See Me in Your Dreams (16 page)

drove, she ate. Neither talked, yet for
once Keelin didn't sense any negative tension emanating from Tyler. He seemed
to have put aside his suspicions and resentments for the moment and was
concentrating on the music from a CD.
Vivaldi's
Four Seasons
.

Keelin was
taking a last sip of tea by the time they arrived at the first of their six
corner intersections in sight of an elevated structure.

"Here we
are," he announced, turning down the music. "Clybourn,
Halsted
and North Avenue."

Keelin looked
around. "Too upscale," she pronounced.

And the next
neighborhood was too poor, too near the city's projects.

They kept on
and soon crawled northwest on Milwaukee, one of the angled streets, trapped in
the morning rush hour. Keelin's mind wandered to Helen.

"Your
ex-wife's vehicle wasn't in the drive this morning, either." She wondered
if it had been there at all during the night, or if Helen had found that male
company Tyler had suggested. "Is Helen an early riser or did she give up
on staying at your house?"

"Helen
gives up on anything that takes work."

Like their marriage?
she wanted to ask.

"Then you
haven't heard from her?" she queried instead.

"Not a
word. And that worries me. She wouldn't have stuck her nose in where it didn't
belong for nothing."

"What do
you think she hoped to get out of the situation?"

"Maybe
she decided to sell her story to one of your cousin's competitors."

Keelin chose
to ignore the reference to Skelly. "You don't think she could simply be
worried about her own daughter?"

"Helen?"
Tyler laughed. "Now that would be a switch."

She couldn't
believe his hard-nosed attitude. "You don't think she loves Cheryl?"

"Helen
loves Helen," Tyler said bitterly. "She always managed to take good
care of number one. She never burned to be a part of her daughter's life
before, and I seriously can't imagine anything's changed."

"If she
was so self-absorbed, why did you marry her?"

"I was
young and foolish. Love can blind a person. Once."

Keelin was
about to argue the point when she glimpsed two free-standing telephones at the
edge of the sidewalk to her right. Her pulse thrummed as she glanced around and
noted the shop she should have remembered.

Just then, the
Jaguar slid to a smooth stop at a major three street intersection.

"Anything
familiar here?" Tyler asked, his voice neutral. He was obviously expecting
another negative reply.

"The
tatoo
parlor," she murmured.

"What?"
He glanced back the way they'd come.

Then, breath
caught in her throat, Keelin looked around transfixed. Her gaze flew from
building to building, from the elevated structure to the newspaper stand. Her
heart pounding, she nodded.

"Keelin?"

"This is
it!" She peered behind her at the familiar landscape. "Cheryl rang
you from those telephones we just passed."

"You're
certain?"

"Positive!
I didn't remember the
tatoo
parlor until I actually
saw it."

The street
light changed and they were forced to move ahead. Tyler wasted no time in
finding a parking spot.

As he fed the
meter several quarters, she asked, "So what do we do now?"

"Let's
backtrack. Maybe you'll remember something else that'll lead us to the building
where she's being held."

Keelin knew
that probably wouldn't happen, but she didn't want to argue. Didn't want to see
the hope in Tyler's eyes die just yet.

So they
started at the telephones and worked back the way Cheryl had run across the
intersection. Thankfully, Tyler had thought to bring his daughter's photograph.
For the next hour, they went in and out of the few businesses that were open,
and he flashed the picture in front of anyone who would look. But all he
received for his trouble were blank expressions and heads shaking in the
negative.

No one had
seen Cheryl.

Standing at
the six corner intersection, a grim Tyler asked, "What do you remember
right before her calling me?"

"She
received change for a dollar to ring you at the newsstand."

They crossed
the street and once at the newsstand, Tyler immediately got the proprietor's
full attention with a ten dollar bill followed by the photograph.

He didn't
hesitate. "Yeah, I remember seeing her."

Keelin's pulse
surged as, voice hopeful, Tyler pressed, "More than once?"

The man shook
his head. "Yesterday. She needed change for a phone call. Don't usually do
that, but I felt sorry for her."

"Why?"
Tyler asked. "Was something wrong with her?"

"Hey, I
don't know." The man suddenly seemed nervous. "I just gave the kid
change."

Tyler flashed
Keelin a quick look and asked, "What direction did she come from?"

"You cops
or something?"

Keelin assured
the man, "He's the girl's father, and he's worried sick about her."

"Runaway,
huh? Up the street." He indicated she'd come east on North Avenue.

"Which
side?"

"This
side. And that's all I know."

"What
about
after
she made the call. You
didn't see what happened to her then?"

"I run a
business here, mister! An' I got customers."

His focus
shifted to one that wanted a newspaper. And Tyler drew Keelin aside.

"Are you
sure you can't remember details about the building or the street Cheryl came
from?"

"All I
remember is her passing a couple of lads on a stoop smoking an illegal
substance."

Tyler took a
deep breath and pressed her. "So the building she ran out of was
large?"

"I
couldn't say how large," Keelin admitted. "Though it did have at
least three flats. She was so..." She didn't want to say
terrified
. He was upset enough.
"... Cheryl didn't truly focus on anything until she arrived at this
area."

Or at least
Keelin hadn't. She remembered instead the girl's heartbeat, the knot in her
stomach, the sheer panic that had enveloped her.

"How far
did she run?"

Keelin
shrugged. "Several blocks."

