A big dumb sigh. “The guy’s handsome, looks like that asshole in the movies-Ronald Reagan? He’s got a smooth way, real charmer, and he knows about antiques, which is why he and Rose had something in common.”
I frowned. “If he’s such a slick customer, why’s he living in cheap flops?”
“He has weaknesses, Mr. Heller-liquor, for example, and women. And most of all? A real passion for the horses.”
“Horses over booze and broads?”
“Oh yeah. Typical horse player-one day he’s broke, next day he hits it lucky and’s rolling in dough.”
I took the job, but when I tried to put one of my men on it, Vinicky insisted I do the work myself.
“I heard about you, Mr. Heller. I rea Heller.”
“That’s why my day rate’s twice that of my ops.”
He was fine with that, and I spent Monday through Thursday dogging the heels of Rich Miller, who indeed resembled Dutch Reagan, only skinny and with a mustache. I picked him up outside the residential hotel at 63rd and Halstead, a big brick rococo structure dating back to the Columbian Exposition. The first day he was wearing a loud sportshirt and loose slacks, plus a black fedora with a pearl band and two-tone shoes; he looked like something out of Damon Runyon, not some bird doing pick-up work at a moving company.
The other days he was dressed much the same, and his destination was always the same, too: a race track, Washington Park. The IC train delivered him (and me) right outside the park-just a short walk across the tracks to the front admission gate. High trees, shimmering with spring breeze, were damn near as tall as the grandstand. Worse ways for a detective to spend a sunny day in May, and for four of them, I watched my man play the horses and I played the horses, too, coming out a hundred bucks ahead, not counting the fifty an hour.
Miller meeting up with Rose at the track, laying some bets before he laid her, was of course a possibility. But the only person Miller connected with was a tall, broad-shouldered brown-haired guy with the kind of mug janes call “ruggedly handsome” right down to the sleepy Robert Mitchum eyes. They sat in the stands together on two of the four days, going down to the ground-floor windows beneath to place similar smalltime bets-ten bucks at the most, usually to Win.
Still, Miller (and his two-day companion) would bet every race and cheer the horses on with a fist-shaking desperation that spoke of more at stake than just a fun day at the races. Smalltime bettor though he was, Miller was an every-day-at-the-track kind of sick gambler-the friend only showed twice, remember-and I came to the conclusion that his hard-on was for horses, and if anybody was riding Rose Vinicky to the finish line when her hubby wasn’t home, this joker wasn’t the jockey.
“That’s why,” Mullaney said, nodding, “you decided to stake out the Vinicky home, this morning.”
“Yeah.”
Mullaney’s huge chest heaved a sigh. “Why don’t we talk to the girl, together. Little Sally.”
Little Sally had a build like Veronica Lake, but I chose not to point that out.
“Sure,” I said.
We did it outside, under a shade tree. A light breeze riffled leaves, the world at peace. Of course, so is a corpse.
Sally Vinicky wasn’t crying now-partly cried out, partly in shock, and as she stood with her hands figleafed before her, she answered questions as politely and completely as she no doubt did when the nuns questioned her in class.
“I went in the back way,” she said. “Used my key.”
Which explained why I hadn’t seen the girl go in.
“I always come home for lunch at eleven, and Mom always has it ready for me-but when I didn’t see anything waiting in the kitchen…sometimes soup, sometimes a sandwich, sometimes both, today, nothing…I went looking for her. I thought for a minute she’d left early.”
“Left early for where?” I asked.
“She had errands to do, downtown, this afternoon.”
Mullaney asked, “What sort of mood was your mother in this morning, when you left for school?”
“I didn’t see her-Mom sleeps in till nine or sometimes ten. Does some household chores, fixes my lunch and….”
“How about your father?”
“He was just getting up as I was leaving-that was maybe a quarter to eight? He said he had to go to the court at ten thirty. Somebody suing us again.”
I asked, “Again?”
“Well, Mom’s real strict-if a guy doesn’t work a full hour, he doesn’t get paid. That starts arguments, and some of the men who work for Mom and Dad sometimes say they’ve been shorted…. Oh!”
Mullaney frowned. “What is it?”
“We should check Mom’s money!”
The blanketed body had already been carted out, and the crowd of neighbors milling around the house had thinned. So we walked the girl in through the front. Sally made a point of not looking into the living room where a tape outline on the floor provided a ghost of her mother.
In her parents’ room, where the bed-a beautiful walnut Victorian antique as beautiful as it was wrong for this house and this neighborhood-was neatly made, a pale brown leather wallet lay on the mismatched but also antique dresser. Before anyone could tell the girl not to touch it, she grabbed the wallet and folded it open.
No moths flew out, but they might have: it was that empty.
“Mother had a lot of money in here,” Sally said, eyes searching the yawning flaps, as if bills were hiding from her.
I asked, “How much is a lot, Sally?”
“Almost twelve hundred dollars. I’d say that’s a lot!”
“So would I. Why would your mother have that kind of money in her wallet?”
“We were going for a trip to California, as soon as my school got out-me, Mother, and my aunt Doris. That was the errand Mother had to do downtown-buy railroad tickets.”
Mullaney, eyes tight, said, “Who knew about this money?”
“My dad, of course. My aunt.”
“Nobody else?”
“Not that I can think of. Not that I know of. I wish I could be of more help….”
I smiled at her. “You’re doing fine, Sally.”
A uniformed officer stuck his head in. “Inspector, Captain Cullen says Mr. Vinicky is here.”
Sally pushed past Mullaney and me, and the uniformed man, and the girl went rattling down the stairs calling, “Daddy, Daddy!”
When caught up with her, she was in her father’s arms in the yellow-and-white kitchen. He held her close. They both cried and patted each other’s backs. Cullen, seated at the kitchen table, regarded this with surprising humanity.
“I want you to stay with your aunt tonight,” Vinicky said to his daughter.
“Okay. That’s okay. I don’t want to sleep in this house ever again.”
He found a smile. “Well, not tonight, anyway, sweetheart. They let me call your aunt-she’s on her way. Do you want to wait in your room?”
“No. No, I’ll wait outside, if that’s all right.”
Vinicky, the girl still in his arms, looked past her for permission, his pudgy face streaked with tears, his eyes webbed red.
Mullaney and Cullen nodded, and a uniformed man walked her out. The father took at seat at the kitchen table. So did Mullaney. So did I.
Seeming to notice me for the first time, Vinicky looked at me, confusion finding its way past the heartbreak. “What…what’re you doing here, Mr. Heller?”
“I was watching the house, Mr. Vinicky,” I said, and told him the circumstances as delicately as possible.
“I take it…I take it you told these gentleman why I hired you.”
“I did.”
