Husbands And Lap Dogs Breathe Their Last (22 page)

Cummings responded, “I want to verify some of Mrs. Hollingbery’s recent transactions.”

A few days later, in the same morning edition, the
Chicago Tribune
published two articles of particular interest to Cummings. He found these tidbits comforting. He was feeling particularly frustrated by his relative lack of progress, and they reminded him that everything remaining unclear in his investigations would likely become clear in time.

One item was a brief article confirming the cause of the house fire in which two Chicago firemen, one of whom was Rutley Paik, had been killed: children shooting off fireworks. This was a confirmation of what Cummings had already assumed, that there was nothing sinister about Rutley’s death.

The second bit of news was of even greater interest because it established the veracity of something Cummings had assumed was a lie. The District Attorney of Cook County announced that, based on new evidence, Edgar Diderot was going to be released from prison. Otto had been telling the truth, at least about Edgar. This did not, of course, necessarily mean Otto was telling the truth about anything else, but at least it took one paradox off Cummings’s list.

Cummings dressed and drove to his first appointment, which was with Anunciación Hollingberry. She answered the door promptly after Cummings rang and ushered him into her living room.

“Thank you for seeing me,” Cummings said.

“I always like to be helpful, don’t you know.” She led him to a chair and indicated he should sit. “Do you still think Surendra was murdered?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Not everything in the world is explainable by science! There are some matters that are beyond our comprehension!”

“Indeed, but I don’t think this is one of them.”

“We will have to agree to disagree.” Anunciación sat. “You said you wanted to speak to me again?”

“Yes. I’d like to ask you about your interest in the Craddock Brooch.”

“What do you mean?”

“You purchased it at auction.”

“I did! My old friend Despina was very ill with heart trouble, and it was said the brooch had the power to heal. I bought it, took it to her home in Wales and placed it on her heart chakra. Sadly, it was no use. She passed anyway.

“Dear Despina! I knew her from the convent school in South Dakota, don’t you know. She was called Muffin then, but she later married an Italian viscount with whom she lived in a ninth century tower on the Tiber. One can’t live in a ninth century tower on the Tiber with a viscount and be called Muffin.

“Fellini used their home as a set in
Satyricon
. He gave them small roles in an orgy scene. There was a close-up of her nipples. Her husband’s family was scandalized and cut off their money. They took what they had left, moved to Wales and began to raise sheep and carrots for better quality restaurants.

“Perhaps the plan was not completely thought through. Did you know the Welsh word for carrots is
moron?
That was Despina’s pet name for the Viscount.

“I’m afraid they faced many difficulties: a flood, then a fire, unstable prices, and an outbreak of feedlot rectal prolapse — that’s a sheep disease. But eventually ...”

“You purchased the Craddock Brooch at auction,” Cummings interrupted, attempting to return Anunciación to the linear.

“Yes. That’s right! It seems the brooch is only a worthless piece of costume jewelry carved from sheep bone. Who can say if it even belonged to Ida Craddock? I resold it at auction. I didn’t know who bought it, though I suppose it now seems likely it was purchased by Therese.”

“It was a gift from her husband, actually. You didn’t tell Therese it was a fake?”

“I didn’t know she was going to buy it, don’t you know. But even if I had, I wouldn’t have said anything. No matter how unfounded it is, one must never destroy hope. It is too scarce and too fragile.”

“Speaking of auctions, you’ve sold a number of items, furniture mostly, during the last year. In fact, you sold something recently at Clarkson’s.”

“What if I have? I’m about to redo several rooms in my apartment.”

“I wonder if there’s another reason, that the financial downturn has been hard on you, as it has been on everyone who lives on investment income.”

“I don’t need money. I’ve been very fortunate, don’t you know.”

Cummings paused to survey the room. “Your furniture really is lovely.”

“Thank you.”

“But I must confess that I was confused by why a woman in your financial position had reproduction antiques,” Cummings continued. “A few days ago I discovered the reason. This furniture was made by your late husband.”

