‘Go to the cops,’ I said, but I was talking to dead air. He’d hung up.
Wendell had become too argumentative. He’d swatted away every red flag I’d waved. For a man who’d been so certain his fellow tycoons were being murdered, a man who’d been frightened enough to stand by his curtains to make sure they didn’t open even an inch, his behavior had transformed suddenly from fear to aggressiveness.
The day was breezy and sunny and good for a walk to mull my new confusion. I headed over to Michigan Avenue, where Jim Whitman had spent the last evening of his life.
Measured by glitz and geography, North Michigan Avenue is the middle sparkler in a three-diamond necklace, approximately equidistant from Rodeo Drive in California and Fifth Avenue in New York. Amanda and I used to walk the grand boulevard when we were new to each other. I was charmed by the way she’d look through the store windows for customers who’d mastered a certain curve to their backs and the oh-so-slight rise to their eyebrows that feigned unconcern to the ridiculous prices of the baubles they were inspecting. ‘Arch,’ the beautiful girl who’d grown up so rich used to call such false posturing. On North Michigan Avenue, Amanda said, life started and ended with false attitude.
I’d brought Wendell validation of his worries, at least about Jim Whitman. He should have pressed me to find out more. Instead he’d dusted me off with impatience and anger. And arch.
I got to Walton Street, where Whitman had been let off. It was one of the grandest intersections in the city, anchored on the northeast by the Drake Hotel. Upscale shops fanned out from the other three corners, lots of vogue for lots of arch. In the distance, past Lake Shore Drive, Lake Michigan rippled blue and calm, already dotted with the first of the season’s sailboats.
I stepped close to the curb to see better in all four directions. I wasn’t expecting anything obvious like a neon sign flashing a big orange ‘C’ or a raven-haired dame in a black dress slit to her hip, blowing C-shaped smoke rings from an upper-story window. I would have settled for even the tiniest of mental nudges, but I didn’t even get that. All I saw were sun-washed storefronts and restaurants offering subtlety at non-subtle prices, and not one had a name that began with a ‘C.’
I turned right, walked east on East Walton Place, toward the lake, then reversed, and came west all the way to State Street. I passed the Drake, shiny new storefronts and old three-story graystones – some housing fashionable boutiques and trendy bars, others housing those who hung out in the fashionable boutiques and trendy bars. It was a rich, hip, ever-evolving neighborhood, but mostly it was young, and a seemingly unlikely place for Jim Whitman to visit six times a year. I got back to the Jeep no smarter than when I’d left it and considerably less employed.
I drove south toward the expressway. Michigan Avenue across the bridge is a different place. Gone is the sunny glitz of the boulevard to the north. Michigan Avenue south of the river is dark. The buildings lining its west side are tall and close to the street and shut out the sun from the sidewalk early as it heads away from the lake. There are no strolling swells swinging little boutique bags south of the river, just art students and secretaries, store clerks and podiatrists; people hustling with their heads down just to stay even. And there are pigeons, often dozens of them, strutting and worse on the sidewalk. There is no pretense on Michigan Avenue, south of the river. There is no arch.
But there is often chaos. Unfamiliar drivers heading southbound are often made crazy trying to find the expressway; the signs pointing the way are small and placed too far down. Only at the last moment do the uninitiated comprehend that a left turn is needed to make the right-hand curve to the expressway. And then they swerve, panicked, across several lanes of traffic.
That’s what happened that afternoon. The driver in front of me shot across my bow, barely missing my front bumper.
I didn’t hit the horn; I didn’t raise a fist or a finger. I didn’t even remind myself to stay mellow, that this was normal road life Michigan Avenue, south of the river.
I did none of those things because the sight of the car veering in front of me seemed to demand more than that, like I was supposed to focus on what I’d just seen. It was an ordinary enough car – light-colored, beige or tan, swerving in the same stupid way that I’d seen a hundred times before. Yet somehow this car, at this time, seemed very much to matter.
