Sheer Gall (29 page)

“Ah ha,” he said, eyeing the swaying body, “it's about time, eh?”

He grasped it by the shoulder and sliced it open. But this time, as the red gash bulged out, I saw there was a human body inside, curled in a fetal position with its backside facing out. It slid through the opening and dropped out at my feet, the back of its head thonking against the hard concrete. It was a naked woman, and she was clutching something against her chest. Horrified, I knelt beside the corpse and tried to brush the hair away from the face. My eyes widened in surprise. It was Sally Wade. Her eyelids were open, only the whites of her eyes showing. She was clutching a telephone. As I staggered back, appalled, the phone started ringing. I looked over at Neville, whose eyebrows arched with amusement. “Answer it,” he said with a chuckle. “It must be for you.”

I awoke with a start and sat up in bed, my heart racing. Ozzie was on his feet, staring at me. My nightgown was wet with perspiration. I realized the phone was ringing. I looked at my clock radio: 2:47 a.m. I sat there rigid. The ringing stopped. I heard my answering machine go on downstairs—the taped message (“Hi, you have reached…”), then the beep, then a dial tone, then silence. A minute passed. Then another. My clock radio read 2:49 a.m.

And then the phone started ringing. I stared at it. One ring. Two rings. I picked up the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Miss Gold?” It was a woman's voice.

I paused. “Who is this?”

“My name is Tammy.”

Chapter Thirty-two

It was close to noon on Friday. We were down to our last two boxes. Amy had one of them in front of her, and I had the other in front of me. The two of us were seated on the rug in the reception area of Sally Wade & Associates. As far as I could tell, we knew nothing more about Sally's connection to Douglas Beef than we had when we started.

Stifling a yawn, I moved my head side to side to stretch my neck.

Amy leaned forward with a look of concern. “You look exhausted, Rachel.”

I nodded wearily. “I didn't get much sleep last night.”

“How come?”

“She called.”

“Who?” Her eyes got wide. “Oh, my God, you mean that woman? Tammy?”

I nodded.

“She actually called you? Wow. What did she say?”

“Not much.” I frowned. “She said she knew something important about the night of the murder, but she refused to say what it was.”

“Why?”

I shrugged in frustration. “She was incredibly skittish. She told me that she was calling from a pay phone and wouldn't talk long because she was afraid that the police would trace the call. I tried to assure her that the police didn't even know about the call, but she told me that I was too naive. She said she might be willing to talk to me in person, but it had to be completely off the record. She said she didn't want her name in the paper or her picture on the news, and if there was any risk of that happening she'd vanish and we'd never hear from her again. Then she gasped and said there was a car coming down the street and hung up.”

“This is incredible,” Amy said, shaking her head in wonder. “Do you think she'll call again?”

I shook my head. “I have no idea.” I paused. “She sounds like she's from Chicago.”

“Chicago?” Amy said. “What do you mean?”

“Her accent. Sha-CAW-go. Sout-west. Sounded vintage Chicagoland to me.”

“Have you told anyone else about her call?” Amy asked.

“Jonathan Wolf.” I gave her a concerned frown. “I told him I've got a bad feeling about that woman.”

“What do you mean?”

“Whatever she has to say isn't going to be good for Neville.” I sighed. “Just a gut feeling.” I shook my head. “And if I'm right, so be it. The most logical explanation for Sally's murder is still the one the police have.”

“But what about the explosion? And that creep in the Schnuck's parking lot?”

“Maybe,” I said, lifting the next file out of the box, “but not necessarily. Remember, there's nothing that conclusively ties that stuff to this case.” I flipped idly through the file. “It could still be an angry ex-husband or a crazy former client. The only direct link to Sally Wade so far is the night Junior Dice broke into my office.”

We worked alongside one another in silence for a while, leafing through each of the files in the box.

“How did you leave it with her?” Amy asked.

I looked up and shrugged. “Just the way I described it. Maybe she'll call, maybe she won't.”

When we finished the last boxes, Amy left for lunch and a doctor's appointment. I went into Sally's office to check in with Jacki and pick up my messages.

Benny Goldberg had left two for me. I caught him just as he was leaving to teach his antitrust seminar. He wanted to know if he could drop by tonight after dinner.

“I'll rent a movie and we can make some popcorn.”

That sounded wonderful—a relaxing night at home with company. “Sure,” I told him.

“Should I bring my three-piece latex suit?”

“Should I recharge my rhino stun gun?”

“Never mind.”

I returned a few other calls, the last to the lawyer who was representing a witness in an age discrimination case that I was handling for one of my mother's friends. As the lawyer blabbered on about certain attorney-client privilege issues, I flipped on Sally's computer. When I got to the main screen, I poked around until I found the directory that contained the draft lawsuit that she had brought to my office the day she (or someone posing as her) retained me. Eventually, the lawyer talked himself out. Hanging up, I studied the date-created information on the terminal screen. It was the same directory Amy had located for me back when we first looked through Sally's computer. It showed that the draft lawsuit had been created the morning of the day she came to visit me. Fairly compelling evidence. Indeed, the police had made a copy of the computer hard drive for that very reason.

