Deadly Interest

by Julie Hyzy

  He pounded his steps through the small house, moving his head from side to side, stopping to check out all rooms, all corners, before pounding again.

  “Why are you stomping?” Lucy asked.

  “If somebody’s here, I want to make sure they know it,” he said, without turning toward us. “Like cockroaches. You make enough noise, they hightail it outta there.”

  Lucy eyed Mrs. Vicks’s piano in the living room, and I put a restraining hand on her arm. “Let’s wait till we know everything’s clear.”

  Moments later, Uncle Moose returned from his full-house examination and pronounced it empty. “You want me to stay?”

  I’d pushed past my initial trepidation. “No, I think we’ll be okay,” I said.

  He pointed at me. “If not, you call.”

  “I will.”

  * * * * *

  Delighted to have an in-tune piano to play, Lucy started in immediately on a Bach Minuet. Perfect music, I thought, as I started toward Mrs. Vicks’ bedroom. The energetic tempo was just what I needed to fuel my search.

  After my wee-hour discoveries in Mrs. Vicks’ accounts, I knew just what I was looking for. I wanted to find her reasons for subsidizing Diana’s visits to Dr. Hooker.

  Standing in the center of Mrs. Vicks’ bedroom, I was caught again by the sadness of it all. A fine layer of dark fingerprint dust covered her dresser tops. Judging from the reading glasses, left upside-down atop a pile of books on her nightstand, I assumed that the intruder who’d been searching her home hadn’t gotten very far.

  What he had done was pull out almost every drawer in Mrs. Vicks’ two dressers. The drawers had all been left open, and from the looks of things, the killer had rushed through a search of each one. Her underwear was bunched into a pastel-colored jumble of cotton, and I could see in my mind’s eye how it must have gone down. Open the drawer, run hands through, come up empty, move onto the next.

  That told me something right there.

  The murderer had been looking for an item of bulk. Had he been searching for a tiny thing, like a ring, or a key, then Mrs. Vicks’ underthings would have been shaken out one at a time. I found it unlikely that the searcher would have cared enough to replace the items into the drawer. No, this spoke of quick movement and a cursory search.

  Still standing in the room’s center, trying my best to get a feel for what I needed to do, I played around with another thought. This could also be the work of an amateur in a hurry.

  Not sure. Nothing was sure.

  Although the overhead light was adequate, I pulled at the hem of the vinyl window shade to raise it. It snapped up, scaring me, whipping out of sight behind the blue-green valance that matched Mrs. Vicks’ comforter.

  Where would I keep important information if I were Mrs. Vicks?

  With Lucy’s musical accompaniment, I began my own search. Under the bed I found only spare sheet sets and an extra pillow. For a moment, in her closet, I thought I hit pay dirt. On the floor, tucked into the corner, she had a large fireproof filing box with a lid that opened upward. A silver key sat in the lock, its mate dangled off the beaded metal chain that connected them.

  I struggled to pull it out of the closet. This thing was heavy. The fact that it wasn’t locked didn’t really surprise me. My parents had a box similar to this one. I’d asked them why they never locked the thing and my mother had laughed at my question. “Nobody’s going to steal my old papers,” she’d said. “But I want them protected in case of fire. And if I lock it, then I have to worry about losing the key.”

  To some extent, I understood the reasoning. The problem was, there’d been two intruders in this house before me. Maybe the same guy both times, maybe not. If there had been anything of value in here, it was probably gone.

  Sitting on the floor cross-legged, I flipped through the files. She kept the current year’s bank statements in separate hanging files. I gave it all a quick look. Brown bank statements, blue bank statements, a file full of personal things. I pulled that one out, my heart racing with possibility, but after I’d gone through it twice I shoved it back in the box with a sigh. Other than her voter’s and social security cards and a few other standard items, I came up empty. The rest of the files were related to her utility and medical bills. Nothing else.

  Returning to the drawers, I felt the wood beneath each and every one, knowing how many people tape their secrets in such a place where they believe no one will look. Nothing.

