Critical Mass (50 page)

“Do you or do you not want a copy? Because I’d like to get out of here on time.”

“Right,” I said hastily, pulling a ten out of my wallet.

Our clerk slowly filled out a receipt, slowly stamped the form “paid,” and returned again to the interior. She came back just as the clock behind the counter turned to five. She already had her jacket on; she was clutching a Buy-Smart Values catalog, but she handed me a three-page document, The Last Will and Testament of Ada Byron.

“You can look at it
outside.
We’re fixing to lock up now.”

Alison and I sat on one of the benches in front of the county building to read Ada Byron’s will. The benches faced a public square; county employees were streaming across it to the parking lot. Deputies were changing shifts, getting into their cruisers. A clutch of boys was jumping skateboards up a low wall across the square from us.

Ada Byron’s house, at 2714 Tallgrass Road in Tinney, was left for the lifetime use of a Dorothy Ferguson, on the condition that all the contents be kept.
It is not necessary to keep them on the premises but they must be housed in safe storage.
Byron donated her telescope to the Tinney Public Library for their children’s science program.

It was the second page of the will that made my hair stand up. Byron left her papers in trust for any descendant of Martina Saginor who could prove both their descent and an appreciation of Martina’s work. The heir didn’t have to know physics, but did have to show a love of science.

I handed the will to Alison, but the landscape and skateboarders were swimming around me in a way that made me put my head down on my knees.

“What, she didn’t leave you nothing?”

It was the clerk who’d brought us the copy of the will, staring at us with an unpleasant avidity.

I lifted my head and managed a smile. “On the contrary, she made me her sole heir. It’s the shock of knowing I won’t have to sell the farm to pay for Mama’s heart surgery that knocked me off balance.”

The clerk scowled but shuffled on to the parking lot. Alison gave a spurt of laughter. “Vic, you’re so amazing; you knew just the right thing to say to her. I don’t understand this will at all. How could Ada Byron know about Martin’s great-grandmother?”

All along, I’d been wondering if Martina had survived the death march to Sobibor Concentration Camp. Ada was Martina, or someone so close to Martina that she cherished her interests.

If Martina survived, why had she never gone to see Kitty or Kitty’s offspring?

She did: she summoned Kitty and Judy to a meeting somewhere in rural Illinois. She stayed close to Chicago to keep an eye on her family, so she knew about Judy’s addiction. She died before Martin was old enough for her to evaluate his character.

Why was she in hiding?

That I couldn’t guess at.

48

ALI BABA’S CAVE

O
N THE OUTSKIRTS
of Tinney, we stopped at a gas station for a street map. Tallgrass Road curved away from the river at Tinney’s north end. Most of the houses this far out were frame boxes, placed at sparse intervals; a number were attached to small farms. We passed cows and signs for organic eggs or “pick your own tomatoes.”

2714 Tallgrass was near the end of the paved road, where it joined the gravel county road. Open fields stood to the north and west. The nearest neighbor was a good quarter mile distant.

The one oddity about Ada’s house was a high platform built behind it, as if she’d created a hot tub level with her attic windows. It was filled now with flowering plants.

Whoever lived here had a child—a swing set stood next to the staircase leading to the platform, and as we walked up the shallow steps to the front door, Alison bent to pick up a stuffed lion.

A screen door was set into a frame that was curiously ornate for so small and poor a house. This wasn’t Chicago: behind the screen, the front door stood open. Before I could ring the bell, a woman around my age appeared. Without opening the screen, she asked if she could help us. The words were cordial, but her tone was forbidding.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Are you Dorothy Ferguson?”

“Why do you want to know?” Her tone moved from forbidding to menacing.

“My name is V. I. Warshawski,” I said. “This is Alison Breen. If you are Ms. Ferguson, I’ll be glad to explain myself. If you’re not, I’d appreciate knowing where I can find her.”

A second woman appeared in the doorway. “Who is it, Meg?”

“Strangers looking for Dorothy Ferguson.”

The second woman moved past Meg and came out onto the small porch. She was in her eighties, with thinning white hair that stuck out in tufts around her head, as if she’d just gotten up from a nap. She was short enough that she had to look up to see me, but despite the wild hair and her age, the eyes under her hooded lids were cold and shrewd.

