Grave Designs (18 page)

Chapter Twenty-three

The green-streak edition of the
Chicago Tribune
was on the chair in front of Benny's desk. It was the lead story: a black and white photograph of Shore Drive Tower, and below that the headline:

BLAST ROCKS HI-RISE CONDO;
BEAUTY QUEEN FEARED DEAD

Two people died today in a condominium in Shore Drive Tower after an apparent gas-leak explosion turned an 18th-floor apartment into a fiery inferno. Police have tentatively identified one of the victims as Cynthia Ann Reynolds, a former Ms. Illinois and the owner of the condominium. The other victim—a middle-aged male—has not been identified.

The explosion occurred at approximately 11 a.m. The force of the blast shattered the large picture window of the condominium and sent shards of broken glass tumbling to the streets below. No one on the ground was injured.

According to Captain James Howard of the Chicago Fire Department, the explosion and fire were caused by a faulty gas line leading to the condominium's oven.

“Once the place filled up with gas, the slightest spark would have set it off,” Captain Howard explained. “Judging from the force of the explosion and the magnitude of the fire, we suspect the decedents may have died from gas inhalation prior to the explosion.”

The charred remains of the two victims were taken to the Cook County Morgue, where positive identification awaited receipt of dental records and other relevant data.

I skimmed the rest of the article, which included a photograph of Cindi from the Ms. United States Pageant. My eyes were stinging. I put the newspaper on Benny's desk and rested my hands in my lap.

“I'm sorry, Rachel.”

I looked up. “I really liked her, Benny. She wasn't at all what I had expected. She was special.”

“I know. I could tell.”

We sat there in silence. I felt exhausted. “Are you going to take the hoop with you?” I finally asked.

Benny turned around to where a small basketball hoop was anchored to the wall over his chair. He turned back with a weak smile. “Sure.” He leaned forward. “Rachel, how's this Canaan thing going?”

I shrugged. “Oh, okay, I guess.”

“What's happened to you?”

“What do you mean?”

“C'mon, Rachel. We're buddies, remember. You looked bushed even before I told you about Cindi.”

I sighed. “I guess I am. I haven't had much sleep.”

“Dammit, tell me what happened. What have you been up to?”

“Well, the night before last I was riding the el trains.”

“Late at night?”

I nodded. “Two in the morning. And yesterday someone drugged Ozzie and broke into my apartment.”

“Jesus H. Christ, Rachel. Is Ozzie okay?”

“He'll be fine. I can take him home from the vet tomorrow.”

“What in hell is going on?”

My shoulders slumped. “That's exactly what I'd like to know. This morning someone tried to rob another grave at Maggie's pet cemetery.”

“Holy shit.” Benny stood up and started pacing. “What in God's name were you doing up on the el?”

I told him—about the
Reader
personal, about the el ride, about tailing that man to the garage of Cindi's condominium. And I told him about the theft of Marshall's dictionary and
The Lottery of Canaan
and Tyrone Henderson's computer search for the Canaan file. It was a relief to talk to him about it.

“Wow,” Benny finally said. “You think there really is a Canaan lottery?” he asked.

“Well, something's definitely going on, Benny. I think I've pieced together part of it. But I still don't have a clue about who took the coffin. Or why. Or who broke into my apartment.”

“What have you got so far?”

“Enough to think that Ishmael Richardson probably ought to be the first to hear about it. I'm going to see him Monday morning. And you'll do me a big favor if you don't mention this to anyone.”

Benny stood up and grinned. He mimed zipping his lips together. “Listen, you've had a terrible day. You need to get your mind off this stuff. Some guy over at Sidley and Austin told me about a new Mexican restaurant in the Pilsen area. They've got a spicy chili rellenos that'll make your colon sing
Aida.”

I smiled. “Sounds like one of life's great thrills.”

“Wanna meet there at seven?” Benny asked.

I shook my head. “I just want to go home tonight.”

Benny looked at me, his eyes sad. “I understand. How ‘bout lunch tomorrow?”

“Okay.”

“Great. I'll pick you up at noon. You better get some sleep tonight, Rachel.”

“I plan to.” I stood up. “God, Benny, I just feel terrible about Cindi.”

“I know. So do I, Rachel.” He shook his head and placed an arm around my shoulder. “So do I.”

***

It was drizzling and gloomy when I stepped off the el at Morse Avenue. I leafed through magazines at the newsstand inside the station, waiting for the rain to ease up. Taped to the back of the cash register was an advertisement for the Illinois Lottery: THE LOTTERY—WE MIGHT JUST CHANGE YOUR LIFE…FOREVER. I stared at the sign. Why not? I bought two tickets. I put them into my purse as I walked to the exit. The rain was coming down harder. The guy at the newsstand had told me there was a severe thunderstorm watch until midnight. I pulled a newspaper out of the trash can, held it over my head, and stepped into the rain.

