‘It was a gift …’ I stopped, though my abrupt silence spilled the rest of it.
‘Ah … the newswoman.’ Then, ‘What are you going to ask my father?’ she asked, leaning more toward her door and safer talk.
Or more dangerous, depending. ‘I’m going to ask him about Wendell Phelps.’
She turned to look at me. ‘What the hell?’
‘I’m going to ask him if he fired his previous investigator using the same baloney he gave me.’
I told her I wanted to talk to Wendell before I said anything more, and we fell into silence as she mulled, and I mulled, things each of us didn’t understand about Wendell and perhaps, less than fleetingly, about ourselves. I tried to fill the quiet by shifting more than was necessary, working through the rush-hour traffic up Lake Shore Drive to Sheridan Road, through Evanston, Wilmette, and Winnetka. With every mile, the homes got grander and set back farther from the road. By the time we got to Lake Forest, most of the estates were invisible.
I turned right onto Red Leaf Road and followed it as it curved along the shore of Lake Michigan. As I rounded the last turn, brake lights flashed ahead as cars slowed to turn through Wendell’s stone pillars.
Amanda inhaled sharply. ‘He didn’t tell me he was having a party. I’m wearing jeans, for God’s sake.’
‘Nice jeans, though,’ I said. ‘And of course, I’m wearing a purple bow tie.’
She didn’t laugh.
We passed a bush that looked like it had been ripped in half.
‘Pigs,’ she said. Earlier, she’d referred to her father’s new wife as a pig lady, but now, apparently, she was including Wendell in her contempt.
I followed a black Mercedes sedan into the long driveway and coasted to a stop. Four more dark Mercedes were ahead of the one in front of us. At the head of the line, several blue-jacketed parking valets were waiting for a uniformed security guard to check invitations. It took ten minutes for the guard to get to us.
Amanda leaned across me and spoke through the rip in my side curtain. ‘I’m Amanda Phelps. I’ve brought a guest.’
I found myself holding my breath. Her body weight, so easily pressed against me, felt like the best of our old times.
The private cop’s list of invited guests had small photos alongside the names. He peered in at her. ‘I’m sorry, Ms Phelps, we don’t have your guest listed.’
‘I’m Mr Phelps’s daughter. That’s sufficient.’
The private cop looked a little too long at the gray primed section behind the driver’s side door before asking for my driver’s license. Amanda had to straighten up so I could reach for my wallet. I handed out my license, and the guard stepped back to speak into his two-way radio.
‘Obviously I didn’t tell my father you’d be coming along,’ she said to me.
I gestured toward the guard reporting my arrival. ‘There goes my shock and awe.’
‘Maybe not. My father hasn’t yet seen your purple bow tie.’
Behind us, expensive automobile engines revved loud and impatient. Finally, the radio crackled and the guard motioned for one of the valets to come over. ‘Thank you,’ the private cop said, handing back my license.
‘Don’t let anybody paint over that primer,’ I told the valet as I got out, pointing at the gray patch behind the driver’s door. He nodded gravely, probably thinking it was a sign of great wealth to have the confidence to drive up in such a heap, particularly wearing a purple bow tie.
A big man was waiting for us by the front walk, his suit coat bulging from a gun. He motioned for Amanda and me to follow him along the flagstone path around the south side of the house. Wendell had sent him out fast when he learned Amanda had brought a most unwanted guest.
A huge red-and-white striped tent had been set up on the lawn. A four-piece combo was playing gentle jazz on the stone terrace as a hundred people, holding champagne flutes, swayed to the music and made appropriate rich people noises. The unseasonably warm weather had held, and the men wore pastel jackets, the women, pastel dresses. All the guests seemed to be tanned, from Palm Beach or Palm Springs or wherever the palms were where they wintered when Chicago got slushy. I supposed I stood out, because I don’t get tanned until summer, and even then it comes mottled with spots of white wherever bits of caulk and paint had blocked the sun from my skin.
I looked around for Wendell. Three more men in ill-fitting, too-square suits stood fairly close together at one end of the terrace. Wendell stood in the approximate middle of them, talking with a small group of people. I started to head over but the big man blocked my way. ‘Mr Phelps is busy.’
