able to do anything except rule both deaths homicides,” announced Blades once he’d finished reading, “especially since you said that they make the stuff at the plant where both women worked.”

  “They make it in the specialty chemicals division. It’s a new product that Philip unveiled at the last board meeting. He even did a little show-and-tell to demonstrate the compound’s properties. I remember reading about it in the minutes.”

  “So what’s the big deal?” Elliott asked. “I thought you said this was some sort of additive for embalming fluid.”

  “According to Philip Cavanaugh, embalming chemicals are a four-hundred-million-dollar market that’s growing all the time.”

  “No shortage of customers, that’s for sure,” remarked Elliott.

  “According to the material safety sheet, up until now there’s only one company that’s made this Fluorad stuff and that’s 3M. It’s odorless, colorless, and very expensive.”

  “How expensive?” I asked.

  “Two hundred and fifty dollars a gallon.”

  Elliott whistled softly.

  “The reason that Philip was so eager to show it off to the board is that his people have come up with a cheaper way to make the stuff. I’m sure he figures the company can make a lot of money breaking up 3M’s monopoly,” I said.

  “I wonder how he’ll react when you tell him that it was used to kill his mistress and his sister?” Elliott demanded in a hard voice.

  “I’m going to see him, now,” Blades replied, “but it wouldn’t hurt if you put one of your guys on him, Elliott, once I’m done with him, just to see if he does anything stupid.”

  “You meeting him at his office, you said?” Elliott asked. Blades nodded. “Then let me go and make a call.”

  The homicide detective and I faced each other across the sticky top of the bar table.

  “You’re right,” I said, “this isn’t turning out at all like I expected.”

  “Well, it sure surprised the hell out of me. I thought I’d seen it all, but someone dying from a drop of perfume is a new one. It’s also going to be a bitch to prove, even if we figure out who did it.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Let me tell you how cops solve murders—not Columbo, mind you, real cops: physical evidence, witnesses, and confessions.” He raised a long finger as he counted each one off. “First the physical evidence. So far the physical evidence in this case is slim, to say the least. The first death was originally thought to be accidental, so there was no attempt made to preserve or analyze the crime scene, and even after the second murder the scene yielded shit. All we’ve got so far is the bottle of perfume. The only solid fingerprints on the bottle are of the two dead women. We also have the box that it was mailed in. It’s got only the fingerprints of people we already know handled it. It was postmarked on the twelfth of February, which is not exactly a breakthrough since it was supposedly sent as an anniversary present. You never know, we may get lucky with the business cards that were used to address the box, but according to the sales rep whose name is on them, he’s been handing them out twenty times a day for about the last ten years. Likewise, we may get a break on the Fluorad. I’ve got the crime lab scheduled to dust at Specialty Chemicals for prints once Philip shows me where it’s kept. I’m also sending some uniforms to see if anybody noticed anything unusual. But again, I’m not holding my breath. So far our killer hasn’t made any mistakes, and I’d be surprised if we started finding fingerprints now. So that’s your physical evidence.” He held up a second finger.

  “As far as witnesses, that’s pretty easy. You’re the only one and you saw diddly. And third”—he put up another finger—“confessions. I guess there’s a chance that someone will come in beating their breast and confess. Not likely, but always possible.”

  Elliott returned to the table. “I sent a man over to Superior Plating. He’ll stick to Philip Cavanaugh like glue,” he reported.

  “What about the perfume?” I demanded. “Surely there’s a chance you’d be able to trace the sale of the bottle. You said it was expensive.”

  “That’s the angle we’re working on now,” Blades replied, taking his bottle of beer in his hand. He took a swallow and made a face. “Elliott’s got four people on it, too. But I’m telling you, it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. The perfume could have been bought anywhere—Chicago, the suburbs, the duty-free shop at a dozen airports. At this point there’s no way of knowing whether the perfume was doctored before or after it arrived in the mail. We can’t even be sure who the intended victim or victims were. Did someone help themselves to cyanide and Fluorad from Superior Plating, lace the perfume with it, and send it to Peaches? Or did someone slip into Dagny’s bathroom to put the poison in?”

&nb
sp; “It sounds like you’ve ruled out Cecilia Dobson as the intended victim either way,” I observed.

  “So far we’ve got no possible motive.”

