Dante's Poison (24 page)

“Go on,” I said impatiently.

“I figured it couldn't hurt to have a chat with him, so I popped by his office on Wells—seedy little space right by the ‘L' tracks—and tried to get an audience. He was there—I could hear him yammering on the phone inside—but his secretary pretended he'd just left for lunch. I thought that was odd, and she was a nice-looking bird, so I invited her out to drinks after work. I give her points for not spilling the beans until we got back to my place that night.”

“You can spare me the details of the conquest,” I said, not wanting to imagine similar romantic adventures with Hallie. “What'd she have to say?”

“Polanski engineered the whole thing. He called on an old pal of his, a guy in the State's Attorney's office, and got him to initiate the exhumation request just so Polanski could show up and acquiesce in it.”

“That seems like a rather roundabout way of going at it.”

“Exactly. You see what it means?”

I admit that at this point I was utterly baffled. “No, but I'm looking forward to your penetrating analysis.”

“Let's say Urquhart wants to knock off his uncle for the insurance money. Being Gallagher's only heir, he'd have to know how quickly suspicion would fall on him. So he decides to make it look like a heart attack. But it can't stay a heart attack forever if Urquhart is to collect under the double-indemnity clause. Eventually it has to be discovered to be a homicide.”

“OK,” I said, still at sea.

“He doesn't demand an autopsy right away because that would look too obvious. Instead, he waits until after the funeral, and then engineers it so that the exhumation request looks like it's coming from a state official. The beauty of it is that by the time the ME gets around to autopsying the corpse, the stomach contents have decomposed enough that no one can say exactly when Gallagher was poisoned. And, to be sure no one pins the murder on him, Urquhart uses a substance that will quickly lead the police to his uncle's lover.”

I thought it sounded too convoluted but went along with his reasoning. “So you're saying Urquhart framed Jane for the murder?”

“Bingo!” Bjorn said in triumph.

“I don't know,” I said. “Wouldn't the plan depend on his knowing about Lucitrol and its health hazards for someone like his uncle?”

“That's easy. Jane's victory in the Atria lawsuit was all over the news, and anyone who watches ten minutes of television would have seen the drug advertised multiple times with all of its warnings. They're very direct about saying someone with heart disease—not to mention a dozen or so other conditions—should not take Lucitrol.”

He had a point. In fact, I thought wryly, given the amount of dire information about designer drugs circulating on the airwaves, it was surprising more people didn't think of bumping off their loved ones in a like fashion. “All right, but if it was a frame job, how did Urquhart know that Jane and Gallagher would be together that night?”

“That's easy,” Bjorn said. “I saved the best bit of information for last.”

I gave him an inquisitive look.

“You can't just show up and ask the Circuit Court to exhume a body—there has to be a reason. In this case, the ASA had an affidavit, conveniently signed by a close associate of Gallagher's.”

“OK, you're killing me,” I said.

“It was Sparks—Lucy Sparks—Gallagher's fiancée.”

We passed the rest of the forty-five-minute drive in near silence, while Bjorn zipped in and out of truck traffic to the beat of Rockin' Country Rebels and I fidgeted in my seat. What he'd told me made sense in an Occam's Razor sort of way—wasn't the simplest answer usually the right one?—but Urquhart as his uncle's killer didn't begin to explain all the other strange doings in the case, beginning with Jane and Gallagher's quarrel on the night he died. I was sure their argument had something to do with his death, along with whatever information Jane had wiped from Gallagher's computer. And then, of course, there was the attack on Hallie and me and the anonymous note. If Bjorn's theory was correct, Urquhart would have had to be behind both, but to what end? Once the police had fingered Jane for the poisoning, his best course was to lie low and wait, not attract possible attention to himself by stalking and then setting upon two strangers. Even if Urquhart and the Luvabull were somehow in cahoots, there were too many loose ends involved in Bjorn's theory.

Urquhart's main store was situated in Orland Park, a community emblematic of the haphazard planning of many Chicago suburbs. Once covered with working farmland, it now consisted of miles of strip malls and housing developments, with nothing so petroleum-unfriendly as a sidewalk connecting them. According to Bjorn, the current cash crop was foreclosures; nearly every gated community we passed had a sign up. E-Z Electronics stood a mile from what passed as the town center at the back of an empty parking lot. Bjorn told me that Urquhart spent most of his days there, hunched over his sales reports and brooding over the Mom and Pop store Armageddon that was online retailing.

We stepped out of the Land Rover into a strong southwest wind that coughed up dust in our faces and traversed a pitted asphalt surface to the storefront, which Bjorn told me was dominated by offers of heavy discounts on everything from laptops to toasters. A bell jingled over our heads as we crossed the threshold.

I took Bjorn's elbow and followed him over to the sales counter.

“What can I do for you fellows?” came the thin, sour voice I recognized from the hearing as Urquhart's. Otherwise the store sounded empty.

“My cousin here is interested in buying a camera,” Bjorn said, indicating me by his side.

Urquhart paused as though not sure whether he was being made fun of. “Is that some kind of joke?” he demanded of Bjorn.

“Which part—the camera or the fact we're cousins?”

“Both is what I meant,” Urquhart said. “What business would he have with a camera?”

I always loved it when people referred to me in the third person. “Are you sure this is a good idea?” I said, turning toward Bjorn. “I mean, I can probably get a better deal on Amazon and I won't have to put up with any insults.”

