Protheroe handed it back to me without comment, except to say the state’s attorney would want some formal statement about finding the dead man. When she saw me rolling my foul clothes into a bundle, she even found a plastic bag in a supply cupboard.
Protheroe took me to a room on the second floor and called someone on her cell phone. “Lieutenant Schorr will be along in a minute. You do
much work out here? No? Well, I know the Cook County sheriff’s office is a cesspool of Democratic patronage and favors. Out here it’s different. Out here it’s a cesspool of Republican patronage. So don’t mind the boys, they’re not all real well trained.”
Lieutenant Schorr arrived with a couple of male sidekicks and a woman who announced she was Vanna Landau, the assistant state’s attorney. One of the New Solway police officers had stayed for the meeting, as well. A fifth man came hurrying in a minute later, straightening the knot in his tie. He was introduced as Larry Yosano, a member of the law firm that had handled Larchmont’s sale-apparently a very junior member.
“Thanks, Stephanie,” Schorr dismissed my guide. She gave me a discreet thumbs-up and left.
I was used to Chicago police interrogation rooms, with their scarred tables and peeling paint, and where strong disinfectants don’t quite cover the traces of vomit. Stephanie Protheroe had brought me to something like a modern boardroom, with a television and camcorder ruling over blond furniture. Behind the modern facade, though, the smell of disinfectant and stale fear rose to greet me like an unwelcome neighbor.
Vanna Landau, the ASA, was a small woman who leaned across the table as if trying to make herself bigger by taking up as much room as possible. “Now just what were you doing on the land?”
In between coughs and sneezes, I explained in as mild a voice as I could summon.
“Spying on Larchmont Hall in the middle of the night?” Landau said. “That is trespassing, at a minimum.,,
I pinched the skin between my eyebrows in an effort to stay awake. “Would it have been better if I’d done it in daylight? Geraldine Graham was worried when she saw intruders around the house late at night. At her son’s request, I went over to take a look.”
Larry Yosano, the young lawyer, was trying to rub sleep out of his own eyes. “Technically, of course, it’s trespass, but if you’ve ever dealt with Mrs. Graham, you’d know that she’s never really acknowledged that she no longer owns Larchmont. She’s a strong personality, difficult to say no to.”
He turned to me. “Lyons Trust is the titleholder. They’re ‘he ones you should call if Mrs. Graham sees a problem with the property.”
I didn’t say anything except to ask for a Kleenex. One of the deputies found some paper napkins in a drawer and tossed them across the table at me. “Or the police,” Lieutenant Schorr said. “Did that ever occur to you, Ms. Private Eye?”
“Ms. Graham called the New Solway police several times. They thought she was a crazy old woman making stuff up.”
The New Solway cop, whose name I hadn’t heard, bristled. “We went out there three times and saw nothing. Yesterday, when someone really was on the property, we responded to the alarm within fifteen minutes. Her own son even says she could be making stuff up because she wants attention.”
I sat up at that. “I met with Ms. Graham yesterday afternoon. She didn’t strike me as delusional at all. I know she’s old, but if she says she’s seeing lights in that house she is. What about the man in the pool? If nothing else, him being there proves someone was using that abandoned estate for something.”
“I don’t think Mrs. Graham makes things up,” Yosano agreed, “but she doesn’t listen to advice. We, for instance, advised her to move away from New Solway when she sold, but her ties to the community are very deep, of course.”
I had a picture of the hapless dot-com millionaire, fending off Geraldine Graham’s efforts to help him run Larchmont the way her mother had done. The young state’s attorney seemed to feel the interview was slipping away; she demanded to know my relationship to the dead man.
“We kissed once, very deeply…” I waited until one of the deputies had eagerly written this down before adding, “… when I was doing CPR on him. His mouth was full of the crud in the pool and I had to clean that out first… Did you get that? Need me to spell any of the words?”
“So you don’t admit to knowing him?” Vanna Landau said.
“The verb `admit’ makes it sound like you think knowing him is a crime.” I sneezed again. “Does that mean you know who he is? Some DuPage County career criminal whom it would be dangerous to admit knowing?”
“Black guy on the land, what else was he but a criminal?” one of the deputies snickered to his fellow.
I reached across the table and ripped a sheet from the state’s attorney’s
legal pad. “Let me just write this last comment down word for word to make sure I have the quote exactly right when I call the Herald-Star tomorrow. `Black guy on the land, what else was he but a criminal: Right?”
“Barney, why don’t you and Teddy go get us some coffee while we wrap this up,” Schorr said to his deputies. When they had left, he pulled the paper away from me and balled it up. “It’s late, we’re all pretty tired and not using our best minds on this problem. Let’s just go over a few last questions and let you get back to Chicago where you belong. Do you, or do you not, know who the dead man is?”
“I never saw him until tonight. I can’t add anything to this discussion. You have any prelimary report from the ME?” I could feel a sore throat rising up my tonsils.
Schorr and the ASA exchanged looks. She pursed her lips but picked up the phone at her end of the table. She had a brisk conversation with one of the ME techs and shook her head. Even under the cold light of the DuPage County morgue, no one had found any clues I’d overlooked.
“You’ll run a photo in the papers and on the news, right?” I said to the ASA. “And a full autopsy, including dental impressions?”
“We know our job out here,” she said stiffly.
“Just asking. I wouldn’t want to think that because he was a black man, you wouldn’t put your best effort into cause of death and so on.”
“You don’t need to worry about that,” Schorr said, the fake good humor in his voice not masking the anger in his face. “You go on home and leave this investigation to us.”
When I told him where I’d left my car, he gave an exaggerated sigh and said he supposed one of the deputies could drive me, but I’d have to wait in the front hall.
My hamstrings had stiffened while we sat. I stumbled on my way out of the room. Larry Yosano, the young lawyer, caught my arm to keep me from falling. When I thanked him, I wondered why he’d joined our happy band tonight.
He yawned. “I’m the junior on call for difficult problems this week. We handle affairs for most of the estates in New Solway; we have keys, so if the lieutenant had wanted to get into the house I could have let him in. In fact, when they called me, I drove over to Larchmont, but your group had already left for here. I took some time to check the alarm; it hadn’t been set off, and it’s still functioning. I had a quick look around the ground floor, but there wasn’t any sign of an intruder.”
He yawned more widely. “I wish Lyons Trust-they’re the titleholders-would find a buyer. It’s not good to have a place like that standing empty. We advised hiring a caretaker, but the bank didn’t want to spend the money”
Deputy Protheroe, the woman who’d given me my dry clothes, appeared: she’d been elected to drive me. Yosano walked out with us. Before climbing into his BMW, he gave me a card. I squinted at it through my swollen eyes: he was an associate with Lebold, Arnoff, offices in Oak Brook and LaSalle Street. I’d never heard of them, but I don’t often have to deal with the property issues of the superrich.
“Give Geraldine Graham my number the next time she calls,” Yosano said. “I’ll try to talk her out of more private surveillance at Larchmont.” My cards were gummed together in my wallet. I wrote my office number on a scrap of paper for him.
“You awake enough to get that car of yours home?” Protheroe asked when we reached the Mustang. “I don’t want to be called out in half an hour to scrape your body off the tollway. There’s a Motel 6 up the road. Maybe you’d better check in for what’s left of the night.”
I knew I was tired enough to be at risk behind the wheel, but I was feeling so rotten that I wanted my own bed. I summoned a travesty of bravado, sketching a two-fingered salute and a smile. The dashboard clock read three-fifteen when I pointed my little Mustang toward the city.