Then again, I reminded myself, the date-created screen wasn't dispositive. Someone could have planted the document. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of computers could have taken a document created on another computer, copied it to a floppy disk, transferred it to Sally's hard drive several days later, and voilà—it would look as if Sally had created the document back on the same date the document was originally created.

But
, I cautioned myself,
the most obvious explanation is also the most logical, namely, that Sally Wade herself typed the draft lawsuit right here at her own computer terminal just before she came to see me on October fifteenth
.

I sat back and stared at the screen with my arms crossed over my chest.

Then again, if someone could add a document to her computer, someone could delete one as well
.

I rummaged through my briefcase and found Tyrone Henderson's instructions for launching the undelete program. I typed in the commands and waited. The screen went blank except for the lower right corner, where the word SEARCHING started flashing. It flashed for almost thirty seconds, and then a new message appeared:

12 DELETED DOCUMENTS HAVE BEEN LOCATED AND RECOVERED. TO VIEW UNDELETED DOCUMENT #1 OF 12,
PRESS ANY KEY…

Chapter Thirty-three

Ten minutes after Benny arrived with three bags of microwave popcorn, a jumbo box of Milk Duds, a large bag of M&M's, and two videotapes, the doorbell rang. We exchanged puzzled looks. Benny followed me to the door.

“Who is it?” I called.

“Your mother, doll baby. Let me in.”

I gave her a hug and kiss, and so did Benny.

“Here,” she said, handing me a covered platter. “I brought something sweet.”

“Way to go, Sarah G,” Benny said, peering under the cover. “Oh, baby, is that your world-famous banana bread?”

My mother nodded. “I baked it today.”

“Let's have some dessert, ladies.”

We got out the plates and silverware and I put on water for tea.

As we waited for the water to boil, I filled them in on my day, starting with my review of the Douglas Beef files.

“So what did you expect to find?” Benny said when I was through. “A bag of gallstones and a signed receipt from Brady Kane?”

“I was hoping to find something in those files.”

“Rachel,” Benny said, “face it: if there was ever anything incriminating in any of those files, the odds are that Sally deleted it before she sent it to storage.”

“Funny you should mention deletions,” I said.

“Oh?”

I told them what I had discovered when I ran Tyrone Henderson's undelete program on Sally's computer. For the most part, his program resurrected fragments of materials that were either abandoned or incorporated into larger documents: a partial table of contents for an Illinois appellate brief, a half-written letter to Visa about a disputed charge. But it did locate two complete documents: an outline for the deposition of someone named Browning and an outline of legal points for a hearing in the same case.

“Here,” I said, leafing through the stack of undeleted documents that I had printed off her computer. I pulled out the two outlines and handed them to Benny.

Benny studied them. “So?”

“Look at the dates,” I said, pointing. “Sally created both documents on October thirteenth. The deposition outline was for a deposition on October fourteenth, and the hearing outline was for a hearing at
one-thirty
on
October fifteenth.”
I paused with a smile.

Benny gave me a baffled look. “And the punch line is?”

“Benny,” I said impatiently, “Sally was in
my
office at two o'clock on October fifteenth.”

“Whoa,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “Where was the hearing supposed to be?”

“Springfield, Illinois.”

“Which is how far from St. Louis?”

My mother answered, “A ninety-minute drive.”

Benny looked at me. “Did the hearing go forward?”

“I don't know,” I said. “The court was already closed by the time I realized what these outlines might mean. I tried to reach the lawyer on the other side. He's out till next Tuesday. I'll call the court tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow's Saturday,” my mother said.

“Then I'll call Monday,” I said. “If Sally was up in Springfield for a one-thirty hearing, that's absolute proof that the person who retained me was an impostor.” I paused. “Saturday? Rats. It's Friday night.”

Benny gave me a curious look. “You are correct.”

I looked at my mother. “I forgot to light the candles.”

She patted me on the hand. “It's okay.”

“No, it's not,” I said.

I fetched the candle holders and two Sabbath candles from the pantry, got my father's wine goblet down from the cabinet, took the Mogen David out of the back of the fridge, and located a yarmulke for Benny in the bottom drawer. I made him put it on. Although the Gold family had never been overly observant while I was growing up, there was one ceremony my father never let us miss: every Friday night he lit the Sabbath candles and said the blessing over the wine, using a silver goblet that had once belonged to his grandfather. When I went away to college, I left those Friday-night rituals behind—until the first Friday after we buried my father. My mother, whose religious beliefs did not survive the Holocaust (in which her grandparents, her father, and all of her uncles and aunts perished), gave me my father's wine goblet after the funeral, and I haven't missed a Friday night since. Tonight, I said the blessing over the candles, and Benny self-consciously mumbled the blessing over the wine.

My mother was yawning by the time we finished. She announced that she was going home to bed.

“Not even one movie, Mom?”

“Not tonight, sweetie.”

I walked her to the door and gave her a big hug. “Thanks for coming by.”

She waggled a finger at me. “You make sure you lock up good tonight.” She gave me a kiss and a fierce hug. “I love you, doll baby.”

“I love you, Mom.”