‘Not for his daughter,’ Amanda said.
‘Mr Phelps suggested later,’ the big man said.
Wendell had allowed me in, only to box me in.
Amanda was about to head for her father when a bell sounded from a few hundred feet away. The jazz group stopped playing in mid-riff.
‘Delores’s new baby,’ a woman with impossibly white teeth said to Amanda. Delores was the name of Wendell’s second wife.
The crowd began to move as a herd toward the far side of the lawn. I looked toward the tent. Wendell had gone.
I grabbed two flutes of champagne from a passing waiter. ‘Delores’s new baby?’ I whispered to Amanda, handing her one. ‘You’ve become a half-sister?’
I’d expected a glare. Instead, Amanda gave me a faint smile and we followed the crowd.
TWENTY-THREE
Only the waves crashing onto the beach below sounded as we moved, hushed like congregants summoned to a secret sunset ceremony, through a tall grass prairie preserve and into a dense tunnel of arched trees that shrouded the path in almost complete darkness. We emerged fifty yards later into a clearing where the last of the day’s sun shone again. Some of those ahead of us had apparently participated in such gatherings before, and were forming a broad semicircle facing a lit-up, miniature stone cottage.
A large woman stood in front of the tiny rock house. Her closely cropped dark hair was streaked with gray, and she wore a loose-flowing, multi-hued robe that, in the backlighting from the little windows behind her, made her look like a pagan priestess afire with the setting sun. She held a champagne flute in her right hand, and the end of a leash in the other. I stepped around the people in front to see more clearly. The other end of the leash was attached to a pig.
It was not the sort of small pink pig seen on farms, destined to become bacon. This pig was larger, with brown and white spots, and looked to weigh two hundred pounds.
The woman in the robe raised her champagne. ‘Welcome Jasmine, everybody,’ she shouted to the sky.
Everyone raised their glasses.
As I raised my champagne, I snuck a glance at Amanda. She was looking directly back at me, her own flute raised, but not toward the pig. She was toasting my ignorance. ‘My new half-sister,’ she mouthed above the muffled applause, the best the crowd could do while holding champagne.
After a few last claps, and several more shouts of ‘Welcome, Jasmine,’ the group began to disperse in the direction of the path back to the food and stronger booze. The homage had ended. I turned to follow, when Amanda stepped up and seized my hand.
‘No, Vlodek,’ she said. It was the first time she’d ever used my given name. ‘You must meet Delores, the woman at the center of my father’s not-quite-rational universe.’
Her fingernails dug into my palm as she half tugged me to the small group of people clustered around the woman in robes. As we got closer to the cottage, I noticed that the thick Plexiglas windows were deeply scratched and smeared milky, no doubt from snouts.
Just then, the rubber door swung outward and, to the faint strains of classical music playing inside, another pig lumbered out, this one pure black and half the size of the leashed Jasmine. I glimpsed straw on the floor of the rock cottage before the rubber door slapped shut.
Delores spotted Amanda standing at the edge of the little group. The way the two women stiffened simultaneously said
it all. Amanda put her arm under my elbow and marched me forward.
‘Amanda,’ Delores Phelps said.
‘Delores.’
People to the left of us stepped back, to make room for the pig that had come from the cottage.
‘Peter!’ Delores Phelps cried, holding out her champagne flute low enough for the new arrival, the black pig, to insert his tongue. ‘Peter just loves Dom Perignon,’ Delores said.
Several in the small cluster murmured approvingly, and Peter the pig grunted, a low, long snorting sound, likely in agreement.
Delores turned to me. ‘And you are Mr Rudolph, Amanda’s most successful young man?’
‘Not young, nor successful, nor Mr Rudolph. I’m Dek Elstrom.’
‘We’re divorced,’ Amanda said, of me.
‘I believe I did hear something about that,’ Delores said. ‘Lovely tie, Mr Elstrom.’
Peter nudged Delores for more Dom Perignon.
