Deadly Interest (32 page)

Fortunately, I was saved by the
doorbell.

“
Any luck?” Lulinski asked
me, by way of greeting when I opened the door.

“
Any luck
what?”

“
Solving my case for me.”
He grinned as we moved into the living room where I introduced him
to Lucy. She was unaccustomed to strangers offering a hand to
shake, but she smiled as she took it.

“
Hi,” she said.

Detective Lulinski sent a quick glance to me
before addressing my sister again. “So you met Laurence Grady,
didn’t you?”

“
Out front,” she said,
pointing.

“
Can I ask you about
it?”

Lucy looked to me and I gave her a nod of
encouragement.

“
Sure.”

“
Did he hurt
you?”

“
Oh, no,” Lucy said. “He
was really nice. He was surprised about Diana and wanted to know
which hospital she was at.”

“
And you told him,
right?”

The way Lulinski phrased it, with such a
natural inquisitiveness, Lucy didn’t think before she answered.
“Oh, yeah. He wanted to know that right away.” She seemed to
consider that. “But I shouldn’t have told him, should I? That’s
where he tried to hurt Alex.”

To his credit, Lulinski didn’t drop the
friendly smile from his face. “It’s okay, Lucy. Nothing bad
happened. And it helps me to know everything I can about when you
talked with him. Did you see where he came from?”

Lucy shook her head.

“
Do you remember which
direction he came from?”

“
Yeah, I do,” Lucy said
with eagerness. “He was walking from here, I think. Yeah. I think
so.”

Damn, I thought. Why hadn’t I asked her
that?

“
Was he carrying
anything?”

Lucy stared up at the ceiling for several
beats. “Just his keys.”

After a few more questions, Lulinski thanked
my sister and I set her back to playing music as he and I headed to
the kitchen.

“
What was that all about?”
I asked.

Dropping into a squeaky chair, Lulinski
craned his neck around, stopping when he spied the coffee maker. He
shot it a look of contempt, then turned to me.

“
I can make some.” I
said.

His eyes lit up.

“
Your sister is really
talented,” he said as I stood.

“
Thanks.” Pouring water
into the appliance’s reservoir, I added, “She plays several other
instruments, too.”

“
I thought you told me she
was mentally handicapped,” he said in a low voice. “She seems
pretty sharp.”

I smiled, and as I moved around the small
kitchen, I explained the vagaries of Williams Syndrome and how my
well-read, articulate sister could still not possess the faculties
to live on her own. Carrying on a conversation felt strange; I was
making coffee in the same house where Mrs. Vicks had been murdered.
Detective Lulinski, fingering the cigarette package he’d pulled
from his pocket, seemed far more at ease, and he turned his body to
watch me as I worked.

“
They did a good job
cleaning this place up,” he said.

I glanced around and shuddered. I hadn’t
seen this room directly after the murder, nor did I want to. A
service took care of the worst of it, then my aunt and several
other women from the neighborhood had come in to finish up. Now
nothing visible remained of the vicious attack.

“
There,” I said. “Couple
of minutes.”

The coffee maker issued a
water-hits-heating-element hiss, followed up by the almost
immediate stream of dripping into the glass carafe. When the warm
brew smell seeped my way I felt myself relax. Normal smells, normal
sounds. It made this abnormal process of finding a killer just a
little more bearable.

“
So, to what do I owe the
honor of this visit?” I asked.

Arms on the table, Lulinski leaned forward.
“Grady’s gone. No sign of him, no word. I talked to his parole
officer and told him I to wanted call Grady in. The folks at the
halfway house where he was staying haven’t seen him, and his place
has been cleaned out.”

“
Okay,” I said, in a
prompting tone.

“
I don’t know what that
means, yet,” he said, spreading his hands out in a gesture of
unsupported explanation, “but despite this latest development, I
have to tell you, my gut tells me Grady isn’t our guy.”

Our guy.

“
Why not?” Standing, I
guessed at which cabinet held Mrs. Vicks’ mugs, grabbing two and
pouring coffee for us both. I cast an uncertain glance at the
refrigerator. “I don’t think there’s any cream,” I said. “At least
not any that’s safe for human consumption.”

He gestured for me to hand him the mug,
which I did. I didn’t particularly care for black coffee, but
without much choice in the matter, I sipped the bitter brew.

“
Our evidence technicians
were backlogged, but I got their report this afternoon.
Unidentified fingerprints, blood, and hair samples all over the
kitchen and in the bedrooms and basement. Just where our guy
was.”

“
Barton?” I
asked.

“
Nope. We printed him. We
have Grady’s on file and we’ve got yours, and Diana’s in addition
to the victim’s. All accounted for. But there are clear prints that
don’t match up to any we have on file.”

He pulled out a small notebook before
continuing. “Blood type issues, too. What are you?” he asked.

“
B-positive,” I
said.

“
Good.” He nodded, still
consulting his notes. “We speculate that the killer was type AB.
Looks like Evelyn Vicks, her son Barton, and the roommate Diana all
had the same blood type—‘O’—the most common, you know.”

I did know. “Why are you telling me all
this? I thought you didn’t trust the media.”

He met my questioning eyes straight on. “You
could find out any of this if you wanted to. We both know that. But
I figure that if I tell you the things I can tell you, you won’t go
behind my back, and maybe you’ll share what you know with me.”

I didn’t know why that stung, but it did. I
deflected. “So you’re saying you found type AB here, too?”

“
Not a lot,
some.”

“
What’s Grady’s blood
type?”

“
B-positive, same as
yours.”

“
Then it isn’t his,” I
said, thinking about that. “So, where did it come from?”

“
Isn’t that the sixty-four
thousand dollar question.” He set his mug down on the table and
rolled its sides against his palms, back and forth, almost
hypnotically. He played with it like I’d seen him play with his
cigarette package and I wondered if it helped him
concentrate.