I replayed the image over and over in my mind as I drove back to Rivertown, but I could make no sense of why the image nagged.
Just like I couldn’t make sense of Wendell’s arch behavior.
EIGHTEEN
I’d just stepped into the turret when a slow ripping creak sounded loud from upstairs. I ran up the wrought iron, knowing, and shot into the kitchen to see for sure.
The turret’s craggy, curved limestone walls make for interesting architecture, but they play hell with converting the place into a residence. Hanging anything onto them is a true nightmare. One of the kitchen cabinets I’d just hung was coming loose. I’d arrived home just in time to pull it safely from the wall before it crashed to the floor.
I changed into my rehabbing clothes, which look only marginally worse than my dress duds, and spent the next few hours re-anchoring the cabinet to the wall. By the time I got it to hang right, it was well past dusk, and Amanda had called three times. I’d dodged each call, knowing she must have spoken with her father, and now she wanted truths from me. I didn’t want to worry her by saying I suspected Jim Whitman had likely been murdered, and that Wendell didn’t want me to learn any more about it.
I walked across what one day might be a hall, and sat at the card table I use as a desk. My cheesy, giveaway black vinyl calendar was nothing like Jim Whitman’s leather-bound desk diaries. Though mine was dressed up in gold like Whitman’s, instead of monogrammed initials, mine sported an air-freight company’s logo of an emaciated bird. And where his provided an entire lined page for each day, mine offered a stingy small page for an entire month – space enough, the air freight company must have concluded, for people who don’t have much going on in their lives. Certainly they’d been right about me. Save for the leaf counts of the ash by the river, and the few hours I’d invoiced so far that spring, my pages were mostly empty.
I switched on my computer, typed in my billable hours for Wendell’s final invoice, wrote a check to refund the balance on his retainer, and printed out two copies of the invoice. One went with the check into an envelope addressed to Wendell. The other was for me. Opening the case folder, I saw again the photocopy of Benno Barberi’s obituary.
This time, though, the date of his death the previous autumn danced on the paper like it was lit by a strobe: October 11.
I grabbed the notes I’d made just that day. Jim Whitman had scrawled a ‘C’ in his calendar across the same Tuesday evening Benno Barberi had come home, furious, to die.
I spilled the rest of the file onto the card table, pawing for the newspaper article about Grant Carson’s hit-and-run. My hands shook as I read it. He’d been killed on February 15th. It had been a Wednesday, but very early in the morning.
My cell phone rang again. I glanced over. It was Amanda. I let it ring.
I read all the obituaries again, double-checking the dates with my vinyl calendar to be sure. There was no doubt. Benno Barberi, Jim Whitman and Grant Carson had all died on, or just an hour or two following, the second Tuesday of an even-numbered month.
I got out of the chair and went up the stairs to the third floor. I wanted a sweatshirt.
Suddenly, I was cold.
NINETEEN
I called Anne Barberi at eight-thirty sharp the next morning.
‘No, I can’t remember where Benno went that evening,’ she said. ‘He attended so many dinners.’
‘Who has your husband’s appointments calendar?’
‘His secretary, I would imagine.’
‘Can you arrange for me to look at his appointment books for last year and the year before?’
‘What have you learned,
Mr Elstrom?’
‘I’m casting a wide net, trying to gather as much information as I can.’
‘What do you suspect?’
‘I’ll tell you when what I suspect becomes what I believe. For now, tell me, was your husband taking much medication?’
‘Of course; several prescriptions. You’re wondering why they were ineffective, that last night?’
I was wondering if they’d been too effective, for a killer, but I couldn’t dare say that yet. ‘Sort of,’ I said instead. ‘Can you arrange for me to talk to his primary physician?’
‘As part of that mysterious wide-net business?’
‘Yes.’
‘Benno’s doctor is a close friend. I’ll have him call you.’
And he did, fifteen minutes later. ‘What’s this about, Elstrom?’
