Life Without Parole: A Kate Conway Mystery (34 page)

“Yesterday.” Walt walked toward the kitchen and I followed, nearly stopping every third step to reconsider. I couldn’t imagine going in there, but as Walt disappeared behind the swinging doors, I also couldn’t imagine letting my fear get the better of me.

I walked in. The kitchen was cleaned up, scrubbed. There wasn’t even a stain on the floor where Erik’s body had been. It was cleaner than it had been the day Walt did the tasting.

“What happened?” I asked.

“There’s a service. They come into crime scenes and, you know, take care of it.”

“Doesn’t it creep you out?”

“A little,” he said. “But what am I supposed to do? I have a kitchen to put together.”

I stood in the center of the room and looked around. The place seemed bigger, or maybe just emptier. “Didn’t there used to be more equipment? More boxes of things?”

Walt looked around as I had. “No. I think it’s the same.”

“So you’re going to cook here? Inches from where Erik was killed?”

“Jeez, Kate. I’m not really thinking of it that way. I mean, if you want to, you can find a history with every inch of land. Someone died there…something terrible happened. If you go back far enough, you won’t find any space that’s free of some blood.”

“I’m not talking about ancient Indian burial grounds, Walt. Erik died nine days ago,” I said. “Right where you’re standing.”

He shrugged.

And to think he had once been my favorite of this group. “Ilena said you’ve put the word out that you’re available for work,” I said.

He bit the inside of his cheek. “Posturing. It’s just a good idea to let people know you’re available. It gives Roman more incentive to get this place together quickly.”

“Are you getting paid while you wait?”

“No.”

“So what are you living on?”

“Insurance settlement from my last restaurant. I lost personal items in there. My knives, equipment, things like that. It’s pretty expensive to replace.”

I pointed to the knives on the counter. “But you’ve obviously replaced them. So what are you living on?”

“Ilena bought those,” he said. “They were a gift when I signed on to the restaurant.”

I heard Andres in the next room call out that he was ready. “What did you want to show me?” I asked Walt.

“This.” He handed me a box of more than a hundred tattered recipe cards with notations from restaurants around the world. “It’s my collection,” he said. “And if someone wanted one of my recipes, I’d give it to him in a heartbeat.”

“It’s nice that you’re willing to share.”

“There’s more than enough for all of us.”

He gave me a dull interview, but it had all the right sound bites about Erik, about the legacy of his vision, and about Walt’s hope that the restaurant would carry on because it was Erik’s dream. It was hokey, but that’s what I was after.

He didn’t once ask me what had happened at Doug’s, and when I brought the subject up, he brushed it off.

“Makina asked me about that,” he said. “I told him what I knew, of course, about you coming over and everything. Whatever went on with Doug happened while you were at my place, so you’re in the clear.”

“Thanks for being my alibi.”

“And mine,” he said. He gave me a light, awkward hug. “If you ever want a good meal, I’d be happy to cook it for you.”

As Walt left, I thought about something. He wasn’t my alibi. Whatever had happened to Doug had happened around ten forty-five, a few minutes before I’d arrived. I’d left Walt’s place at just a few minutes past ten, got gas, and drove the streets. Could Walt have beaten me there? It would be tight, but it was possible.

I wanted to share my theory with Makina as soon as we arrived at his office for the interview, but he was pacing. He’d worn a new suit, dark blue, with a light blue tie and crisp white shirt. I sat him in the chair opposite me and chatted with him. Normally this is when I try to make my interview subject comfortable, but I didn’t want to make Makina comfortable.

“I’m sure your colleagues will get a kick out of this show,” I said. “I’m sure they’ll all watch it. Maybe tape it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You’ve never done TV before?”

“I usually let someone else handle it,” he admitted. “But I know I’m just supposed to look at you and answer your questions.”

“That’s right. And I’ll be paying close attention to everything you say.”

Makina shifted. He tried to seem casual, but a band of red was creeping up his neck, the telltale sign of nervousness. Andres pointed the camera toward Makina, but I waited a moment before starting the interview. I wanted a minute to enjoy watching him be the one to squirm under the hot lights.

But I didn’t
let him sit long. I had business to discuss. I told him about Walt not having me as his alibi.

“Listen, Mrs. Conway,” he said, “I appreciate the help, but—”

“There are plausible suspects that you are not considering.”

“You really don’t know what I’m considering.” He nodded toward the camera. “These are not the kinds of things I’m prepared to discuss on videotape.”

“Okay. Then tell me where you are in this investigation.”

“There is nothing I can tell you beyond the fact that we’re doing everything we can to apprehend Mr. Price’s killer. We are following every lead, no matter how ridiculous, and we’re confident that we’ll have a resolution to this matter.”

“Where’s Doug Zieman?”

“That’s a separate investigation that may or may not have anything to do with the homicide.”

“How can it possibly be separate? Doug disappeared the night Erik was killed. He said to both Vera and Walt that something fishy was going on at the restaurant.”

Up until then Makina had been sweating. On hearing Vera’s name, he perked up. “What did he say to Ms. Bingham?”

Victor was right. Telling Makina about Doug’s phone call, about Erik’s embezzlement, wouldn’t get Vera off the hook. It would just make her motive stronger. “My interview. My questions,” I said.

