An Eye for Murder (13 page)

Dear Sir or Madam: I found your reply to BenS’s post to the family roots site in his E-mail. I’m sorry to tell you that BenS passed away on April 12. Because your message to him was dated April 13, I am sure he never had the chance to read it. However, it turns out that my father knew Lisle Gottlieb as well, independently of Mr. Skulnick
…

I backspaced and deleted “Skulnick.” Skull hadn’t revealed his identity to DGL. I wouldn’t, either.

…
independently of BenS, and we would very much appreciate any information you could provide about her
.

Okay. I was taking editorial license with the “we.” But everything else in my note was true. I leaned back, trying to imagine how DGL would react to my message.

It sounded weak. DGL might decide I was a nutcase and trash the note without replying. But I couldn’t explain my reasons for pursuing Lisle Gottlieb in an E-mail. Wild stories about a break-in and stolen cartons would scare anybody off. I needed to establish credibility. But that would mean giving up some privacy. I chewed my lip, curious about Lisle Gottlieb, but reluctant to make myself more vulnerable. Curiosity won out.

I’m sure you have questions. I would be willing to answer them by phone. I look forward to hearing from you. 847-555-9876. Ellie Foreman

Chapter Eighteen

When I got home from the Midwest Mutual shoot a few days later, my answering machine was flashing. The first message was from Roger Wolinsky, Marian Iverson’s campaign director. He left both his work and home number. The second message was from Barry, asking me to call him ASAP. I called Barry first.

“It’s me. What’s up?”

“Oh.” There was a pause. “Ellie, I don’t know how to say this…”

I mentally reviewed where my family was supposed to be. Rachel was at school; Dad was probably playing cards at his place. If something was wrong, they would have called my cell. If they could. My stomach twisted. “What happened?”

“I…I just lost a lot of money. The high-tech incubator I was telling you about…it tanked. The stock’s in the toilet.” I sagged against the counter. It was only money. Still. It was money. I picked up a butcher knife. “How much, Barry?”

“It’s this economy, you know? There’s no way we could have known—”

“How much Barry?”

“Half a million. They want a chunk of it now.”

I concentrated on my breathing and studied my shoes. “I’m sorry, Ellie. I fucked up.”

I concentrated
hard
on my breathing and studied my shoes.

“But I don’t think you’ll be involved.”

I angled the knife above the cutting board. “What do you mean, you don’t think I’ll be involved?”

Barry didn’t say anything.

“Except for child support, which I gather I’ll never see again, I’m not involved.” Silence.

“Right?” More silence.

“Barry, what are trying to tell me?”

I heard a long exhalation. “The account I was trading on was a joint account. It has your name on it.”

“What are you, a comedian?”

“It’s true.”

“That’s impossible. We closed the account when we settled.

I got money. You got money. The end.”

“They never closed it. Some kind of administrative snafu. When Arnie retired, instead of being closed, the account somehow went dormant. I tried to open a new one when I started to invest again, but they said I already had an account open. I meant to do the paperwork and get it straightened out, but I just never got around to it, and then—”

“Let me get this straight. You’re telling me that technically, I’m liable for half a million dollars of your stock loss?”

“It’s not going to happen, Ellie. I’ll fix it.”

A car crawled down the street, its movement distorted like a slow-motion film. The sun glinted off the chrome bumper, shooting out sparks of light. The engine chuffed noisily. Insects droned.

“Look, I know you’re upset, but I’ll call Gene. He’ll get it all worked out.” Gene Sherwood was his lawyer. The lawyer’s lawyer. “Just hold on for a day or two, okay Ellie? Don’t do anything stupid.”

I stabbed the knife into the cutting board. He’d just lost half a million dollars, made me a party to his debt, and was telling me not to do anything stupid. The stupidest thing I could do was stay on the phone.

My lawyer, Pam Huddleston, said not to worry. It had to be a clerical mistake. I wouldn’t be held responsible; we had the paperwork to prove it. It was an aggravation, nothing more. Maybe for her. I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with money. I’ve yet to feel the love.

“Will this go on my credit rating?” I stared through the window. The car was gone. “I don’t know.”

“What if I have to get a loan to tide me over?”