“Very funny,” Urquhart said. “And I don't believe for a minute you two are cousins.”

“I suppose he's never heard of albinism,” Bjorn said to me.

“Sure I have,” Urquhart said. “My mother's father was Albanian. Hey, wait a minute. I know who you are. You're the blind sonofabitch who testified at the hearing.”

I was amazed at how long it took him to catch on.

“I don't have anything to say to you. Or to him,” Urquhart said, obviously meaning Bjorn. “My lawyer told me not to.”

“Your lawyer is why we're here,” Bjorn said coolly. “We know he engineered the order seeking exhumation of your uncle's body.”

“So?” Urquhart said.

“So how did he know that the autopsy would turn up evidence of poisoning? Unless someone told him.”

“Like I said,” Urquhart replied. “I'm not talking to you.”

Bjorn pressed on while I stood by, eager to learn how a pro would handle the situation.

“Come now, Mr. Urquhart. Let's not play around. I'll tell you what I think. I think you knew ahead of time exactly what the autopsy would show.”

Urquhart didn't flinch a bit. “That's crazy. And I've got work to do.”

“That's funny,” Bjorn replied. “I don't see any customers in here.” He nudged my arm. “You, Mark?”

“Not a one,” I deadpanned.

“Yeah, well,” Urquhart said. “Business has been a little down lately.”

“So I gathered from your credit reports. You're behind on your bank payments. And this store and everything in it are mortgaged to the rooftop.”

“Again, so what?” Urquhart said, seeming not in the least perturbed. “I've got more bills than I've got money to pay them, like everyone else in this stinking economy.”

“Bills that you'll be able to pay off quite easily with your uncle's insurance money,” Bjorn said. “You don't really expect us to believe you were torn up over his death.”

“Believe what you like,” Urquhart said in the same flippant manner. “And now, unless you're planning on shopping for a camera for your pale-faced cousin, you can just take yourself off the premises. Or do I have to call the cops?”

I figured it was time for the amateur to get involved. “Good idea. Bjorn, why don't you go back out to the car and get the video. I'm sure the police will find it fascinating, along with all the other evidence you've collected.”

“Wha—” Bjorn began. I stepped on his shoe as a signal. “Of course,” he recovered quickly. “The video. Right, it's in the boot.”

“What video?” Urquhart snarled. “What other evidence?”

“The evidence that you and your uncle's so-called fiancée were involved. You didn't think anyone would find out? Bjorn here snapped some very interesting footage of the two of you. That plus the insurance money and the two of you conspiring to have his body dug up should make for a very interesting tale.”

“I didn't have anything to do with him getting killed. It was that bitch of a lawyer,” Urquhart protested, finally starting to sound worried.

“Sure it was. Except that the bitch, as you call her, didn't go asking anyone to have your uncle's body exhumed. You did. How else would you know what the ME would find unless you put it there yourself? Though I'll allow it could have been Ms. Sparks who slipped him the pill.”

“I . . . I can produce an alibi,” Urquhart bleated.

I shook my head. “That's not going to help you get around a charge of accessory to murder. See, the way I figure it is this: you and Ms. Sparks have been an item for some time. Maybe your uncle introduced you, or maybe Lucy cozied up to him after the two of you hatched your little plan. There was never any engagement to Gallagher, and I'll bet when the police go looking for the receipt for that engagement ring, they'll find your name on it. Which means Ms. Sparks was lying when the prosecution put her on the stand, and not just about the wedding bells. She testified that she made Gallagher breakfast that morning and didn't eat any of it herself. It's as good an inference as any that she poisoned him, and no one is going to believe she acted alone—especially with a million and a half in insurance money going to you when he died. You see how it all looks, don't you? Once the police find out about you two, they'll draw the only sensible conclusion. What do you say we go over and tell them right now, Bjorn?”

“I'm for it,” Bjorn said, pulling his car keys from his pocket and giving them a shake. We turned in unison as if to go.

“Wait, wait—you've got it all wrong!” Urquhart nearly shouted.

“Which part in particular?” I said over my shoulder. “That you murdered your uncle or that you were having it on with his girl behind his back?”

“She wasn't his girl,” Urquhart said shakily. “Oh, all right, she slept with him from time to time after we got together, but it was just an act. We didn't want him to find out about us. I was afraid he'd get pissed off and write me out of his will. We met at a barbecue at his place last fall. And yeah, it was me she was going to marry. But we never tried to kill my uncle, I swear.”

I turned to face him again: “I'm having a hard time believing that after Sparks perjured herself.”

“That was just to shore up the homicide claim. Gene Polanski explained it to me. I'd get double if my uncle was murdered, and it was in our interest to point the finger at another suspect. I always hated Barrett, so it was an easy decision to try to pin the blame on her. Stuck-up piece of pussy. I never understood what Rory wanted with her, but she had him twirled around her little finger. I thought it would kill two birds with one stone to get her in trouble, so we had Lucy go to the police with that made-up story. Lucy wasn't even with Rory that morning. She was with me. We didn't know for sure he'd been poisoned until after the body was exhumed.”

“Uh-huh,” I said skeptically. “But then what made you think about digging it up in the first place? Or did a little bird just happen to come along and whisper in your ear?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Urquhart said. He opened a drawer behind the counter. “I got this.”