Breakdown (28 page)

“Yeah, when I got cut up two years ago. I’m just not up to date on my detecting skills. Maybe I can get a booster shot for those.”

Lotty wrapped a sheet around my shoulders. “A course of antibiotics. And even though it is contrary to your nature,
Liebchen,
some rest as well. What mistakes do you think you made this afternoon?”

“I didn’t do any homework. I’m grabbing at straws, so when I got the anonymous call about the guy’s Camaro, I raced off to confront him, instead of coming up with some other strategy.”

“What other strategy?”

“That’s part of my problem—I don’t know. Xavier Jurgens certainly has a car that he likely can’t afford, but maybe he has rich parents—I didn’t even bother to check that. Or maybe his girlfriend got some big insurance settlement. She’s on disability, for her lungs, she says.”

I leaned back in Lotty’s reclining exam chair. “The neighbors are divided. Most think Xavier got the money from stealing hospital drugs, but some think his girlfriend, or business partner, or whatever she is, has a sugar daddy. My own thought was that Wuchnik bribed Xavier to get into the forensic ward, but Jana, the girlfriend, made it clear that wasn’t the story. I started off with Xavier by asking him about the money, and that was where the conversation ended, too—he tried to fight me, and when that didn’t work, he grabbed a knife.”

“I don’t understand, Victoria. Wuchnik—he’s the detective who was found stabbed in the cemetery? Why do you think he bribed this orderly?”

“The social worker at the hospital said that Wuchnik had been seen talking to an orderly in the forensic unit. Leydon thought Wuchnik was stalking her, that her brother had sent him out to Ruhetal to check up on her, but I’m convinced he was on a different mission.”

Lotty opened a closet and handed me a white blouse. “Unless the top you wore in here is a sentimental favorite, I’d advise throwing it out. You can borrow this, if you promise not to fight anyone while you’re wearing it.”

I smiled weakly. Joke, recognized.

“And I’m driving you home to spend the night with me. Your car will be safe in the lot until morning, and I want to make sure you get soup into you.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I sketched a salute, but the tension eased out of my shoulders. Even though a high-speed chase in a motor boat on the north Atlantic was safer than riding with Lotty, it still felt good to relinquish my responsibilities to her.

I was her last patient of the day; Jewel Kim was taking care of the people who’d been in the waiting room. I snoozed in the recliner while Lotty finished dictating her day’s notes.

Jewel came in to tell Lotty she’d finished, but she needed Lotty to double-check a lump in a woman’s armpit. While Lotty went off to the other examination room, Jewel looked at the job Lotty had done on my shoulder with a grudging approval: ordinarily this was the kind of injury she’d handle herself.

“You did a good job,” she said when Lotty came back. “You could be a nurse if you get tired of surgery.”

Lotty laughed but took Jewel aside to confer. My cell phone rang while Lotty and Jewel went off to talk to the woman with the lump.

It was Henry Knaub, the dean of Rockefeller, who asked politely if this was a convenient time.

I bit back a bark of sardonic laughter. “Fire away.”

“You called me last week with a quotation.”

“Yes, ‘In death they were not divided.’ I’m afraid Second Samuel didn’t give me much guidance.”

“I was having dinner with a colleague in the English department last night; I hope you don’t mind, but I mentioned the matter. She is on the Rockefeller Chapel board, and of course the entire university community is worried about the unfortunate accident to your friend.”

His voice was apologetic, as it always seemed to be when he was speaking to me. I wondered idly if he sounded as hesitant when he spoke to his English colleague. I felt a twinge of annoyance that he’d discussed my question with his colleague, but I murmured something noncommittal. I was too beat for a discussion.

“She reminded me that George Eliot used the verse as an epigraph in
The Mill on the Floss.
”

Another book I’d read as an undergraduate. I searched my tired brain. “It’s about a brother and sister, right? Maggie somebody?”

“Maggie Tulliver. The novel is based loosely on Eliot’s own life, particularly her relationship with her older brother, whom she idolized as a child. In the novel the brother and sister drown together when the River Floss floods. My English colleague asked if there were a brother and sister involved in your case.”