  “What about Philip Cavanaugh? I think we can all agree that he might have had a reason for wanting her out of the picture,” Elliott suggested.

  “But then why leave the perfume in the bathroom, where his sister was likely to use it?” Blades countered. “Surely, in the days following Cecilia Dobson’s murder, he had more than enough opportunity to get rid of it. Even if for some reason he wasn’t afraid of his sister using it, why leave it lying around? It’s the one piece of physical evidence that might link him to the murder.”

  “Did anyone benefit financially from any of the deaths?” Elliott asked.

  “As far as I can see, no one. Except for Dagny’s daughter, Claire, of course, but so far we have no reason to treat her as a suspect.”

  “What about malice?” I suggested. “It seems to me that Lydia Cavanaugh hates every member of her family enough to want to poison them. By all accounts, she was pathologically jealous of her sister, Dagny, and her mother-in-law. For a while she changed her hair and started dressing like Peaches. They even traced crank phone calls they were getting last year to her.”

  “I know. And we’re running a check on the phone records for the entire family for the last three months. Believe me, we’re not ruling out anybody at this stage. Especially since Peaches was the victim of a felonious stalker two years ago.”

  “Surely that can’t be tied in to all of this?” I demanded, remembering the newspaper clippings Babbage had saved.

  “The Fluorad points to it being someone inside the company,” said Elliott. “But from what Joe tells me about the guy who was stalking Peaches, I don’t think we can rule him out.”

  “How could he have found out about the Fluorad,” I demanded, “much less have gotten his hands on it?”

  “The guy’s a real piece of work—not smart, but cunning. He managed to get a job as a janitor at the station where Peaches worked so that he could steal her keys and have copies made. He broke into her house on a number of occasions. When we finally went in to arrest him, his room was plastered with pictures of Peaches.”

  “So what happened to him?” I asked.

  “We sent him to jail for eighteen months with three years’ probation.”

  “So where is he now?”

  “He got out of jail on February first of this year,” said Blades, his voice heavy with resignation. “According to his parole officer, he’s living in an SRO on Halsted— about two miles from Peaches and Jack Cavanaugh’s house.”

  29

  Daniel Babbage, a man who’d spent his whole life in the city, was laid to rest in Naperville, Illinois, a suburb he would have visited only at gunpoint while he was alive. The day was sunny but it was cold, and the wind blew so sharply that it ripped the petals off the flowers that had been mounded on top of the casket. In the wind, the lawyers who had come to see him buried seemed to flap around the graveside in their black coats like a flock of crows.

  Skip Tillman, the firm’s managing partner, spoke movingly at the internment—as ever, the consummate public man. His remarks were anecdotal. He recalled Daniel’s early years at the firm, his determination to serve family-owned businesses over the objections of his partners, his service, his loyalty, and above all his love for his clients. He talked from the heart about the bravery with which he faced his final illness.

  I look back at the morning of Daniel’s funeral as one of the low points of my life. Emotionally exhausted by the blitzkrieg of crisis surrounding the Cavanaughs and at sea about my personal life, I was tormented by the unsolved murders of Dagny Cavanaugh and Cecilia Dobson as by open sores. I had also quite simply been to too many funerals in too short a time. The fact that they had been for people I had really cared about just darkened the water at the bottom of the well.

  I had spotted Jack Cavanaugh across the crowd during the service and sought him out after the final benediction. Eugene, ever dutiful, was at his side. Father and son both seemed beaten down by the events of the past few weeks.

  “It was a beautiful service,” I said, falling into step beside them as we began to walk back to our cars.

  “Philip should have been here,” Jack complained.

  “Sally called this morning and said that he was in bed with the flu,” Eugene explained. Judging from his tone of voice it was clear he’d been defending his brother all morning.

  “That’s no excuse,” snapped Jack. “He could have at least pulled himself together for an hour. Daniel was like a member of the family. It’s wrong that he wasn’t here.”

  We walked several yards in silence, neither Eugene nor I willing to break into Jack’s angry reverie.

  “The police came to the house again this morning to talk to Peaches,” Jack said finally. “They seem to think it’s that psycho that she had all that trouble with who’s behind everything. As soon as he got out of jail, we started getting those calls again. I told that judge at the parole hearing he should never be released. He’s a nut. But he didn’t have the balls to keep him behind bars, which is where he belongs. Now two innocent women had to pay with their lives. I suppose now they’ll give him the electric chair. So what? It won’t bring my Dagny back. I ask you, what’s wrong with this world?”

