Burn Marks (20 page)

I felt a jolt, the way you do when the earth goes on hurtling through space and you haven’t quite moved with it. Finchley’s jaw dropped. He clearly hadn’t been privy to Montgomery’s theories. “I didn’t know we were considering that possibility, Monty,” he said softly.

“And I would never have suspected you of so extravagant an imagination,” I put in. “Sounds like you read too much Tom Clancy on your days off.”

Finchley hid a smile so fast I wasn’t sure I’d seen it. “Monty, what evidence do we have that points to Miss Warshawski?”

Montgomery ignored him. “You tried to waste police resources last week, claiming there had been a baby in the Indiana Arms that was never there. It’s one of the hallmarks of arsonists that they can’t stand to have their handiwork ignored.”

“Hunh-unh.” I shook my head. “You go away and do some real work on this problem before you bother me again. You find out about the accelerant and who had access to it, and you come up with a reason for me knocking myself out and then setting the fire and then scrambling to get away. Then we’ll talk some more.”

“Accomplice,” Montgomery said smugly. “You must have run afoul of your partner in this.”

I leaned back in the corner of my couch and shut my eyes. “Good-bye, Lieutenant. The door will lock automatically behind you.”

He started shouting at me. When I didn’t respond he got up and shook my shoulder until my head throbbed in earnest.

“You’re one step away from a complaint of police brutality,” I said coldly. “Unless you have a warrant with my name on it, you get the hell out of my place now.”

If Finchley hadn’t been there, I think Montgomery would have slugged me, but he could see whose side the detective was on—he wasn’t nearly as dumb as he looked.

“Just watch your ass, Warshawski. I’m going to be sticking to you like your underpants. If you’re up to something, next time we’ll catch you red-handed.”

“Thanks for the warning, Lieutenant. It’s a help to know who your enemies are before you hit the streets.”

When the door shut behind them I did up all the bolts again and checked the back door for good measure. I was too tired to think about what it all meant, too tired even to call Bobby and chew his ear off about it. I staggered back to my bedroom and fell back into a deep, unrestful sleep.

28

A Few Kind Words from a Friend

Robin phoned later that evening, concerned that he hadn’t been allowed to see me in the hospital and glad I was still in one piece. He was eager to drive down for a convalescent visit. I was too worn out for more company but said he could stop by on Saturday if I felt better.

Before he hung up I remembered a question. “By the way, did Ajax insure the Prairie Shores Hotel—the place I was in?”

“No. It was the first thing I looked at, but of course we don’t cover abandoned buildings. And if it’s any comfort to you, it wasn’t owned by your pal Saul Seligman. So it’s either a vendetta against that block of Indiana or someone with a grudge against the Warshawski family.”

The last comment was meant as a joke, but it reminded me again of Elena, her red-veined face slack and empty. I muttered something to Robin about feeling too feeble for jokes and hung up. I did not have to be a Victorian angel and go sit with her. I didn’t, didn’t, didn’t.

I stumbled into the dining room and dug around in the cupboards hunting for stationery. It had been so long since I’d written any personal letters that the box had landed behind the fondue set and silver salad servers left over from my brief marriage. I stared at the pieces in bewilderment: Why had I carted those particular items all over Chicago with me for the eleven years since my divorce?

I wasn’t up to making a decision about them today; I thrust them back into the cupboard and sat down with the yellowed stationery to write my uncle Peter. It was a difficult letter—I had to overcome my dislike of him enough to plead Elena’s case with conviction. I described the accident, made much of my own decrepitude and the fact that I’d saved her life, and concluded with a plea that he either take her in himself or put her up in a convalescent facility. In the morning I’d express it to Mission Hills. It was the best I could do for Elena.

In the bathroom mirror my face looked sunken, nothing left but cheekbones and eyes, their gray looking almost black against the pallor of my skin. No wonder Mr. Contreras had been eager to fill me with steak. I stepped on the scale. My weight had fallen below a hundred and thirty pounds. I couldn’t afford to be that light if I wanted to have the energy to do my job. I wasn’t hungry but I’d better eat something.