‘Was Benno Barberi taking any medication that, in larger than prescribed doses, could have killed him?’
The doctor paused, as he must have often, in this modern era of high-buck medical malpractice suits. And then he evaded. ‘Aspirin, taken in large doses, can kill you.’
‘Could Barberi have overdosed?’
‘The cause of his death was obvious to the EMTs: massive heart attack.’
‘He wasn’t autopsied?’
‘No need.’
‘If there were sufficient grounds, can he be autopsied now?’
‘Elstrom, you’re inferring something untoward? The EMTs would have noticed anything suspicious about Benno’s death, as would the emergency room personnel who pronounced him dead.’
‘Maybe they didn’t probe because his heart condition was well documented.’
‘My God, man; you’re insinuating he was deliberately overdosed?’
‘For now, it’s something to rule out.’
‘Who would benefit from his death? I don’t believe Benno had any enemies.’
There was no answering that yet, just as there seemed to be no reason to overdose Jim Whitman, a dying man.
‘I need your support to exhume Benno Barberi,’ I said.
‘Summon divine intervention instead. Benno was cremated and his ashes were scattered off his boat in Lake Michigan.’
Benno Barberi’s former secretary called twenty minutes after the doctor slammed down his phone. She was as crisp and as efficient as she’d been the first time we’d spoken. She told me I could come anytime. I left immediately.
She was waiting in the lobby. She was an austere but attractive brunette in her late thirties. If she’d been briefed by Barberi’s two sharply barbered assistants about my first visit, she didn’t show it. Certainly she did not glance down to see if any varnish or mustard remained on my blazer sleeve.
We went to the same small conference room where I’d met Jason and Brad. Two red leather appointment books sat on the small table.
‘I recorded all of Mr Barberi’s appointments,’ she said. ‘What are you looking for?’
‘Symmetry,’ I said.
‘I’m afraid I don’t understand,’ she said, ‘but that’s not necessary. Where shall we start?’
‘The day and evening of his fatal heart attack.’
She opened one of the books and started turning pages. ‘That would be October eleventh,’ she said, stopping at the page. She turned the book around so I could see.
The page was crammed with entries, beginning at seven-thirty in the morning and ending with a notation at five-thirty that read: ‘Emerson.’ Nothing was posted for the evening.
‘What’s Emerson?’ I asked.
‘Emerson is a fitness trainer. Three times a week, Mr Barberi took light exercise, as prescribed by his physician.’
I pulled out my note pad. ‘Where’s the health club?’ I asked.
She smiled. ‘In the basement here. Mr Emerson is on staff for our senior executives.’
‘Of course,’ I said, like I had the lifestyle that would have presumed that. I pointed to the bottom of the calendar page. ‘There’s nothing written for the evening, yet his wife told me he’d gone out to dinner.’
‘I wondered about that.’ She looked down at the book. ‘He didn’t tell me of a dinner engagement, and that was a rarity. His evenings were as busy as his days, and he expected me to keep track of his after-hours obligations as well.’
I started turning the pages backwards. She was right; every one of his evenings, Monday through Saturday, had a notation penned in her handwriting. I didn’t find a blank, working-day evening until I’d gone back to August 9.
It, too, had been the second Tuesday of the month.
I turned the book to show her. ‘Nothing here, either.’
‘I guess he forgot to tell me his plans then, as well.’
I continued backwards through the book quickly, growing more certain. And all were there. Or rather, they were not: The evenings of the second Tuesdays in June, April and February had been left blank. I picked up the calendar for the preceding year. It was the same. Benno Barberi had listed no evening appointments for any second Tuesday in February, April, June, August, October or December for two years.
Second Tuesdays, even-numbered months. I closed the second calendar and stood up.
‘Did you find what you were looking for?’
‘I don’t—’
‘I know: you don’t know.’ Her smile was tight and telling. She knew I’d spotted something.
I could only smile back. She walked me downstairs to the fitness center in the basement. Rudy Emerson, dressed in gray sweats, could have been forty or sixty, and looked like he’d never gotten outside a Twinkie in his life.