By the time I reached my apartment my skirt and blouse were dripping and my shoes squished. I kicked off my shoes at the front door, stripped off my clothes in the front hall, and padded into the living room. I listened to my messages on the telephone answering machine as I hung my wet clothes over the backs of my kitchen chairs: “Rachel, it's your mother calling to say hello. We'll be home all day tomorrow, sweetie…. Click…. It's Paul, Rachel. Just calling to make sure you're okay. Talk to you later…. Click….” It ended with a dial tone, the last caller having hung up without leaving a message.

I walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower. I stood motionless under the hot water for a long time, struggling to keep my mind blank.

After the shower I put on my boxing robe and walked barefoot into the kitchen. I took a beer out of the refrigerator, stared at it for a moment, then put it back and took a glass out of the cabinet. I clinked four ice cubes into it and poured in some vodka.

Yawning, I walked into the living room, clicked on the television, and plopped onto the couch, splashing some vodka onto my lap in the process. “Damn,” I mumbled, and settled back as the local news came on the screen.

The anchorman was joking with the weather girl, who was apologizing for the rain—apparently in the belief that she not only reported the weather but somehow caused it. She promised plenty of sunshine tomorrow, and the anchorman asked her if she'd be out sunbathing on the Oak Street Beach. That broke them both up, and they cut to a commercial.

When they returned from the commercial break, the weather girl was gone—presumably hauled off the set in a straitjacket. The anchorman looked up from his papers and put on his serious face:

“Recapping tonight's top stories. The Tribune Company, owner of the Chicago Cubs, denies a report in the
Chicago Sun-Times
that it is planning to move the team to Phoenix, Arizona….Residents of Shore Drive Tower are still in shock over today's deadly explosion in the apartment of former beauty queen Cynthia Reynolds….The Cubs beat the Dodgers five to two at Wrigley Field this afternoon. The White Sox play tonight in Oakland….Stay tuned for
Family Feud
starring Richard Dawson immediately following this newscast. Have a good evening.” I stood up and turned off the television.

I finished my drink in one gulp and walked back to the kitchen for a refill. On the way back I checked the dead-bolt lock on the front door. I stopped at my stereo and put the Temptations'
Greatest Hits
on the turntable.

As I sat back down on the couch, the sky suddenly lit up and there was a crash of thunder. The rain sounded like shotgun pellets on my windows. I thought of Ozzie at the vet's office. How I wished he were here with me tonight.

Get hold of yourself, Rachel. You're a big girl now. There is such a thing as coincidence. Maybe the guy in the station wagon really did live in Shore Drive Tower. Maybe the gas explosion in Cindi's apartment really was just an accident. If you eliminated the grave robbery and the Canaan personals and the exchange on the el train and the search of my apartment and the second attempted grave robbery, Graham Marshall's odd codicil started to make sense. Assuming Maggie Sullivan confirmed what I was sure was the case, anyway. But you couldn't eliminate the grave robbery, or the Canaan personals, or the incident up on the el train, and all the rest. And you probably couldn't eliminate the gas explosion either. If they could kill Cindi…

I stared at the telephone, thinking of Paul. But if I called him and told him about Cindi's death, and the attempted grave robbery, he'd be all excited about the possible Canaan connection. And I wasn't in the mood to listen to Paul go over the clues again and spin out possible solutions. Not tonight. My Canaan assignment was almost over. I'd tell Ishmael on Monday what I'd found and let him handle it from there. He could decide whether to bring in the police. Besides, I'd told Paul too much as it was.

A crash of thunder shook the apartment. I glanced at the telephone. Not my parents. Not tonight. I wasn't in the mood for another one of my mother's updates on Dr. Jerome Katzenstein, the latest in a series of nice Jewish doctors she had selected to be my future husband. This one was a urologist, and I was scheduled to meet him at dinner at my parents' house on Rosh Hashanah. My mother said he had strong features, which probably meant that he had a nose the size of one on Mount Rushmore.

The thunderstorm had become even more fierce. The apartment windows were shuddering from the wind and rain. I pulled my knees up to my chin. Sipping the vodka, I listened to the storm.

I must have dozed off, because I awoke with a start. I checked my watch: the dial—glowing in the darkness—showed ten minutes after one. The storm had passed and the silence was eerie. I realized I was all alone in my apartment. And I realized that what woke me was the sound of footsteps on my back landing.

