The Bad Kitty Lounge (9 page)

I stepped close to the glass and exhaled steam on it. Amy Samuelson's mouth fell open.

Then, from behind me, a woman's hand reached past my shoulder, and her index finger drew a little heart on the steamed glass.

The skin on the woman's hand was tan, though the sun hadn't shined solid in Chicago since Labor Day. Her fingernails glittered like semiprecious gems. I turned and saw the rest of her. She looked like she was in her mid-thirties but with a lot of wear. She had wheat-brown hair, tinted blond, and wore tight jeans and a little shirt that showed belly on the bottom and breast on top. I'd seen her once before, as the passenger riding in the silver Mercedes that almost ran me down after Greg Samuelson burned Eric Stone's car. She'd changed her clothes but she still looked like a fancy fishing lure.

I held my hand to shake hers and smiled. “I'm Joe Kozmarski.”

She smiled back with bleached teeth. “Pleased to meet you, Joe.”

“And you are—?”

“Cassie,” she said. “Cassie Stone.”

“This is a family business,” I observed.

“Family is everything,” she said. She didn't sound happy about it. She turned and walked away.

I called after her, “You ever go fishing?”

She stopped without turning to look at me. “No, Joe, I've never gone fishing.”

“You should try it. You look like you would be good.”

“Give me a call,” she said. “I'll try anything once.” She disappeared down the hall.

Eric Stone's office was next to the conference room. It had a large glass-topped desk and, on the walls, framed paintings of buildings that LCR had constructed—a mix of office and residential skyscrapers, all high-end.

He stood when I came in, and we shook hands, friendly, and sat down together. He wore a tailored charcoal gray suit and a tie. His bald head showed the healthy pink skin of a man who spent time exercising outdoors.

“Mr. Kozmarski,” he said, “you saw me yesterday at an embarrassing moment. I'd just left Amy's house, and I was watching my car burn.” He gave me a wink that could sell real estate at a thousand dollars a square foot. “But you know all that.”

I agreed that I did.

“I apologize for my brusqueness. I don't usually behave that way.”

“You behaved understandably, considering everything.”

“And you provoked me,” he said. “What happened later—to the nun at the church—was terrible. And I have a hard time believing Greg would do it. I've known him and, of course, Amy for over two years. He's a gentle man”—he gave an ironic smile—“if you keep him away from gasoline and matches.”

I showed him my palms. “The police are convinced he did it.”

“I can't believe that's true,” he said.

“Did
you
do it?”

The ironic smile. “If I understand the sequence of events,
I was sitting at my desk when Sister Terrano died and Greg shot himself. My brother and his daughter picked me up at Amy's condo and we came straight here.”

“I'm sure that others saw you here and can verify your story.”

“I've given all of that information to the police.” He leaned back in his chair. “If they want to talk with me, my lawyer and I are available.”

I nodded. “Did you know Judy Terrano?”

“I did, but not well. Three months ago, before Amy and I started seeing each other, Greg introduced us. I don't necessarily agree with her principles, but she seemed like a good woman. And tough, very tough.”

I nodded some more. I would describe her as tough, too, though I didn't know how good she was. “So why did you call me?” I asked. “What do you want?”

His smile dropped and he leaned forward. “Do you know of a man named William DuBuclet?” He probably saw my surprise. He said, “Last summer, I had dinner with Greg and Amy. This was right before Amy and I got together. Something was bothering Greg that night, and it came out that DuBuclet had visited Judy Terrano's office in the afternoon and threatened her. When Greg intervened, DuBuclet threatened him, too—‘him and his family' was what Greg said. Apparently DuBuclet and the nun knew each other from way back—they met in the sixties on the South Side—but Greg took the threat seriously. He was scared that night.”

“Why did DuBuclet threaten Sister Terrano?”

“Greg wouldn't say. I'm not sure he knew.”

“Yesterday
you
threatened Samuelson after he burned your car.”

“If he'd heard me, he would've laughed. He knows I'm harmless. He didn't laugh when DuBuclet said it.”

