Hunting Sweetie Rose : A Mystery (9781429950879) (12 page)

“Unless Sweetie Fairbairn herself set that 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 Fairbairn.

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.

“You came into the living room,” he went on, “and saw the guard lying on the floor.”

“Duggan. Yes.”

“You also saw your client.”

“Trying to help Duggan, as I said.” I hoped it wasn't a lie. I couldn't really tell what she'd been doing, but I'd seen no weapon.

“Then you called us.”

“First I told Ms. Fairbairn to go to her room and lie down. She was obviously in shock. It was then that I called 911. I waited in the foyer.”

“You know shock? You're a doctor, Elstrom?”

“She looked like she was in shock.”

“You know her bedroom?”

He was goading, prompting for any kind of a slip.

“No. I just figured it was down the hall. Look, she left the living room. I called 911, for an ambulance, for the police. Then I went to wait in the foyer.”

“By the elevator door?”

“Of course. It's a small foyer.”

“The whole time?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean: Did you wait in the foyer the whole time after calling 911?”

“It took only a few minutes for you to get here.”

“You believe Ms. Fairbairn will back this up as well?”

“No, Lieutenant, she won't. It was after she headed for her bedroom that I called, and then went to wait in the foyer.”

“Ah yes, her bedroom; that bedroom down the hall.”

The other detective left the kitchen. I heard him out in the hall, talking to someone. He came back a minute later. Plinnit raised his eyebrows. The other man shook his head.

“We're having a problem getting Ms. Fairbairn to corroborate any part of your story, Elstrom.”

“She's in shock. Get a doctor. Sedate her. In the morning, she'll be able to have her lawyer tell you everything you need to know.”

Plinnit came to stand next to me. “We'll escort Mr. Elstrom down to our office,” he said to the other detective.

Plinnit's hand was strong on my shoulder. I tried to relax. It would not do to make any moves.

“What the hell is going on?” I asked as Plinnit steered me through the living room, past the live evidence technicians and the dead Timothy Duggan.

“Sweetie Fairbairn is not in this penthouse, Mr. Elstrom.”

CHAPTER 20.

I don't remember the ride. I don't remember whether it was a marked or an unmarked car, or who drove, or whether there was much traffic. I'd never seen the police station. I did recognize the table. It seemed like every station house I'd been in had the same kind of beat-up, plastic-topped relic, surrounded by metal-framed hard plastic chairs that were tough on the ass.

I knew the questions Plinnit was going to ask, like he knew the answers he was going to get. We'd done it before, in Sweetie Fairbairn's kitchen. Twice. Even so, we were going to slog through them again, and again, until one of us wore down too much to go on.

The gray-haired, gray-eyed man stood at the door. Plinnit and I sat at the table.

He switched on a tape recorder and blew through a Miranda. When I said I didn't need a lawyer, he started with the questions. “Ms. Fairbairn was alive and well when you saw her?”

“She was in shock,” I said again.

“You know shock?” he asked again.

“Nothing on her face wanted to move. She barely had the energy to blink.”

“You told me you didn't think she stabbed the guard?”

“I didn't think anything except blood. I didn't see a knife. I told her to go wait in her bedroom. I went to the foyer, called 911, and—”

“Waited for us.”

I nodded.

“Where is Ms. Fairbairn now, Elstrom?”

“I don't know.”

“You want to continue insisting you waited for us by the elevator door?”