  Shaking my head, I blew my bangs out of my face in frustration. I’d begun to work up a sweat, despite the fact that my T-shirt was loose and light. Think, I told myself. Where would my parents keep important documents?

  After an hour of futile searching, I called to Lucy to sit with me at the kitchen table while we shared some of the cookies. Puzzled by the excitement in her eyes when we sat down, I asked her about it.

  “I want to talk to you about something really important,” she said, her smile bright.

  I had no idea what was up.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Somebody likes me,” she said.

  I laughed. “Everybody likes you, Lucy.”

  With a prim look of exasperation, she explained, “I mean somebody at the residence. A guy I know.” Turning red, she added, “He says he loves me.”

  Words dropped away, rendering me speechless. From Lucy’s reaction, a sudden apprehensive look that rushed to her face, I could only imagine what mine looked like. A hundred scenarios, none of them good, raced through my brain in the course of the three seconds it took me to come up with response innocuous enough not to alarm her. “Really? What’s his name?”

  “You don’t seem very happy.”

  “You just took me by surprise, Lucy, that’s all,” I lied.

  “Uh-huh.” She twisted her mouth to one side. “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you.”

  “No, no,” I said, too quickly. “I’m glad you did, really glad. What’s his name?”

  “Bobby.”

  “That’s great,” I said. “I can’t wait to meet him.”

  Lucy had been unlucky in love ever since she’d hit puberty. She’d developed a series of crushes on her male teachers and, once, just before she turned thirty, she’d “dated” a young man in her special-ed music class who’d broken her heart when he got caught fondling another other girl in class, and then lied about it when she confronted him. She’d been confused, angry, and wanting to forgive him all at once. My appalled parents had consulted with Lucy’s doctors and teachers and they’d come to the unanimous conclusion to change her class schedule, so that she’d never see old Romeo again.

  While it’d been an efficient way to handle the situation, I’d always wondered how Lucy had perceived it. As hard as the male/female thing was, how much harder it had to be to have such personal issues decided by committee—decisions lifted out of your hands because those who know best believed you incapable.

  I worried for her, always.

  “Maybe when you drive me back down next week his parents will bring him back too, and we can all meet.”

  “That would be wonderful,” I said. But all I could think of was “Oh, my God.”

  “We didn’t get a lot of time to talk this week,” she said. “I know you’ve been very busy with all the work about finding the person who killed Mrs. Vicks, but I remembered you said we were going to go to lunch or maybe downtown or something.”

  “That’s right,” I said, with a forced smile, berating myself for forgetting I’d even said that. She’d been waiting for me and I’d let her down, again. “When do you want to go?”

  “Downtown?” she said, in an almost-squeak.

  “Yeah, just you and me.”

  “How about tomorrow?”

  Tomorrow. God, I so needed to make headway on this story. I needed to get some answers fast. Bass was on my butt and I felt the pressure of time from him, as well as knowing that the longer this stretched out, the less likely we’d find Mrs. Vicks’ murderer.

 
Lucy started to reach behind her head, ready to twist her hair into knots at the delay in my answer.

  “Sure,” I said with a profound feeling that this was the right thing to do, even if it would cost me a fight with my boss. “Let’s plan to just have fun tomorrow.”

  My cell phone buzzed in the back pocket of my jeans, and I jumped at the vibration.

  Detective Lulinski’s voice barked at me over the wireless connection. “Where are you?”

  I told him. “Why?”

  “Good,” he said. “Stay there.”

  He hung up before I could say another word. I shrugged at Lucy, shoved the last bit of oatmeal-raisin cookie into my mouth and said, “I think we’re going to have company. How about a little Mozart?”

  Smiling, she jumped up from her seat and headed back to the piano while I resumed my task of trying to get into the mind of an elderly woman with secrets.