Stone was right. Samuelson
had
laughed when I'd told him that Stone said he would kill him. “So you're saying DuBuclet killed Judy Terrano or had her killed.”

“I don't know. I'm saying he threatened her and now she's dead.”

“Did you tell the police?”

He hesitated. “No.”

“Why not?”

“DuBuclet's a very powerful man, and he influences most decisions involving commercial property on the South Side. If word got back to him that I pointed the police at him, he would become a quick enemy. If he turned out to be innocent, his anger could have a lasting effect on my business. As a land developer I can't afford to have that kind of enemy.”

“So why are you telling me?”

“I'd like to hire you to keep an eye on DuBuclet. Quietly. I don't want you to talk to him, but I want to know what he's doing. If he had Judy Terrano killed and if he's responsible for Greg getting shot, I want to know whether he really meant he'd get Greg
and his family
. I want to know that Amy's safe. Me too, to tell the truth. I spend a lot of time with Amy, and I want to know if DuBuclet's people are coming.”

I thought about all he'd told me. “Okay,” I said. “Write me a check.”

He looked relieved. “How much?”

Usually I charged fifteen hundred up front. But I didn't like Eric Stone. Or what he did. Or how he did it. “Five thousand,” I said.

Five thousand was no problem for him. He nodded and
pulled a checkbook from his desk. I would put the check in the drawer with the cash from William DuBuclet and decide what to do with it later.

 

I WAS FINDING MY
own way out when the receptionist said, “Mr. Kozmarski? If you have a minute, Mrs. Stone also would like a word with you.”

That stopped me. “Stone is married?”

The receptionist found me funny. “Mrs. Stone is Eric's mother.” She directed me through another door, which led down a short hallway to a single office. The woman who had been arguing with Amy Samuelson in the conference room sat at the desk having another argument, this time with the ponytailed man who had been driving the silver Mercedes that almost hit me outside of Samuelson's condo. I saw no reason to listen to the argument, so I knocked on the door frame.

The woman glanced at me with the same cold, impassive eyes she'd shown me before and touched the man's hand with her fingertips. “We can continue this later,” she said quietly.

The man pulled his hand away. He stood and cocked his head to the side like he was sizing me up. I guess he thought I was small enough. He bowed his head slightly and knocked my shoulder with his as he pushed through the door.

Mrs. Stone offered me his chair. Her office looked a lot like Eric Stone's, but the walls were tinted pink and she had framed pastel renderings of a project called Stone Tower that the company seemed to be working on. A small vase of roses stood on her blond-wood desk. The soft colors didn't fool me. She was the hardest thing in the place.

She said, “Never go into business with your family, Mr.
Kozmarski. My son David”—she gestured to the door that the ponytailed man had passed through—“is fifty-six this month and Eric is fifty-eight, but I treat them like badly behaved thirteen-year-olds and they respond by acting like badly behaved thirteen-year-olds. They bring their girlfriends home and give them jobs. They hire their friends with or without qualifications.”

I gave her a straight face.

She waved impatiently. “Nothing but trouble. But what choice do I have? I won't put them out on the street. Did you know that both of my boys live in my house? They're almost sixty and they live with their mother. David's daughter Cassie, too. I raised the girl myself. What do you think of that, Mr. Kozmarski?”

“It's nice to be close to your family.”

She laughed sharply at that. “It's nice to be close to this,” she said, and she gestured at the framed renderings of the Stone Tower project. “Without the buildings my boys would live in the holes where they probably belong. Me too. But with the buildings they get to play tennis and drive nice cars and hire the girls they're dating. And I get to play queen over it all.” Her cold eyes watched mine. “What do you think of that?”

“Like I said, family is nice.”

She leaned back in her chair. “That's my story, Mr. Kozmarski. What's yours?”

“Which story do you want?”

“The one that explains why you're here talking to my son.”

“He called me because he thinks you're having an affair.”

“Pardon me?”

“He's paying me to follow you around, watch who you park next to at the Motel 6, snap some pictures. He thinks you've
been getting together with the eighteen-year-old kid who delivers mail to your office.”

