“Spur-of-the-moment kind of thing, a sort of spontaneous combustion of good intentions among the moneyed set?”
“Sweetie Fairbairn,” she said. She’d ignored my sarcasm, another bad sign.
“What about her?”
“Two other ladies on the Memorial fund-raising board got the same kind of call from her that I did. She’s become hugely interested, hugely fast. We’re going to try to enlist her as a director. If we do that, we raise tens of millions in a hurry.”
“That’s the way hospitals are funded, so spontaneously?” I pressed, because I didn’t quite believe. “You people land a hitter like Sweetie Fairbairn, then do a week’s worth of meetings, and presto, a new hospital wing gets built?”
“Honestly, when we talked about a movie and dinner, I didn’t know…”
The wise part of my brain, never larger in size than a speck, told me to let it go. Amanda’s life was going through an upheaval. I’d told her I’d support her new priorities, that I’d be as understanding as she’d tried to be when I’d gone through my own upheaval—at least until I’d pushed her away by pickling myself in alcohol.
I mumbled something about nothing at all, and then we hung up, both of us relieved that the call was over.
CHAPTER 17.
The next morning, I drove a half-baked plan and a full mug of coffee over to Leo’s.
I’d spent the previous evening trolling the Internet, trying to get a fix on Andrew Fill. His mentions were numerous, all accumulated from his stint as executive director of the Midwest Arts Symposium. During the years he’d headed that group, it appeared he’d gotten photographed alongside every writer, stage actor, and opera singer who’d come to Chicago.
He was a thin fellow, with a thin nose and thin hair, and a stoop to his thin shoulders. He didn’t look like a killer; he looked like the president of a stamp club. For sure, he looked smart enough to take a freebie Stay-out-of-Jail card offered by a charitable socialite. All he had to do was pay back the embezzled funds. He had no motive for coming back at her.
Certainly, not by killing a clown.
Besides, Bea Stitts had said it was a woman who’d hired her husband, a woman in a dark limousine, perhaps playing out some twisted fantasy.
I had to push my mind away from that. Andrew Fill was who I had.
Unless it was a twisted client.
* * *
Leo’s Porsche wasn’t in his garage. I knew Endora started at the Newberry Library at nine o’clock. Chances were, Leo was on his way home from her place. I decided to hum show tunes while I waited. That’s what one does when one doesn’t have a car radio.
I’d just gotten through an eighth rendition of the first verse of “Singing in the Rain,” which was what one does when one knows only the first verse, when my cell phone rang, spoiling what I was sure was an improving performance.
“How about buying me dinner?” Jennifer Gale asked.
“I thought you always worked.”
“This is my day off.” She told me she’d swing by the turret at seven thirty and hung up.
Leo’s Porsche’s exhaust sounded behind me before I could think to examine how I felt about seeing Jennifer Gale again, or, more futilely, begin another rendition of “Singing in the Rain.” Leo had the top down, a straw hat string-tied under his chin, and was sporting the huge sunglasses that, with his pale skin, made him look like a glaucoma patient escaped from a prison eye clinic. He gave me a nod as he pulled into his garage, trailing German exhaust and riffs of Brazilian bossa nova. I pulled up behind the big door and climbed out.
He made a disdainful show of surveying my attire. I was wearing painting clothes.
“Don’t start,” I said. “Don’t dare to stand there in yellow rayon, adorned with purple birds and what look like green tarantulas, and deign to mock my wardrobe.”
“Deign?”
“Deign,” I repeated.
“I consider this”—he fingered the hem of the shiny untucked shirt, which in double XL hung on him like a silk robe—“to be perfect attire to wear when deigning, whatever you might think that word means. More important, though, I am not speckled everywhere with crusted bits of white and black, from sloppiness with a brush.”
“It’s a disguise,” I said. “For breaking and entering, which we’re going to do today.”
“Unfortunately, my schedule, unlike yours, is cluttered. I must work today.”