“That’s true! How did you learn that?”

“I found an old article about him in the
Sun-Times,
” he said, unfolding a printout from his coat pocket and handing it to her. “Apparently your late husband relaxed from the stress of the Chicago Board of Trade by making furniture. It seems that he was quite the craftsman, even winning blue ribbons for his work. He also developed a polish for fine furniture, Heirloom Formula, that’s still sold locally. In fact, I bought some yesterday at the hardware store. Its primary ingredients are beeswax and linseed oil, and it’s scented with lavender.”

“He was a remarkable man, at least when he was sober,” Anunciación said wistfully. “I miss him.”

“Did you know that the Chicago Fire Department determined that Heirloom Formula was the accelerant used to burn Therese to death?”

“That’s not possible!”

“That’s not to say I think you had anything to do with her death. You had no reason to kill her, at least that I’m aware of.”

“Of course I didn’t!”

“However, consider the following: Let’s say you needed money badly. Perhaps you recognized your husband’s product as the accelerant. You must be quite familiar with its odor and characteristics. Let’s assume you also figured out who the murderer was. It appears that Tom Daniels, who is a trust fund baby, is being blackmailed, so let’s assume he’s the murderer.”

“What are you trying to say?” she snapped, looking intently at him. Her eyes suggested a rising fury.

“That I think you’re blackmailing Tom. Let’s further assume that to distance yourself from the crime, you somehow coerced Mandrake to act as a go-between,” Cummings continued. “Let’s also suppose Otto found out about the blackmail and in his quirky way has been trying to find a way out of this predicament for both Mandrake and Tom. That would explain why he brought me into the situation.”

“You son of a bitch!” Anunciación shrieked in a hot Mediterranean rage. She rose from her chair, grabbed a small crystal bowl from a side table and hurled it at Cummings. It missed, shattering on the floor. “You think you’re so clever! Why don’t you know this?”

She threw open a drawer in a Chinese cabinet, pulled out a legal document and threw it at Cummings. It landed at his feet. He picked it up and perused it.

“This appears to be a contract,” he said.

“Yes, you idiot!” she confirmed. “You are correct that I needed money. Proctor and Gamble has been dogging me for decades to buy Heirloom Formula. Things being how they are, I accepted their offer a few months ago for more money than you will ever see in your life! I had no reason to blackmail anyone!”

Cummings considered this. He also consulted the figure stipulated in the contract, which included many zeros. “I suppose it’s possible I’ve miscalculated,” he conceded finally.

“How could I do such a thing? With my sweet disposition!”

She picked up another small object, a Sandwich Glass decanter, and threw it at Cummings. It grazed him before landing safely on a sofa cushion.

“I apologize,” Cummings said, rising hurriedly. “Perhaps you could stop throwing things at me now?”

“Out! Get out!”

Cummings made an athletic leap for the door, opened it and ran for the elevator.

By the time he came out of the lobby and was safely back on the street, his adrenalized condition was beginning to ebb. Worse, he was feeling regretful, not about falsely accusing Anunciación but about making a significant error.

He sat in his car and considered, then reconsidered, all the facts that had led to his erroneous conclusion. He then considered the same facts again but with a focus on what other conclusions they might lead to. Suddenly he saw his mistake. There was another even stronger possibility, one that seemed not merely plausible but now appeared to be obvious.

When the mail came, Cummings was pleased to discover a substantial check from Otto. He immediately went to the bank and deposited it. Still, working for Otto was hardly steady income. He spent the bulk of the day following up another batch of leads for jobs and consulting work, something that had become a frequent and frustrating routine.

The most promising, which wasn’t promising at all, was an inquiry from the Magen David Pet Cemetery. They wanted a consultant to assess why its requests for funding to the city’s many philanthropies were uniformly being rejected.

“Perhaps they don’t view it as a priority,” Cummings suggested during a call with the Director.

“But we have an online bereavement group!” the Director insisted.

Later Cummings managed to create an informal but filling dinner for himself and Odin, who seemed glum when he came home from work.

