Deadly Interest (33 page)

“
Why is that?”

Smiling to myself, I recalled some of the
rumors that I’d heard over the years. “The owners supposedly rent
out the rooms in numerical order,” I said, then amending. “And so,
if you want half a chance at something clean, you have to ask for
the rooms that have seen the least action. Second floor.”

Lulinski shook his head, wearing a grimace
that matched my own reaction. “Well, Big Bart must not have gotten
the scoop,” he said. “He’s in one-thirteen.”

“
Lucky number,” I said.
“And he’s a gambler?”

I’d forewarned Lucy, but when Barton showed
up, minutes later, he threw open the front door with the force of a
gale wind. Simultaneously, I heard the concomitant dissonance of a
misplayed chord coupled with Lucy’s squeak of terror. I jumped up,
meeting her halfway between the rooms. She grabbed my arm.

“
Barton,” I said in a
sharp voice.

“
What?” his insolent tone
led me to believe he’d shared company with a warm bottle of booze
in that hotel room.

I wanted to tell him he should have knocked,
but we were in his house now and that would have come out childish,
not to mention stupid. So, all I said was, “Settle down.”

“
Sorry,” he said, then
looked at me, as though seeking for an atta-boy.

Lucy stayed close, whispering in my ear that
she wanted to go home now and could we please leave. I could feel
her entire body tremble next to mine and I could only imagine how
frightening a big lout like Bart was to my tender sister. “Sure,” I
said. I gestured Bart into the kitchen and pulled out my cell phone
to call Aunt Lena.

Within five minutes, our aunt had zipped
over to spirit Lucy back to her house. As she did, she handed me a
bag, and plate full of food for those of us remaining to work.
“Just a little something,” she said with a wink. “It’ll give you
strength to deal with Barton.”

The two men’s eyes lit up when I uncovered
the tray of sandwiches. My aunt had included chips, cans of pop and
some side items in the bag. She’d made ten half-sandwiches in
turkey, beef, and ham. Since the two fellows seemed to be waiting
for me, I grabbed one of the roast beef sections and then watched
them dig in too.

Ten minutes later, I’d eaten my single
half-sandwich and a handful of chips, but all that was left on the
plate was a slice of tomato and some crumbs. I eyed the tomato, and
when it looked safe enough for me to take it without having one of
the two guys mistake my arm for another sandwich, I grabbed.

“
So, down to
business?”

I took charge of the mail, and sorted it
into three piles, trying not to make it look too obvious that I was
handing Barton mostly sale paper and credit card offers. I split
the personal correspondence, banking stuff, and anything that
looked official between myself and Detective Lulinski. For a good
five minutes, we worked in silence.

“
This is shit,” Barton
said, flinging a shiny flyer across the table—it landed, tented, so
that the zero-percentage rate faced us in bold red and blue.
Immediately after his pronouncement, he belched, and the stench of
lunch mixed with sweet alcohol that bubbled my way nearly curdled
my stomach. “What do you think we’re going to find in this crap,
anyway?”

“
Probably nothing,”
Lulinski said, without looking at him.

“
Shit,” he said again. He
began ripping envelopes open with uncontained fury. “This is a
waste of time.”

I’d seen Barton fight off those security
guards; I knew he could be a formidable adversary when he was in a
snit, especially when tanked to the gills the way he was now.
Lulinski placed one piece of mail to his left, and picked up
another, still apparently unconcerned. Still paying no attention to
Barton.

Seated at the head of the table, to Barton’s
immediate right, I could see the big guy’s hands spasm, even as I
tried to concentrate on the handwritten envelope in front of me.
Barton moved his neck and jaw at once, like his shirt was too
tight. Unlikely, since he wore a torn polo with an open collar. A
few dark chest hairs sprouted from its “v” and I reassessed whether
Barton was a natural blond or not.

Eeyoo.

He looked from Lulinski to me, then at the
mail. His mouth twisted downward. “You think I don’t know what’s
going on?” he said, standing. “You two gave me all the shit mail
because you both really just want to get that damn reward for
yourselves. What do you think, I’m some kind of idiot that I don’t
see that?” With one angry sweep of his arm, Barton scattered his
pile of mail across the table and onto the floor.

