Sheer Gall (27 page)

Chapter Thirty

I called Jonathan Wolf the following morning at eight-thirty and told him I needed to meet with him. He had an arraignment and a client meeting that morning but was free for lunch. When I explained that I didn't want others overhearing the conversation, he said he'd arrange for a private room at the Noonday Club.

“Is there something wrong?” he asked with concern in his voice.

“I'll tell you at lunch.”

I suspected that he might be disturbed to learn that I was back on the case again, and if he was, I didn't want to conduct that discussion over the phone.

My suspicions were correct, of course. He was quite upset.

“Rachel,” he said, shaking his head in exasperation, “that's a terrible idea. This isn't your area of expertise in the first place. You were almost killed five days ago. That's why you got out, remember? You need to stay out.”

“I know, Jonathan.”

I walked over to the window and looked down at the Mississippi River. A long string of barges was moving downriver, passing beneath the Eads Bridge. The Noonday Club is on the top floor of One Metropolitan Square, the tallest point in downtown St. Louis. We were above the Arch, which looked like a giant silver wicket from this height.

I turned to face him. “I do want out. Believe me, Jonathan. I want out, and I want to stay out.” I paused, shaking my head. “But I can't.” I came over to the table. “Look,” I said earnestly, “I'm not going to do anything crazy and I'm not going to do anything that you or your investigators can handle, but I've got to do whatever I can.”

Jonathan was studying me, his face set in a scowl. He crossed his arms.

I took a deep breath and exhaled. “That boy died, Jonathan,” I said quietly. “He died in my place. I can't walk away from that. I can't pretend it didn't happen.” I took a seat facing him across the table. “So don't start lecturing me, and please don't start issuing orders. I didn't come here for that, and I won't put up with it. You're not my commanding officer on this.”

I stared at him, the corners of my mouth curling into a reluctant smile. “But I could sure use a partner.”

He looked down at the white tablecloth, his arms still crossed. He seemed to be scrutinizing the weave of the linen. Eventually, he raised his eyes to mine. With a long-suffering sigh, he shook his head in resignation. “Okay,” he grumbled, “fill me in.”

I grinned. “My pleasure, partner.”

Despite himself, he smiled. It was a lovely smile.

The waiter arrived to take our orders and to refill our glasses of iced tea. I waited until he closed the door behind him, and then I described the results of my three hours of wandering around inside the Tully, Crane & Leonard computer network yesterday afternoon.

The computer's search logic had been fairly easy to figure out. I started with a search for all documents concerning Douglas Beef involving environmental matters.

“What did you find?” Jonathan asked.

“Basically, a hodgepodge.”

I pulled out my notes. The computer had located nineteen separate documents, including legal research memos, memos to file regarding telephone conversations, and letters to clients and to various governmental agencies. The subject matters ranged from applications for permits under the Clean Water Act to an Illinois EPA proceeding on alleged discharges of animal blood and body parts directly into an open creek.

“Nothing specific to gallstones or Sally Wade,” I said.

After that, I explained, I had expanded the search to anything having to do with Douglas Beef. That had turned up a variety of labor matters, including two charges of sexual harassment.

I glanced up from my notes, reddening slightly. “In one, a woman claimed she found a severed bull's penis in her locker.”

Jonathan shook his head in disgust.

“The other is more intriguing,” I said, “because it involves the plant manager, Brady Kane. The complainant is a woman in the accounting department named April Lindner. She claims he made obscene comments to her at work.”

Jonathan looked up, intrigued. “What happened to the case?”

I shrugged. “It settled, but the papers were drafted by the other side, so there was nothing in the computer about the settlement terms.”

He nodded silently. “Anything else?”

“Not on Douglas Beef. I found dozens and dozens of letters and memos by Bruce Napoli on other matters, but nothing that seemed relevant. I tried Swiss bank accounts and came up with zip. I even tried gallstones.”

“And?” Jonathan asked.

I smiled and shook my head. “I found the wrong kind. The firm is defending a medical malpractice case in Jefferson County over a bungled gallbladder operation.”

The waiter arrived with our orders: grilled salmon and fresh broccoli for Jonathan, a fresh fruit plate with a cup of gazpacho for me.

As we ate lunch, I described the rest of what I'd found in the Tully, Crane computer network. The most interesting had been the matches between Bruce Napoli and Marvin the mortician. On a hunch I had requested all documents that mentioned Marvin Vogelsang or Vogelsang Funeral Home. I turned up three fairly routine matters, all supervised by Bruce Napoli: an asbestos-removal problem involving old pipe wrap discovered during a remodeling; an issue as to whether a heating oil underground storage tank dating from the 1940s was exempt under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act; and a review of the funeral home's procedures for the disposal of hazardous substances used to preserve bodies.

“Any personal correspondence between Napoli and Vogelsang?” Jonathan asked.

I shook my head. “At least not in the computer. But they definitely know each other.”

I explained that I had been able to access the time records for all of the attorneys at Tully, Crane & Leonard. According to Napoli's time sheets, he had had three meetings with Vogelsang over the last twelve months. I flipped through my stack of printouts.

“Here,” I said, handing him one of the time-sheet entries:

“That particular meeting,” I said, “took place on the Thursday before Sally was killed.”

He studied it for a moment and looked up at me.

I shrugged. “The entry says ‘various pending matters,'” I said, pointing. “As near as I can tell from the billing records, there were no pending matters.”

“Can I have this?” Jonathan asked.

“Sure.” I lifted up the rest of the stack of printouts. “Take it all. I have a copy at my office.”