A series of low beats began pulsing slowly from his bungalow.
“At nine in the morning?” I asked.
He stared at the back of his home, disbelieving. “I had to work last night. Ma had bingo at the church. They came over afterward. All of them. They stayed upstairs at first, having vodka and watching dirty movies. I thought it would be OK; I kept working. Then, at midnight, they came down the basement stairs, liquored up and ready to strut. It was too much. I fled to Endora’s.”
The bass beats were coming faster now, loud and deep enough to vibrate the clapboards on the old garage. He pointed to the stuff I’d piled in the back of the Jeep. “A stepladder, a paint tray, a gallon of paint?”
“And a brush. It’s part of the disguise.”
“You’re really going to break in someplace?”
I told him about my visits to Sweetie Fairbairn’s penthouse, the powder room fire, and my conversation with George Koros. “Andrew Fill had a beef with Sweetie Fairbairn. It’s all I can think to do.”
He looked back at the house. “I can’t go in there.”
He was weakening. “A home invasion always brightens the day,” I said.
He nodded, and we got in the Jeep.
As I pulled away, he asked, “How about we go out for pizza tonight? Real late.”
“Can’t.”
“Date with Amanda?”
“She canceled, for every night next week. She has meetings about her hospital renovation.”
“Important work.”
“It might be true,” I said.
“Of course,” he said, staring straight ahead.
“It might also be that she’ll be with that white-haired old commodities trader.”
“This will pass,” he said.
“I’m having dinner with Jennifer Gale tonight.”
He shifted on his seat. “Is that wise?”
“A potential disaster. She charged ahead after she gave me the clown photos. She got us in to see the rope.”
“And?”
“The rope was cut.”
“Murder for sure,” he said. “Does Jennifer Gale know Sweetie Fairbairn is your client?”
“I don’t even know if Sweetie Fairbairn is my client. It’s touch and go with her.”
“You’ve got to be careful around Jennifer Gale. Hell will pay if all this makes the news.”
“She’s smart; she’ll tumble to it sooner rather than later. For now, the best I could do was cut a deal with her. She stays quiet on everything until I approve. In return, I keep her informed about the clown’s death.”
“You are a man facing constant dilemmas.”
“I like her, Leo,” I said, after a minute. “She’s straight up about what she wants.”
“Jennifer Gale.”
“Jennifer Gale.”
“She’s beautiful. And Amanda is sending you bad signals.”
I moved on to tell him about the crime we were to commit.
“So what if his mail is piling up?” he said, when I was done. “He got fired, he swiped some money. He’s not finding another job. He might have gone home to see the folks, plot his next move. Or maybe he’s on a beach, spending his ill-gotten loot.”
“Then he wasn’t around to set the fire in Sweetie Fairbairn’s penthouse.”
“That’s reason enough to see if Andrew’s been at home?”
“A dead clown, and now a fire in her home. Someone’s applying pressure to Sweetie Fairbairn. Right now, Andrew Fill is the only one who’s got motive.”
“Unless Sweetie Fairbairn herself set tha
t fire.”
“There is that,” I said.
* * *
People are honest. People want to trust. They want to trust working Joes most of all. Getting past the buzz lock in Fill’s building was simply a matter of setting my ladder, a tray, and a half-empty paint can in the foyer until an older man opened the door to come out.
“Hold the door for you?” the well-meaning soul asked.
“Thank you,” I said, all paint-splattered appreciation. I stepped inside with the paint can. “Thanks again.”
The paint and I rode the elevator to the third floor and walked down to Fill’s apartment. My hunch that the building’s contractor had been as chintzy with the locks as he was with the mailboxes didn’t matter. Andrew Fill’s door pushed open at the first touch of my Discover card.
“Mr. Fill?” I called from inside, after I shut the door.
Only a smell came back at me, thick and cloying from being shut up in an apartment.
Dead meat.
I took out my cell phone and called Leo in the Jeep. He was watching for anyone who looked like the picture of Andrew Fill I’d printed off the Internet.
