by Ian K. Smith
I looked around the neighborhood and its display of sheer wealth. The scrubbed sidewalks and neatly trimmed parkway grass might as well have been on another planet compared to the vacant lots, dilapidated houses, and crumbling streets of Englewood. To think that two places, so far apart in so many ways, could suddenly come clashing together like this for all the wrong reasons.
I didn’t know how long I would have to wait, so I came prepared with my playlist and a series of golf video tutorials I had downloaded to my phone.
I was in the middle of Bruno Mars singing about twenty-four-karat magic in the air when the Morgan gate elegantly rolled open. A sporty silver 3 Series BMW stuck its nose cautiously out of the driveway before turning south toward Forty-Ninth Street. The brake calipers had been painted a deep burgundy to match the color of the convertible top. It was the same car Mechanic had photographed when they’d left their lunch at Chez Gautier.
Hunter Morgan wore a thick cotton sweatshirt and a black baseball cap. I fell in behind her, moving slowly through the neighborhood. After a quick five-minute drive through the center of the University of Chicago, she pulled into a parking spot on Fifty-Seventh Street just in front of a small row of storefronts that sat comfortably across from an elementary school and large park. The traffic was much heavier in this part of Hyde Park, with school buses cramming the narrow roads and students cycling to class. Caravans of strollers clogged the tight sidewalks.
Hunter walked into a place called Medici Bakery. I ducked into a spot across the street and killed the engine. I could see her through the bakery’s large windows. I waited until she had paid for her order before I entered.
Just as she was turning from the cashier, I pulled up next to her. She jumped back and fumbled with the brown bag in her hand. I smiled softly and invited her to take a seat at one of the high-top tables. Business in the tiny bakery was quite brisk.
“Have you talked to Tinsley lately?” I asked.
“You already know the answer to that,” she said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have asked.”
I smiled. “Cozy little place here.” The old metal ovens had probably been cranking since dawn. Three women sat in the small work area several feet behind the counter, kneading dough, dusting it in flour, then placing their creations on long baking sheets. “Come here often?” I asked.
“Couple of times a week,” Hunter said. “Their fresh blueberry muffins are killer.”
“But you have a cranberry muffin in front of you.”
“They only make blueberry twice a week, and you never know what those days are gonna be. I’ve complained a bunch, but it’s useless. Why would you make the most popular muffin in America only twice a week when most of the people who come here want that particular muffin? Go figure.”
“What did management say?”
“They allow their bakers to make the decision on what muffins they make each day.”
“Sounds pretty democratic.”
“Sounds like a way to lose money and customers.”
“But you keep coming.”
“And that’s what they count on. They know we’re a captive audience. So, they do whatever in the hell they want to do.”
I looked at the steady line of customers running from the cash registers to the door. Professors mixed with college students mixed with unsupervised kids from the elementary school loading up on sugar because their parents wouldn’t let them do it at home. The pastries in their display case were quickly disappearing, and the coffee machines were constantly humming.
A small group of kids took the table next to us. They were teasing each other and laughing and being loud like most kids are wont to do.
“Anything you care to share with me?” I said.
Hunter hiked her shoulders. “Like what?”
I smiled my most disarming smile. “You were pretty good,” I said with a wink. “But you made some mistakes.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Hunter said, taking a bite of the cranberry muffin and washing it down with a swallow of coffee.
“How about we start with Tinsley’s cell phone,” I said.
She stared back at me without expression.
“Tinsley actually came by your house that night,” I said. “You drove up to the shore, picked her up, and brought her down here. But for whatever reason she didn’t want to stay at your house. Whether you had an argument or not, I don’t know. But somehow, she left without her phone. Either she forgot it, or you swiped it.”
“You should try writing fiction,” she said with a smile. “You have a great imagination.”
“That’s what it took for me to figure it all out,” I said. “There were so many pieces I had, but I couldn’t make them fit. It was like they all belonged to a different puzzle.”
She looked down at her watch. “Don’t mean to be rude, but is this gonna take long? I have a lotta shit to do this morning.”
I shook my head. “Not long at all. My first stumbling block was her cell phone. I couldn’t understand why her cell phone popped up on the Hyde Park tower the same night she supposedly disappeared, the same night she was supposed to be spending the night at your house, the very same night you said she never showed up.”
“Like I told you before, she never showed up, and she didn’t call to say she wasn’t showing up. That wasn’t unusual for her.”
“So, she came all the way from the North Shore down here to Hyde Park and never let you know she was in the neighborhood, especially since she’s supposed to be sleeping over? Doesn’t make a lot of sense. Strange behavior for someone considered to be a best friend.”
“I don’t need a lecture from you on how best friends treat each other,” she said, folding her arms across her chest.
“Of course not, but that was the first sign that something wasn’t right with what you said the first time we spoke.”
“And that’s what you think proves I did something?” she said.
“No, that’s what got me thinking. Her cell phone is dead for seven days; then it pops back up again on a tower. Wanna take a guess where?”
“Surprise me.”
