Deadly Interest (7 page)

Read Deadly Interest Online

Authors: Julie Hyzy

Tags: #amateur sleuth, #chicago, #female protagonist, #murder mystery, #mystery, #mystery and suspense, #mystery novel, #series

BOOK: Deadly Interest
11.96Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub


I’m disappointed,” he
said. “Please don’t break my heart and tell me you’re refusing me
because you have a date.”

A date. With William. I felt a thrill of
excitement at the use of the word. “Well . . .” I said. Truth be
told, it was none of his business whether I had a date or not. “A
colleague and I are getting together to get a few things done for a
story here. It’ll take all day.”


Remember Alex, all work
and no play . . .” He paused just a half beat. “How about
Sunday?”

He was one of those folks who calls a person
by name at every opportunity. “David,” I said, trying out his name
myself, “there is something else I think you should know.”


Uh-oh, here it comes,” he
said. He waited a beat before continuing. “You’re not married, are
you?”


No, no. Nothing like
that.”


Good,” he said. “Then I
anticipate we’ll get together some other time. Soon. You’re an
intriguing woman, Alex St. James.”

Okay, I was flattered. Here he was, a
bright, handsome, albeit older man, who was interested and who came
at me with a directness sorely lacking in most of the male species.
Still, I thought, time to return to business at hand. “I’m afraid I
have some personal business that might keep me occupied for a few
days.”


Oh?”

I told him about Evelyn Vicks.


What?” His voice, filled
with incredulity, boomed loud over the phone. I heard a hollow
seashell sound, as though he’d cupped his hand over the mouthpiece.
When he spoke again, it wasn’t to me, but I could make it out.
“Donna, get Owen in here. Tell him it’s urgent.”

Geez, I thought, dialogue right out of a
suspense film. I couldn’t imagine why he was getting so worked
up.

The seashell-against-the-ear sound
disappeared and he returned to talking with me. “Oh, Alex,” he
said, his voice soft, like butter. “Not Evelyn Vicks.”


You know her?” I
asked.


She works . . . worked
for me.”


You work at Banner
Bank?”


Well, I suppose you could
say that.” He cleared his throat. “I . . . own the
bank.”


Oh,” I said, astonished
to speechlessness.

David chimed in to help. “She was a friend
of yours?”


Yeah,” I said, suddenly
finding it hard to talk. “I’ve known her all my life.”

I’d not had a chance to fully appreciate the
situation. Instead I’d been hit in small, unexpected moments. This
was one. A friend of mine. I wouldn’t have described her in those
words. I would have said she was my parents’ friend, or my
neighbor, or the elderly lady whose house was one of the best for
trick-or-treating when I was a kid.

Remembering the casserole she brought over
when my grandmother died, and the scarves she’d knitted for me and
Lucy, and even last night, the fact that she knew the whole story
about how Dan had stolen my feature and had taken all the
credit—she suddenly felt more real to me than she ever had, and the
fact that she was gone, murdered, felt like I was being sliced from
the inside.


It’s hard to lose someone
we care about,” David said.


It is,” I answered, not
knowing what else to say.


Alex,” he said, “if there
is anything I can do, you’ll tell me, won’t you?”


Of course,” I said. It
was a remote, automatic response.


I’ll call you another
time,” he said.


Sure. Thanks.”

I hung up, thoughtful, both hands resting on
the receiver for a long moment. I was supposed to go visit that
detective again today, and maybe, if I played my cards just right,
I’d get some information out of him. Unlikely, since he seemed
circumspect, to say the least. Still. I hadn’t become one of the
top researchers in my field by waiting around for details to fall
into my lap.

Jordan popped around the corner again. “So?”
she said, affecting a sassy air as she meandered into my office and
pulled up a chair. “You want to tell me about this Dewars
fellow?”

I brushed my hand in front of me, like
shooing a pesky fly. “Nobody important.”


Uh-huh,” she said in a
flat, “I don’t believe you for a minute” voice, her brown eyes
widening in amused affectation. “Girl, you are holding out on
me.”


Why all the interest? I
met him at the dinner last night.”

