When he entered the kitchen, Josie turned to see a completely different man striding toward her. Now he was wearing tennis whites, including a cable-knit sweater and long pants, as if he were Bill Tilden playing in the ’20s.
“Are you playing tennis today?” Josie asked.
Tim looked down at himself, as if considering the question an odd one. “Ah, no. I dressed to watch a match later.” He went to an incredibly complex coffee machine and started fiddling around. It looked like it could manufacture widgets or launch a missile, but soon the smell of strong coffee filled the air. Josie was wondering if he was crazy, a term she no longer used lightly, given her own diagnosis.
He turned to her with a brilliant smile. “Do you like your espresso neat or with some milk?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “I’ve never had espresso.”
“Oh, darling. That is sad. Let’s start you off with a latte so we don’t blow a hole through your head.” Josie wondered why he put it that way. Had he recently blown a hole through Kelly’s head?
More fiddling as he blended some milk into a froth. He finally placed their drinks on the counter and settled on a stool next to her. “What would you like to ask me about my sister?”
“I discovered you hadn’t been interviewed when Lauren was arrested, and I thought that was odd. Your parents weren’t either.”
Tim somberly took a sip of his coffee in its tiny cup. She watched for his pinkie finger to extend, and there it went. She was no stranger to weirdness when it came to interviewing people, but this guy was impossible to tag as one thing or the other.
“Well, my parents are sailing around the world in their own boat, so they’re impossible to reach. They’ve been gone for ages. I tried to reach them when Kelly was murdered but couldn’t find a way to get a radio or satellite message to them. They didn’t leave any of that information for us. I don’t think the police even tried. My parents still don’t know Lauren was arrested and tried for murder. And as for me, the police never got in touch. I was a little insulted, to tell you the truth.”
“You could have gone to them,” Josie said. “Wouldn’t you want to say something to them to support your sister?”
He looked at Josie as if she’d asked him to roll in the mud with his tennis whites on.
“It’s understandable you wouldn’t know any of the family history, but rest assured, I wouldn’t support my sister. It was too bad for her my parents weren’t in town when this happened. They would have done anything to make the situation go away. Bad for business, you know,” he said bitterly, before falling silent, staring into his espresso cup. “You’ll have to excuse me, but I really can’t talk any further about my family.”
“I’m sorry if I brought up a tough subject, Mr. Wade. But I have to ask whether you believe Lauren was capable of murdering her partner?”
He returned to his relaxed demeanor. “Absolutely. I think my sister’s capable of anything. She’s proved that over and over again. If something infuriated her, I could see her pulling the trigger.” He sprang off his stool and looked at Josie. “I wish I could invite you for some dinner, but I’m off to Midtown Tennis Club. There’s a tournament starting tonight and I like to watch.”
Josie stopped at the door. “Can we meet again when you have more time? Maybe for coffee somewhere?”
“I’m not sure I see the point, but I’d be delighted. I’d love to hear how you’re getting on.” He reached for a stack of cards on an antique table in the foyer. “Feel free to give me a call. I think you’re on a wild goose chase. Lauren’s the murderer, I’m sure of that. You won’t find anyone else.”
“Why didn’t you tell the police that?” Josie asked.
“She’s still family. I’m loyal to family.”
That didn’t make much sense. How could he be loyal to and hate his sister at the same time? Greta would say something about “enmeshment,” a state of family fucked-upness Josie’s family suffered from as well. Or so Greta said.
Tim opened the door. “One last question, then,” Josie said. “Where were you between seven and ten o’clock on the evening of Kelly Moore’s murder?”
Tim grinned as he pulled out his iPhone. “This is great. I’m a big fan of the TV crime shows. Did you know in France they call them ‘Les Policiers’? I love that.” He tapped at his phone for a moment. “What day was that, again?”
“February fifteenth,” Josie said, curious he hadn’t already considered his alibi. Or maybe this was another act, which was more likely.