“Good ole Hyde Park,” I said. “About ten blocks from your house.”
She threw her hands up. “Earth-shattering.”
“At first it wasn’t, but then I got to thinking more about it. This time there’s a call going out. It connects to Chopper McNair. But the call only lasted thirty-three seconds. That was strange. Only thirty-three seconds.”
“I didn’t know there was a minimum time that a girlfriend and boyfriend had to speak to each other.”
“There isn’t, but what kept eating at me was the context behind what you just laid out. Tinsley has no contact with her boyfriend for a week; then when she does call him, she only speaks for thirty-three seconds? No text messages, no voice messages, just thirty-three seconds and the phone goes dead again. Not exactly the behavior you’d expect from two lovebirds. So, I start wondering what Tinsley is really up to. Maybe she had another boyfriend. Maybe she and Chopper were in a bad fight. Then out of nowhere, while we’re looking for Tinsley, Chopper is the one who shows up murdered.”
Hunter stared at me calmly, but I could see the tension forming around her eyes. Customers came and left with their pastries and yogurt parfaits and coffee. I pressed on.
“Were you in a panic after you shot him?” I asked.
“What the fuck are you talking about? I didn’t shoot Chopper.”
I knew that, but sometimes putting someone on the defensive made them reveal things they wouldn’t have otherwise.
“So, if you didn’t do it, who pulled the trigger? Was it your father?”
“You’re not making any sense,” she said. “My dad doesn’t even know Chopper.”
“Because Chopper and Tinsley knew about the illegal real estate deal,” I said.
“What real estate deal?”
“The one you all were fighting about at the dinner the night before she disappeared. T
he one that ran through his charity.”
Hunter stared at me. I knew I had connected the right dots, a small crack in her facade.
“Tinsley knew about the deal your father and her father put together. Her father donated a multimillion-dollar strip mall in Oak Park to your father’s charity, Lunch for All. Randolph Gerrigan gets a big tax break for his generosity. Then your father turns around and leases the mall back to one of Gerrigan’s companies. Problem is, your father never charges Gerrigan for the lease. Gerrigan gets use of the land free and continues collecting millions of dollars in rent from the mall’s tenants. I bet when they follow the money—and trust me, they will—some of that money Gerrigan was making was either kicked back to the charity or personally to your father.”
I paused for a moment to give Hunter a chance to say something. She didn’t. She sat there and just stared at me. It was the confirmation I needed that I had gotten it right.
“There’s still one thing I’m confused about. Who called Chopper from Tinsley’s phone? Was it you? It had to be someone Chopper knew. There were no defensive wounds on his body. The killer shot him at close range, which meant Chopper was comfortable enough with the person to let them get so close. I don’t know what you said to him, but I know he would come to you if you called. You used Tinsley’s phone as part of the ruse, to get him to answer, and whatever you said to him gave him hope that he would reunite with Tinsley. That was the bait.”
“You’re just making this up,” she said. “I haven’t seen Chopper for weeks. I had brunch in the South Loop with him and Tins. That was the last time I saw him.”
I kept pressing, trying to open the crack a little wider. “It takes some nerve to shoot someone point blank like that,” I said. “People can bring themselves to shoot someone at a distance. But when you’re close like that, I’ve heard murderers say that something changes inside of you. There’s this connection that forms if there isn’t one already. Then the guilt starts creeping in, because the person knows it’s you who’s gonna take their life.”
She shook her head and smirked as she measured my words.
“The ME said it only took one shot,” I said. “No signs of a struggle on the body, because there wasn’t time or need for a struggle. Chopper knew you. He trusted you. He never expected you to pull a gun on him. Then you drive to Englewood, looking for the darkest, most remote place to dump the body. You knew exactly where you wanted to drop him, because you had been there earlier that morning. Ten twenty-nine to be precise. What you didn’t realize, because this wasn’t something a rich sheltered girl would typically think about, was that there were cameras everywhere. A trust fund kid from Kenwood would have no reason to know or understand the POD grid. So, you find South Wallace that morning and decide it was as good a place as any to unload. Dark, desolate vacant lots and a crumbling wall underneath old train tracks.”
“Are you done yet?” she said, gathering her things to leave. “This is the most ridiculous shit I’ve ever heard.”
“You tried your best,” I said. “You got Chopper’s ring finger right, but you messed up on the tag.”
“What tag?” she said.
I could tell she was sincere. She really didn’t know about it. But I wanted to push her, so I stuck to the plan.
