“And the side of the building?” I asked affably. “Did they leave or are they still upstairs?”
His tirade changed rapidly to remorse. “My God, doll, no wonder you don’t want to trust me with any of your secrets. Here I am falling for the oldest game in the world. They left, but what if someone else let them back in, that Vinnie guy across the hall or Miss Gabrielsen upstairs?”
Berit Gabrielsen, who lived across the hall from me, was still at the cottage in northern Michigan where she spent her summers. Mr. Contreras refused to listen to this idea but insisted on bustling me into his living room while he went up with the dog to check out my apartment. He wanted my keys but I resisted.
“You’ll be able to tell if the locks have been tampered with. They’re more likely waiting outside the door if they’re there at all. And if they are, I don’t want you waltzing into their arms-I don’t have the energy to carry you to the hospital. Besides, my car is broken.”
He was too agitated to pay any attention to me. If I’d thought there was really any danger I would have gone with him, but if my visitors had been sent by Ralph MacDonald they wouldn’t come back when they knew they’d be ID’d. I let Mr. Contreras usher me into his badly sprung mustard armchair.
I leaned back in the soft musty cushions, my mind drifting on the verge of sleep. My neighbor’s living room wasn’t that different from Saul Seligman’s-the same soft, overstuffed furniture, the same relics of their dead wives filling every available inch. And except for Seligman’s fire irons, the relics were also remarkably similar, down to the studio photos of their weddings.
I felt a tender kind of pity for the two of them, each struggling in his own way to maintain the intimacy their wives’ deaths had stripped them of. Seligman had accused me of being like everyone else, wanting him to sell his heart for a dollar, but I-
I sat up in the mustard chair. But I hadn’t been paying proper attention to him. That was my problem. Someone had been trying to get him to sell the building. I hadn’t heard that; I’d just been letting his plaints flow over me. Mrs. Donnelly knew, though, because it was Farmworks that wanted to buy it.
Her daughter worked there. To help boost her career she’d let them know the building might be for sale? Or she’d given them access to Mr. Seligman? At any rate, something about the sale, or at least about the fire, had brought that little smirk to her face because it reminded her of some special benefit to her daughter Star. But when she went to the man (woman?) she knew at Farmworks, worried because I had a picture of Star, he (she?) had killed Mrs. Donnelly and torn up the place to find any documents relating to their sale offer.
I got up and started pacing around the room, knocking my shins into a shrouded birdcage. Swearing briefly, I ran into the curio case Mr. Contreras kept in the middle of the room under an old bedspread.
Saul Seligman didn’t have anything to do with the property management company anymore. He told people he went in most afternoons, but he didn’t really leave his home to do much of anything. I’d never seen him with shoes on, only his worn bedroom slippers. Still, he hadn’t given Mrs. Donnelly a powder of attorney or anything. She would have needed his agreement to sell.
Whoever killed her had left him alone because everyone knew he wouldn’t be able to make the necessary connections. He didn’t have any documents-those had all gone to Rita Donnelly. She might even have portrayed him as mentally incompetent to her principals.
But why had they wanted the Indiana Arms? What was it about that building that someone cared so much about? I was just a derelict property in the decayed triangle between McCormick Plance and the Ryan. Of course that was where MacDonald and Meagher wanted to put their stadium; if they got the bid, the value of any property there would skyrocket.
I came to a stop in front of the birdcage before I could bang into it again. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe I could have been so dense for so long.
Old MacDonald had a farm. Of course. He had damned near every other piece of land in Chicago, why not a farm too? He’d have a little holding company that could do deals on the side without drawing the public scrutiny that MacDonald Development inevitably attracted. And why not call it Farmworks? Just the name for someone with a macabre sense of humor. And if the Indiana Arms was the last, or one of the last, bits of property standing in the way of his development, then just burn that sucker down.
Wunsch and Grasso, they did a lot of business for the county. Ernie’s daddy had grown up in Norwood Park alongside Boots and the two of them had just naturally kept in touch. Ernie and Ron had started out doing favors for the Dems-in Chicago that could mean anything from hustling votes to breaking legs of tavern owners who didn’t pay off the right people. So when they took over Ernie’s daddy’s business it expanded along with Boots’s career. So if Boots and his pal Ralph wanted them to supply Alma Mejicana with trucks and compressors and manpower for the Ryan project, they’d be happy to help out.
“What’s wrong with you, doll?” Mr. Contreras’s severe voice behind me made me jump. “You know I ain’t had a bird in there in ten years. I only keep it because Clara loved canaries. You thinking of getting a bird, don’t. You may not think they need a lot of looking after, like the princess here, but you can’t be gone all the time and have any kind of animal.”
“I wasn’t planning on a canary,” I said meekly. “Anybody upstairs?”
“We went up outside your kitchen besides going up inside here, in case you wondered what kept us. Nobody there. Seemed to me someone might have been trying to get past those locks of yours, but they held okay. Maybe you should spend the night down here, though. I’m not going to be real happy wondering what’s happening to you.”
“I’ll be fine upstairs,” I assured him. “They know you saw them. They won’t come back. Even if they could field a different crew, they’d be too worried that the cops would trace them through you. I’ll lock all the bolts and tie a rope across the upstairs landing, okay?”
He didn’t like it and went on at some length to explain why. I couldn’t tell if he was genuinely worried or if he just wanted a bigger role in my affairs. Whichever it was, I preferred the possibility of a break-in to spending a night on his sagging couch under the empty birdcage.
“I’m sleeping in here, then, cookie. The princess’ll bark if anyone comes in and we’ll be upstairs in a wink.”
I wondered briefly if they’d have a jolly confrontation with Rick and
40
Scared Out of House and Home
I turned on the bath when I got into my own place but my mind was racing too hard for me to relax. I got out of the tub and tried Murray. He wasn’t in, either at the news office or his home. I thought about calling Bobby but I could just imagine his reaction. Accusations against the chairman of the county board and his wealthy sidekick? Much worse than stirring up the officers of his regiment. Just not done, Vic old thing-if you had a touch of class you’d understand.
I went to look out the window. Despite my brave words to Mr. Contreras, I felt lonely and vulnerable by myself. I wondered if the two men who’d come calling had indeed meant to waylay me or if they were, in fact, a harmless duo of salesmen. Were they the answer Ralph MacDonald had promised to give me within twenty-four hours? Was that man idling across the street really waiting on his dog or waiting for me to come out?
I dropped the blind and went back to the phone to call Lotty.
“Vic! I’ve started to become quite worried, not hearing from you for so many days. How are you?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve got a tiger by the tail and I don’t think I’m quite strong enough to wrassle with it.”
“What kind of tiger?” Lotty asked.
I told her where my thinking had been leading me. “I’m just a little scared, Lotty. And I keep worrying about my aunt. I think she must have seen whoever they hired to set the fire. She probably tried a little genteel blackmail, she and Cerise between them, and now she’s hiding out someplace not very safe. I don’t know how to find her. The cops are helping. At least a cop is helping,” I amended, remembering that Finchley hadn’t even known Elena’d skipped again. “And now my car is dead so I can’t…”