“Calm down, Ellie,” she said. “It’s not going to go that far. Let me see what’s happening and call you back. In the meantime, here’s what to do.” I jotted down notes as she told me to round up the title to the house and make sure it was in my name, and to locate the rest of the divorce records. She also suggested this might be a good time to start organizing my money. She could refer me to a great financial planner. Great. All I needed was enough net worth to manage.

My next call was to Roger Wolinksy. We set up a meeting for Thursday.

Chapter Nineteen

River North, just north and west of the Loop, is artsy without being bohemian, commercial without being crass. Marian Iverson’s headquarters were squeezed into the third floor of a loft building at Franklin and Superior, above a graphic designer on the first floor and a furniture outlet on the second. An Italian restaurant was next door.

Inside, an enormous redwood desk with a mottled marble counter obscured the person behind it. I stretched up on my toes before spotting a young, blond woman with a pair of headphones and a tiny mike clamped to her head.

“May I help you?” she chirped, looking up from the latest edition of
Cosmopolitan
.

“Ellie Foreman to see Roger Wolinksy.”

“Have a seat.”

I sat down on a small, hard couch, the receptionist invisible again but her voice surprisingly clear as she repeated my name. The walls above her were bare except for a clock, and the odor of fresh paint was strong. Craning my neck, I peeked around the corner.

The office was essentially one huge room dominated by high ceilings. Two floor-to-ceiling windows with a fleur-delis pattern on the glass overlooked Superior. The glass looked new. In the middle of the room, eight desks, each with banks of telephones, were pushed together.

Three women and two men, all of them young, and all with the same headphones as the receptionist, huddled at the desks. Several murmured into their mikes. One of the women looked Hispanic. At the far end of room was a large conference table with a Starbucks machine on one end and an empty doughnut box beside it. Rimming the central area were a few private offices. Someone had made an effort to cheer up the place. Plants on laminated pedestals were scattered here and there.

Roger Wolinsky rounded the corner. I stood up. “Ellie.”

He was wearing a dark green polo shirt and jeans, and the dark hair on his arms gave him a swarthy but not unattractive appearance. He smiled when he realized I was studying him and did the same to me. I was in a long flowery skirt with a white T-shirt and sandals. My hair was gathered at the back of my neck with a butterfly clip.

As we shook hands, my eyes drifted to the people at the desks. Their voices were barely louder than the hum of the air conditioning. The restraint and sense of order was disquieting.

“I thought campaigns were supposed to be crazy. Chaotic,” I said. “People screaming, running around, gnashing their teeth over the latest polls.”

He laughed. “It’ll pick up. We’ll be adding staff over the summer. But it’s amazing what we’ve already accomplished with E-mail and the net. And don’t forget, this is only one office. We have people all over the state.”

“What are they doing?” I pointed to the people at the desks.

“The pit bulls?” He gestured. “That’s our pit.”

“Oh.”

“They’re doing advance work. Coordinating with the field. Planning where we’re gonna be on the Fourth of July.”

“But it’s not even Memorial Day.”

“That’s been set in stone for months. We’re working on the Fourth now.” He caught me by the elbow and walked me back to the conference table. “We can do three, maybe four events downstate if we charter a fly-around.”

“A fly-around?”

“A plane—so we can get to multiple events.” I flinched. I hate to fly.

“Everybody wants her,” Roger continued, apparently oblivious to my reaction. “She’s climbed seven points in the past two weeks. Which is phenomenal, given that she’s running against an incumbent.”

Her opponent, a downstate Democrat just finishing his first term, was likable but unremarkable. No hanging chads in this election. We reached the conference table.

“Coffee?”

I shook my head while he poured himself a cup, his eyes on the “pit bulls.” Roger was definitely B-ship material, I decided. The B-ship, according to
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
, was one of three arks sent out to colonize a new planet when a giant mutant star-goat threatened to destroy the Golgafrinchams. The A-ship contained the planet’s leaders, inventors, and scientists. The C-ship was filled with workerbees. But the B-ship, which was launched
first
to prepare the way for the others, included hairdressers, middle managers, and marketing types. Five years after the launch, no one from the other ships seemed to have made contact with the B-ship.

