Breakdown (48 page)

The pool and the kids were so overwhelming that at first I didn’t see the adults on the patio. Seven or eight were drinking from pitchers of iced tea or lemonade, but beer seemed to be on tap, too. One of the women nudged a stocky guy whose hair was bleached white from the sun; he got up from his lawn chair and walked over to me, limping a bit.

“You the lady who’s writing up the history of our fire department? The boys told me you’d be stopping by. Eddie Chez.” He held out a meaty hand, wet from holding a glass of iced tea.

“V. I. Warshawski. I’m not a writer; I’m a lawyer, and I’m a long time after the fair, but I’ve agreed to represent a guy at Ruhetal. Tommy Glover. Do you remember him?”

“Tommy Glover?” Chez’s jolly red face clouded over. “Oh, my. That was a sad story if ever there was one. His poor ma, and getting killed that way—hit-and-run, I talked to Damon Guerdon, he’s our police chief, told him if they track the SOB down I want first kick at him. Netta, she always said Tommy never killed Maggie, but of course she would do—my wife would say the same if, God forbid, it was one of our kids.”

“So there wasn’t any question that Tommy killed Magda Lawlor?”

“The boyfriend, Link Beringer, that was his name, found Tommy there at the lake, staring at Maggie. All Tommy would say was that he was waiting for her to wake up. It was like some cat who kills a mouse and brings it to you, thinking you can make it start running around and squeaking again.”

“They’re sure it was Tommy who killed her, not the boyfriend?”

He nodded, grunted. “You’d have to go to the police, look up the file, but what I recollect, the autopsy showed she’d been dead for four or five hours by then, and the boy had some kind of job—Mavis!” He hollered over to the women on the patio. “What kind of work did Link Beringer do? Before he joined the Army, I mean?”

A merry-looking woman who didn’t mind spilling her thirty extra pounds around the sides of a swimsuit came over, carrying a glass of lemonade for me. “You’re interested in all that ancient history? My word. Link, he worked at his uncle’s box factory, over in, now, I don’t remember, was it Lyle? No, I think Wheaton. What I do remember is how worried Jackie Beringer was, although of course she didn’t put it into words, until they had the whole timetable worked out from when poor Maggie died and it was clear Link hadn’t killed her.”

“This lady’s a lawyer,” Eddie explained. “She’s trying to see what she can do for Tommy.”

Mavis shook her head. “He seems happy enough over there at Ruhetal, from what I hear, and I don’t know where he could live if you got him out, not now that Netta’s dead. No offense, miss, but no one here in Tampier would ever be really sure he wouldn’t do it again, and where would a big man with no more sense than a five-year-old go to live, anyway? We all liked Netta, and he was a sweet-natured boy; no one wanted to see him get the death penalty, although I guess Wade Lawlor still holds a grudge—he sometimes carries on about his sis on that show of his as if it was yesterday, not a quarter century back.”

“Tommy talked about Good Dog Trey,” I ventured.

Gilchrist laughed. “Gosh, he can’t be as stupid as they say if he remembers Trey. That dog was our mascot—he belonged to one of the other volunteers. Trey always rode in the truck with us when there was a fire. Tommy loved Trey, and a lot of times the guy who owned him left him with Tommy during the day—guy worked in a bank and couldn’t be bringing the dog to work with him.”

“Tommy said Wade kicked the dog, then tried to blame Tommy for it.”

“Could be, could be, I wouldn’t remember that. But the Lawlor boy, he could be a handful. Losing his sis like that straightened him out. She carried the can for him, you see, those times he got caught shoplifting, or when he was in trouble at school. But I guess when Maggie died Wade saw he was going to have to fly solo. Not to speak ill of the dead, but his ma was never going to look out for him. He started going to his classes regular, earned that scholarship to Northwestern to study broadcast journalism—everyone here is pretty proud of what he made of himself.”

A little boy whose bathing suit was drifting to his knees ran up. “Gramma, Gramma, a butterfly drownded in the pool, can you fix it?”

Mavis Chez bent over to look at the bedraggled butterfly. She tugged at the boy’s trunks and suggested they make a little nest for the butterfly. The two disappeared into the house.

“Tommy talked about a picture the firemen took of him. Would you remember that?”