I wandered moodily to the kitchen. After all this time any resemblance between the stuff in my refrigerator and human food was purely coincidental. I smelled the yogurt. It was still okay, but the vegetables and fruit had passed the point of no return while the orange juice smelled both rotten and fermented.

I took a bag of fettucini from the freezer and sawed off a hunk with my big butcher knife. While it boiled I ate the yogurt directly from the carton, trying to put some order into the chaos that enveloped me.

Several people had been annoyed with me the last week or two. Ralph MacDonald had descended from his throne to hint me away from Roz Fuentes’s affairs. Saul Seligman was upset that Ajax wouldn’t honor his claim. Zerlina Ramsay blamed me and Elena for her daughter’s death. It was quite a list, but I didn’t know that any of them would express their annoyance by leaving both Elena and me to die by fire. Of course Lotty was angry with me, too, but she preferred to do her scorching directly.

Then there was Luis Schmidt. He’d called me a bitch on Tuesday and told me not to ask any more questions about Alma Mejicana or he’d make me sorry. I’d flipped back some good macha retort and he’d hung up on me. So if I was going to go pawing around any of these people, Luis was the place to start.

The hissing of water on gas startled me back to the present—the fettucini had boiled over, extinguishing the pilot. Of course I couldn’t find a box of matches among the jumble on the stove. I started slamming doors open and shut. I just couldn’t take this life anymore, living alone, no one to pet me when I came home from the wars, nothing to eat, no matches, no money in the bank. I grabbed a handful of spoons and spatulas and flung them as hard as I could at the kitchen door.

When the clatter died down the grate over the door vibrated in a mournful bass for a few seconds. My shoulders sagged in defeat. I shuffled over to the door to collect my utensils. A wooden spoon had landed on the refrigerator. When I reached up for it I knocked a box of matches down. Okay, good. Have fits. They get results. I stuffed the implements back into a drawer and relit the stove.

Besides Luis and the possible problems of Alma Mejicana, I had to consider my aunt’s affairs. I didn’t want to think about her anymore—and not just because I didn’t want Victoria the Victorian Angel nudging me to look after her. Her tales of woe had sucked me into a series of hideous events lately, starting with my hunt for her new home and culminating in my near death. I couldn’t take much more probing into her life.

I still wasn’t hungry, but I was starting to feel lightheaded from lack of food. I drained the pasta and grated some rock-hard cheddar onto it. It was slow work with my padded hands. My arm muscles were still sore enough that I gave it up, panting, with only a few teaspoons of cheese for my effort. My right palm stung so violently I was afraid I might have rubbed the scab off through my mitt.

I carried the plate in my left hand into the living room. After forcing several mouthfuls down I leaned back in my armchair and made myself think about my aunt. Elena ran away when she learned about Cerise’s death. It’s possible something else had frightened her—I didn’t know much about her day-to-day life. With her character she could easily have stubbed more than one toe.

But I had to start somewhere. Linking her flight to Cerise’s death made sense. It would take a strong compulsion to force her from a secure berth. Since losing the Norwood Park bungalow she’d lived precariously on the small annuity scraped out of the remains of the sale. Even though the Windsor Arms was a desolate place, she’d had too much experience of hand-to-mouth living to turn her back on it lightly.

She and Cerise had been working some scam together. When I told Elena that Cerise was dead she’d been both crafty and uneasy. So she’d gone to their mark. That made sense too—twenty-four hours had lapsed between my telling her about Cerise and Elena’s disappearance. She’d had time to talk to their target and find out …

My thought trailed away. She’d found out that Cerise had been murdered? Was that possible? What else could frighten her into running away, though? Someone saying, Look what we did to your friend. The same thing could happen to you. A quart of whiskey inside you and death by exposure on Navy Pier and who’d be the wiser.