Roger gestured to a manila folder on the conference table. “I took the liberty of pulling together some background for you: Marian’s bio, her legislative record, a few other things.”

We sat down, and I opened the file.

“There’s an article from the
Trib
,” he said. “It’s a good interview.”

I riffled through the papers and pulled it out.

“It’s going to be a series. Kind of a campaign journal.”

“Really?” I looked at the reporter’s byline. Stephen Lamont. The name wasn’t familiar.

“We couldn’t pay for this kind of publicity.” Roger’s eyes gleamed. “Lamont is turning out to be quite a friend. You’ll run into him.”

I skimmed the article. A thumbnail sketch of Marian’s career, it covered her two terms in the Illinois Senate, where, as chairman of the Agribusiness Subcommittee, she pushed through a major ethanol bill. It also mentioned her job as deputy administrator of DCCA, the state’s commerce department, prior to her election. Before that, she was CEO of Iverson Steel.

“She ran Iverson’s?”

“For ten years. Until it was sold.”

“When was that?”

“The family sold it off in the Seventies, around the time imports started to strangle the industry,” Roger said.

“I had no idea,” I murmured. “She was so young.”

Roger shrugged. “She doesn’t talk about it much.” He lowered his voice. “A rift in the family.”

Rift or no rift, my admiration for her deepened. To be a young female CEO back then was rare enough. To be a female CEO during hard times for the steel industry was extraordinary. It must have shaped her character in ways I could only guess.

“Looks like there’s a gap of several years here before she went into public service. What did she do?”

“Took a few years off. Traveled. Saw the world. When she decided to enter public service, the governor offered her a job in Springfield right away.”

Easy for her. I closed the file. “So, Roger, what are your thoughts about the video?”

Roger lifted a Palm Pilot from his pocket and turned it on. “Marian was talking about the kind of thing they did for Clinton.
The Man from Hope
shtick. It worked well for him.” Not wanting to insult his taste, I said carefully, “Do you really think we need to copy him?”

“Why not? He copied us for years.”

I was about to respond when someone shoved a piece of paper in front of him. I looked up. The Hispanic woman stood over him. “Excuse me, Roger,” she said, “but I need a signature on this.”

He looked up. “What is it?”

“It’s the posters we ordered. I went ahead and got five thousand. We can distribute them in the precincts.” The woman was striking with dark, soulful eyes and long black hair that grazed her shoulders.

“Ellie. Meet Dory Sanchez,” Roger said. The woman straightened up. She was dressed in a tailored suit that made my outfit look shabby.

“Nice to meet you,” she said. “Did you just join the staff?”

“Not exactly. I’m producing a videotape for the campaign.”

“I see.” She eyed me thoughtfully before turning back to Roger. A look passed between them, and he signed the paper. As she returned to her desk, Roger followed her with his eyes. “Where were we?” His hand started to twitch, and he started making little circles with his thumb and forefinger.

Captain Queeg was back.

“The Man from Hope.”

“Right.” He cleared his throat. “How about something like that?”

“Frankly, Marian doesn’t strike me as that kind of person.”

“How does she strike you?”

I straightened my shoulders. “Intelligent. Straightforward. Confident. Determined, although she doesn’t push herself on you.”

“Go on.” Tapping a metallic pen on the tiny monitor of his Palm, he made notes. “What about her politics?”

“It’s interesting,” I said. “She’s almost a blend. I mean she’s definitely a Republican, but she doesn’t come off as rigid. She’s traditional but modern. Almost liberal on some issues. It’s almost as if there’s something for everyone.”

“Then it’s working.” Roger grinned.

“What’s working?”

“We’re targeting a broad base of support. You’re confirming that our message is getting through. If we can keep up the momentum, the sky’s the limit.”

“Including the urban vote?”

Roger yanked his thumb toward the pit bulls, where Dory and an African-American man were in deep conversation. “I’m not writing anything off. Like I said, the sky’s the limit.” He suggested that I come up with a proposal—a “concept”—by the following week. We agreed to shoot during June and July and post during August. We would need some stock footage as well. I should plan on shooting over July Fourth weekend, he said, and made a note to get us aboard the plane. I ignored the uneasy twinge.