“Who are you two, and why are you looking for Dorothy Ferguson?”

I looked at her steadily. “It’s Ada Byron that I’m really interested in, but I can’t explain further until I know who you are, and whether I can trust your discretion.”

The woman’s wide nostrils flared—amusement or contempt, hard to tell. A girl of perhaps four came running around the side of the house. Her brown pigtails were tied up in pink ribbons and she had on a Hello, Kitty pink sweatshirt.

“Is it Grace, Auntie Dorothy? Can she sleep over?”

“You get inside, Lily, you stay with your mom until I tell you it’s safe to come out again. And Meg, you go get the shotgun and keep your phone handy in case you have to call the police.”

Auntie Dorothy’s voice was so fierce that Lily put a hand over her mouth and ran past us into the front hallway. I don’t like guns pointed at me any more than the next person, but I suddenly felt too weary to stand, no matter how many muzzles were aimed at my head.

I collapsed on the top step and leaned my head against a scarred post. Alison squatted easily on her haunches.

“Until an hour ago, I had never heard your name,” I said, “but I read it in the will that Ada Byron signed and which you executed.”

“Herman Voles let you read Ada’s will?” Dorothy exclaimed. “How could he be so untrust—”

“Ma’am, anyone can read the will: it’s a public document. I found it in the county courthouse over in LaSalle. I am desperate for information about Ada Byron, and Martina Saginor, and Martina’s great-grandson Martin.” I heard Meg cock the hammer, but didn’t bother to look up.

“Desperate? That’s a strong word to use for something so ephemeral as information.”

“My name is V. I. Warshawski.” I fished in my bag for my wallet and took out my ID.

Dorothy barely glanced at it. “A Chicago detective. Am I supposed to be impressed, or become weak at the knees?”

“You’re supposed to reciprocate with confirmation of your own identity,” I said.

“Hmmph.” She snorted again, this time more obviously in amusement; she called into the house to Lily, telling the little girl to find her big pocketbook and bring it to Meg.

Lily found the heavy purse and dragged it to her mother. Meg slipped the driver’s license through the screen door: Dorothy Ferguson, eighty-six years old, living at 2714 Tallgrass.

I accepted the charade, although it would have been easy for me to go into the house, disarm Meg and look around for myself. They were very vulnerable, these two tough-talking women.

“This is a long story, Ms. Ferguson, and I am taking a calculated risk in trusting you,” I said.

“Go on,” Dorothy said.

“We are looking for a young man named Martin Binder.” I pulled his photo from my case and handed it to Dorothy. She glanced at it, but laid it on the porch railing without saying anything.

Alison looked anxiously at Dorothy. “Please: if you’ve seen Martin, please tell me—tell us!”

“Are you his girlfriend, then?” Dorothy asked.

Alison flushed. “A friend. A coworker, at least, we worked on a project together this past summer. He was at my house right before he disappeared, and I’m terribly worried about him.”

“Easy to say, young lady, hard to prove.”

“Everyone in this town is anxious to protect Martin,” I said. “I couldn’t understand it—the librarians, the newspaper—he’d clearly been in Tinney. He’s a stranger, but he has the town behind him. You have the forceful character it would take to line up the rest of Tinney. Were you their mayor?”

Dorothy narrowed her eyes at me. “You can say you’re terribly worried, but who’s to say what you’re worried about?”

“Martin’s grandmother was murdered last week,” I said. “The killers shot Martin’s mother, but she survived. Martin’s great-uncle, Julius Dzornen, died two nights ago in a car crash because someone tampered with his brakes. I’m worried that the men who killed all these people have Martin in their sights.”

Meg gasped. Dorothy’s mouth worked as she tried to decide what to say.

When she didn’t speak after a long moment, I tried not to sigh audibly, but recited the history of Kitty, Judy, the papers Martin and Judy had fought over, and the BREENIAC sketch.

“When Martin was arguing with his mother about these old papers, what excited him most was seeing a letter from Ada Byron.”

I looked at Alison, who accepted her cue to explain why Ada Byron’s name would be a red flag to anyone who knew the history of computers.

