by Dorien Grey
He could empathize with Aaron’s need to know what had happened to Bill, yet he couldn’t avoid the feeling that he was, in effect, being blackmailed. He had no doubt that if he didn’t find out what had happened to Bill, Aaron could and would make it impossible for him to sell the building. His entire investment in time and money could be lost. That he could afford the financial loss if he had to wasn’t the point. That it should even be an option was.
He called Larry as he got out of the car.
* * *
At precisely seven thirty, the doorman called to announce the arrival of Marylinn Hightower, and Elliott told him to send her up. As he opened the door in response to her knock, her perfume entered the room before she did. If she recognized him, she did not let on. It wasn’t until he stepped back, opening the door wide to let her enter, and said pleasantly, “Please come in, Mrs. Stiles,” that a flash of recognition passed over her face.
She smiled, though her eyes did not, and extended her hand, shifting her expensive leather portfolio to her left hand.
“Of course. You were at my husband’s office party with your…friend. Steve, wasn’t it?”
He smiled and nodded, amused by the slight catch in her voice when she said friend.
He showed her into the living room, noting she took in everything as they went. She moved immediately to the sliding glass doors to the patio overlooking the city and the Loop. It was a clear evening, and the carpet of lights leading to the bejeweled towers of the Loop presented a spectacular tableau he knew could not fail to impress her.
“Lovely,” she said. “May I?” She indicated the patio doors.
“Of course.”
She slid one of the doors open and stepped outside, going to stand at the balcony railing. He did not follow but studied, trying to figure her out.
He had already assumed, from Mrs. Reinerio’s report on the stripping of Aaron’s apartment and having met Bruce Stiles, that Marylinn Hightower’s charm-school demeanor might well mask a swastika’d heart. But bigotry, he knew, usually took a back seat to greed, so he was fairly certain her desire for a prime listing and the commission it would bring would trump her discomfort at being in the presence of an unabashed homosexual.
Stepping back into the living room, she slid the door closed. When she turned to him, she was smiling—he suspected her pleasure was not derived from his company but from the dollar signs he could see in her eyes.
“Would you like to see the rest of the unit?” he asked.
“Yes, please.” She opened her portfolio to extract a notepad and pen.
Leading the way, he gave her a tour, pausing several times to give her a chance to jot down notes. While he never thought of himself as the domestic type, he was glad the appointment coincided with Ida’s cleaning day. Walking through the condo with a realtor gave him a new perspective on the place and made him appreciate it even more than he normally did.
Opening the closet in the guest bedroom, she seemed a bit surprised to find it empty.
“You live alone?” she asked.
He suppressed a smile. “Yes. It’s one of the reasons I’m thinking of selling. I really don’t need all this space.”
He could see her mentally readjusting her realtor persona as she said, “Yes, of course. This would be perfect for a young family. And perhaps, when the time comes, I could help you find something a bit smaller.”
“That’s nice of you.” He led her back to the living room. “As I explained when I called, I haven’t decided for sure I’ll be selling, but I did want to get an idea of how much it might be worth.”
“I understand,” she replied. “I think you might be pleasantly surprised by how much you can get for it.”
Actually, he had a very good idea of what his condo was worth, and was curious as to how close she would come to the figure he had in mind.
In the living room, he invited her to sit on the couch facing the view while he took the chair to her right.
Looking around the room, she said, “I see you don’t smoke. That’s a plus. Smoking is a nasty habit, and the smell gets into everything. I finally broke my husband of the habit, but it was a real battle.”
He smiled. “I can imagine.”
“What is it that you do for a living, Mr. Smith?” she asked as she laid her portfolio on the seat beside her, hastily adding, “if you don’t mind my asking.”
“I’m a contractor,” he said, “which is how I came upon your brother-in-law’s building.”
A quick look of discomfort crossed her face like a suppressed belch, but she merely nodded and said, “I see.”
“How long have you been with Brighton?”
“I only started with them recently,” she said proudly, “but I’ve been in the business for over ten years. I was with Prentice five years before I came to Brighton, and had my own office—Hightower Realty—for a while before that.”
Paul had told him Aaron helped set her up in business, but he decided not to mention it.
“Interesting,” he said instead. “I have a friend who speaks very highly of Gunderson and Polk out on Foster. Are you familiar with them? A friend recommended them, but they’re quite a distance away.”
She did not so much as blink. “There are so many realtors in Chicago,” she said with a studied smile and, he noticed, without answering his question.
He resisted the temptation to follow up on it, since he didn’t want her to feel this was an interrogation. Instead, when he saw her looking over his shoulder at the painting of Steve’s brother above the buffet in the dining area, he said, “It is nice, isn’t it?”
Breaking off her stare, she replied, “Very. Your friend Steve did it, I assume?”
“Yes. He specializes in landscapes and still life,” Elliott said. “Your husband is a painter, too, I understand.”
She brightened a bit and said, “Yes, mostly portraits. He’s done some wonderful paintings of our family.”
“That would include his brother Aaron, I assume?”