“Hmm. Unfortunately my phone says I had no events that day. Kind of sad. Also, pretty inconvenient in terms of an alibi. At this point I have no idea what I was doing that day.”
“Do you keep any kind of personal journal? That might jog your memory.”
“God, no. I don’t want to go noodling around in my brain. It’s best to keep things as they are.”
Josie was quite sure there was room for improvement there. She took one of his cards and left the house. Once in her car, she jotted down what had happened before she forgot any details. Tim was definitely weird, but crazy might be a stretch. Clearly the Wade family had strained relationships, particularly between Lauren and Tim. All she knew was there was an extremely odd son and a possibly murderous daughter, and neither could be trusted in what they said about the other.
She’d start all over in the morning, trying again for an appointment with Lauren, who was guarded more fervently than the pope. She’d tried all day on Friday, but Lauren’s assistant said no each time and there was no getting beyond that. She’d keep trying.
*
A few hours later, Josie strolled into Tillie’s to meet Lucy. In two minutes of conversation the day before, Lucy had made Josie feel as safe with someone as she’d remembered ever feeling. Maybe Greta did, too, but Greta felt more like a mother figure, whatever it was that was supposed to feel like. Lucy was someone she would date, a word as foreign to her as “relax.” She’d called to ask her to meet her at Tillie’s, and Lucy had eagerly agreed.
They sat at the bar, nearly empty as the Bears game was over and its result no cause for celebration. The stereotype that queers didn’t like sports was simply crap. You couldn’t move in this place on game day. Josie hated stereotypes. She grew up hearing them every day from her father, who seemed encyclopedic in his knowledge of how to lump a group of people together in the most unflattering way possible. She remembered how red her face turned during the time she was in uniform, on-site at a murder her father was the lead detective on. The victim was an Orthodox Jew, the blood from a gut shot turning his white tzitzis dark red. Every stereotype about Jews came tumbling out of her father’s mouth, as if they were standing in 1939 Munich rather than West Rogers Park. Josie could hear the other uniforms nervously laughing around her.
She realized she was brooding, so she turned toward Lucy, glass in hand.
“Cheers,” she said, watching as Lucy’s eyes locked onto hers. “I better drink this while it’s cold, since I only get the one a day.”
They drank, and Lucy put her mug down first. “I was pretty certain you were alcoholic before…”
“My hospitalization,” Josie finished. “Don’t dance around it for my sake.”
“Okay. But you must not be an alcoholic if you can stop at one a day.”
“What if I was an alkie then but not now?” Josie was teasing, but Lucy looked at her earnestly. She was adorable.
“You can’t be alcoholic and then not an alcoholic. It’s like unringing a bell,” Lucy said.
“Yeah, I know that actually. My mom is a stone alcoholic. My dad, too. That probably tells you a lot, doesn’t it?” Still, Josie started to find the focus on it a bit irritating.
“I can’t imagine you escaped the disease with the background you have,” Lucy said.
“What difference does it make to you whether I’m alcoholic or not?”
Lucy watched as Josie pushed her beer away from her. “It matters a great deal. I make it a po
licy to never date an alcoholic.”
They were sitting on bar stools facing each other, knees touching. There was that word “date” again.
“You look apoplectic,” Lucy said. “If this isn’t a date, say so. You made it sound like one when you called.”
“I did?” Josie looked perplexed.
“Yes, you absolutely did. You had a flirty tone to your voice,”
Maybe she hadn’t lost her swagger after all.
“I can’t say it’s not a date,” Josie said.
Lucy laughed and picked up her beer. “Pardon me while I swoon. A sentence with two negatives in it makes my heart soar.”
Josie shrugged. “Stopping by Tillie’s for a beer isn’t a proper date. I planned to ask you out while we were here.”
Lucy’s smile was brilliant, transforming her plain face into something entirely desirable. “That would be great. I was hoping you felt that way.”
“It’s only a date,” Josie said, turning her head away from Lucy. “Don’t order the U-Haul yet.” Talk about stereotyping. Lucy laughed.