She gazed at me with her hard eyes. “I have very little patience and less of a sense of humor.”

“Why don't you ask Eric?”

“Are you saying you won't tell me?”

“That's what I'm saying, yes.”

“Very well,” she said. “I'll tell you, though, I protect what's mine. I'll do whatever I need to do. I have lawyers and other resources that can stop you and crush you.”

I had no idea what she was talking about. “If they crush me, they'll probably get Eric, too.”

She shook her head. “Just you.” But her voice quivered.

I tried to see into her eyes but saw only a rocky hard place.

 

ON THE SIDEWALK OUTSIDE
, I thought about the Stones. I wondered what they were up to and how they tied in to Judy Terrano. I wasn't sure how much I bought Eric Stone's worries about William DuBuclet. Robert and Jarik had threatened me. They'd pulled a gun on me to make the threat stick. But even if DuBuclet was responsible for killing Judy Terrano, Amy Samuelson seemed too far out of the nun's circle to need protection. Still, if DuBuclet and his flunkies were on the prowl, I wanted to keep my eyes open for them.

I wanted Lucinda to watch out for them, too. I pulled out my cell phone to check in with her. But the screen said someone had left voice mail while I was chatting with the Stones. The number was Stan Fleming's and his three-word message sounded unhappy—“Call me please.”
Please?
Who was teaching him manners? I called the District Thirteen station and
they told me how to reach him in Judy Terrano's room at Holy Trinity.

His voice was flat when he answered the phone. “Look, it seems Greg Samuelson got up and walked out of intensive care at Rush Med.”

“Huh? When?”

“A couple hours ago. But I just heard.”

“He ‘got up'?”

“And left.”

“With half a face?”

“The injury's not quite as bad as it looks. He shot off part of his jaw. But, yeah, half a jaw, half a face, he left.”

“I thought you had him under guard.”

“Of course I had him under guard. But you know what he looked like. The guard took a break and—”

“Yeah, I get it.”

“With the bandages, he shouldn't be hard to find,” Stan said. “We can stake out every Dairy Queen in the city. He's not eating anything chewier than a milkshake.”

“You think he killed the priest?”

“The church is just a mile away from the hospital.”

“Yeah, but it's hard to believe he could have done it.”

“It's hard to believe he didn't. Who else?”

Exactly, I thought, who else? I said, “What can I do for you?”

He said, “I need your help on this.” He must have had a hard time saying those words.

I said, “I'll be there in twenty minutes.”

I CALLED LUCINDA WHILE
I drove. She was on her way to play reference librarian. I told her about Stan Fleming's call and Greg Samuelson walking out of his hospital room. I warned her about William DuBuclet's threats and told her about the check I was carrying from Eric Stone.

“Do you trust Stone?” she asked.

“Are you kidding? But he interests me. Yesterday he was waving his fists around and promising he would draw blood. Today he's playing the calm, concerned boyfriend. He even sounds worried about Greg Samuelson.”

“I'll check the newspaper file for articles about him and his family.”

“Thanks,” I said. “You want to catch up over dinner with me and Jason?”

She said she would pick up Thai on her way back from the archives and meet us at my house.

 

_______

 

A LITTLE BEFORE FIVE
I pulled into a parking spot a block and a half away from Holy Trinity, locked my gun in the glove compartment, and eased myself out of the car. The afternoon sky had turned gray, and a cold wind was rising again from the west. Six police cruisers and an ambulance lined the curb in front of the church. News vans had parked across the street. A neighborhood crowd watched the church buildings as if Moses himself would walk out and deliver ten new commandments. If the killings kept up, concession stands would come next.

A cop at the garden gate radioed inside to Stan Fleming, then let me in. In Judy Terrano's room, a forensics man was working on the brick that the killer had taken from the stack next to the radiator and used to crush the priest's head. A bunch of cops were squeezed into the nun's bathroom. Stan was one of them. The forensics detective who dressed like Smokey the Bear was another. “We're looking at early rigor,” Smokey was saying. “Better put a couple sheets over him, 'cause this guy's coming out of the Virginity Nun's room stiff.”