Lotty returned to her office and announced that we were leaving. I thanked the dean and climbed out of the chair. I was moving stiffly; after sitting so long, the muscles I’d used in my fight had tightened up.

Lotty eyed me without pity; she knew exactly why I was limping and she has made her position on my fighting skills clear plenty of times. Today she merely shook her head. At least she didn’t tell me I was getting too old to fight.

As Lotty ran red lights and zipped around UPS trucks, I kept my eyes shut and thought about brothers and sisters. The most obvious were Leydon and Sewall Ashford, but it was hard to see how Eliot’s epigraph applied to them.

Had there ever been a time when Leydon idolized Sewall, or vice versa? Not that she’d ever talked about. Perhaps they’d been born fighting. “Look it up,” she’d told Wuchnik. “In death they were not divided.” Was she thinking about brothers and sisters, or fathers and sons, or something even more obscure?

As Lotty pulled into the garage underneath her building, I remembered my conversation with Miles Wuchnik’s ex-wife. She’d said the only person he seemed to care about was his sister, Iva. He’d even made her the beneficiary of his 401K. Maybe he’d bequeathed her some information, along with his thirty-two thousand dollars.

28.

BOOK CARVINGS

H
EAT ROSE IN SHIMMERING WAVES FROM THE CARS AND TRUCKS
around me as we inched our way south. It was after one and traffic on the Ryan was at its miserable worst. The Interstate signs told me I’d be heading to Memphis in another quarter mile, which sounded like excitement, a road trip, but the reality, when I finally made the turn, was more of the same congestion.

I’d hoped to be under way earlier, but yesterday’s fight, or maybe the tablet Lotty ordered me to swallow at bedtime, had knocked me out for a solid ten hours. When I finally got up, it was after eight and Lotty was long gone. She’d left instructions for how to protect my wound while bathing.
If the surgical strips come loose, see Jewel before you do anything strenuous, such as arm-wrestle a boa constrictor.

Out hunting for a boa with arms,
I scrawled under the note. Lotty also left a Thermos of her rich Viennese coffee, along with a basket of the fresh rolls someone on her staff at the hospital bakes. I scratched out my snarky comment—it felt too wonderful to be pampered.

When I’d stretched the worst kinks out of my muscles, I returned to Lotty’s clinic for my car, but I couldn’t set out on my journey immediately. Aside from a pressing need for clean clothes, I needed to reassure Mr. Contreras, never a speedy activity. I’d called him last night, of course, but he had to see me for himself, cluck his tongue over my wound, remind me that there were better ways to solve problems than fighting.

“Darling, that comes strangely from the man who swings a pipe wrench first and asks questions second!” I kissed his cheek.

“Yeah, but you need your looks, doll. Jake Thibaut may be a good guy, but there are a lot of beautiful girls half your age playing the violin around him day and night out there in Vermont.”

That thought had also occurred to me, but I said, “That’ll help me stand out in a crowd—middle-aged, scarred, no violin. He won’t be able to miss me.”

Mr. Contreras shook his head in disapproval. “I seen you go through a lot of guys in the years I’ve known you, cookie. This Jake is better than most of them, but you can’t keep beating them up or beating them off. One of these days you’ll be as old as me, always assuming you don’t let some punk stab you to death first, and who’s going to look out for you then?”

That was unanswerable, so I deflected him by telling him my day’s travel plan. I further deflected his desire to accompany me by reminding him that if I got stabbed to death he’d have to be in Chicago to take care of Mitch and Peppy. He did drive over to the lake with me to give the dogs a long swim, since the heat was building too much to let them run. And he made lunch for me while I changed into my last clean pair of summer slacks. I packed an overnight bag just in case, and finally made it to the Kennedy Expressway a little after noon.

Before setting out, I’d run a couple of searches on Miles Wuchnik’s sister, Iva. I was still annoyed with myself for doing so little preparation before calling on Xavier Jurgens yesterday. I let my iPad read the search reports to me while I drove.