The bartender came over to clear away their empty mugs and wipe the counter. Josie knew bartenders were usually fonts of information.
“Kris, you must know a bit about the Kelly Moore murder. What do you think about it?”
Kris was a big woman who played on the offensive line for the Chicago women’s professional football team. You wouldn’t want to be in her way once she had a head of steam behind her. But she was a popular bartender and people told her things.
“What do I think? I don’t think about it, is what I think. I only know one of my regular customers got shot and killed.”
“Kelly came in here a lot?” Josie prodded.
“Yeah. Over the last year or so. Hell, I saw you putting the moves on her soon after she started hanging here.”
Josie blushed, which was all shame and nothing about flattery.
“I have a terrible memory, you know that,” Josie said. Lucy looked empathetic.
“Well, you struck out, Ace. I remember the look on your face when she walked out the door,” Kris said.
“It must have been an off night for you,” Lucy said.
“I also saw what was going on with Kelly and that tall girl she cheated with,” Kris said. “I think her name’s Ann-Marie. I kept my eye on that because Gabby and me are friends. She’s a medic for the football team.”
Lucy looked like she was settling around a campfire for a good story.
“When did you start noticing that?” Josie said.
“Hell, I don’t know. Not long before Kelly was murdered.”
“Did you tell Gabby you thought Ann-Marie and Kelly were sleeping together?”
“Honey, there was no sleep involved where they were concerned,” Kris said. “They both lived with their girlfriends and had to get in before curfew. But no, I wasn’t gonna get in the middle of that. I seen the way Gabby treated Ann-Marie, well before she found out she was cheating on her. Looked like there were some issues to work out.”
Kris wiped down the bar, an autonomic action for a bartender, like breathing.
“How did Gabby treat Ann-Marie?” Josie asked. “Was she abusive?”
“I don’t think many people noticed, but I notice a lot. One night Gabby grabbed onto Ann-Marie’s arm and held it hard. There were a few times she pulled on her hand and led her out of the bar.”
“And she’s a friend of yours?”
Kris gave her a sharp eye. “I don’t judge.”
“Do you think she was aware of Kelly and Ann-Marie having a thing going?”
Kris shrugged again. “Don’t know. I’d guess no, since they were still coming to the bar together, and Gabby would have gone ballistic hearing about Ann-Marie and Kelly. She was hard on Ann-Marie, you could tell. I didn’t like that much. But I think Gabby was too dense to pick up on anything going on.
“Like I said,” Kris continued, “it seems like both Gabby and Lauren Wade had cause to be upset. I don’t know Lauren, so I can’t tell you whether I think she’d murder Kelly. But I can’t see Gabby doing something like that either.”
Kris got called down to the end of the bar. “Why couldn’t she see Gabby doing that?” Lucy asked. “She just got done telling us how Gabby was abusive.”
Josie looked at Lucy. It almost felt like Lucy was a partner, helping her sort through a case, having her back, caring. Maybe it was something more than a partner? She’d never flirted or had sex sober that she could remember, never knew whether desire was real or the result of the mass quantities of alcohol she’d been drinking. She wondered if it was desire she was starting to feel with Lucy, who winked at her as she looked her way.
“Definitely something to look into,” Josie said. She was excited to have any kind of lead. She’d seen in the police file there’d been a brief interview of Gabby, who didn’t have an alibi for the time of the murder.
The bar was filling up again and Josie and Lucy moved their stools closer to one another. Josie ordered a couple of Diet Cokes and they got down to the business of getting to know each other. Most of what she learned about Lucy was delightful, with the possible exception that she was a social worker. That meant another set of knowing eyes and ears on her, keeping tabs on how she was managing her disease. She liked to have options, to hide her moods, to lie about them if it suited her. She had a feeling Lucy would be able to see through all that. Still, she allowed herself to be charmed by Lucy’s openness, her red hair, her brilliant smile, and the simple fact she seemed to like Josie for who she was.