Her discomfort was evident, as though he’d dipped his hand into a bucket of eels and handed her one. But though it cracked slightly, her shield remained up.
“Our immediate family,” she amended. “My husband and his brother were not that close.”
“Ah,” Elliott said. “I’m sorry to hear that. From what I’ve heard, Aaron was a very nice and generous man.”
The crack in her shield widened briefly, allowing him a glimpse of the glacier beneath the artificially sunny surface.
“I’m afraid you’ve heard wrong,” she said, her tone reminding him of his third-grade teacher admonishing a gum-chewer. “His brother was a selfish, demanding…” She stopped and took a deep breath before continuing. Apparently anticipating his response, she said, “The fact that he was homosexual had nothing to do with it. Nothing at all. I’m sure you know just being a homosexual does not make one a saint. Aaron did nothing but thwart my husband at every turn, and, frankly, though I am ashamed as a good Christian woman to say it, I cannot be sorry he is dead.”
“Again, I’m sorry to hear that,” Elliott said. “From what I’d heard of him, I never would have gotten that impression. It’s hard to imagine someone so selfish and demanding dying of a broken heart.”
She looked at him sharply. “A broken heart?” she asked incredulously, and with no little contempt in her voice.
Ignoring it, Elliott said, “A woman who lived in the building and knew him quite well is convinced that’s what killed him. I’m sure you knew that his partner, Bill Somers, disappeared two weeks before Aaron died, and was himself found dead a month later. Had you ever met Bill?”
He could tell she was increasingly uncomfortable with the conversation and that only her reluctance to lose a prospective commission kept her from bolting.
“We never met him. Aaron tried to force a meeting a few times, all but demanding we come to dinner, but we declined. My husband is a man of strong principles.”
He chose not to s
peculate on the implications of that non sequitur.
“I didn’t mean to pry,” Elliott said, rather surprised she had given him as much information as she had. “I’m just trying to learn more about Bill, and Aaron, and what might have happened. Bill’s death was ruled a suicide, but I suspect it was murder.”
She reacted as though she’d been slapped. “Surely, you’re not implying…”
“No, no, no,” he assured her. “Of course not. I just thought you might be able to give me some insight into Bill and Aaron that might help me understand what might have led to Bill’s death.”
She abruptly closed her notebook and replaced it in the portfolio, which she zipped closed. Picking it up, she stood without looking at him, studiously smoothing her dress as though she were brushing away cat hairs.
“Well,” she said, attempting a realtor-warm smile and failing, “I’ve taken up enough of your time. Let me get some figures worked up and I’ll call you. I’m sure we can get you top dollar. And I can arrange a showing of some available smaller properties, if you’re interested.”
Getting up to walk her to the door, he said, “Thank you. I appreciate it, and I’ll look forward to hearing from you.”
They shook hands at the door, and she left.
* * *
Interesting meeting.
Oh, yeah. And it got me exactly nowhere. I’d make one piss-poor cop, I can tell you that.
But what does your gut tell you?
Everything comes back to who, if anybody other than Bill and Aaron, knew about the wills. If nobody did, Jim Babcock strikes me as maybe the prime suspect. Brad told me he didn’t even know about Aaron until shortly before Bill disappeared. He told Brad they’d had a minor disagreement on the day before he vanished. I wonder if it might have had anything to do with the will or Bill’s intention to dissolve the partnership.
Either way, if he knew Bill was going to change his will and leave his share of the business to Aaron—and I still don’t know for sure that’s what he was going to do, though its logical—then he would have good reason to kill him before the will was changed.
I suppose, but…
I know, we’re in how-many-angels-can-dance-on-the-head-of-a-pin territory here, but, hey, if I can’t grab at straws, I’m screwed.
And the lovely Miss Hightower and her husband?
I wouldn’t put anything past them, either. But why kill Bill? If they were going to kill somebody to get Aaron’s money, why not just kill him?
I can think of a couple of reasons. Killing Aaron would probably put them under a police microscope. Bruce had to have known about Aaron’s heart condition, and that he could go any time. All they had to do was wait for the inevitable, which would be, and was, hastened by his losing Bill.
But greedy people don’t usually like to wait. And if they were going to kill someone, better Bill than Aaron. Especially if they thought Aaron might be intending to leave everything to Bill
I suppose that’s true. Killing Bill instead of Aaron would put a bit of space between them and the murder. But why would they put Bill somewhere he wouldn’t be easily found? You’d think that if they killed him, they’d want the body to be found as soon as possible, hoping the shock would cause Aaron to have a heart attack. So, why put Bill in that particular garage?
* * *
Elliott awoke with a start. There was something Brad had said early on, about the house behind which Bill had been found. He rummaged through his brain to find it, and finally did—the house had been in the final days of escrow at the time Bill died, but the escrow had fallen through at the last minute.
Timing was the key, and after four years, it wouldn’t be easy to trace. If Bill did, indeed, die just before the scheduled close of escrow, the new owners would have moved in and discovered his body the minute they went into the garage. And learning of Bill’s death almost certainly could have triggered a fatal heart attack in Aaron. Bill would be dead, Aaron would be dead, and Bruce would inherit Aaron’s money as sole surviving relative.