Chapter Twenty-four

I jumped to my feet. There was definitely someone on the back landing. I bolted for the front door to escape. Reaching for the doorknob, I froze. What if they were waiting on the other side of the door? They? Who were
they ?
I felt a rivulet of sweat down the middle of my back. I thought of Ozzie and then remembered he was still at the vet. Damn.

Call the police. I dashed back to the living room and grabbed the telephone. It was dead. I grabbed the cord and traced it to the wall. Still connected. Someone was tapping on the back door. I tried to catch my breath.

I walked on wobbly legs into the dark kitchen. The tapping was getting louder. I opened the bottom drawer and reached in. My hand fumbled in the darkness and I pulled out the heavy claw hammer. Someone was now pounding on the back door. I walked to the door. The hand holding the hammer was shaking.

Raising the hammer, I took a deep breath. “Who is it?” I demanded.

“Open up, Rachel.” It was a woman's voice. “It's me.”

“Who?”

“Cindi. Cindi Reynolds.”

“Cindi?”

“Yeah. Please let me in.”

I exhaled. This must be a dream. “You're supposed to be dead.”

“I know. But it wasn't me. Let me in and I'll explain.”

“Are you alone?”

“I promise. Please let me in, Rachel. I'm scared to death and I'm catching pneumonia out here. I'm soaked.”

I unlatched the lock and, holding the hammer up with the other hand, I turned the knob. I took a deep breath and yanked open the door.

Cindi was standing barefoot in the yellow light of the porch, her shoulders slumped. Her hair was matted to her head, and her clothes—a cotton pullover shirt and jeans—were soaked. She was holding her sandals in her hand. She stared at me, her eyes blinking and her lips quivering.

“Come in and tell me about it,” I said quietly, and held out my hands.

“Oh, Rachel.” She lurched forward into my arms, sobbing.

We stood there in the doorway. Cindi clung to me, her head on my shoulders.

She finally lifted her head. “I'm getting you all wet.” She smiled.

“That's okay,” I said. “But next time give me a call before you decide to return from the dead. I almost had a stroke in here.”

Cindi laughed through her tears and wiped her nose against the back of her arm.

“C'mon,” I said. “Let's get you into something warm and dry.”

“Then who was she?” I asked.

Cindi was fluffing her hair with a towel. She was wearing my old gray sweatshirt and a pair of my white socks. “Andi Hebner. I've known her for a couple of years. She was a graduate student at the U. of C. She was also a call girl. She had this client—an accountant at Coopers and Lybrand. But both of them—Andi and the guy—live in Harbor Point on the same floor. The guy is married. He doesn't want to risk having his wife see him going into Andi's apartment. So they always go somewhere else. She sees him about once a month, and sometimes she borrows my condo.” Cindi sighed. “She was up there with him this morning when it happened.”

“When did you find out?”

“Around three o'clock. I was on my way back from that swimsuit layout in the Dunes. It took us two days to finish the photography. When I drove up, there was a police barricade around the whole building. There were fire engines and squad cars and ambulances all over. I asked one of the policemen what had happened. He told me there'd been an explosion up on the eighteenth floor. He wouldn't tell me anything else. One of the gawkers told me that the paramedics had brought out two bodies in those horrible black body bags. Well, I stepped back and looked up and practically passed out when I saw them boarding up my window. I got out of there in a hurry. I was in a daze, Rachel. You can imagine.”

“Where'd you go?”

“I walked over to the Hyatt Regency and went to the lounge on the top floor. I just sat by a window staring out at Shore Drive Tower. Drinking gin and tonics. You can't imagine how weird that was. There was a TV behind the bar. I was the lead story on the local news. They had shots of the building and even a film clip of me from the pageant. I went back down to the lobby and bought the evening paper. That's when I really freaked out.”

“Why?”

“All that talk of a gas leak. It made me really scared.”

“I don't get it.”

“There couldn't have been a gas leak, Rachel. My oven hasn't been connected to a gas line for more than a year.”

“You're kidding.”

Cindi shook her head. “I'd been having all kinds of trouble with it for a couple of years. In the meantime, I was using my toaster oven and my microwave. I finally called in a repairman, and he told me it would cost almost two hundred dollars to fix. I told him to forget it, that I didn't use it, anyway. He told me it was too dangerous to leave it like that because the pilot light wouldn't stay lit and it was leaking gas. So I paid him forty dollars to disconnect the gas and plug up the gas line leading into my condo. He cut off the gas from the main line all the way down the hall past the elevator. There hasn't been a drop of gas in there for more than a year. It couldn't have been a gas leak.”