“Something smells bad in the apartment,” I said.
“How bad?”
“Dead bad. Take my painting stuff from the foyer, put it back in the Jeep. We might be leaving in a hurry.”
With my cell phone still on, I took another few steps into the apartment. “Mr. Fill?” I said again, louder this time.
Still no answer. The bad smell was stronger.
Ahead lay the living room. It looked undisturbed. I took a right at the corridor and walked down to what looked like two bedrooms and a bathroom. The smell got weaker the farther down the hall I got.
Both bedrooms were neat, the beds made. No clothes were lying about. The bathroom was immaculate.
Only the kitchen remained. Where the smell was coming from.
I walked in, expecting to see a thin man dead on the floor. He wasn’t there. Only a roast was, on the counter, rotting next to two peeled and molding potatoes.
Nothing else.
* * *
“You broke in on a roast?”
Leo cackled like a crazed jaybird when I got in behind the wheel. I wanted to laugh, too, but the stench of the rotted meat was still too strong in my nose.
“You don’t understand,” I said. “The guy’s apartment was absolutely neat as a pin. Nothing was out of place. He even puts his toothpaste in a drawer.”
“Maybe to keep it from smelling like the roast.” He started laughing again.
“A man as neat as Andrew Fill would never leave a roast out.”
“Depends on how much money he absconded with.”
“Or whether he was abducted. Remember, the door was unlocked.”
“What now?” he asked.
“I go see what people don’t want to say about this.”
CHAPTER 18.
Leo said that working out of Endora’s cubicle for the rest of the morning would be preferable to hanging around the backyard of his bungalow, waiting for Ma and her friends to finally exhaust themselves. I dropped him across the street from the Newberry Library.
I called Koros as Leo walked inside.
“How much money did Andrew Fill steal?”
“I’m not authorized to tell you, Mr. Elstrom. Approval has to come from Ms. Fairbairn.”
“Call her.”
“I’ll get back to you.”
“I’m fifteen minutes from your office.”
“No need,” he said quickly. “I’ll call you right back.”
I shut off the engine to wait for a more forthcoming attitude.
He called back ten minutes later. “I don’t understand. She always answers her cell phone.”
He didn’t know about the powder room fire. Sweetie Fairbairn might very well have been huddled somewhere, not talking to anybody.
“I’ll take the responsibility for what you tell me about Andrew Fill.”
“I don’t know…”
“Fill’s mail is piling up.”
Koros’s voice rose. “He’s left town?”
“There’s more: He left a roast out to spoil.”
Koros laughed. It was forced. “Are you kidding with me, Mr. Elstrom?”
“Andrew Fill is a fussy housekeeper, neat in every regard. He left a roast and two potatoes out, to spoil. Which they’ve been doing, for some weeks.”
“You know this how?”
“He may be in hiding. He may be dead.”
He sucked air. “Andrew’s alive. He must be alive.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s been paying—”
“Paying what?”
“Paying back what he took, as I told you.”
“How much so far?”
“Twenty-one thousand—but he’s late, and he’s stopped answering his phone. I’ve been calling every day for the past two weeks. The voice mail is full. He’s not answering anyone.”
“How much money did he take?”
“A lot,” he hedged.
“How much?”
“Four hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars.”
“That’s enough to go far away.”
“This is my fault.”
“His disappearance?”
“The money. I was overseeing the Symposium’s checking account. The disbursements looked so regular; travel and meals and lodging for the guests the Symposium board invited.”
“Not legit?”
“The bills were very legitimate, and Andrew purportedly withdrew funds from the cash account to pay them in full. Secretly, though, he’d set up a dozen credit card accounts, and arranged to use those to pay only minimums against the invoices. He kept the rest of the cash he withdrew.”
“I don’t understand why Ms. Fairbairn wouldn’t go after a man who stole almost a half-million dollars.”