Her lips set into a smug smile. “Don’t you
tell me that he’s nobody important.” She lowered her voice in an
imitation of his, “‘May I be connected to the lovely Alexandrine
St. James, please?’”


He didn’t say
that.”

She wiggled her head and shot me a
pursed-lip smile. “You bet he did.” She grinned bigger, then asked,
“There was something else you wanted to talk with me about?”


Yeah.”

I had an immediate crazy desire to pull
everyone I knew into my office so I could tell them about Evelyn
Vicks’ murder all at one time. I’d never had such difficult and
weighty information to impart to so many people, and I hated the
thought of explaining it yet again.

I went through the whole scenario, trying my
best to keep it light, and angry at myself for doing so. Somehow
each time got easier to tell and I didn’t like that. As if Mrs.
Vicks’ murder somehow got lessened with each telling. That’s how
murderers get away, I decided. Enough people tell the story enough
times till everyone is desensitized and the crime no longer holds
the capacity to horrify. By the time the criminal makes it into
court, the facts have been rehashed so often that it becomes simply
words on a page, or facts stated aloud. The victim, the person
whose life has been cruelly stolen from the rest of us, has turned
into a mere statistic.

I managed to get through the ordeal of
telling her without as many guilt pangs and without feeling like my
throat was closing up. Dragging my purse onto my lap, I switched
into business mode.


I have to go down to
provide my fingerprints today,” I said, pulling Detective
Lulinski’s card from my wallet. “Here,” I handed it to her. “Would
you mind calling him and asking if there’s a good time for me to
show up? I’d hate to spend the afternoon sitting there, if they’re
busy.”


Sure,” she said,
standing. “You sure you’re okay?”

I wrinkled my nose. “I will be. Thanks.”

After she left, I remembered the phone
message from Lucy’s school. Dialing it, I got a sudden tingle of
fear. What if they were calling me because something had happened
to her? I berated myself for not phoning them the minute I’d gotten
in.

The receptionist connected me with Lester
Raymond almost before I’d finished giving her my name.


Good morning, Les,” I
said.


Alex.”

Thirty seconds into our conversation, I was
relieved to realize that things were fine with Lucy, but that the
institution was in the midst of an upheaval. Inspectors had
discovered asbestos in a high-traffic area, and plans were in place
to effect its removal.

I knew the man on the other end of the
phone, Lester Raymond. A slight fellow, with dark hair and deep
brown eyes that stayed alert behind dark-rimmed glasses like a
studious bird, he spoke with a bit of a speech impediment that
caused him to slur his words. In person, I could tell that he was
an intelligent, caring man. Over the phone he sounded like a
drunken Elmer Fudd.


We are sorry,” he said,
and I felt myself cringing at the hollow sound of his “r’s.” “But
we require all the residents to be relocated.”


I understand,” I said.
“When will this take place?”


Well,” he said, and I
realized that his “L’s” were lost, too, “we were planning to have
them all resettled by this weekend.”


Oh,” I said.

My mind raced. This weekend. That was pretty
short notice. He must have read my mind because he added, with a
bit of apologetic haste, “I am very sorry, but we weren’t aware
that your parents were out of town. We left them two messages, but
received no reply.”

It took me a moment to decipher “awawe and
pawents,” but I understood a moment later. “My parents are in
Europe.”


We discovered that this
week. I’m afraid that we were so certain that Lucy would be picked
up that she dropped through the cracks. You know, your family is
very good at visiting. Most families are not.”


Thanks,” I said, but my
mind was still processing his comment about this
weekend.


We really need Lucy to be
relocated,” he said again. “We have made arrangements with another
school, but the closest one that we feel comfortable with is on the
far west side of Iowa, and I don’t know if you would want your
sister that far.”


No,” I said, quickly, as
though he was about to make an immediate decision and send her off
that minute. “No, she can stay with me. Do you have any idea how
long the asbestos removal will take?”


We anticipate no longer
than two weeks,” he said. “What time can you be here
tomorrow?”

I thought about William. “Can’t I pick her
up on Sunday?”