Chez shook his head. “I expect we took his picture when we posed for our annual calendar or something, but I couldn’t tell you anything more specific. He liked to go to fires with us, loved the excitement. He was real proud of having his own fire hat. Netta got a scanner so she could keep track of when we were called out, and she’d drive him over to the fire, if she wasn’t at work. We’d let him help hold the hose if we needed an extra pair of hands—he could remember how to do a job if it was simple and you explained it to him careful. And he was a strong boy, so those hands came in useful on a fire hose—they’re heavy, they’re tricky if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

Heavy boy with strong hands. I thought of those big white hands I’d seen this afternoon, around Magda’s neck, or maybe even my own.

Two granddaughters came over, needing Chez to tighten the chains in their bicycles. I spent another half hour with the lively family, but neither Eddie nor his wife could add anything to the story.

I took a slow route back to Chicago, avoiding the expressways, turning the afternoon’s conversations over in my mind. Tommy had been obsessed with Magda Lawlor, used to stand watching her as she sunbathed, as she danced with Link Beringer. Maybe he’d imagined dancing with her himself and she had told him no, or laughed at him. He was prone to sudden rages; he had poor impulse control. He might have shaken her until her neck broke and then laid her in the lake.

I didn’t think he thought in such a complicated way that he’d say, oh, no, she’s dead, better make it look as though she drowned. More likely, he’d followed her to the lake. He’d followed her to the lake and somehow broken her neck, and then watched her, waiting for her eyes to open, for her to say, ‘That you, Tommy? I thought it was Prince Charming.’ ”

I shuddered. But twenty-seven years in the locked ward had calmed him down. It seemed mean of Fred to threaten to take his trucks, but maybe that was kinder than using restraints.

While I was with the Chezes, Murray had been texting me and leaving ever more urgent voice messages, wanting to know what I’d learned from Tommy Glover. Murray so much wanted to prove it was Wade Lawlor who had pressed Weekes into canceling his
Madness in the Midwest
series that he was ignoring all the other ramifications of the case. He’d even wanted to come with me to Ruhetal, but only licensed members of the bar could go cold-calling on Ruhetal inmates, and it’s easier for camels to make their proverbial journey than for journalists to get into a forensic wing unannounced.

Still, he was entitled to some information; he’d paid his dues by getting the
Star
to make me professional-quality photos to show to Tommy. When I reached my office, I gave Murray a report.

“The key to the situation may be in an old photograph of Tommy with the local volunteer fire department. He showed it to Leydon, and Wuchnik saw it, too, but it’s gone now. If Leydon took it—I don’t know—I’ve been through her apartment and her car, and didn’t come on anything with a fire department in it. And Wuchnik’s and Jurgens’s places were swept bare. If any of them removed it from Ruhetal, it’s probably in the CID landfill now.”

I also went over my conversation with Eddie Chez, and Chez’s suggestion that it might have been one of their old volunteer-fire-department calendars. Murray said he’d take care of that angle. He could go out to Tampier tomorrow and track down some of the other people who used to be part of the volunteer squad. Somewhere, one of them would have a copy of the picture with Tommy in it.

I locked the photos in my office safe. When I drove home, I found that my cousin had shown up at Mr. Contreras’s place. Petra had spent the weekend in Kansas City with her mother and sisters; tomorrow she’d go back to the Malina Foundation, where they were trying to rekindle enthusiasm for the book club program among the families who’d fled the mayhem of the past month.

“What are you doing?” Petra asked.

“Trying to find an old picture of a suburban fire department.”

“Well, gosh, Vic, that will help Arielle and the Dudek girls come out of hiding, won’t it!”

“I don’t know.” I ignored her sarcasm. “It seems to be a picture that meant a lot to Miles Wuchnik and Leydon both, but it isn’t in her apartment. If I can find it, maybe it will tell me the whole story.”

I went up to my own place to wash and to change clothes. I was meeting Max and Lotty for dinner at Max’s home in Evanston. He and Lotty were taking off for Cape Cod at the end of the week, and would drive from there to Marlboro.

“You’ve created a situation for yourself, haven’t you, Victoria?” Max said, as we sat on his patio, discussing Wade Lawlor, the Salanters, and my meeting with Tommy Glover. “Getting this man’s hopes up when you think he’s guilty.”

I grinned. “It’s Murray whose hopes are riding high. Poor Tommy Glover—his biggest expectation is that I’ll get his picture back. I wonder if he’d settle for a calendar of firefighters—I ought to be able to find one of those easily enough.”