“There would be the personal embarrassment, of course. Technically, she was his boss. Worse for her, though, was that she worried her friends would stop donating to charities she was involved with. So she repaid the fund on her own—and remember, Andrew has started to pay it back.” He cleared his throat. “Until he stopped answering his phone.”
“When did he stop answering, exactly?”
“Like I said, a couple of weeks ago, maybe longer. I thought he had to go somewhere, out of the country perhaps, to get the rest of it. I wasn’t alarmed; he was paying back. But lately…”
“You’re very trusting, Mr. Koros.”
“I had no idea he’d stop repaying, and I certainly did not know he was sending threatening letters, or whatever. Look, I’m not a fool, Mr. Elstrom. I should have kept better tabs on that account. But really, all I did was make sure the account was properly funded and reconciled every month. As for Sweetie, if she said no to punishing Andrew, then it was not my place to disagree.”
George Koros had answers for everything.
I drove the few blocks north to Oak Street, to see if Sweetie said they were true.
* * *
There was no guard outside the private elevator in the Wilbur Wright. I expected the elevator to be locked out, if Sweetie wasn’t home, but the doors opened as soon as I pressed the button.
The motors whirred, the elevator went up. Five seconds later, the door opened into the penthouse.
There was no guard in the foyer, either.
I walked into the living room. I suppose I first saw the familiar soft yellow silk on the walls, and the greens and yellows and oranges on the sofas and chairs, all of the colors made bright by the sun streaming in the windows.
I know I saw the sun glinting off the small ring of keys dropped on the beige carpet. It had a large fob with the letters S and F.
Mostly, what I saw was red. Lots of it, spilling out of the square suit of the bodyguard lying facedown on the pale carpet, wet and glistening in the sunlight.
I saw it, too, smeared, darker, on the arms and on the front of the dress of Sweetie Fa
irbairn.
CHAPTER 19.
We stood in Sweetie’s kitchen.
“Tell me again, Elstrom. Beginning in the hall downstairs.” The man in charge, a lieutenant named Plinnit, was tall like me, and packing twenty pounds too many, also like me. He’d come with another detective and two uniforms seven minutes after I’d called. Rich people got fast service, even in crime.
“I didn’t figure she was home, because there was no guard off the lobby,” I said.
“She always had a guard?”
“Pretty much.” I nodded toward the living room. “Timothy Duggan worked full-time. He told me he hired others, to fill in for events and things.”
“Why does she have guards?” His eyes didn’t blink.
“She’s got a lot of money.” It was no time for candor.
“Bullshit.”
“You’d have to ask Ms. Fairbairn.”
“All right. Go on.”
“I was surprised when her elevator opened.”
“It was unlocked?”
“Yes.” Without thinking, my hand moved to my pants pocket, to finger the keys I’d found lying on the carpet. I dropped my hand. I didn’t need to be found with keys that weren’t mine.
“You entered the elevator and went up?”
“I expected someone would be upstairs in the foyer.”
“A guard?”
“A guard.”
“And when you got up here, there was no one?”
“No one.”
“Meaning no guard? No live guard?”
“Duggan was dead, facedown on the carpet. You know that.”
“Sweetie Fairbairn was here, though, right?”
“Trying to help Duggan. I think you ought to talk to her.”
Anger flashed across his face, but just as quickly, he made it go away. “All right, Elstrom. Can you tell me if you’ve been here before?”
“Three times. First for a party three nights ago.”
“Why?”
“She was thinking about hiring me.”
“Why?”
“You have to ask her.”
“You don’t have confidentiality protection, Elstrom. You’re not her lawyer. You’re not even a licensed investigator.”
“Ask her anyway, Lieutenant.”
Plinnit looked across the kitchen at the other detective. He was much bigger, at least three hundred pounds of solid Chicago beef, gray-eyed and gray-haired. The other man shrugged slightly. Plinnit turned back to me.
Hunting Sweetie Rose : A Mystery (9781429950879) Page 9