He took the documents from me and stuffed them into his briefcase. “I'll study these tonight,” he said. “I may schedule interviews with both of these men.”

I gave him the thumbs-up. “Go get 'em, partner.”

He smiled. “What else?”

I told him that the police detectives working on my case had interviewed Junior Dice twice in jail but had so far been unable to connect him to the car bomb. I also told the detectives about Officer Annie McCarthy and her incriminating connection to the chaser investigation, but they hadn't seemed interested in that angle. Jonathan was, however, and said that he would add her to his list.

Finally, I told him of my efforts to run down the gallstone numbers through my Chicago connection at the parent company of Douglas Beef.

“I talked to Betsy again this morning,” I said. “I asked her to see if she could get a breakdown on the byproduct sales numbers directly from someone inside the accounting department at the Douglas Beef plant. That ought to tell us whether someone's been stealing gallstones.”

Jonathan shook his head with amusement.

“What?” I asked.

“Back in my days in the U.S. attorney's office I prosecuted some peculiar embezzlements, including the theft of Civil War bearer bonds, but I must admit I never handled a gallstone swindle.”

“Let me assure you,” I said with a smile, “there's gold in them thar bladders.”

After our lunch meeting, Jonathan rode the elevator with me down to the lobby even though his office was in the building just a few floors below the Noonday Club. It was a nice gesture, and I appreciated it. As he walked with me to the parking garage elevator, he made me promise that I would call Walter Brunt if I wanted to do anything in the investigation that required me to leave the office.

“Protection is what he does for a living, Rachel, and he's the best in St. Louis.” He pushed the up button and turned to me. “So no heroics, okay?”

“Okay.” The elevator door slid open and I got on. Turning to face him, I said, “Thank you for lunch, Jonathan.”

He nodded in acknowledgment. As the doors started to close he stopped them with his hand. “Rachel,” he said seriously, “Neville already has him on retainer in the case. Let him earn his fee. Got it?”

It was my turn to salute. “Yes, sir.”

He gave me a droll look as the doors slid closed.

Two hours later, I was fumbling through my purse looking for Walter Brunt's business card, which had his telephone number. Betsy Dempsey had just called back with an unanticipated development. It seems that I now had an appointment at the slaughterhouse at seven o'clock that evening to discuss the sales numbers for cattle byproducts. The lateness of the hour was due to the fact that Douglas Beef was running overtime all week. The accounting people were staying late to get the quarterly figures compiled and shipped to Chicago by the close of business Friday. The meatcutters were staying late because this week's herd included an unusually high number of pregnant cows, which meant that there would be an unusually heavy demand placed on one of the more lucrative but labor-intensive of the by-products harvesting operations, namely, the collection of fetal calf blood.

All of which put an added, creepy twist on my meeting. For I was scheduled to meet not with one of the pocket protectors in accounting but with Brady Kane himself. Although Betsy had spoken directly to the head of accounting at the plant in an attempt to set up the meeting, Brady Kane had called her back twenty minutes later and asked if Rachel Gold was the person coming to the plant that night. Betsy was so rattled by the call and his point-blank question that she answered yes. Kane told her that was fine with him, since he'd rather meet with me himself. His accounting people had too much to do already without having to waste their time answering questions for some nosy damn lawyer who didn't know shit from Shinola.

“I feel terrible, Rachel,” Betsy had told me, her voice trembling with remorse. “That man is so—so coarse. I got so flustered.”

I had told her it was okay, that it was probably better for me to ask Brady Kane direct. And maybe it was. In fact, having Betsy involved in setting up the meeting was like buying extra protection. Brady Kane now knew that Betsy knew that I was meeting with him tonight; moreover, in light of what had happened to me less than a week ago, he had to assume I would let others know of the meeting as well.

Nevertheless, that didn't make me any less anxious to get Walter Brunt involved. I found his card and dialed his number. He was out, but his answering service told me they would page him.

As I leaned back in my chair, I thought over one of the more surprising things I had learned about Brady Kane from Betsy. Apparently, he had a special status among the upper echelon of Douglas Beef that made him virtually an untouchable, largely because of the fact that Kane ran the most profitable of the Douglas Beef meatpacking operations. For that reason, the top brass were reluctant to interfere in his internal operations. As long as he was sending all those revenues to Chicago, their attitude was leave him alone. It certainly explained what appeared to be a fairly minimal level of corporate control over the East St. Louis slaughterhouse.

Jacki came in with some draft court papers as I waited for Walter Brunt's call. We talked some about the investigation.

I sat back and rubbed my chin pensively. “I can make connections, but I can't find the motivation.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Take Sally and Marvin and Bruce Napoli. Sally and Marvin were lovers, he takes pills made in Hong Kong that she must have bought him on one of her trips, and he's Napoli's client. That's
how
they're connected, but where's the motivation to kill her? Or take Napoli and his wife and Neville McBride. McBride was Napoli's law firm rival; worse, he had sex with Napoli's wife. I could see where that might motivate Bruce Napoli to kill Neville McBride, but where's the motivation to kill McBride's ex-wife?”

“Revenge?” Jacki said slowly, concentrating. “Sally's death leads to McBride's disgrace, which gets him pushed out of Napoli's way at the law firm.”

I shook my head dubiously. “That's a roundabout way for Napoli to reach his goal.”

We talked through other possible suspects, including Junior Dice, who didn't have a known slaughterhouse connection but had an obvious Sally Wade connection and a girlfriend who could have collected the semen sample direct from the source. So, too, there was Officer Annie McCarthy, with a strategically placed boyfriend and plenty of motivation.