  By the time the detective showed up at the front door, I’d about exhausted every idea. I remembered a writer friend who had her protagonist hide a valuable item in the fridge, tucked into a carved-out head of lettuce. I tugged open the white metal door and turned my head at the ten-day-old smell of rotting food. When I found myself braving the stench in order to search through Mrs. Vicks’ vegetable crisper, I knew I was starting to lose it.

  Fortunately, I was saved by the doorbell.

  “Any luck?” Lulinski asked me, by way of greeting when I opened the door.

  “Any luck what?”

  “Solving my case for me.” He grinned as we moved into the living room where I introduced him to Lucy. She was unaccustomed to strangers offering a hand to shake, but she smiled as she took it.

  “Hi,” she said.

  Detective Lulinski sent a quick glance to me before addressing my sister again. “So you met Laurence Grady, didn’t you?”

  “Out front,” she said, pointing.

  “Can I ask you about it?”

  Lucy looked to me and I gave her a nod of encouragement.

  “Sure.”

  “Did he hurt you?”

  “Oh, no,” Lucy said. “He was really nice. He was surprised about Diana and wanted to know which hospital she was at.”

  “And you told him, right?”

  The way Lulinski phrased it, with such a natural inquisitiveness, Lucy didn’t think before she answered. “Oh, yeah. He wanted to know that right away.” She seemed to consider that. “But I shouldn’t have told him, should I? That’s where he tried to hurt Alex.”

  To his credit, Lulinski didn’t drop the friendly smile from his face. “It’s okay, Lucy. Nothing bad happened. And it helps me to know everything I can about when you talked with him. Did you see where he came from?”

  Lucy shook her head.

  “Do you remember which direction he came from?”

  “Yeah, I do,” Lucy said with eagerness. “He was walking from here, I think. Yeah. I think so.”

  Damn, I thought. Why hadn’t I asked her that?

  “Was he carrying anything?”

  Lucy stared up at the ceiling for several beats. “Just his keys.”

  After a few more questions, Lulinski thanked my sister and I set her back to playing music as he and I headed to the kitchen.

  “What was that all about?” I asked.

  Dropping into a squeaky chair, Lulinski craned his neck around, stopping when he spied the coffee maker. He shot it a look of contempt, then turned to me.

  “I can make some.” I said.

  His eyes lit up.

  “Your sister is really talented,” he said as I stood.

  “Thanks.” Pouring water into the appliance’s reservoir, I added, “She plays several other instruments, too.”

  “I thought you told me she was mentally handicapped,” he said in a low voice. “She seems pretty sharp.”

  I smiled, and as I moved around the small kitchen, I explained the vagaries of Williams Syndrome and how my well-read, articulate sister could still not possess the faculties to live on her own. Carrying on a conversation felt strange; I was making coffee in the same house where Mrs. Vicks had been murdered. Detective Lulinski, fingering the cigarette package he’d pulled from his pocket, seemed far more at ease, and he turned his body to watch me as I worked.

  “They did a good job cleaning this place up,” he said.

  I glanced around and shuddered. I hadn’t seen this room directly after the murder, nor did I want to. A service took care of the worst of it, then my aunt and several other women from the neighborhood had come in to finish up. Now nothing visible remained of the vicious attack.

  “There,” I said. “Couple of minutes.”

  The coffee maker issued a water-hits-heating-element hiss, followed up by the almost immediate stream of dripping into the glass carafe. When the warm brew smell seeped my way I felt myself relax. Normal smells, normal sounds. It made this abnormal process of finding a killer just a little more bearable.

  “So, to what do I owe the honor of this visit?” I asked.

  Arms on the table, Lulinski leaned forward. “Grady’s gone. No sign of him, no word. I talked to his parole officer and told him I to wanted call Grady in. The folks at the halfway house where he was staying haven’t seen him, and his place has been cleaned out.”

  “Okay,” I said, in a prompting tone.

  “I don’t know what that means, yet,” he said, spreading his hands out in a gesture of unsupported explanation, “but despite this latest development, I have to tell you, my gut tells me Grady isn’t our guy.”

