by Ian K. Smith
“His movements don’t make sense to me,” I said, still studying the chart. “Tinsley called him seven days after she never showed up at the Morgan house. They speak for thirty-three seconds. His tower had him in the South Loop. Then fifteen minutes later his phone hits the tower in Hyde Park.”
“She called him to come see her, so he went,” Carolina said.
“But where was she in Hyde Park? Where did they meet? And why were both of their phones turned off not too long after he arrived in Hyde Park?”
I wondered if his phone was turned off because he had been killed. But why was hers turned off, when I was convinced she was still alive? Was I seeing this all wrong, and she was actually dead too?
“You just need that one person to come forward who had seen or talked to him,” Carolina said. “That could be your break.”
“Someone definitely saw him, and someone definitely talked to him. And that someone obviously doesn’t want us to know that.”
By the time the waiters had come to clear our plates, we had already decided on dessert. Carolina chose the key lime pie, and I chose the german chocolate cake. The red tufted banquets in the main dining room were completely full as the restaurant swung into overdrive. The conversations were robust, drinks were poured generously, and the bar was packed three deep. I was content being on the patio alone with Carolina under the lights of the city and warmth of our heat lamp.
“What are you going to do about the Hertz rental car?” Carolina asked. “I tried to access their database, but we don’t have an arrangement with them. I’d have to submit official paperwork to get some answers.”
“I can’t make it out, but there’s something suspicious about that truck. Shows up earlier in the day, then shows up later that night. Doesn’t compute.”
“How did the PODs miss it?”
“Because it never drove all the way down South Wallace to Sixty-Ninth Street. It turned into South Wallace, then backed up on Seventieth, and drove away going east. All of the POD cameras are on Sixty-Ninth and Seventy-First. The church’s camera got the driver but couldn’t get the face behind the dark glass.”
“What’s your plan to get the rental company to give you the driver’s information?”
“Still working on it,” I said. “But it’s also possible that it wasn’t a rental at all. An employee could’ve been driving it.”
“Employees are allowed to drive rental cars off property?”
“That’s what I intend on finding out tomorrow morning.”
Dessert was placed in front of us, and our attack was instantaneous.
“You have plans for later tonight?” I asked.
“Maybe running ten miles to burn off this dinner.” She smiled.
“There’s a treadmill and elliptical in my building.”
“But I don’t have a change of clothes.”
“Then I can think of another way to burn off the calories. Doesn’t require any clothes at all.”
48
THE NEXT MORNING, I set out early for the Hertz lot at O’Hare Airport. All the city locations were closed on Sunday, but the one at the airport was open around the clock. I parked my car in the visitor lot and looked through the windows of the mostly deserted office. It was important that I not make my move until I found the right employee. I probably had only one chance to get this right. After ten minutes of carefully observing workers who entered and left the office, I found my mark. He was an older man with fair skin, average height, shoulders slightly hunched, and his blue baseball cap tilted nonchalantly to the side. He had come in several times to drop off keys to the agents sitting behind the counter. He moved like someone who had all the time in the world. I imagined he enjoyed sitting in a barbershop watching ESPN and debating who would win the next Super Bowl or NBA championship. He looked affable enough.
I cut through the office and out the side door to the parking lot where all the cars were stored. I met my mark as he was about to get into a shiny black Chrysler sedan.
“Nice car,” I said, approaching the driver’s side. He had just opened the door. His name tag said CLIFF. “Is that the new three hundred?”
“Brand spanking,” Cliff replied. “Less than a hundred miles on it. Floor mats still in the plastic.”
“I like what they did with the body,” I said. “The lines are nicer, not as boxy as it used to be. Real slick.”
“She drives as nice as she looks,” he said, taking a cloth from his back pocket and wiping down the chrome along the window. He stood back and admired with me. “Can’t even feel the road underneath the tires. Like she’s floating on air.”
“I haven’t driven one in a while,” I said. “My father used to own one. He wouldn’t let me touch it.”
“I got my first one the year after I got married. White exterior, leather red interior, a set of whitewall tires. They used to come out the houses when they heard I was coming down the street. Prettiest car I ever owned.”
“Have you gotten a chance to get one of these new ones out on the open road?” I asked.
“Just a little,” he said. “Only on the access road between here and the airport terminals. We can’t take the cars on the highway. Insurance regulations.”
“I might have to change my car and give this a try.”
“What they put you in?”
“Something like a Hyundai or a Kia.”
“No comparison,” Cliff said, shaking his head. “Different class altogether. Compared to this, riding one of them is like riding a go-kart. My money’s not what it needs to be right now, but the minute I get myself together, I’m gonna pick up one of these bad boys. That you can believe.”
“Too bad they never let you guys take these cars home overnight.”
“Never,” Cliff said, shaking his head. “Corporate don’t want no liability with employees getting into an accident with one of their cars.”
“That’s too bad,” I said. “You can’t even sneak it home late at night when no one’s looking?”