I frowned. “Whatever happened, it was good enough to fool the fire department.”

“I know,” Cindi said with a shudder. “If they're that good, then they're good enough to find me.”

“What did she look like?”

“Who?”

“Your friend. Andi.”

“Blond, tall, good-looking.”

“How'd she wear her hair?”

“Sort of like mine…but a little shorter.”

I thought it over. “You're probably safe. At least for a few days. Whoever did it must think you're dead. The police think you're dead too—which means no one in the building told them anything different. What about the doorman?”

“He wouldn't have seen them.”

“Why not?”

“They always came in through the garage entrance so no one would see them together. I gave her the combination to the garage door lock so they could get past the doorman.”

I nodded. “No one will know it wasn't you until they get your dental records. So you've got at least until Monday. Probably longer. You're not as urgent as the guy. The cops don't have any reason to think it's not your body down in the morgue.”

Cindi shuddered. “My God.”

“You want something to drink?” I asked.

“No, thanks.”

“Why didn't you go to the cops right away?”

“I guess I panicked. And I didn't want to have to explain about Andi and why she was in my condo. I don't know. When you're a hooker”—she shrugged—“you get conditioned to avoid the cops.”

“Well, you're going to have to go to them eventually. You can't stay dead forever.”

“I know.”

“Who would want to kill you?”

“I don't have a clue.”

“Do you have any violent or weird clients?” I asked.

Cindi thought for a moment and then shook her head. “No. Not like that.”

“Maybe it's just a coincidence, but I followed some guy to your building two nights ago.”

Cindi leaned forward. “What do you mean?”

I had to tell her about
The Lottery of Canaan
and the personals in the
Reader
and the
Tribune
and following the guy to her building. Pretty soon I might as well broadcast it. But Cindi's life was involved, and she had a right to know what was happening.

Cindi gasped. “My God.”

I said, “Maybe it's just a coincidence. But maybe not. Maybe they think you know something about Canaan.” I paused. “There've been some other weird things going on.”

“Like what?”

“Someone tried to steal another coffin from the pet cemetery. And yesterday someone broke into my apartment.” I told her about Ozzie being drugged and the evidence that someone had searched through my things. “Ozzie's okay,” I said. “Thank God. I can pick him up tomorrow morning. But there's definitely something out there called Canaan.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don't know. Yesterday I just wanted out. Period. But now…that may not be an option anymore.” I checked my watch and stood up. “C'mon. Let's go to sleep. It's almost three in the morning.” I yawned and stretched. “I've got a queen-size bed. You can share it with me.”

Cindi stood up. “Thanks, Rachel.” She gave me a hug. “You were the only one I thought of turning to when this happened. I left the Hyatt and wandered down Michigan Avenue toward the Loop, sneaking in and out of bookstores and clothing stores. I sat through two kung-fu movies in one of those horrible theaters in the Loop. It was disgusting. Sticky seats, rats running down the aisles. I finally left the theater, looking you up in the phone book, and tried to call, but your line was dead. I didn't even know if I had the right Gold, but I had to take a chance. I didn't know where else to go.”

“I'm glad you came, Cindi. God, I'm so happy you're alive.”

***

I checked the telephone on my way to bed.

“Phone still dead?” Cindi asked.

“Yes.”

“The storm must have knocked out the phone lines. There're big branches all over the streets out there.”

I looked out the back window. An Illinois Bell Telephone van was parked in the alley, its yellow light revolving slowly.

***

“Rachel?”

“Hmmm?” I was almost asleep.

“Being dead was really depressing.”

“Um-hmmm.”

“I was really bummed listening to that TV news guy do his thirty-second profile on my life. Ms. Illinois, Third Runner-up in the Ms. United States Pageant, and now a part-time fashion model. And a high-priced call girl, I thought. I sat there in the darkness in that horrible movie theater thinking about my life. Cindi, I said to myself, you really gotta get your act together. What if you really had died, and that's all you had to show for yourself? I mean, you're different, Rachel. You're a lawyer. A professional. You know?”

“Um-hmmm.”

“So I said to myself, you've got to pull yourself together. I'm definitely going to go to law school, Rachel. Or something like that. I mean, I have more going for me than just tits and ass, you know. I have…”

I fell asleep to the sound of her voice.

Cindi woke up about an hour later, sitting up and shouting, “No, no, no!”

I touched her on the shoulder and she stopped. She laid back down and snuggled up against me. I held her until her panting slowed to the rhythmic breathing of deep sleep.