Lotty shook her head. “He wants something specific. It will make you seem untrustworthy if you offer him a substitute. You’re sure that this photograph matters that much?”

“Xavier Jurgens took Wuchnik up to Tommy’s room, completely against the rules. I learned that this afternoon. And from Tommy’s account, Wuchnik and Leydon fought over the photograph. Whatever it showed to Leydon, to Wuchnik it opened a door on blackmail. I guess I’ll go back to Leydon’s apartment in the morning and give it another sweep, but—”

“What about the sister?” Lotty asked. “That is, as you pointed out, the situation is filled with sisters. I mean the blackmailing detective’s sister down in Danville.”

“Yes,” I said slowly. “If Wuchnik stole the photo, he might have sent it to Iva inside a hollowed-out book, although I didn’t see it in the books I inspected. I suppose she could have put it in a bank vault.

“Your comment about sisters: Leydon told Wuchnik that if he understood the Bible verse
In death they were not divided,
he would understand everything. I can see her in Tommy’s room, laughing at Wuchnik, spinning words around him, getting him furious.”

I toyed with the stem of the wineglass. “Her saying that means the picture may have something to do with Magda and Wade Lawlor’s relationship. If it showed brother and sister in some compromising situation, everyone who saw it in Tommy’s room for the last twenty-odd years would have recognized it, too. And I cannot for the life of me imagine a photograph that would involve Tommy, the firefighters, and the Lawlors.”

Max and Lotty played around with the idea, too, but neither of them could come up with any believable possibilities, either. I left soon after. At home, I prowled restlessly around my apartment. Miles Wuchnik had worried that Leydon would muscle in on his blackmailing turf. Of course, that was ludicrous. She’d seen the picture, and it had agitated her, but its full significance hadn’t dawned on her until after Wuchnik’s death, or she would have tried to call me sooner.

Maybe Fred had stolen the picture. If it was valuable enough that Xavier Jurgens could get the price of a Camaro from blackmailing someone in it, then perhaps Fred was trying to cash in on it himself. In which case, he was probably as good as dead.

At eleven, Jake called from Marlboro; he’d finished an exhilarating day of music-making and he missed me. That cheered me. He might be surrounded by young violinists or bassists who had no white in their hair or spider veins in their legs, but he still missed me.

“Come out next week with Max and Lotty,” he coaxed.

“I miss you, too,” I said. “If I can clear up this problem—”

“Oh, don’t put conditions on it, V.I. Just come. If you haven’t solved it by then, a break from it will do you good. At least it will do me good.”

I felt better after the call and went straight to bed. The thrumming of the air conditioner, the laughter from the drunks straying away from the bars on Belmont, the honking, all blended into an urban lullaby that rocked me into an easy sleep.

47.

CLEANING UP FOR A CHANGE

I
N MY DREAMS, FIRE TRUCKS WERE CHASING
L
EYDON AND ME
across the University of Chicago campus. Leydon’s red-gold hair was streaming behind her in the moonlight; she was throwing jelly beans onto the quads, shouting, “They took my picture, they took my picture.”

I sat up, waking myself so abruptly that I almost fell out of bed. It was five-thirty, but the sky was a dull lead: more rain was coming.

If Leydon had taken Tommy’s photo, I might find it in the landfill in her condo. I pulled on cutoffs and a T-shirt, collected the dogs from Mr. Contreras’s place for a short walk, and then drove up to Leydon’s Edgewater apartment. The rain had just started to fall, heavy, greasy drops, when I found a parking space around the corner from her building.

Early though it was, Rafe, the doorman, was on duty. He remembered me from last week and asked after Leydon.

“She’s still in a coma,” I told him. “The prognosis isn’t very good, but they’re moving her from the hospital to a nursing home this week.”

While he made commiserating noises, I added, “She mislaid something in her papers that I’d like to try to find.”

Rafe accepted the ten I slipped him with the dignity of a man for whom money is unimportant. He called down to the night super to relieve him and took me up to Leydon’s apartment. He flinched, as I did, at the sight of the mess, which looked worse than I remembered it.

“Maybe she has her problems, but she’s unusual—unordinary, if you know what I mean. She made me think of moonlight on the lake, the way she talked.” He laughed, embarrassed at his own poetic flight. “You let me know when you’re done so I can double-lock the doors.”