“The tag you marked on the body. It was a good try, though. When avoiding capture, lead the hunters in the opposite direction. You get him out of the car; then you remember you need to tag him, throw the hounds off the scent. So, you quickly tag the body with the Warlords’ crown. Now that was where your thinking earned you high marks. You knew that Chopper’s uncle runs the opposing Gangster Apostles, so make it look like a gang conflict. But it was also bad thinking, because the two gangs are respecting a peace right now, and a hit like this would never be approved. You wouldn’t know about that, either, because rich girls like you don’t really know the day-to-day of gang business. It’s dark and you’re panicking, and you don’t want anyone to see you. So, you draw the crown as quickly as possible, but you forget a minor detail that is actually a major detail, the most important part of the tag. The numbers two and nine. You either didn’t know about them or were in too much of a rush to draw them at the base corners of the crown. You jump back in the car and, for whatever reason—maybe the way his body had fallen and you couldn’t stomach rolling over it, or maybe there was something else you saw down the street that you didn’t like. Whatever the reason, you decide to back up out of South Wallace. So, you reverse onto Seventieth Street and head east to the expressway. All in seven minutes and fifteen seconds.”
Hunter stood up to leave. “I’ve entertained you long enough,” she said. “Everything you’re saying is a total lie and circumstantial at best.”
I pulled the still photograph of the rental car out of my jacket and placed it on the table. “You were smart about the rental car. The airport location is open twenty-four hours. You could bring it back anytime you wanted.”
She looked down at the photograph. This time the tell was in the way her shoulders stiffened. “That means absolutely nothing,” she said.
“So, was it your stepfather driving the rental car in Englewood that night? But that wouldn’t make sense according to you. You just said he doesn’t even know Chopper. Why would Chopper be in the car with someone he didn’t know, unless you were in the car with them?”
She sat back down and closed her eyes. I gave her time. She looked down at the picture again. The noisy children vacated the table next to us and rambled out the door. I always wondered what went through the mind of a guilty person when struggling to decide whether to continue the charade of innocence or admit their guilt.
“Tins just wouldn’t listen to me. She couldn’t see beyond him. She was so stubborn. She liked to come across as the perfect little angel, but she had her faults too. She could be really selfish. Dating him against everyone’s warnings, threatening everyone about the real estate deal—that was all because she wanted to prove a point. She made things more difficult than they had to be.”
“Where is Tinsley?” I said.
“I don’t know.”
“Was it you who called Chopper?”
“I tried to protect her. I tried to help her. Chopper was not right for her.”
She didn’t answer my question, but she didn’t have to. I knew she’d made the call.
“Isn’t it up to Tinsley to decide who she wants to be with?”
“You don’t understand. We’ve known each other our entire lives. We’re best friends. I understood her better than anyone. I loved her with everything I had. I didn’t want her to be hurt. Chopper was pulling her away from all of us. You can’t relate to what it feels like losing someone who you love so much.”
“I understand very well what that feels like,” I said. “The woman I was supposed to marry left me on my thirtieth birthday, flew to Paris to be with someone else, and sent the engagement ring I had given her back in the mail. I was beyond crushed. I felt like I couldn’t get the air to move through my throat. I was suffocating. But as much as I wanted to, I didn’t fly over there and shoot her lover. Leaving me for someone else was her decision, and while it was the last one I ever expected her to make, I had to live with it. Sometimes there’s a justification for murder. Trying to avoid a broken heart isn’t one of them.”
Hunter Morgan lowered her head, her chest heaving violently, her sobs muffled by the din of activity around us. Everyone was either too busy or too indifferent to pay us any attention. For a fleeting moment I felt sad for her. Heartbreak is the most uniquely agonizing emotion a person can ever experience. But as I got up from the table and looked down at her, I couldn’t stop thinking about Chopper McNair and how suddenly and unexpectedly his life had ended, his young body dumped like rotting trash in a dark, forgotten alley. Did he even have a chance to beg for his life?
I walked out of the bakery and locked eyes with Burke as a swarm of his men rushed through the door behind me. I shook my head. They were goin
g to arrest her and question her a lot more forcefully than I had. But I was now certain that while she might have lured Chopper to his death that night, she wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger. I wasn’t sure it had been her stepfather, either, but I needed to get to him before he was aware Hunter was in custody.
I PULLED INTO THE Morgan driveway and parked behind Cecily’s BMW. A silver Maserati was parked in front of Cecily’s car. The license plate read RVM. I walked up the front steps and rang the bell. Gertie opened the door. She looked at me solemnly.
“Is Mr. Merriweather home?” I asked.
“Come in,” she said, nodding.
As I walked into the marbled foyer, a tall, elegantly dressed man in a plaid blazer and tailored black trousers descended the winding staircase. He looked like he belonged watching a polo match at a country estate. He smiled once he reached me.
“How can I help you?” Robert Merriweather said.
“Ashe Cayne,” I said, extending my hand.
He took it cautiously.
“No wedding band,” I said. I caught Gertie out of the corner of my eye. She stood in the shadows of the adjacent room.
“Excuse me?” he said.
“You’re not wearing your wedding band today.”
He smiled confidently. “I haven’t worn a wedding band since my first wedding anniversary some twenty-five years ago,” he said. “Lost it on safari in Botswana. Never got it replaced.”
“That’s a good thing,” I said.
“Why’s that?”
“Because it clears you.”
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “Clears me from what?”
“From being arrested for the murder of Chopper McNair.”
“What the hell are you talking about? I haven’t murdered anyone or thought about murdering anyone.”