I rubbed my aching head. Romance, Victoria. You need facts. Just say for starters that Cerise and Elena had a tiger by the tail. To find out what it was I needed Elena to start talking. Or Zerlina Ramsay—it was remotely possible that Cerise had confided in her mother.

My phone books were buried under a stack of music on the piano; I’d been singing more recently than I’d been looking up numbers. No Armbrusters were listed on south Christiana. I called directory assistance to make sure. So I’d have to make another trip to north Lawndale. I gritted my teeth in anticipation of this treat. And after that I should find out where everyone on my list of annoyed patrons had been early Wednesday morning. Although if Ralph MacDonald or Roz’s cousins had tried torching me, they’d probably hired someone else to do it. Still, it would be worth finding out where they’d been. It wasn’t exactly a job for a convalescent. Maybe I could wait until Sunday to start working on it.

My eyes were too sore for television or reading. My body ached too much for anything else. After I force-fed myself the plateful of fettucini I went back to bed. Lotty capped my wonderful day by phoning at eight-thirty to see if I was still alive.

“I’m doing okay,” I said cautiously. If I told her I hurt like hell, I’d only get a lecture on my just deserts.

“Mez told me he’d released you today. He didn’t think you were ready to go home, but I assured him you had an iron constitution and would be ready to do something else life-threatening next week.”

“Thank you, Lotty.” I lay down in the dark with the phone propped on a pillow next to my mouth. “If I turned my back on people who came to me in need, I can imagine how loudly you’d cheer. And if I avoided all risks—stayed home watching the soaps or something—you’d really be leading the applause meter.”

“You don’t think you could find some point of balance between doing nothing and putting your head in the noose?” she burst out. “Do you know how I feel every time I see your body come in on a stretcher not knowing if you’re alive or dead, not knowing if this time your brain is ruined, your limbs paralyzed? Do you think you could manage your affairs so that you stopped a few feet short of the point of death, maybe even ask the police to take those risks?”

“So someone else’s friend or lover can do the worrying, you mean?” I wasn’t angry, only very lonely. “It will happen inevitably, Lotty. I won’t be able to jump through hoops or climb up ropes forever. Someone else will have to take over. But it won’t be the police. Not when I have to fight them every inch of the way to look into arson and they still won’t do it. Or when their only answer to my near death is to accuse me—”

I broke off. Maybe Cerise and Elena had seen who set fire to the Indiana Arms and were going after him. Or her. Or them. Still, if that was so, it could be the arsonist was disposing of her by his favorite means. And maybe assumed she’d confided in me so I had to go too? And—but had they murdered Cerise? The police said it was an overdose, pure and simple.

“I know I shouldn’t be losing my temper with you. It’s only my fear of losing you, that’s all,” Lotty said.

“I know,” I said wearily. “But it just puts that much more pressure on me, Lotty. Some days I have to fight a hundred people just to be able to do my job. When you’re the hundred and first I feel like all I want to do is lie down and die.”

She didn’t say anything for a long moment. “So to help you I have to support you doing things that are a torment to me? I’ll have to think about that one, Victoria…. One thing I don’t support, though. That you dedicate your life to your aunt. Mez mentioned that part of your conversation to me. I suggested that if you were a man, he would never even have raised the topic with you except to ask if you had a wife to do the job.”

“What did he say?”

“What could he say? He hemmed and said he still thought it was a good idea. But there’s a limit to how much of yourself you have to immolate for people, Victoria. You almost killed yourself for Elena. You don’t have to sacrifice your mind as well.”

“Okay, Doctor,” I muttered. I blinked back tears—I was so weak that one little sentence of support made me feel like crying.

“You’re exhausted,” she said curtly. “You’re in bed? Good. Get some sleep. Good night.”

When she hung up I switched my phone over to the answering service. I fumbled around with the switch in the dark to turn off the bell. When my thick ungainly hands had managed that I finally fell into a deep clear sleep.

29

Heavy Flowers

When I woke up on Saturday it was past nine-thirty. I’d slept more than thirteen hours and for the first time in a week I felt rested for my time in bed. I let myself come to slowly, not wanting to bring on black spots by jerking my head.