  Our guy.

  “Why not?” Standing, I guessed at which cabinet held Mrs. Vicks’ mugs, grabbing two and pouring coffee for us both. I cast an uncertain glance at the refrigerator. “I don’t think there’s any cream,” I said. “At least not any that’s safe for human consumption.”

  He gestured for me to hand him the mug, which I did. I didn’t particularly care for black coffee, but without much choice in the matter, I sipped the bitter brew.

  “Our evidence technicians were backlogged, but I got their report this afternoon. Unidentified fingerprints, blood, and hair samples all over the kitchen and in the bedrooms and basement. Just where our guy was.”

  “Barton?” I asked.

  “Nope. We printed him. We have Grady’s on file and we’ve got yours, and Diana’s in addition to the victim’s. All accounted for. But there are clear prints that don’t match up to any we have on file.”

  He pulled out a small notebook before continuing. “Blood type issues, too. What are you?” he asked.

  “B-positive,” I said.

  “Good.” He nodded, still consulting his notes. “We speculate that the killer was type AB. Looks like Evelyn Vicks, her son Barton, and the roommate Diana all had the same blood type—‘O’—the most common, you know.”

  I did know. “Why are you telling me all this? I thought you didn’t trust the media.”

  He met my questioning eyes straight on. “You could find out any of this if you wanted to. We both know that. But I figure that if I tell you the things I can tell you, you won’t go behind my back, and maybe you’ll share what you know with me.”

  I didn’t know why that stung, but it did. I deflected. “So you’re saying you found type AB here, too?”

  “Not a lot, some.”

  “What’s Grady’s blood type?”

  “B-positive, same as yours.”

  “Then it isn’t his,” I said, thinking about that. “So, where did it come from?”

  “Isn’t that the sixty-four thousand dollar question.” He set his mug down on the table and rolled its sides against his palms, back and forth, almost hypnotically. He played with it like I’d seen him play with his cigarette package and I wondered if it helped him concentrate.

  “Speaking of which . . .” I met his eyes over the rim of my coffee cup, “did you hear about the reward?”

  His rubbed his face so hard that for the first time, a pink tinge crept up from beneath his saggy gray stu
bble. “Did I? Every lunatic in the city of Chicago has been calling the station trying to get the fifty G’s this David Dewars offered.”

  “How’d they hear about it?”

  He tilted his head my direction, gazing at me over the tips of his fingers. “You’re kidding, right?”

  I shook my head.

  “The idiot took out a goddamn ad in the goddamn Sun-Times,” he said. “Goddamn full-page ad.”

  “Must have missed it,” I said. “I read the Trib.”

  With a baleful glare, he went back to massaging his coffee mug, staring down at it for a long moment until one gray eyebrow lifted my direction. “So, how did you hear about it?”

  “At first, Barton told me,” I said, “but then last night I asked David about it and he—”

  “David?”

  “Dewars,” I said, feeling my face color, “he and I were talking about all this.”

  The other eyebrow joined its mate. “Last night.” He didn’t phrase it as a question.

  “As a matter of fact, yes.”

  “At the bank?”

  “Well,” I said, hating the hedging tone to my voice. “We met at the bank.” I didn’t like where this conversation was going. “Why do you want to know?”

  He sat back, with a funny look on his face.

  “Did you go on a date with him?” he asked.

  I opened my mouth, closed it, then shrugged. “Kinda.”

  “Well now,” he said in as close to a drawl as a native Chicagoan can get, “I find that a little bit odd.”

  “Oh you do.”

  He nodded, leaning forward again. “He’s got what?” Lulinski’s eyes flicked up toward the ceiling for a split-second, “twenty-four years on you? Don’t you think that’s a bit much?”

  He hadn’t said, “around twenty,” not “twenty some-odd,” but “twenty-four.”

  “How do you know our ages?”

  “I make it a point to know my suspects. All of them.”