“Not a chance in hell,” he said. “We used to do that back in the day—wait till the managers left for the day, then drive out the back lot. Didn’t have no cameras back then. But they got hip to us. Now they put cameras around the entire property and buried a computer chip in all the cars. Every time a car leaves the lot, the chip is scanned, and they can tell down to the second when the car rolled out and when it gets returned. You can’t outsmart all these fancy computers and programs they got now.”
I had part of the answer I needed. “Well, you take it easy,” I said. “Next time I get a chance, I’m gonna try that three hundred.” We shook hands, and Cliff climbed into the car and drove away.
I walked back into the office and up to a desk clerk who had an empty counter. The woman wore a pair of bright-blue reading glasses around her neck on a matching beaded chain. She took them off when I approached.
“How can I help you?” she asked.
“I was trying to locate a car,” I said.
“You want to rent a particular car?”
“I rented a car a couple of weeks ago, and I liked it a lot. I wanted to see if I could rent it again.”
“Unlikely we have that exact car, but we probably have something in the same class. Can I get your driver’s license?”
I was worried she would ask me this. “I don’t have it on me,” I said. “But I know the license plate of the car.”
“I can bring the car up that way, but I can’t rent you anything unless you have a driver’s license on you.”
“I completely understand. Can you at least see if that class of car is here?”
“Sure.”
I gave her the license plate. She typed on her keyboard some and moved her mouse. She shook her head. “Unfortunately, that specific car isn’t here,” she said. “Black Suburban. It’s up in Minneapolis. But I have another car just like it. Different color but same make and model.”
“Color doesn’t matter to me,” I said. “I’ll come back wit
h my license a little later. Thanks for all your help.”
I went back to my car and sat there for a while. Several planes must’ve landed, because a surge of people filed into the office. I continued to watch. Then something caught my eye. There was a special number for something called Club Gold members. I decided to give it a try and called it. The first three agents shut me down, but the fourth was a charm.
“I was hoping you could help me locate an item I left in a car,” I said. “It’s a small flash drive that fell out of my bag. It might’ve fallen between the seats.”
“You’re talking about one of those small storage devices you stick into the computer?” she said.
“Exactly. I have some very important work information on it, and I can’t afford to lose it.”
“We have a number you can call for lost and found,” she said. “Let me get that for you. They can tell you if anything has been turned in.”
“Well, I just returned the car a couple of hours ago,” I said. “So, I’m planning on driving back out to the location to see if it’s there. It’s so small, they could’ve easily missed it when they cleaned the car, especially if it’s under the seat.”
“Going to the location might be your best bet,” she said. “It can take a while for recovered items to show up in the system.”
“Before I go back out there, I was just wondering if the car is still on the premises or if it’s already been rented to someone else.”
“The turnaround shouldn’t be that fast unless they get slammed. Let me check. Can you give me your gold number?”
“It’s stored in my phone, and I’m driving. Can I give you the license plate number, and you can look it up that way?”
“Sure, what’s the tag?”
I gave her the number.
“That’s strange,” she said.
“What’s strange?” I asked.
“When did you say you returned it?”
“A couple of hours ago?”
“To what location?”
“O’Hare Airport.”
“I think you’ve given me the wrong tag number,” she said. “This car was returned to O’Hare almost two weeks ago. Are you Mr. Robert Merriweather?”
“Robert Merriweather?”
“That’s who rented this car and dropped it off at O’Hare.”
“I must’ve copied down the wrong tag number,” I said. “Thanks for all your help. I’ll sort it all out when I get to the facility.”
49
I DROVE STRAIGHT BACK to the office and booted my computer. It was Sunday morning, so traffic was light. I typed Robert Merriweather into the search engine, and it returned over 390,000 hits. I scrolled through the first couple of pages, then gave up. I needed something else to tighten the search. I tried Robert Merriweather Chicago. That cut the results down by twenty-six thousand, but still a near impossible feat.
I sat there staring at the computer screen as if that were going to persuade it to speak the answer to me. I tried a couple of other search engines, but that didn’t help either.
I stared at the computer for a moment, then opened a Google search, but this time I typed Robert Merriweather Chicago, Illinois address. This cut the results in half, but it was still over a hundred thousand. Then something caught my eye. The article headline read Robert Merriweather Donates One Million Dollars to Lunch for All. Largest Single Donation in Organization’s History. I clicked on the article and read about the Healthy Schools Campaign, a small charitable organization whose signature program, Eat Well Live Well, put students front and center in the conversation about the school lunch program. This citywide program encouraged students to create healthy lunches that their peers would enjoy. The student chefs worked with mentors early in the school year, then late in fall had a cook-off at the Bridgeport Art Center, where supporters came and tasted the offerings from the participating schools. A panel of judges ranked the schools, with the first-place team winning a chance to compete in the national competition in Washington, DC.
In the middle of the page there was a picture of Merriweather surrounded by at least twenty children in chef aprons and hats. They stood in an enormous kitchen, with pots and pans hanging above them on a large metal rack. He was a tall, handsome man somewhere in his midfifties. He seemed very much at ease with the children. A couple of them had their arms around his shoulders, and he hugged them back. I had never heard of this man before, but that didn’t mean much. There were plenty of anonymous rich people in the city who lived their quiet life of luxury, only to pop up on the radar when doing something publicly philanthropic.