In the bathroom I unwrapped my hands. The palms had turned an orangey-yellow. I flinched in nausea—their swollen discoloration made a sickening wake-up call. When I gently pushed the blood blisters lining my hands like railroad tracks, they seemed to be healing. I tried to remember that injuries always look their worst when they’re on the mend, but the squishy mass still made my stomach turn. I also wasn’t sure I could wrap them back up again myself. The hospital had given me a salve and some dressing but hadn’t included a manual on how to apply them with my teeth.

Still, if I kept my hands on the edge of the tub, I could take a proper bath. I turned on the water, threw in some milk bath, and toddled off to the kitchen to make coffee. Since I could use only my fingertips to handle the kettle, it was a slow and tiresome experience. By the time I had a cup poured the bath was close to overflowing. I climbed in carefully, holding the coffee in my fingers. When I sank down cross-legged and great wave swept over the side of the tub but my hands stayed dry.

I lay soaking until the water became tepid, thinking of nothing at first, then going back to my painful headwork of the previous night. I still couldn’t understand why Cerise’s death had terrified Elena into flight, unless someone had pumped Cerise full of heroin and left her to die. I couldn’t move on that idea, though. I didn’t have any evidence—it was just the only explanation that I could come up with. And how had Elena known? She’d found it out in the twenty-four hours between my visit to her and her panicky exit in the middle of the night. While she was lying mute behind a protective barricade of doctors and nurses I didn’t have any way of finding out. I’d have to drop it for now.

What I could do was take a look at Alma Mejicana. I put the coffee cup on the windowsill and looked at my palms again, grimacing. Tomorrow would be the ideal time to slide into their offices, but I didn’t think I’d be much more healed by then than I was this morning.

I soaped down and pulled myself cautiously from the tub. Drying off presented more difficulties. It’s only when you can’t use them that you realize how much you need your hands. The third time I dropped the towel I left it on the floor and climbed back into bed to finish drying.

The front doorbell rang just as I was trying to hoist jeans over my still-damp rump. I’d forgotten Robin was coming. I slid my arms through a zip-up jacket and managed to have it closed by the time he got to the third-floor landing.

“Vic! Good to see you in one piece.” He looked me over critically. “You don’t seem nearly as battered as I figured from the news reports. How you feeling?”

“Better than I did a few days ago. My head’s clear, that’s the main thing.”

He held out a bunch of late-summer flowers picked from his own tiny, carefully tended plot. I got him to carry them into the kitchen and fill a pitcher for me. Something about the bright gold daisies on the table suddenly gave me an enormous appetite. I wanted pancakes, eggs, bacon, a whole farmer’s breakfast.

Even though he’d eaten several hours ago, Robin obligingly agreed to go to the corner diner with me. He even overcame his own nausea to dress my hands for me. I thought with my palms padded I could manage a bra, but the hooks still were too much for me. It was one thing to get my hands dressed, another to need help with a bra. I put on an outsize sweatshirt and headed downstairs without one.

Mr. Contreras and the dog were coming in the front door as we left. He looked Robin over with critical jealousy. Peppy jumped up on me and started licking my face. I played with her ears and introduced the two of them to Robin.

“Where you off to, doll?”

“Breakfast. I haven’t had a proper meal since Monday night.”

“I told you yesterday you was looking peaked. The princess and me would have brought you breakfast if you’d asked, saved you a trip out. I only didn’t come up because I figured you was still asleep.”

“I need the exercise,” I said. “Robin here will make sure I don’t overdo it.”

“Well, you call me if you need help. You be sure and give him my number, doll. You pass out or something in the restaurant, I don’t want to see it in the papers first.”

I gave him my solemn word that he would have the honor of providing me smelling salts if needed. He scowled at us but went on inside with Peppy.

“Who is he?” Robin demanded when we were out of earshot. “Your grandfather?”

“He’s just my downstairs neighbor. He’s retired and I’m his hobby.”

“Why’s he so rattled about you going out to eat?”