Although Benny had rented two oldies but goodies—Kenneth Branagh's
Henry V
for me and Arnold Schwarzenegger's
The Terminator
for him—we agreed that one movie was enough for tonight, and I went along with his plea for Schwarzenegger over Shakespeare.

When it ended, I stood up and stretched as Benny hit the rewind button.

“Big plans for the weekend?” I asked him.

“Nah.”

“What about Amy?”

He made a dismissive gesture. “She's going to Memphis for tomorrow and Sunday to visit a college friend.”

“How are you guys doing?”

He shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”

I nodded silently, knowing enough to drop the subject. In guyspeak, the phrase “okay, I guess,” when referring to the status of a relationship with a woman, means “in the pits.”

“How ‘bout you?” he asked.

“I'm going rollerblading in Forest Park tomorrow morning with Jennifer and Cory.” Jennifer and Cory were my sister's children. “We were supposed to do it last week, but, well, things happened.”

Benny slid the videotape out of the VCR. “Anything else going on tomorrow?”

“Well,” I said, trying to keep my tone offhand, “I'm having dinner at Jonathan Wolf's house.”

Benny turned to me, his eyes sparkling with delight. “No shit?”

I blushed slightly. “He invited me over for a
havdalah
service and dinner. It'll be nice.”

“Jesus, Rachel, lighting the Shabbos candles tonight, doing a
havdalah
service tomorrow—to quote Annie Hall's grandmother, you're getting to be what I'd call a real Jew.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, right.”

He went into the kitchen and cut himself another slice of banana bread. “Listen,” he said, his back to me, “do you mind if I crash here tonight?”

“Pardon?”

“I've got my sleeping bag and a pillow in the car.” He turned toward me. “If you don't mind, I'll sack out on the living-room couch.”

I gave him a strange look. “What's going on?”

“No big deal.” He shrugged and came back to the table. “That asshole Junior Dice is out of jail. You had another delightful encounter with Brady Kane. And, if I correctly recall, you are now on your second loaner car because of a rather dramatic recent problem with your own car.” He leaned down and scratched Ozzie. “I know you have the most vigilant guard dog on the block, but the Oz-meister might feel more comfortable with me here, and how can I deny the Oz?”

“That's sweet, Benny,” I said, genuinely touched, “but you don't—”

“Whoa, girl, don't get mushy on me. You haven't heard my payment terms.”

“Oh?”

He gave me a stern look. “I ain't playing security guard for free, woman. The price of one night of Benny Goldberg's Vigilant Home Protection Service is a homemade Rachel Gold breakfast special consisting of a pot of fresh hot coffee and a tall stack—and I do mean tall—of those incredible homemade buckwheat pancakes. Otherwise, woman, deal's off.”

I kissed him on the cheek. “You've got a deal.”

“Excellent. Come out to the car, Ozzie. You can carry in my pillow.”

***

Benny insisted on the living-room couch, even though I had an extra bedroom. He gave me some ridiculous excuse, but I assumed the real reason had to do with his idea of the optimal security position in the house. Whatever the reason, when I tiptoed downstairs in my terry-cloth bathrobe at six-thirty Saturday morning, he was on his back on the couch, snoring away with a crowbar across his stomach. Ozzie was asleep on the floor beside him.

Forty-five minutes later, I woke them both with the smells of breakfast—buttermilk buckwheat pancakes bubbling on the griddle, sausage sizzling in the pan, and fresh-ground Sumatra coffee dripping into the pot.

Benny staggered into the kitchen in his baggy pajamas, scratching himself in the usual early-morning guy places. “Lord have mercy,” he whispered hungrily.

I looked over and winked. “Morning, officer. Quiet night?”

I scooped another pancake off the griddle and placed it on top of his tall stack. He came over to the stove and inhaled deeply over the sausage. “My God, what kind is that?”

“
Andouille
, fresh from Louisiana. I got it at Bob's Seafood yesterday. Yummy, huh?”

His jaw dropped in delight as he nodded.

I pointed to the plate. “One tall stack of homemade buckwheat pancakes. There's fresh-squeezed orange juice on the counter. A pitcher of warm Vermont maple syrup in the microwave. The whipped butter is on the table, and the sausage should be ready in five minutes.”

Benny got down on his knees and held his arms toward me in supplication. “We're not worthy, we're not worthy.”

I laughed and knighted him on each shoulder with a clean edge of the pancake spatula. “Get on your feet, you nut, before you get splattered with sausage grease.”

If I say so myself, it was an awfully good breakfast. Afterward, Benny helped me clean up, and then I went upstairs to take a shower while Benny headed for the den to watch Saturday morning cartoons. After my shower, I peered out the bathroom window to check the weather. It was overcast and windy. I called the weather line as I got dressed. The forecast was grim: showers throughout the day, temperatures in the low forties. Not the kind of day to go blading in the park.

The phone rang as I was pulling on my black leggings and trying to decide on a fun alternative plan. Maybe ice skating. I lifted the receiver, thinking it might be my sister, Ann. “Hello?”

“Rachel?” The voice was tense and familiar.

“Tammy?”

“I think I'm ready.”

“For what?”

“To meet with you.”