There had been four children in the Wuchnik family—Iva, Miles, and two other brothers. All three boys had moved from Danville when they were in their twenties, but Iva had stayed behind, looking after their aging parents in the time-honored tradition. In another time-honored tradition, the parents hadn’t rewarded her sacrifice. Their father had died back in the nineties; when their mother died three years ago, the family home and her modest savings had been divided equally among the four children, with no special recognition of Iva’s work. The house had been sold, right after the market fell out of real estate, and Iva had moved into an apartment near the claims office where she worked as a clerk.

It was a depressing story. I shut off the iPad and put in a CD Petra had created for me of her favorite indie bands. I was pleasantly surprised by my cousin’s taste, especially Neko Case, who took me down to 138th Street, where the road finally opened up. After that, I had a smooth drive south to Danville.

I found Iva Wuchnik’s apartment easily enough, but I’d gotten into town before the end of the business day. I didn’t think it would help either of us if I showed up at her office, so I found a park, where I ate the chicken sandwich Mr. Contreras had packed, then wandered along the Vermilion River for a bit.

At four-thirty, I went back to Iva’s apartment. The five-story building wasn’t run-down, exactly, but it had an air of shabbiness, as if the management company had gotten too depressed to care about the dirt in the corners of the lobby. Poor Iva, first caring for her elderly parents, then having to move into this.

I rang her bell, but there wasn’t an answer. I went back to my car, where I could watch the front entrance while pretending to work my cell phone. Just one of 286 million U.S. texters, as unnoticed as the setting sun. I didn’t pay close attention to the cars going into the building’s underground garage, and would have missed Wuchnik if she hadn’t had to fumble around with her card key.

Something about the depressed set of the lines around her mouth, or the square forehead, similar to her brother’s, made me stare over the top of my phone. I gave her twenty minutes to settle in before ringing her doorbell.

“My name is Warshawski,” I called through the intercom. “I’m the person who found your brother’s body last week.”

There was a pause, as if she were wondering whether to believe me, and then she buzzed me in. When I got to the third floor, she opened her door the length of a short chain.

“Who did you say you are?”

“V. I. Warshawski. I’m sorry for your loss; I’m the person who found Miles’s body at Mount Moriah cemetery last week.”

“Let me see some ID,” she demanded.

A sensible precaution. Although it really was no proof of anything, I showed her the laminate of my PI license. This satisfied her enough that she undid the chain.

She ushered me into a living room so stuffed with old furniture it looked like a showroom to a down-market antiques store. Iva had apparently grabbed every piece of furniture from her parents’ home when she and her brothers sold it. A sectional couch in aqua Naugahyde took up the most space, but there was also a card table and chairs with the spindly legs so popular in the fifties and sixties, an overstuffed armchair and a scarred teak cabinet with a stack of old books on top.

Next to the books stood an eight-by-ten of Miles in a decorated frame. It dated from some earlier epoch, before his hair had started turning gray, before the jowls had begun to grow heavy, before someone stuck a piece of rebar through his heart.

Iva saw me looking at the picture and said, in her flat, heavy voice, “So you’re a private investigator, like Miles. He never mentioned you to me.”

“No. We never met.”

“Then how come you were in that cemetery where he died?”

“A missing-persons search,” I said, not exactly lying. “I had a tip that my target would be there, but I found your brother. The medical examiner told me he had been hit on the head hard enough to knock him out. His body was then carried to the tomb, where he was stabbed to death.”

“I see.” She kneaded her hands together. Despite her thick shoulders and short, square body, she had long, slender fingers. Another woman might have painted the nails to draw attention to a fine feature, but Iva Wuchnik’s hands were rough, untended, like the skin on her face, or her hair, dyed a shoe-polish brown.

She roused herself. “I was making some iced tea; you want a glass?”

She led me past the furniture storeroom to a kitchen that was also cluttered, this time with racks of pots hanging from the ceiling. I sat on a bar stool next to the counter while she poured cold tap water into two glasses of powdered tea.

“It looks as though you’re quite a cook.” I gestured toward the pots.

“Oh—those were my mother’s, and my grandmother’s. I don’t have time for that kind of thing. Most of what I eat is take-out, although I suppose if I had company . . .” Her voice trailed off; she couldn’t imagine herself with company.

I couldn’t, either. I hastily changed the subject.

“I’m trying to follow up on some of your brother’s cases. He seems to have been a very generous man.”