I went back to the search results and quickly scanned them, not sure what I was looking for but certain this approach was unlikely to bear fruit. After an hour of reading obituaries, searching numerous databases, and looking at several Merriweather family trees, I threw up the white flag and left the office.
CAROLINA AND I SAT down at Kanela’s, two blocks from my building. The aromas of sizzling bacon and fresh dough baking in the oven made the inside of my mouth tingle. We took a booth facing what used to be the River East Art Center. Several men in hard hats were at work across the street, trying to finish the construction on the new Carson’s Ribs restaurant.
“I didn’t know Carson’s was expanding,” Carolina said.
“They’re not,” I said. “They’re closing down their location over in River North and moving over here.”
“After forty years? I liked that old building. A throwback to the eighties.”
“Real estate is too expensive over there to keep a small restaurant on a corner lot. They’re putting up another high-rise.”
“How many more high-rises does that area need?” Carolina said. “The prices are already through the roof.”
“Welcome to the more-is-better world of real estate developers,” I said. “Build, build, build until there’s too much inventory; then the prices tumble, and everyone’s sitting with their banker, begging to refinance.”
The waiter came, and we placed our order. I chose the baked french toast with a crispy cinnamon crumble crust. Carolina ordered an egg white omelet with mushrooms, avocado, tomato, broccoli, onion, green pepper, and salsa verde. I suggested they change the name to a garden with egg omelet. The harried waitress didn’t get the joke.
“So, how will you find Robert Merriweather?” Carolina said.
“Short of hacking into the Hertz computer system?”
“Yes, short of that.” She laughed.
“Probably run his name through one of the county databases.”
“You should try the county’s Recorder of Deeds. All their records are available to the public. You might get a hit.”
“I guess it’s as good a place as any to try. But I can’t stop thinking about why someone who had rented a car drove it to that part of Englewood—not once, but twice.”
50
EARLIER IN THE AFTERNOON I had spent hours searching the Cook County Recorder’s website, but nothing came of it. I had no real plan B yet other than to find a vulnerable employee at Hertz and try to slip them some cash. I thought about Cliff, but he didn’t work with the computers. Then I got a call from Penny Packer.
“I just got back from playing Albany a couple of days ago,” Penny said. “The course was in terrific shape.”
Albany was an exclusive golf resort in New Providence, Bahamas, minutes away from the Packer’s winter compound. I had played it once, thanks to Penny’s husband, who had a complete disinterest in the game. It was one of the best golf courses in all the Caribbean.
“What did you shoot?” I asked.
“Seventy-nine the first day and seventy-eight the second.”
“Were those scores for nine or the whole eighteen?”
“Very funny,” she said. “I was in such a zone. My driver couldn’t miss. Twelve fairways in regulation. Felt good to be out. Temperature was perfect, each day in the eighties. You have to come back down with us this winter.”
“Have clubs w
ill travel,” I said.
“I called to ask you about the Gerrigan girl,” she said. “Whatever happened to her?”
“I’m still trying to figure it out,” I said. “Her boyfriend is dead, she still hasn’t shown up from what I can tell, and her mother fired me.”
“Fired you?”
“Walked into my office a few days ago and told me that my services were no longer needed.”
“Strange,” Penny said. “I just saw her last night, which is why I ask. We were at the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society dinner. She and Randy looked perfectly happy. Not a mention of Tinsley or anything that was happening.”
“I’m not surprised,” I said. “Their facade is thick as cinder block.”
“Robert and Cecily never mentioned anything either.”
“Who are they?”
“Cecily Morgan is Hunter’s mother, one of Violet’s best friends. Robert Merriweather is Hunter’s stepfather. I figured they might say something, but not a peep.”
“Say that again?”
“Which part?”
“The name of Hunter’s stepfather.”
“Robert Merriweather. He runs the VC firm Merriweather Capital Partners. Gives away a lot of money. Happens to be a scratch golfer too.”
“Do you know if he’s connected to a charity called Lunch for All?”
“Absolutely,” she said. “He was the one who founded it. He’s still on the board, but now it’s being run by their son, Weston. He took over after he and his wife moved back from Denmark.”
I barely heard a word she said after that. My mind was focused on only one question. Why was a prominent man like Robert Merriweather driving a rented Suburban in Englewood at the same location where Chopper McNair’s body was found?
51
MECHANIC SLOWLY PULLED OFF as I parked under a line of trees in front of an old yellow-brick house with freshly painted white shutters. He had pulled the graveyard shift with nothing to report. I figured something would be stirring soon as daylight reclaimed the sky.
The hedges lining the front lawn had been meticulously cut into an assortment of shapes and geometric designs that gave the illusion of something extraterrestrial. A fluffy gray poodle with grooming that seemed to match the hedges sat imperiously in the window. Only one car was parked on the entire block. It was a white Chrysler 300 with polished chrome. I thought about Cliff driving it slowly down this wide avenue, cap cocked to the side.