‘Peter is so attached to his mommy, aren’t you, Peter?’ Delores cooed, lowering her flute to give him another taste. ‘Peter is a Vietnamese potbellied pig,’ she said. ‘He used to sleep in his own bedroom, just down the hall from ours, but after he outgrew his bassinet, he started coming into our bedroom.’ She stopped, noticing the look on my face. ‘He was mostly potty trained, of course, but still, he did have his accidents.’ She bent down again to nuzzle the pig’s hairy ear. ‘So we built him his own little cottage, and got him some brothers and sisters.’ She straightened up and nodded to the pig at the other end of the leash. ‘Jasmine’s our newest, a Kunekune from New Zealand.’
I looked at my empty champagne flute, simply because I couldn’t think of what to say.
Delores noticed, and held out her own flute, swishing the little in the bottom that Peter had not licked out.
I shook my head. ‘Thank you, no.’ I took a quick look around for Amanda, but she’d disappeared. Only the bodyguard remained.
‘It was lovely meeting you,’ I told Delores Phelps.
‘Likewise, I’m sure.’
‘You, too,’ I said to the guard, but he made no move to step away. We walked back to the mansion, me in front, him a close two steps behind.
Amanda was talking to her father on the terrace. ‘What have you been telling my daughter, Elstrom?’ he asked, when I walked up.
‘That you’ve not been forthcoming, and nothing else.’
‘We’ll discuss your ignorance privately.’ Then, to Amanda, ‘Just he and I, my dear.’
‘I’m part of this,’ she said.
‘I’ll explain later,’ he said.
For a moment he stood silent, I stood silent, and she glared. Finally, she shrugged and walked away.
Wendell led us across the lawn, a small parade with him in the lead, me in the middle, and three body guards bringing up the rear. We entered the house through a side door and passed a laundry room with a porcelain-topped table for folding clothes and a kitchen fitted out, wall-to-wall, with stainless steel. A right turn down another hall brought us to the passage that led to his study door. We didn’t go in. The three guards moved up close behind me as Wendell continued marching us through the long dark foyer to the front of the house.
‘What are you hiding, Wendell?’ I asked the back of his head.
He opened the front door. ‘Why call the police?’
‘I didn’t call any cops.’
He stepped back, and two of the three guards came up on either side of me. I took the hint. I pressed Wendell’s refund check onto the guard at my right, and stepped outside. The door slammed.
A valet had been alerted to bring up the Jeep. I got in and drove through the gates. I pulled over fifty yards from the house and called Amanda. Her phone went automatically to voice mail. I didn’t leave a message because by then I noticed the glint of a familiar bumper parked just past a copse of trees alongside the road ahead. I started up, motored past without looking directly at the driver. It didn’t take long to be sure. The car, a black junior-grade BMW, pulled out and stayed far back at every turn, from Lake Forest all the way south and into Evanston.
I found the sort of cul-de-sac I was looking for just before I got to the outskirts of Chicago. I turned in, spun around fast, and was waiting for him when he eased into the cul-de-sac. He slammed on his brakes but he was too late; I’d pulled sideways to block him in. I jumped out of my car.
His window was open, and so was his collar. I reached in and grabbed it.
It was Jason, or Brad. I couldn’t tell because they’d been so similarly barbered.
‘Tell Mrs Barberi that I’ll report when I’m ready,’ I shouted. ‘And tell yourself that if I see you again, I’ll break your snout.’
As I got back into the Jeep and drove away, I realized I’d misspoken. I’d meant to say nose, not snout.
It had been that sort of day.
TWENTY-FOUR
The fellow flashing a badge early the next afternoon had to be one of the cops Wendell accused me of calling. He didn’t look like a cop. Blond and fresh-faced, he wore a gray herringbone sport coat, charcoal slacks, a white shirt and a blue-striped tie. Right down to his highly polished burgundy penny loafers, he looked bound for the Ivy League, Princeton perhaps. He said his name was Delmar. I asked if that was a first name or a last name. He said his first name was Delray.
‘Delray Delmar?’
‘I figured a guy named Vlodek would understand.’