“It’s not breakfast—it’s breakfast with you. If he was twenty years younger, he’d be beating up any guy who came visiting me. It’s tiresome, but he’s essentially so good-hearted I can’t bring myself to punch him down.”

The four blocks to the Belmont Diner wore me out. I’ve been through convalescence before. I know the early part is slow and then your strength comes back pretty fast, but it still was frustrating. I had to work to get the tension in my stomach to subside.

Most of the waitresses at the diner know me—I probably catch at least one meal a week there and sometimes more. They’d all read about my misadventures and crowded around the table to find out how I was doing and who the talent I’d come in with was. Barbara, whose section I was in, shooed the others away when they started offering juice and rolls. When I ordered a cheese omelet, potatoes, bacon, toast, and a side of fruit with yogurt, she shook her head.

“You’re not going to eat all that, Vic—it’s twice what you get when you’ve just run five miles.”

I insisted, but she was right. I got through half the omelet and the potatoes but couldn’t even make a pro forma effort with the fruit. My stomach strained uncomfortably; all I felt up to was napping, but I forced myself to talk a little shop with Robin.

“You know anything about the fire at the Prairie Shores? What kind of accelerant they used, whether things looked the same as at the Indiana Arms?”

He shook his head. “The Indiana Arms job was more sophisticated because there were people on the premises. It looks as though they put a fuse in the wires in the night man’s quarters when they’d gotten him off to the track. They had a trailer going down to a stock of paraffin in the basement and a timer so they didn’t have to be anywhere near the place. The fire you were in they didn’t have to be that careful—they just dumped gasoline in the kitchen and at the doors to the basement, set the thing off, and took off.” He looked at me soberly. “You were lucky, V.I. Damned lucky.”

“That’s what gets the job done. Napoleon wanted lucky generals, not theoretical whizzes.” It gets me edgy when people lecture me on a narrow escape. I had been lucky, but all the luck in the world wouldn’t have helped if I didn’t also keep myself in top physical and mental shape. Why didn’t my skill count for anything?

“Yeah, but he was beaten in a big way in the end…. Do you have any idea who did this to you? My management is concerned that it came out of your investigation into the Indiana Arms—that you’re sitting on information you haven’t shared with us.”

I tried to keep my temper even. “I don’t know who did it. It’s possible it’s connected to your claim, but the only person who can tell me is lying doggo. If I had that kind of information, I wouldn’t be so unprofessional as to keep it to myself.”

He hesitated, toying with the salt shaker. “I’m just wondering—my boss and I were talking yesterday—we work with a lot of investigators. Maybe we should bring someone else in on the Seligman case.”

I sat stiffly in my booth. “I realize I don’t have the results you want, but I’ve done the financial checks and a pretty good rundown on the organization. If you want someone else to talk to the night watchman or explore what Seligman’s children may have been doing, that’s your call, of course.”

“It’s not your competence, Vic, but—well, this assault on you just has people questioning your judgment.”

I tried to relax. “I went down there because I got an SOS from my aunt. Since she has a strong proclivity for alcoholic histrionics I wanted to see her myself first rather than share that part of my family life with outsiders. If I’d had any serious inkling of danger, I would have handled things differently. But I am really, really fed up with being chewed out by everyone from doctors to the police to you for saving her and escaping from danger with my own life intact.”

By the time I finished I was panting. I leaned back in my chair with my eyes shut, trying to head off the incipient pain in my head.

“Vic, I’m sorry. I’m glad you’re alive. You’ve been doing a marvelous job. But we wonder whether someone else could bring a different perspective. Just the fact that your aunt is involved may be affecting your detachment.”

“That’s your right,” I repeated stiffly. “But if you bring someone else in, I will not work in a subordinate capacity to him. Or her. I’ll be glad to share my notes and my ideas, but I won’t continue working for Ajax.”

“Well, maybe we don’t have to hire someone else at this point. There is a city Bomb and Arson Squad …” Robin offered tentatively.