"At least
we know which direction to look in."

As they
crossed the street to the Jaguar, Keelin eyed a series of banners set high on
the light posts that identified the area as Wicker Park.

For the next
half hour, they drove around the neighborhood's side streets. Keelin gazed at
two and three flats as well as larger apartment buildings side-by-side with old
homes of cut stone or brick that once must have been considered mansions. The
diverse elements and transitional condition of the neighborhood suggested that
wealthy people no longer occupied them, however. And every time Keelin thought
some building looked vaguely familiar, another popped into view that she
thought was familiar, as well.

"I just
don't know," she said. "The more I look, the more confused I
become."

"We need
help," Tyler admitted, slowing the vehicle and staring at a beautiful old
commercial building, his brow furrowed. "I'm going to take you back to
your hotel for a while to rest."

To rest or to
sleep? Was he hoping that she would dream yet again, perhaps see the area
through Cheryl's eyes?

Glancing at
the building that had Tyler's focused attention – it looked to have been
recently renovated – Keelin asked, "And what will you do?"

"Go to my
office where I'll call the North Bluff police chief, see if he can get
Chicago's finest to cooperate and do a thorough search."

"You're
going to tell the authorities about me?"

Keelin was
horrified. She wanted no contact with the constabulary. That's why she'd gone
to Tyler in the first place. Her pulse surged and her mouth went dry at the thought
of being questioned...and, no doubt, being held in suspicion.

"I'll be
careful what I tell them."

"Trust
me...they won't believe you," she said, suddenly feeling desperate.

Trapped.

"All
right. I won't involve you at the moment. I'll say that
I
scoured the area, acting on a hunch."

Thinking Tyler
sounded as if he actually did have a hunch of some sort, relieved that she
wouldn't be held up to ridicule again, Keelin relaxed. His attention was still
absorbed in the renovated building as the traffic before them began to move.

"We have
the green," she murmured.

His attention
snapped back to the street and he started up the vehicle. "I'll tell
whomever I deal with that I showed Cheryl's photo around until the guy in the
newsstand recognized it," he went on. "I'll have dozens of copies
made so they can use them to identify her."

"And if
the Chicago authorities refuse to help?"

"Whether
they do or don't cooperate, I'll still get my investigator on it. I'll give
Bryant the go-ahead to bring in more men to comb the area. If the police won't
do it,
he
can start a door-to-door
search."

Keelin nodded.
Not that she believed the people living in the area would necessarily cooperate
any more than the authorities would. But she also knew that Tyler had to have
hope to hold onto, or he would go out of his mind with worry.

And while he
was busy setting up the actual search, perhaps she would delve further into
motive.

KEELIN FOUND THAT, despite her initial reluctance
to come near a computer, she was able to move along the information
superhighway, albeit at a crawl, with a bit of instruction. After Tyler had
dropped her off at her hotel, she'd freshened up and had taken a taxi straight
to the station. Skelly had finished his morning taping and had readily agreed
to do a little more digging for her. At the moment, however, she was mourning
the fact that she hadn't actually found anything of note.

Skelly popped
back into his office, waving a videotape. "
Lookie
,
lookie
."

"You
actually found something? You are an amazing man."

"I found
a
big
something." Skelly popped
the tape into the recorder and turned on the monitor. "Wicker Park rang a
bell. I didn't have to go back very far into our video morgue to find the footage."

Keelin watched
with fascination as he punched in some kind of code on the equipment. The
machine whirred softly, clicked, and an image gelled on the monitor.

"... a tragedy in Wicker Park this afternoon,"
came the
newswoman's voice.
"An eleven year
old boy died searching for his missing pet. It happened at this newly renovated
Milwaukee Avenue building..."

Keelin stared
wide-eyed. The newswoman was standing before the commercial building that had
caught Tyler's attention while they were waiting in traffic.

Then the image
changed.

"Harry was just
lookin
' for
his lost dog. My son didn't mean no harm to nobody. An' he wasn't
doin
' nothing wrong. If that stairway wasn't safe, why
wasn't it boarded up or something?"

The man
speaking was stocky and had salt-and-pepper hair. His features were
grief-stricken.

And
startlingly familiar.

"A question that authorities want answered from L&O
Realty, as well,"
said the newswoman, reporting from the rear of the
building.

The stairway
in question was now boarded to block entry, but the broken railing on the
second landing was still evident. Keelin swallowed hard, imagining a poor child
falling to his death on the pavement below, even as Skelly stopped the
videotape.

"The
man's name is George
Smialek
," he said.
"And he's suing L&O Realty over his son's death."

"Maybe
that's not all he's doing," Keelin murmured, excited. She kissed Skelly's
cheek and hurried to the door. "Thank you,
cous
,"
she said, picking up his Americanism.

"Let me
know if you need something else. This detective work kind of reminds me of why
I became a journalist in the first place."

From the
doorway, Keelin flashed him a grateful smile before rushing off to share her
conclusions with Tyler.

THE CHICAGO POLICE PROVED TO BE far
less cooperative than Tyler had hoped...probably because he'd not been
convincing enough even though he'd told them his daughter was being kept for
ransom. Only a single team of detectives would make the rounds of the Wicker
Park area looking for anyone who had seen Cheryl. And though the squad patrols
would keep an eye open for her, as well, he didn't consider that nearly enough
action to find his daughter fast.