Taking that line of thought one step farther, if Aaron and Bill had changed their wills and Bill died first, Aaron would undoubtedly have gotten the bulk of Bill’s estate, which in turn would have passed on to Bruce when Aaron died. Bruce needn’t even have specifically known whether Aaron was Bill’s heir or not—it was a fairly reasonable assumption.
A glance at the clock showed it was 4:50 a.m.—far too early to call Brad. He wanted to get back to sleep to pick up his conversation with John, but his mind was far too active for sleep. Finally, at 5:40, he got up, made coffee, and sat in his living room watching the sun rise over the lake.
That Bruce and/or his wife had killed Bill and hastened Aaron’s death was, the more he thought of it, almost patently obvious. He couldn’t understand how he hadn’t realized it the minute he heard Marylinn was in real estate. He thought of Poe’s classic tale, “The Purloined Letter,” and the fact that people tend to ignore what’s right in front of their noses precisely because it’s too obvious.
And he knew what was obvious now would not have been so four years ago when the links were not so clear. Brad and the police, at the time, and especially with Aaron also dead, had no way of recognizing them.
He carefully went over what he knew in the same detailed manner as he reviewed bids and estimates on a property, seeing how the facts interrelated with one another and how they fit into the overall picture.
If Aaron and Bill were considering buying a house, as Mrs. Reinerio and Paul had indicated, one major question was why Bill, who undoubtedly knew about the animosity Bruce and his wife had toward Aaron, would ever have selected Marylinn to show him a property?
Then, he thought about Aaron’s having helped set Marylinn up in business—a real estate office, he was certain. He reflected on Aaron’s incomprehensible generosity toward people who treated him with contempt. With that in mind, he might have made one more attempt to gain his brother’s approval. One that may well have led to Bill’s death.
All Marylinn needed to know was that the house was empty and the garage open. She could easily have found out the property was in escrow, and when it was scheduled to close. What she couldn’t know was that the escrow would fall through and the house would remain empty, and Bill’s body would not be immediately discovered. Once that happened, to call someone’s attention to the body in the garage would have been too risky.
The realization that all of this—every bit of it—was pure speculation, all circumstantial at best, washed over him once more.
Returning his empty cup to the kitchen, he went down the hall to shower and get ready for work. As he stood in the shower, he pondered whether to call Brad before work. Brad had ready access to information he knew Elliott would have a hard time getting—records on showings of the house on North Lovejoy, other houses in the area for sale at the time, and the realtors who listed them. He was particularly curious as to whether there might have been any listings with Hightower Realty at that time.
He also wanted to ask if Brad might remember noting any other houses in the area being for sale at the time Bill’s body was discovered. However, it would be a stretch if he did four years after the fact, and he would surely want to know why Elliott wanted to know.
He had no illusions about his total lack of talent as a detective, or his lack of desire to become one. He just wanted to find out who killed Bill Somers, send Aaron off to wherever it was he was supposed to go, sell the property, and get on with his life.
* * *
He couldn’t tell during work on Wednesday if he was subconsciously mulling over the events of the night before and his conviction the Stiles were responsible not only for Bill’s death, but Aaron’s as well. He was aware of a subtle but definite something he could not pin down. It was like the indefinable feeling people sometimes get when a summer storm is brewing. But summer was gone, and the day was sunny.
No one else seemed aware of it. He remained alert, anticipating and dreading some sort
of demonstration from Aaron, but there was nothing. Still, the feeling persisted until quitting time and he left for home. He realized he’d never gotten around to calling the lawyer.
* * *
He had arranged for Steve to meet him in front of the building that evening, and from there they headed directly for the restaurant. Finding a place in the parking lot, Elliott turned off the engine and reached under the seat for Steve’s card and present.
“You didn’t have to get me anything!” Steve protested, though he was obviously pleased. Grinning as he read the card, he reached over to vigorously rub Elliott’s thigh, ending with two quick pats. “Thank you!”
He then turned his attention to the package, being careful not to tear the paper.
“Scent!” he said when he read the name on the box. “Terrific! I was down to my last few drops and was planning to take out a loan to buy some more. Thank you!”
Elliott returned his grin. “Not total altruism,” he said. “You know when you wear it I get like a cat in a field of catnip.”
“Well, in that case I’d put some on now, but we’d better eat dinner first.”
“Probably a good idea,” he said. “Oh, and next time you’re near the Art Institute, stop at the will-call—there’s a membership card for you there.”
“You’re kidding! That’s fantastic! How can I thank you?”
“You don’t have a clue?”
“Oh. Yeah. Silly me. You wanna go into the back seat?”
Elliott laughed. “After dinner, maybe.”
He opened the car door while Steve put the cologne back in its box and slid it and the card under the seat for safekeeping. He waited at the front of the car for Steve to join him.
* * *
As they sat at the bar having a drink while waiting for their table, Steve said, “Well, I thank you for all this. I really do. It’s just what I needed after the last couple of days.”