When she’d finished, I picked up the story again. “Martin knew who the original Ada Byron was, so he guessed, as we did, that it was a fake identity. I’d bet just about anything that Martin found Byron’s obituary and that he came here, to Ms. Byron’s house, to ask you the same thing we did: Did she leave any other papers behind?”

Dorothy pursed her lips. “Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. Why should I trust you with any information?”

I looked up at her. “A number of people care about what became of Martin and the documents. Homeland Security wants any nuclear secrets Martin may have. They’re tracking an old Nazi rocket scientist who used to thumb her nose at the FBI, and they think Martin has secret documents she made off with. The head of Metargon thinks Martin is selling his top-secret code to the Chinese or the Iranians.”

Next to me, Alison gave an involuntary cry. This wasn’t news to her, just hard to hear in public.

“Ms. Breen and I slipped out of Chicago undetected, at least, I think we did, but I don’t know how much time we have before they find the same trail we followed. Goons working for the head of Metargon knocked me out yesterday; they stole a printout of Byron’s obituary from my jeans pocket. We may have company before the afternoon is over.”

Dorothy looked at the house, as if wondering how little Lily could be protected. My own eyes widened as I followed her gaze—not to the inside of the house, but the frame around the screen door. Inside the carved decorations, I saw tiny camera eyes, identical to those Martin had mounted in the doorway guarding his basement hideaway in Skokie. In the middle of a bunch of grapes was the same minute speaker.

I got to my feet. “Ms. Ferguson, if Martin isn’t here now, he’s been here, and spent a considerable amount of time here.”

“Martin’s here?” Alison cried.

She came up the stairs behind me as I opened the screen door. Meg tried to stop her. I moved fast, ducked my head, used my shoulder to hit Meg in the diaphragm. She cried out and her hold on the shotgun slackened. I took it from her.

Alison ran past us into the front room. “Martin! Martin! It’s Alison! Where are you?”

Little Lily had been watching television, but she turned to stare at the live drama in the doorway, a finger in her mouth. Meg rubbed her abdomen, her face pinched more in anger than pain: I’d embarrassed her in front of her family.

Dorothy followed us into the house, weariness in the lines of her face. The three of us stood in the entryway, listening to Alison calling Martin’s name from the back of the house.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I really need to find him before Cordell Breen’s goons do. Will you take me to him?”

“Who is the girl, really?” Dorothy asked.

“Her father owns Metargon, but she’s on Martin’s side. At least, I hope she is.”

“I guess if you’re going to break in, show us up for not being strong enough to defend ourselves, I’ll have to let you see the house,” Dorothy said bitterly.

Meg scowled at her, but didn’t speak, just went into the living room to sit next to her little girl on the floor. Dorothy took me on through, showing me the dining room, the kitchen, the two small bedrooms beyond it, as if she were a realtor and I a prospective tenant. The kitchen held a computer monitor connected to the cameras embedded in the front door. I watched a school bus trundle past the house, heading north toward the open prairie.

At a narrow staircase that landed in the dining room, Dorothy told me to go up on my own: her legs didn’t like climbing up and down anymore. I smiled sourly: she knew I would find nothing. The climb was payback for disarming her niece. Today my legs didn’t really like stairs, either, but I pretended to be detecting things, examining the risers with a magnifying glass while I was still in Dorothy’s sightlines.

The room at the top was Lily’s: the bed was covered with stuffed animals, the drawers filled with sunsuits and tiny T-shirts. Since I was up here anyway, I pulled down the hatch to the attic crawl space and
hoisted myself up, my abdominal muscles protesting mightily, to look at a layer of dusty insulation.

When I was back on the ground floor, Dorothy said, “There’s also the basement. Your young woman is down there.”

She opened the door and turned on a light, a naked forty-watt bulb that dangled from an old wire, but stayed in the kitchen.

I took a deep breath and started down the stairs. My legs were unsteady and I began to sweat. Not muscle fatigue, but terror. I did not want to be underground again. Everything connected to Martin Binder lay underground, his Skokie bedroom, the secrets buried deep within his grandmother’s family, the body in his uncle Julius’s basement.

I tried to sing under my breath, but the only song that came to mind was “O terra, addio,” when Aida is walled up in the tomb to die. Not helpful. I called to Alison instead.