Chapter Fourteen
Monday, September 9
Josie walked toward the exit of Acme Insurance Company, thinking the name was about as old-fashioned as the people who worked there and the equipment they used. She was sure she saw a secretary typing on a Selectric. Perhaps the company was founded by Road Runner. But her first freelance contract was clutched in her hand, so she didn’t concern herself with the office’s decrepitude. They paid in US tender. She’d already called on three insurance companies that morning and hadn’t gotten any contracts; by the time she hit Acme she wasn’t picky about who she’d work for.
The man who’d given her the contract, a paunchy, humorless middle manager named Fredrick, looked like an Obersturmfürher in WWII. Josie’s rates beat anyone else’s and Acme had plenty of insurance fraud cases to investigate; he didn’t care about her inexperience and she didn’t care how mean he was. The case she’d been assigned was a typical worker’s compensation matter. Acme felt steel worker Bill Swanson was faking a lower back injury and wanted Josie to film him doing something that showed his back was perfectly fine. How hard could that be? She’d stake him out and catch him mowing the lawn or something. Then Mr. Swanson would be back on the second shift.
She went back to her office to pick up her camcorder and head out to the Swansons’. She wanted to get that check cashed. After she finished there she needed to interview Gabby and Lauren Wade. She also needed to give the whole case a good think, which she could do while staking out the Swansons’.
As she stepped into the hallway of her office building, she saw Stan Waterman locking his door. He turned when he heard her and a big smile creased his face.
“Josie! I expected we’d be running into each other. I haven’t seen you since you opened up.” He walked toward her as she put her key in the door of her office. She’d been expecting this chat.
“Hey, Stan,” she said, walking into the outer office. “I’ve been pretty busy. In fact, I’m only stopping by to pick something up before I’m out on the job again.” She walked into her private office, not surprised to hear him follow, uninvited. The trouble was, Stan was such a sweet man she always found it impossible to ignore him, as much as she’d like to. Stan took a seat in front of her desk.
“Hold up a sec,” he said. “Don’t you have time to say hello to an old friend?”
Stan was in his late fifties, same as her dad. He had a saggy face and nearly white
hair, which made him look older. He was still nimble as hell, though. It wasn’t much more than a year ago that Josie heard about him tackling some perp who’d slipped past her father. Stan saving Jack’s reputation once again. His longtime association with her father made her wary of him. But thankful, too. She knew Stan had tried to temper Jack’s Neanderthal beliefs, a Sisyphean task if ever there was one.
Josie sat behind her desk and tried not to sigh. She pulled her camcorder out of a desk drawer and fiddled with it to remind Stan how busy she was.
“Sure, I can take a minute. Then I have to go out on a bad-back case. It’s very hard to stand the excitement.” She didn’t know if Stan would catch the sarcasm.
“It looks like you’ve gotten off to a good start,” he said. “Those bad-back cases are bread and butter. Infidelity, too. That’s a huge part of what we do.”
Josie looked up at him. “What’s with the ‘we’? I thought you were on your own.”
“For the most part, I am,” Stan said, looking as comfortable in her cheap visitors chair as he would on a chaise lounge. “I hired a young ex-cop to pick up my overflow work, but he’s worthless. I took his word he left the job because he didn’t like the chain of command. Found out later he’d washed out.”
Silence. Josie was reasonably sure Stan hadn’t purposely steered the conversation to her own departure from the police. But there they were.
“I’m sorry,” he said, leaning forward. “I wasn’t thinking how leaving the job would be a sore spot.”
Josie smiled wanly. “It’s not so much how I left. I could’ve stayed if I accepted a desk job. I’m more sensitive about all the stupid shit I did before that.”
Stan waved it away, as if Josie drunkenly trying to seduce a commander in a banquet hall women’s room was merely a blip on the screen. But Josie knew it was a big fucking blip.
The Aquittal Page 9