I’m sorry, no. They’ll be
bringing in all the crew on Sunday, and taking over the area. We
don’t want any of our residents here at the time. We think it would
be too stressful for them. Too difficult to see so many strangers
here. Upsetting, you know.”


Tomorrow?”


Yes, the earlier the
better.”

I sighed. “Fine. I’ll be there as soon as I
can.”

Maybe, I thought. Maybe if I started out
really early, I could have her back home by mid-afternoon, and
still make my date with William. Maybe we could push it back a bit,
but still . . .

I shook my head. Lucy would expect to spend
time with me. I couldn’t leave her alone—not with some kind of mad
killer running loose in the neighborhood. I couldn’t just drop her
over at my aunt and uncle’s house when I hadn’t seen her in almost
a month, either. They’d probably generously offer to have Lucy come
visit while I was at work during the week, but to take advantage of
their good nature by imposing on their weekend wasn’t fair to them
and it wasn’t fair to her.

Even if I started out at eight in the
morning, it was a three hour trip one-way, in good weather with no
construction. Add in packing her things up for an extended stay,
and the trip back, and the day was shot.

I stared out the window at the sunny day.
Just as beautiful as David Dewars had described. I wished I could
feel as good as the day looked.

Chapter Six

I pulled Jordan in and brought her up to
speed after my phone call with Lucy’s school. I then stopped by
Bass’s office to tell him about Evelyn Vicks.

The team’s offices lined the perimeter of
the entire second floor of our building. Bass had a corner office
facing north and west. My office was just a couple of doors away,
and I overlooked the Chicago River, with a gorgeous view of the
Wrigley Building and the Tribune Towers. Hank had the corner office
that faced North and East, but William, tucked at the far end of
the line of offices, faced south—right into the side of a marble
building, so close he could touch it if the windows hadn’t been
welded shut.

His door was open, and the lights were on.
Poor guy always had to have lamps and overhead lights on, seeing as
how no natural sunlight ever pierced the narrow opening between the
two buildings.


Hi,” I said, as I walked
in.

He looked up and smiled. A genuine “glad to
see you” smile. It both warmed my heart and made me feel immense
disappointment at the same time.

He put his pen down and gestured for me to
sit. “What’s up?”

I shook my head. “Remember me telling you
about my sister, Lucy?”

His head canted, ever so slightly.
Concerned. “Yeah.”


Well,” I sat across from
him, “it looks like plans for tomorrow have changed, after all.”
Explaining my need to make the long trek downstate in the morning,
I kept my tone cheerful. I didn’t want to make it seem like a
chore—after all, Lucy meant the world to me—but I wanted him to
know I was disappointed, too. “I’m sorry.”


Sounds like a full day,”
he said. His face had returned to that impassive look he was so
good at. The look I had a hard time reading.


Yeah,” I said. “Very
full.”

We chatted a bit longer, and I lingered a
few hopeful moments, but he didn’t say anything that could even
vaguely be construed as “Hey, don’t worry, we’ll just make it
another time.”

Pensive, I headed back to my office.

Jordan took one look at my face, and
followed me in. “Looks like you’re having a hell of a day.”


Tell me about
it.”


I hate to make it worse,
but . . .” She grinned.


What?” I asked,
frustrated by the tired sound in my voice. It wasn’t even eleven in
the morning, and I felt like I’d been through two weeks of boot
camp.


Bass wants you back in
his office. He says something’s come up. And,” her brown eyes
flicked up at me “that detective not only wants to fingerprint you,
he wants to interview you again. He says to be there at
three.”


Be there at three,” I
repeated. I made a mock-salute to no one in particular. “Yes, sir.”
I stared out the window, trying really hard to soak in some of the
good feelings the day was trying to deliver. No sense feeling sorry
for myself.

Other books

Growing New Plants by Jennifer Colby
El Campeón Eterno by Michael Moorcock
A Fortune-Teller Told Me by Tiziano Terzani
Stars Collide by Janice Thompson
Victory Point by Ed Darack
He Belongs With Me by Sarah Darlington
ROPED by Eliza Gayle
Deadly Interest
You must be logged in to Read or Download
CONTINUE
SECURE VERIFIED
Close X