  “If it was him, how did he get access to the plant? Not only would he have to get into Dagny’s office, but he’d have had to get into the specialty chemicals building as well, and that has a security system,” I remarked.

  “The swipe cards get lost all the time,” answered Eugene. “Dad’s secretary just came to me to get hers replaced. She told me she lent it to you and you never gave it back.

  “And another thing,” Eugene continued, “the cops said they picked the guy up for vagrancy the night of Dad’s anniversary party. He was hanging around the neighborhood.”

  “I’m still surprised,” I replied. “I’d always imagined that there was a big leap between mooning around someone’s house and sending them poison in the mail, but I don’t have much experience with these things.”

  “You sure as hell don’t.” Eugene was suddenly angry. “Don’t you think my family has been through enough without you making small talk about it like it was some kind of guessing game?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “I want to find out the truth as much as you do.” If the police didn’t find the killer soon, I reflected, everyone in the Cavanaugh family was going to have a breakdown. As it was, everyone’s nerves were frayed. “How is Peaches handling all of this?” I inquired of Jack.

  “Naturally she’s upset,” he said. We had come to a stop beside his shiny black Lincoln. “Have you spoken to Lydia yet?”

  “I went to see her yesterday at her new office. She’s already rented space for the foundation she plans on funding with the proceeds from the sale of her stock.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She’s determined to sell. Not only that, but she’s named her price. She says she wants ten million dollars from the family for her shares or she’s selling to an outsider.”

  “She’s only doing this for attention,” Jack announced gruffly, lowering himself into his car.

  “It doesn’t matter why she’s doing it,” I insisted through the open window. “She’s doing it.”

  Jack Cavanaugh didn’t bother to respond. His face was set like stone as he drove away.

  When I got back to the office I found a copy of a letter from Philip Cavanaugh on my desk. It was from his new attorneys and it had arrived by messenger while I was at the funeral. It said that unless Lydia resigned from the board of directors of Superior Plating and Specialty Chemicals and signed the original buyback agreement within seven days, Philip was going to put his shares of the company’s stock up for sale. No doubt the original of the letter was waiting on Jack Cavanaugh’s desk at his office. Suddenly Philip’s bout with the flu made perfect sense. If I’d sent that
letter to Jack Cavanaugh, I’d be at home hiding in bed, too.

  I waited for the rest of the morning for an angry phone call from Jack and was surprised when none came. By lunchtime I wondered whether he had still not returned to his office, or perhaps it was just that his powers of denial were so strong that he was treating Philip’s threat with the same lack of seriousness as he had Lydia’s.

  I was busy deciding if I should do anything about it when Cheryl came in to say that Elliott Abelman was in reception asking whether I had the time to see him. Grateful for an excuse to put off a call to Jack, I told her to bring him back to my office.

  Elliott slouched in wearing a nondescript navy-blue parka, a pair of jeans, and sneakers. Against the backdrop of Callahan Ross, he looked like a kid, a partner’s son home from college for the weekend. He didn’t sit down, choosing instead to lounge in my doorway.

  “I was just on my way to pay a call on Leon Walczak.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Peaches’s not-so-secret admirer. It turns out he works about a block from here washing dishes at a coffee shop on Quincy. I figured you might want to have a look at him.”

  I took a look at my watch. “What the hell,” I said, getting up to grab my coat.

  Leon Walczak worked in the filthy kitchen of the coffee shop in the Liberty Building. It was still the tail end of the lunch hour, so Elliott was careful to slip twenty dollars to the Greek behind the cash register who owned the place. He accepted the bill with a cynical shrug and pointed the way to the back of the restaurant.

  We found Walczak hunched over a basin of dishwater, dipping greasy plates into the suds and then loading them into a plastic rack. He was a big man turned to fat, with greasy hair escaping from under a paper cap, a pasty face splattered with acne, and a grimy T-shirt showing beneath his dingy apron. His jaw was slack as he worked, his small eyes squinting through the steam. I felt sorry for Peaches. Walczak was a low-life creep. I couldn’t imagine anything worse than being the focus of his obsession.