“Whom?”
“Todd and Katy Ducane.”
“I mean, whom will it help?”
“It will help me find their killer, I hope.”
“Read the paper.”
“I will,” Lefebvre said. And waited.
O’Connor took a drink of stout and said, “You’ve been a pain in my ass for five years now.”
“That bad? I apologize.”
“No,” O’Connor admitted in fairness. “Not that bad. You’ve never lied to me or intentionally sent me off on a false trail. You’re just far less willing to talk to me than most. Are you offering to help us out now?”
“Not to an extent that will allow a murderer to escape prosecution. But otherwise, yes. And you have a reputation for being trustworthy. Norton swears you will keep a confidence.”
“No kidding. But somehow I think you already knew that. So why the change of heart about talking to me?”
“Thank one of your fans.”
“Norton?” O’Connor said, and laughed.
“No, Ms. Kelly.”
“She didn’t talk to you about me.”
“No. I watched how you treated her. That’s all.”
O’Connor took another drink and thought about the fact that if Lefebvre had seen him at a dinner party a few nights ago, he probably would have wanted to knock him off the bar stool.
He stayed quiet, but Lefebvre didn’t move, just bought him another round. He began to admire Lefebvre’s patience.
What the hell, he thought. I owe something to those bastards for Katy and for Jack. And the child. The poor child.
“Norton said Todd Ducane was a lady’s man,” Lefebvre said.
O’Connor looked over at the detective. “Jack always called him ‘the Toad’…”
32
T WO THINGS KEPT ME FROM GETTING MUCH SLEEP THAT NIGHT-THINKING about what I had seen in the trunk of a buried car, and reading Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire. I was close to the end of the book, and until that evening, it had been scaring the bejesus out of me in a delicious kind of way. It was due back to the library the next day, and I had planned to try to finish it that night, but finding the remains kind of put me off reading about dead people. I decided I’d turn it back in and buy the paperback and read it when I could handle the idea again.
The living person named Max Ducane-or Kyle Yeager, take your pick- called me at work the next morning. He asked if he could meet me for lunch.
“I’m not even sure what to call you,” I said.
He sighed. “Max. Legally, it’s my name now.”
“Max it is, then.”
O’Connor came over to my desk, carrying his “Jack” box. I motioned him to take a seat. He was looking a little bleary-eyed.
Into the phone, I said, “So why, exactly, do you want to meet me for lunch?”
“I don’t suppose you’re allowed to date anyone you might be writing about?”
“No,” I said. I could see O’Connor watching me more closely now, shamelessly eavesdropping. I held the receiver a little closer to my ear.
“Okay,” Max said. “Not a date. I’ll tell you more about what’s going on when I see you-if I can see you?”
“All right. When and where?”
“How about if I meet you in the lobby there at noon?”
“Okay. See you then.”
I hung up and wondered if I was making a mistake.
“Who was that?” O’Connor said.
“He says his name is Max Ducane.”
“Oh, the former Kyle Yeager, is it? Well, I hope he’s nothing like his adoptive father, or you had better take a bodyguard.”
“You’ve met him-I think I’ll be fine, don’t you? Or do you want to come along?”
He seemed to space out for a moment when I asked-seemed so distracted I wondered if he had heard my question. But then he said, “Thanks, but no. I’ve already got lunch plans today.”
“When you said I should have a bodyguard-did you mean I’d better take a chaperone?”
“No. I meant bodyguard, but forget it. Kyle Yeager isn’t much like Mitch.”
“You think I’d need a bodyguard with an old man like Mitch Yeager? He’s a just a rich businessman.”
“That’s what he’d love for everyone to believe, isn’t it?” O’Connor said bitterly.
I stared at him. Clearly I’d struck some nerve.
“There is more than one way of doing business,” he said. “People complain of politicians being crooked? They’ve got nothing on certain members of the business community.”
“So why don’t you write about him?”
O’Connor glanced toward Wrigley’s office. “I did now and again, as your friend Max noted, but not nearly as much as I would have liked to have written.”
“This about advertising dollars?” I asked.
“Mr. Yeager and some of the friends who had invested in his companies made it clear to the first Mr. Wrigley that they’d never buy another inch of advertising if the Express continued its ‘campaign’ against Mr. Yeager. That was forty years ago, and if you think Yeager is a weak old man now, you’re wrong.”
“You really hate him.”
“Hate him?” He looked surprised. “No. But I dislike his way of doing things. He likes to intimidate people. He tried it with me when I was no more than a child.” He smiled. “I’m happy to say I had caused a bit of trouble for him even then.”
He made something of a show of looking at his watch, then said, “Wrigley’s letting me use one of the meeting rooms to go over some background of the Ducane story with you. You’ve already heard it in bits and pieces, but…”
“Sure. Let’s go.”
I followed him to one of the conference rooms.
He closed the door behind us and shut the curtains to the windows that looked out onto the newsroom-and through which most of the newsroom had been looking in-then set the box on the wooden table at the center of the room. I leaned against a credenza with a phone on it and watched while he put on a pair of cheaters, opened the box, and began taking items out of it, looking at each through the bifocals, then peering over the top of the lenses as he arranged the items on the table.
I strolled around the table as he worked. Some of the materials were photographs, some newspaper clippings. Most were reporter’s notebooks and loose, indecipherable notes. With effort, I could make out the handwriting- but like the cards in his Rolodexes, the notes were apparently written in some sort of private code.
I had supposed the contents of the box were disorganized-O’Connor’s desk always looked as if someone had busted a pinata full of pink telephone message slips and scraps of paper over it, so it wouldn’t have surprised me if he had simply tossed items into the box over the years. I was wrong about that, though-there was a method to the way in which he was laying things on the table. He wasn’t sorting them as they came out of the box. They were already in an order of some kind.
The photographs ranged from curling black-and-white glossies to the slick squares of 1950s color