“
Speaking of which . . .”
I met his eyes over the rim of my coffee cup, “did you hear about
the reward?”

His rubbed his face so hard that for the
first time, a pink tinge crept up from beneath his saggy gray
stubble. “Did I? Every lunatic in the city of Chicago has been
calling the station trying to get the fifty G’s this David Dewars
offered.”

“
How’d they hear about
it?”

He tilted his head my direction, gazing at
me over the tips of his fingers. “You’re kidding, right?”

I shook my head.

“
The idiot took out a
goddamn ad in the goddamn
Sun-Times
,” he said. “Goddamn
full-page ad.”

“
Must have missed it,” I
said. “I read the
Trib
.”

With a baleful glare, he
went back to massaging his coffee mug, staring down at it for a
long moment until one gray eyebrow lifted my direction. “So, how
did
you
hear
about it?”

“
At first, Barton told
me,” I said, “but then last night I asked David about it and
he—”

“
David?”

“
Dewars,” I said, feeling
my face color, “he and I were talking about all this.”

The other eyebrow joined its mate. “Last
night.” He didn’t phrase it as a question.

“
As a matter of fact,
yes.”

“
At the bank?”

“
Well,” I said, hating the
hedging tone to my voice. “We met at the bank.” I didn’t like where
this conversation was going. “Why do you want to know?”

He sat back, with a funny look on his
face.

“
Did you go on a date with
him?” he asked.

I opened my mouth, closed it, then shrugged.
“Kinda.”

“
Well now,” he said in as
close to a drawl as a native Chicagoan can get, “I find that a
little bit odd.”

“
Oh you do.”

He nodded, leaning forward again. “He’s got
what?” Lulinski’s eyes flicked up toward the ceiling for a
split-second, “twenty-four years on you? Don’t you think that’s a
bit much?”

He hadn’t said, “around twenty,” not “twenty
some-odd,” but “twenty-four.”

“
How do you know our
ages?”

“
I make it a point to know
my suspects. All of them.”

“
I’m a suspect?” My voice
squeaked.

“
No,” he said. And then,
with a comedian’s sense of timing, he waited till my shoulders
relaxed and I breathed out a sigh before adding, “Not
anymore.”

“
I was?” I asked,
aghast.

“
Everyone involved is a
suspect until it’s proven they’re innocent.”

“
I thought it was supposed
to be the other way around.”

The corners of his mouth curled upward. “Why
did you go out with David Dewars?”

“
Is this an
interrogation?” I asked.

“
Why, do you have
something to hide?”

I felt like we were
playing the “Questions” game from the
Whose Line Is it Anyway
television
show.

“
No,” I said, putting an
end to the silliness. “I went out with David Dewars because he
asked me. I’ve been looking into Mrs. Vicks’ bank records—at
David’s invitation—and he wanted to touch base with me about all
that.” Punctuating my sentence with a look that said, “I hope
you’re satisfied,” I continued. “Last night was really the first
opportunity we had to connect.”

I couldn’t read Lulinski’s expression. “What
are you hoping to find in the victim’s bank records?”

“
Honestly, I have no
idea,” I sighed.

“
But the bank president is
letting you have free rein over her accounts, and he took you out
on a date.”

I was beginning to wonder why he seemed so
interested in my social life. He certainly had no romantic interest
in me, and my perplexity came out snappish.

“
We went to a play, and
that was it,” I finished, feeling foolish at my attempt to say
“nothing happened” without actually saying the words.

He seemed to get it, but his expression was
still off-kilter as he focused on the empty space between my left
shoulder and the wall behind me. “Okay.”

“
That’s it?
Okay?”

I’d gotten an impression from the very start
that Lulinski was the sort of man who didn’t answer when he didn’t
want to. Nothing in his manner contradicted that notion now. “So
what exactly are you looking for?” he asked. “I mean, I can’t
imagine why the victim’s bank records would be of interest. But,”
he interrupted himself, “I’m no ace reporter, so what do I know?”
He tempered the sarcasm with a smile. Glancing over to my left,
lifted his chin. “What have you got there?”

“
Mrs. Vicks’ mail. My aunt
took it in all week.”

“
You haven’t opened it,
have you?”

“
That’s actually next on
my exploration agenda,” I said. Responding to the look in his eyes,
I added, “I’m sure Barton’s okay with this.”

Lulinski pulled out his cell phone and
flipped a few pages in his notebook. Moments later he’d connected
with Barton and identified himself. “We’d like your permission to
take a look at your mother’s mail.” I couldn’t gauge Barton’s
answer from the look on Lulinski’s face, so I waited till he spoke
again. “No, really, you don’t have to,” he said. After repeating
himself, he rolled his eyes my direction. “Sure, okay. We’ll see
you then.”

“
He’s coming here?” I
asked as he snapped his phone shut.

“
Wants to
help.”

“
Only if it means he gets
the reward.”

Lulinski sat back again and scratched at his
left eyebrow. I got the feeling that, for a few moments, he forgot
I was there. “Something doesn’t add up.”

“
Care to
share?”

Like a camera lens he blinked, and suddenly
his focus was back to me. “Not particularly,” he said with a
grin.

“
Where was he?” I
asked.

“
He’s staying at the Tuck
Inn Motel,” he started to say, stopping when he caught my
expression. “What?”

“
I didn’t know that place
rented for longer than four-hour increments.”

He snorted what could have been a laugh.
“And how would a nice girl like you know about places like
that?”

“
I grew up here, remember?
That’s the neighborhood skank place. Everybody knows about it.”
Lucy moved into playing an off-beat version of “Chopsticks.” I
stood up, smiling. “I hope he asked for a second floor
room.”