“Who wouldn’t even look at the Indiana Arms for you. Don’t put your faith in them just because I’ve gotten some licks—it’d take more than that to get Roland Montgomery to look at the case seriously. He’s even spinning a little story about me setting the fires myself.”

Robin looked startled. “You’re joking!”

When I told him about my meeting yesterday with Montgomery, he made a sour face. “What the hell is with that guy? He hates outsiders horning in on arson inquiries— I know—we’ve clashed before—but this is outrageous even for him.”

His mention of outsider brought the elusive memory of a face at the fire swimming back to my mind, but I couldn’t place it. “You don’t know who called in the alarm, do you? If the fire trucks hadn’t been there, I don’t think my aunt would have made it out.”

Robin shook his head again. “I have pals in the fire department who let me see everything they have on both fires, but the call to 911 was anonymous.”

I ran my fork around in the congealed grease on my plate, trying to come up with questions I should ask about the fire. Did the police have a list of the onlookers, for example, or had anything been left behind at the site that might point to the arsonist?

My heart wasn’t in it, though. The questioning of my professional judgment wounded me as few other criticisms could. At the same time I saw myself in a shameful light, clattering off to the Prairie Shores Hotel like a giant elephant thundering through the veldt. If I’d called the cops—of course, I had called Furey. Still, a full police battalion might have saved both Elena and me a knock on the head. But the truth was, if it happened again tonight, I would do it the same way all over again. I couldn’t expose Elena to the ribald indifference of the police. I have to solve my private problems privately. I don’t even know if it’s a strength or weakness. It just is.

I paid my bill and we set off silently for my apartment, neither of us pretending the conversation hadn’t occurred. Outside my building Robin played with the bandages on my right hand, choosing his words.

“Vic, I think we’ll let the Seligman investigation go on the back burner for a few days. We’ll get someone to talk to the night watchman in more depth, but we won’t ask him to take over the case. Next week, when you’re feeling better, we’ll see what he’s turned up and you can decide how you feel about going ahead with the rest of it.”

That seemed fair to me. It didn’t stop me feeling depressed as I slowly hiked upstairs, but it did ease the tight knot between my shoulder blades.

As I was unlocking my door Mr. Contreras and the dog came bounding upstairs. When they reached the second landing I could hear him scolding her gently—he couldn’t see where he was going; did she have to keep racing back and forth under his feet? Trip him up and then where would she be with me gone all the time. I felt the knot come back to my neck and faced them without a welcoming smile.

Mr. Contreras was hidden behind a giant parcel wrapped in the striped paper florists use. “This came while you was out, doll,” he panted. “I thought I might as well accept it for you so they didn’t bring it by when you was asleep or something.”

“Thanks,” I said with what politeness I could muster— I just wanted to go into my own cave and hibernate. Alone.

“It’s okay, doll, I’m happy to help. What happened to your friend? He leave you high and dry?” He set the parcel down gently and wiped his forehead.

“He knew I wanted to rest,” I said pointedly.

“Sure, cookie, sure. I understand. You want some time by yourself. You need me to do anything for you?”

I was about to utter a firm denial when I thought of the letter I wanted to express to my uncle Peter. I needed to sleep so badly I couldn’t get to the post office before their early Saturday closing.

Mr. Contreras was more than pleased to mail it for me. He was ecstatic that I’d chosen him for the errand. He was so thrilled I wished I’d fought back my fatigue and taken the damned thing myself.

When he bustled off with the letter-“Don’t give me no money now, doll, I’ll settle with you later”—I dragged the flowers inside. It was a magnificent bouquet, reds and golds and purples so exotic I hadn’t seen them before. They were arranged in a handsome wooden bowl lined with plastic. I fished around among the foliage for a card.

“Glad you’re out of the hospital,” ran the round unformed writing of the florist. “Next time try to pick quieter work.”

It was signed “R.M.” I was so tired I didn’t even want to try to decide if it was a good-natured gibe or a warning. I locked all the bolts, turned off both phones, and stumbled into bed.