“Then your interview is over,” he said. “There isn’t anything I can really tell you, anyway.” He grabbed at the mic hidden just below the third button of his shirt. As he removed it, Victor jumped up to take it from him. “Are you ready to talk now, Mr. Pilot?” Makina asked.

Andres and I looked at Victor, who looked like a cat raising its fur to look bigger, with about as much effect. Victor looked Makina in the eye, and Makina looked back. We waited. Victor looked like he was just about to tell Makina one of this theories. Andres took a step toward him. But before he could get there, Victor spoke.

“I have a lawyer,” he said. “You can only talk to me when my attorney is present.”

I could hear Andres exhale.

Makina nodded. “Then I guess we’re done here.”

A
fter Makina left, I tried Dugan again. I had to tell Andres and Victor that I was checking with the Business Channel about the interviews. I knew Andres wouldn’t like it that I was worried about Brick, and he especially wouldn’t like my justification. On the first day I interviewed him, Brick had said that at some point we have to throw away the rules and live by our instincts. According to the rules, a multiple murderer is a bad guy, but my instincts said he wasn’t—at least, he wasn’t trying to hurt me. And more than that, something in my gut told me he was in trouble.

But for some reason, I couldn’t get anyone at Dugan to confirm it.

“We’ve had some issues in that block, and we’ve suspended phone privileges,” a guard told me.

“Can I talk with Joanie Rheinbeck?”

“She’s in a meeting with the warden.”

“Can you at least tell me if Joseph Tyler is okay?”

“We don’t give out prisoner information. Unless you’re family.”

I would have lied and said I was his sister, but they probably had records of his relatives, and Brick had only mentioned a brother to me. “No,” I said. “But I’m the television producer—”

The guard hung up.

“Everything okay at the network?” Andres had somehow snuck up behind me. I wasn’t sure how much he’d heard.

“Yes. Of course, they’d love it if we could end the show with an arrest.”

“We came pretty close there with Victor,” he said. “I say we end with a celebration that we didn’t have an arrest today.”

Just as I was about to agree, my phone rang, a number I didn’t recognize. “Hello?”

“Miss Conway?” An elderly woman’s voice. Not weak, but definitely older. “I’m Douglas Zieman’s neighbor.”

“
Have you seen him?” It was abrupt, but I couldn’t be bothered with pleasantries at the moment.

“Yes. We spoke. I told him his girlfriend and a Miss Conway were looking for him. He seemed very concerned. I didn’t know whether I should call you, but you were so nice that day and so worried about your friend, I thought you would be able to help Douglas if he were in trouble.”

“When did you talk to him?” My heart was beating just a little fast. It was almost too much to hope for.

“Fifteen minutes ago. He was on his way into his house.”

I almost laughed out loud. “Thanks,” I said. “Just don’t tell him you called me.”

I hung up and slapped Andres on the back. “Keep your camera out,” I said. “We may get that arrest on tape yet.”

On the way to Oak Park, I called Makina, but only once Andres and I were blocks away from Doug’s. I am a law-abiding citizen…ish, and it was my civic duty to inform the police that a possible suspect in a homicide had been spotted. And I wanted footage of Makina taking the elusive Doug Zieman into custody.

When we got to the house, Andres parked his van across the street. He pointed the camera out the window, discreet but still a good shot, and we waited. I was tempted to go to the front door and see if Doug was there, but I didn’t want to spook him. Or get killed. I’ll go toe-to-toe with anyone in a verbal altercation, but my chances of winning an actual fight are somewhere around zero. Especially since it was likely that Doug still had Vera’s gun.

Local police pulled up just a few minutes after we’d arrived, surrounded the house, and waited. A few minutes later, Makina and several other detectives arrived. Makina glanced toward the van and frowned.

They knocked on the door. Nothing. More knocking. More nothing. Then a nod from Makina and several Oak Park police officers broke down Doug’s door. There was a rush inside. This was it—a great ending to the show and Vera off the hook for Erik’s murder, all in one easy step.

A
few minutes later Makina walked outside. No Doug. He chatted with a uniformed cop, pointed toward the door. The cop made a call. There was no urgency. If Doug had been inside fifteen minutes before the neighbor called me, then he’d left in the twenty minutes it had taken us to drive over.

Makina walked over to the van. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to clear the area.”

I jumped out of the van and walked into the street, approaching Makina before he could reach us. Andres was still shooting every moment, and Victor’s boom mic had made an appearance out the van door. How can you not believe in psychic connections when we all knew what to do without speaking?

“Why?” I asked Makina when I’d reached him. I positioned myself so he had to look toward the camera to speak to me.

“This is a crime scene.” The nervousness from the interview was gone. He was back in charge and he wanted me to know it.

“You have evidence that Doug killed Erik?”

“Mrs. Conway…”

It took a minute. “Doug is in there. Someone is in there. Someone is dead in there.”

“Mrs. Conway, you have to move the van.”

“You’re a Chicago detective. This is Oak Park. You have no authority here.”

“I can get someone with authority.”

“We’re a news organization. We have the right—”

“I’m happy for you. Move the van.”

Makina turned and walked back to the scene, just as an ambulance pulled up.

“Did you get everything?” I asked Andres.

“It was nice,” he said. “We have the cops milling about in the background and Makina up front giving us the tough cop act. And now we have the ambulance.” He tossed Victor the keys to the van and got out. “If Victor moves this down the block, I can stay here and shoot until they kick me out.”