Faster than I could say, “smooth move,”
Lulinski was out of his seat and up in Barton’s face. I hadn’t
realized until I saw the two men nose-to-nose that Lulinski was
taller, by several inches. Barton just always seemed so much bigger
to me.

“
Listen, fat-ass,”
Lulinski said, and I could see tension in his body fighting the
urge to grab Barton by those wayward chest hairs and twist, tight.
“Your mother was murdered. Or did you forget that?” As Lulinski
advanced, Barton backed up. “She was murdered, here, in her own
goddamn kitchen—a place where she should have felt
safe.”

The red-rimmed bottoms of Barton’s eyes
twitched. “Yeah,” he said, bluster fading, “and all I want—”

“
All you want is walk away
from this with the goddamned reward money in your pocket so you can
pay off your bookie.”

Barton’s color drained. He shot an
accusatory look my direction.

“
Don’t look at her. It’s
my job to know these things. And it’s my job to find out who killed
your mother. For all I know, you did it.”

Barton’s attitude swung from anger to
simpering fear in the time it took for me to switch my glance from
Lulinski to him. “I didn’t do it, I swear.” His hands came up in a
gesture of surrender. “I swear it,” he said again.

Lulinski turned his back on Barton, making
his way back to the table. “She was your mother, asshole. When did
you forget that?”

Suddenly it was too much for the big guy.
Too much liquor, too much tension, too much confrontation. Barton’s
face crumpled and tears leaked down his pudgy cheeks as he started
to blubber right in front of us.

Embarrassed for him, I looked back down at
the square envelope in my lap. Hand-addressed on plain pink
stationery in a woman’s hand, it felt weighty, as though there were
several sheets inside. I’d been about to add it to Barton’s pile of
to-be-reads when I noticed the return address.

Iowa.

Standing so close now that he could have
read over my shoulder if he wanted to, Barton gripped the back of
his chair, leaning hard. I kept the letter on my lap, wanting to
read it, but wanting even more to keep it from Barton, at least for
now. I didn’t know why, but I knew I wanted to digest its contents
alone. I could feel its importance tingle along my tips of my
consciousness.

I hated waiting.

Standing, turning, I grabbed my purse which
I’d slung over the back of my chair. “Excuse me,” I said, and I
pressed the envelope against the back of my bag, hoping Barton
wouldn’t notice the awkwardness of my movements.

Lulinski gave me a look that asked what was
up.

“
Washroom,” I
said.

His skeptical gray eyes shot from the purse,
clasped at my mid-section, to my face, but he said nothing. I held
tight, letting the long shoulder strap dangle, feeling as though
any idiot could see that I was hiding something. I counted on the
fact that Barton wasn’t just any idiot.

Five steps away, the bathroom door stood
open. I was just about to cross its threshold when I glanced
back.

“
Hang on a minute there,”
Barton said, his voice cracked and impatient.

Without meaning to, I pulled my purse
tighter into my gut.

“
What’s up?” Lulinski
asked, moving between us.

The big lug pushed past the detective. “Let
me get in there first, okay?” he asked. “Just want to splash some
water on my face, is all.”

“
Sure,” I
managed.

When I heard the small lock click, I blew my
bangs out of my face in relief.

“
All right,” Lulinski said
in a low voice, sidling up to me as I moved back to the table,
“what’s going on?”

I gave him a sheepish half-shrug as I set my
purse on my chair and pulled the pale pink envelope from behind it.
“I don’t know. Maybe nothing.”

“
But you think it might be
something.”

Knowing Barton might emerge any moment, I
moved as fast as I could, sliding my finger into the corner where
the envelope glue hadn’t stuck, loosening it. The letter, three
pages folded in half, had been sent two days before Mrs. Vicks’
murder, according to the handwritten date up top. Before reading
it, I flipped to the last page to see who signed it.

“
Theresa,” I said,
quietly.

“
Mean anything to you?”
Lulinski asked.

“
No.”