‘Like we were joined at the hip.’ I invited him in.
‘Nifty,’ he said, looking around the bare limestone room. First-time visitors are always impressed with the craggy, curved limestone walls and the beamed wood ceiling, though typically they offer up more than one word of architectural praise.
I motioned for us to sit in the two white plastic chairs. Except for those, two cans of varnish and my table saw, the first floor is unfurnished.
‘I know how it is, starting out,’ he said.
I was old enough to be his father, almost. Mature enough, certainly, to control my temper.
‘I’m saving up for furniture, too,’ he added after another beat, as if that helped.
I fought the urge to ask if he’d like some chocolate milk. He might have said yes, and I didn’t have any. Milk. Or chocolate. So I stayed silent, and stared at the knot of his striped tie.
He cleared his throat. ‘You were hired by Mr Wendell Phelps to investigate the recent deaths of three prominent businessmen?’
He was asking two troublesome questions. He wanted me to confirm the identity of a client, something I wouldn’t do. And he was asking me to admit to running an investigation, terminology I had to tiptoe around, because ‘investigate’ is a touchy verb in official Illinois. Investigators – private detectives – are required to be licensed, and that in turn requires law enforcement experience or a law degree. I had neither. But there’s a loophole, as there usually is in Illinois laws: a person can operate as an investigator if he’s working for a lawyer. It’s a gray line, but it’s a mile wide. I knew several lawyers, including the Bohemian, who would cover for me if I ever got in trouble. Still, I like to dodge the word ‘investigate.’
‘Did Wendell Phelps tell you that?’ I said, instead of answering.
‘I got your name from Debbie Goring, who was delighted to talk to me. It didn’t take much Internet research to learn that you nibble at investigating. I also learned you are Mr Phelps’s son-in-law.’
‘Former son-in-law,’ I said.
‘Mr Phelps is a friend to many powerful people, including Arthur Lamm,’ he said, floating the name while watching my eyes.
The kid had a contact in the IRS. ‘I went to see Mr Phelps,’ he went on. ‘One of his guards said he wasn’t home. So now I’ve come to see you.’
‘I’m a records researcher,’ I told the lad. ‘Mostly I work for insurance companies, though I chase down information for law firms as well.’
‘And for Wendell Phelps?’
‘I agree with Debbie Goring. I’m t
roubled by where Jim Whitman got the pills to kill himself.’
‘I believe you’re also bothered by the timing of the deaths of Benno Barberi and Grant Carson because they, like Jim Whitman, died on or just after the second Tuesdays of even-numbered months.’ Young Delray Delmar had also talked to Barberi’s and Carson’s secretaries.
‘Therefore,’ he went on, ‘you’ve probably deduced that the three dead men spent those Tuesday evenings together.’
I liked the way he applied the word ‘deduced’ to my thinking. It made me sound like something other than a schlump who couldn’t hang a kitchen cabinet straight.
‘By Jove, Holmes, it’s an interesting puzzle,’ I said.
‘Work with me, Mr Elstrom. I’m not interested in Wendell Phelps. You can continue to protect Mr Phelps and perhaps help Debbie Goring. She might even part with some large dollars if you help her gain insurance money.’
‘Who are you really interested in?’
He leaned forward. ‘Arthur Lamm. What do you know about him?’
‘If he’s not gone fishing, then he’s gone missing,’ I said, rhythmically.
‘I think he’s on the run,’ he said.
‘From the IRS?’ I asked.
‘Surely from them, but I’m wondering if he’s running from something more. I want to question him about those deaths. Do you know where he might be?’
‘No. Do you think he killed Whitman and Carson?’
‘All I think right now is he travels in the same circles as the dead men and now he’s disappeared.’
‘Do you think he’s part of that Tuesday evening group?’ I asked.
‘He’s wealthy enough. Do you have any idea where they hold their get-togethers?’
‘No idea.’ It was true enough. All I had was the letter ‘C,’ and I wasn’t going to share that without Wendell’s permission.
‘Somewhere north of the Chicago River, on the Gold Coast?’ he asked.
The Confessors' Club Page 10