He remembered his last session with Benno Barberi. ‘Of course I knew about his heart. Like always, there was no unusual exertion that day. I started him with easy stretching exercises, we moved to the light weights, and finished with more stretching. Thirty minutes, easy does it. He left here feeling good, looking good.’
‘Looking good?’ I asked.
‘Same suit, but a fresh shirt and a different tie.’
‘He sounded good, too? No disorientation, no signs of physical distress?’
‘Whatever he ate that night might have killed him, but I guar-antee it wasn’t the exercise he got here.’
‘He didn’t happen to mention where he was headed?’
Rudy Emerson shook his head. ‘Not for a heart attack, that’s for sure.’
Barberi’s secretary left me in the lobby. Walking out, I had the thought to turn around and look back. Like the last time I’d left Barberi Holdings, I caught sight of a young man in a dark suit watching me. It could have been Brad; it could have been Jason; it could have been someone else, similarly barbered. Whoever he was, he must have caught sight of me looking back, because he quickly moved from sight.
The Rivertown chip pressed down a little on my shoulder, suggesting a little show. I took a leisurely stroll down the rows of the cars parked in the lot.
There were six of the junior-grade black BMWs, each identical to the one that had tailed me at least twice.
A tailing car need not be driven by a killer, I told myself.
Nor did it need be driven by an innocent, either.
I spent a showy moment in front of each car’s license plate, writing its number in the little spiral notebook I always carry. Then, back in the Jeep, I checked my cell phone before I started the car, wanting whoever might still be watching to think I was running the plate numbers I’d just written down. And maybe later I’d get a cop friend to do just that. For now, I had other things to think about.
Amanda had left fresh, furious messages, demanding to know why I had not returned any of her calls. Leo offered to buy lunch. And the Bohemian had asked me to call right away. I thumbed his number.
There was no booming ‘Vlodek’ to begin the conversation, but there was a chuckle, of sorts. ‘Arthur Lamm is still missing,’ he said.
‘You don’t sound worried.’
‘Perhaps because his absence has become even more explainable. The IRS began investigati
ng him last fall.’
‘For what?’
‘Unreported income from insurance irregularities.’
‘Insurance? I thought the guy was in real estate.’
‘Arthur might have the longest tentacles of those in the heavy cream. He acts as a broker, selling large office buildings. Then he negotiates to become its property manager. To top it all off, he gets the property owner to buy the building’s insurance from his agency.’
‘An IRS investigation wouldn’t make a guy like Lamm run into the woods,’ I said.
‘Of course, unless his battery of high-priced attorneys told him to get lost until they could work something out with the Feds.’
‘Or unless he committed big-time fraud?’ I asked. ‘Such things can attract long prison sentences. In which case, he wouldn’t run off into the woods of Wisconsin. He’d flee the country, go someplace where he can’t be extradited.’
‘Look, we already know his rowboat and fishing gear are all gone, and that his cottage is on a string of lakes,’ the Bohemian said. ‘I suppose we could see something clandestine in that. I guess it’s possible he could have headed north to Canada, and from there gone overseas.’
‘Or he’s staged things, leaving a false trail to buy time to leave the country another way.’
‘This might be of interest to some of his associates,’ the Bohemian said. ‘Those in the heavy cream often cross-invest in each other’s companies.’
‘You want me to look more deeply into it?’
‘I want you to be ready.’
TWENTY
Rikk, at Carson’s life insurance carrier, sounded half asleep when he picked up the phone.
‘Did anybody identify where Carson went, his last night?’ I asked.
He yawned, quite audibly. ‘You’re killing me, Elstrom. You already asked that. Our concern starts at the moment he got smacked. Dinner doesn’t matter.’
‘Didn’t your investigator ask, anyway?’
‘Maybe; probably; I don’t know. How does knowing where he ate help us?’
The Confessors' Club Page 8