“Did something happen today?”

“I was asked to test the tensile strength of aluminum-reinforced pantyhose. I didn’t spend six years in school for this.”

“Persevere.”

“What’s the point?”

“Have you heard anything from your job interview?”

“No.”

“Things will improve. I have to go out for a few hours. Try and relax.”

Odin nodded. He turned on the television, took his dinner to the sofa and stared blankly at the screen.

Boys Town, an area in and around ten blocks of North Halsted Street in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood, is the city’s historic gay and lesbian enclave. This designation, dating back to 1970, is acknowledged with place markers: eleven pairs of twenty-three-foot-high, slightly tapered phallic pillars with rings adorning them in the colors of the rainbow.

Boys Town has evolved in the last decades. The irony of social progress is that marginalization strengthens minority cultures while assimilation weakens them. In the post-gay world of the
twenty-first century, Boys Town is no longer needed as a ghetto stronghold. A gay and lesbian presence remains, but Boys Town is a community now, not an enclave, and that community is diverse.

Boys Town was Cummings’s destination for the evening. He wanted specifically to visit several businesses including two gay bars, though not for the beer and flirting.

Cummings found a place to park his car and walked to his first destination. This was a tavern called The Wicked Age, Chicago’s oldest surviving gay bar, founded in 1927. It was named after a play written by and starring Mae West, an early gay rights supporter as well as an actress.
The New York Times
called the play “the low point of the theatrical season of 1927-1928,” and the show closed after nineteen performances. The bar has fared better.

Like so many Chicago tavern interiors, it was dark and oaken. There was a long wooden bar, the walls were covered in wood paneling, and there were wood shutters on the windows. Curiously, the light fixtures were art deco layer cakes. The original owner, Louis Gager, commissioned these as a visual joke.
Cake eater
was slang for
homosexual
in the late 1920s.

Cummings walked in and looked around, surveying the surfaces, the clientele and their activities. Little was happening. There seemed to be few patrons, even for a week night, and they didn’t seem a very lively bunch at that.

Cummings left and went to the second destination. This was a much newer bar, Cement Pond, a sawdust and plank floor burger joint that served two hundred varieties of obscure beer and featured drag queen waitresses dressed like Elly May Clampett. Cummings was surprised to discover that the place was closed, not just for the evening but for good. A handwritten sign taped in the window announced the venue had ceased operations three weeks earlier.

So far, it was as Cummings had theorized, but he wasn’t certain his final stop would continue the trend.

He walked a few blocks to a small office building. It was locked up for the night. He assumed it would be, and that was fine. What he was looking for, if it was even there, wouldn’t be in plain sight.

Looking through the front window, his choices were these: take the risk of breaking in and hope he found useful information, or dig through the trash and hope that useful information had been foolishly discarded. Neither option seemed promising, but worst case, digging in the trash was likelier to result in wasted time than a jail sentence. So the trash it was.

He walked to the immediate back of the building, where there were two large commercial dumpsters. He threw open the heavy metal lid of one and climbed inside with a flashlight.

As Rockland might have observed, contradicting Dostoyevsky, the one subject so old that nothing new can be said of it is trash. The refuse in this dumpster did as garbage has always done: it rotted, it slimed, it stank. Cummings persevered, carefully digging through it layer by layer for more than ninety minutes. He found a great deal he would have preferred not to have encountered, such as the remains of fifty servings of Tom Yam Goong from the adjacent Thai restaurant, but retrieved no trash of interest from the business.

Finally he climbed out of the first dumpster and climbed into the second. This turned out to be a more pleasant repository, as it contained only the leftovers of commercial transactions involving paper.

Cummings dug again. Though nothing was rotting, much was shredded. He stuck with his task, carefully looking through the streams of paper until he got near to the bottom. There he found several sheets of paper that had somehow missed the shredder in whole or in part. These were random parts of pages from three unrelated financial statements. He climbed out of the dumpster to take advantage of the brighter light of a street lamp.