Turning back to the first sheet, I began to
skim. Theresa’s letter began “Dear Evelyn,” and, in the way that
friendly letters often do, asked if everything was going well in
Chicago. I wondered, briefly, at Theresa’s age. Beginning her
letter by using Mrs. Vicks’ first name might indicate that they
were contemporaries.

Theresa then went on to mention a couple of
recent events in her own life, including the fact that she’d
apparently been out on “another date” with a farmer named Ned.

When I heard the toilet flush in the next
room, I read faster, vaguely aware that Lulinski wasn’t reading
over my shoulder, but appeared ready to run interference the moment
Barton stepped out.

Before the end of the first page of script,
Theresa asked about Diana. She mentioned the fact that she hadn’t
gotten a call from her in over a month. She said that she knew that
Laurence Grady had been released from prison, and that her concerns
for Diana were mounting. The next page held another interesting
tidbit. She wrote: “Dr. Hooker called me at home again today. I
don’t know if I’m going to be able to make the trip to Chicago, but
he thinks it’s important that I be there when the time comes. What
do you think?”

The bathroom door clunked open and I slammed
the letter to my chest in a “Look at me, I’m guilty!” move.
Lulinski moved to intercept Bart and I shoved the pink sheets into
my purse as the two did a narrow-hallway dance, buying me some
time. I still didn’t have any reason to hide the letter from
Barton, beyond a sense of needing to sort things out in my own mind
before sharing them.

With a neat little click, a piece of the
puzzle fell into place. Remembering the day Mrs. Vicks had shown me
Diana’s school picture and spoken fondly of her, I knew, even
before confirming it, that Theresa was the girl’s mother. My eyes
shot to the top drawer of the built-in china cabinet where Mrs.
Vicks had stored the photo that day. I would bet there were more
letters like this one, there and I’d bet some of them would explain
why Mrs. Vicks had sent money out to them all these years.

Barton dropped into the squeaky kitchen
chair with resigned lethargy. “I’m bored with this crap,” he
said.

I returned to the same chair I’d occupied
earlier and fingered the next few pieces of mail in front of me
while I waited for the detective to come back from the washroom.
Nothing else looked promising at the moment, and I wanted to get
into the little room myself to read the rest of Theresa’s letter in
peace.

“
Hey,” Barton said. “This
isn’t where Ma worked.”

He held up a blue bank statement.

I’d seen several similar statements in the
fire box in the closet, but I hadn’t paid them much attention. I
took a closer look. “May I?”

He handed it to me.

I had to give the big guy credit, this was
indeed not issued by Banner Bank. According to this monthly
statement, Mrs. Vicks maintained a savings account and two
certificates of deposit at a neighborhood bank.

“
This is the bank on
Pulaski,” I said aloud, “The one on the corner.”

Maybe those bank statements I’d seen earlier
this morning deserved a closer look. I grimaced. Yet another thing
I’d rather do with Barton out of my hair.

Lulinski came back to our little group and
after a few minutes of watching me fidget, asked Barton where he
could get a pack of cigarettes in the area. As Barton started to
give directions, Lulinski interrupted. “It’d be just as easy for
you to show me. Come on, let’s take a ride.”

Not realizing he was being manipulated,
Barton gave a so-so motion of his head and stood, with a little bit
of interest in his eyes. I resisted the urge to ask Lulinski if he
was going to let Barton play with the siren along the way.

The detective caught me as they headed out
the door. “I expect you to share,” he said with a wink.

The moment they were gone, I grabbed the old
wooden buffet drawer with both hands and dragged it out from its
recess. Cumbersome and heavy, it was almost a perfect square, about
eighteen inches to a side, and a good six inches deep.

Crammed with a lifetime of miscellany, this
was Mrs. Vicks’ important junk drawer. Easy to recognize, since I
had several of them, myself. My eye caught a thick envelope labeled
“Photos” next to a four-inch ball of string, and I knew I’d struck
gold.

Inside the envelope were pictures of Diana
from the time she was a toddler. Each photograph, whether a candid,
or a posed school portrait, had been carefully labeled with her
name, her age, and the date.