"So David did trust Beth, at least." Mitch said.
"Beth and Dorothy Jeffers had a long-term relationship. David was always a real shit, and I think he wanted what he couldn't have. He put a lot of effort into wooing Beth, and he finally showed her his treasure-the manuscripts-to help convince her. She knew that he gave them to Martin to examine and for safe-keeping, and Martin found out she knew. So Martin had no choice but to get rid of her."
My shoulder was hurting from last night's blow, and it screamed in pain when Mitch jerkily shifted into a hard left turn onto Franklin Street.
"Sorry about that," Mitch apologized.
"Mitch, listen." I reached over and turned up the volume on the radio as a newscaster reported Martin Sweeney's death.
... best known for his impersonation of Ernest Hemingway. With three English professors dead, all under mysterious circumstances, officials have canceled graduation ceremonies and announced they are closing the college for the remaining week of the semester. In a related matter, a college student, Debbie Majors, confessed that her sexual harassment suit against one of the dead professors, David Barnes, was a hoax. She said the scheme was cooked up by her lover, Bill Butler, head of the college English department who was jealous of Barnes and worried about losing the chairmanship of the de partment to him in an upcoming election. Authorities confirm that Butler was arrested yesterday on charges of obstruction of justice and suborning perjury.
"Wow. The entire department's down the tubes. Did you know anything about this?" Mitch asked as we approached our destination.
"No, this is the first I..." My explanation was aborted as Mitch jammed on the brakes, and we lurched forward.
"What's going on?" I yelled.
A bunch of police cars, lights flashing, and a squadrol blocked the front of the IRS building. Two bored-looking cops were redirecting traffic.
"Shit," I screamed in frustration. "This is going to make me late."
Mitch took a quick right turn to escape the melee and tried to soothe me. "Some taxpayer probably went postal. There's going to be so much commotion that all of the appointments will be late."
"Pull over right here," I directed.
"DD, that's illegal, but it's your call."
"Just do it," I said.
"Okay," Mitch conceded amiably and parked next to the fireplug. As he killed the engine, I scrambled out, gingerly balancing my purse along with stacks of messy files while struggling to keep the door from hitting the fireplug.
I ran across Franklin Street and felt Mitch hard on my heels.
I reached the building and the door opened in my face. Mr. Poussant appeared.
"Mr. Poussant," I stammered, feeling like a guilty fifth grader. "I can explain. These cops held me up or I would have been on time and..."
One of the cops interrupted. "Lady, if you have an appointment with this perp, you'll have to keep it in the lockup. This guy and his secretary had their own little business going, shaking down taxpayers to support their lifestyle."
It took a moment for this news to penetrate my frenzy. Gradually I felt my heart stop racing. As they led Mr. Poussant and Miss Wang away, I stuck my tongue out at them and gave them a great big raspberry.
Mitch and I linked arms and stood in the front of the gathering crowd, watching as first Mr. Poussant and then Miss Wang were led into separate squad cars. When the procession drove out of the lot, I waved good-bye, but the only one who returned my wave was the cop with a mustache riding shotgun.
"So," I said, smiling up at Mitch as we walked arm in arm back to the car. "I probably won't end up any better with another IRS agent, but then again, miracles do happen."
I glanced sideways at him, wondering if this was going to be a long-term relationship or just a torrid affair that would burn out overnight.
"Ha, no parking ticket," I noted with satisfaction as we approached the car. "It must be my lucky day."
"It is your lucky day, but not for that. The cops were too busy arresting Poussant to write out any tickets," Mitch retorted, opening the door for me.
"There. Know what I'd like?" he asked, grinning as he came around and got in the driver's side.
"What?"
"Let's take in a Cubs game on Sunday."
I frowned, remembering my mother's birthday. She'd been a brick, returning all six of Aunt Elizabeth's phone calls for me. "Why do men always have to ask the impossible? I can't. Sunday's my mother's birthday dinner."
"So? Bring her and the twins along." He smiled. "Later, I'll take you all out to dinner. We'll break open a bottle of champagne. Maybe two. I feel like celebrating."
"You mean you're willing to meet her?"
"Absolutely." He raised one arm and flexed his muscles. "Bring on the lions."
We pulled into traffic, and he shifted smoothly into fourth gear. As we purred along, the air felt refreshingly clean after last night's storm.
I breathed deeply, beginning to feel better. Mitch was good for me, and I found I couldn't stop smiling. He couldn't either. I knew I was going to have to tell him all about Scotty, but not today.
All things considered, except for Don's wife, Anne, who blamed me for what happened last night at Graue Mill, and would probably never speak to me again, all was right with the world. Still, somewhere deep inside the happiness, I could hear Auntie Elizabeth warning me to keep a sharp watch over my shoulder for the furies of the fates.
THE END
AUTHORS AFTERWORD
ALL OF THE INFORMATION on Ernest Hemingway presented in this novel was gleaned from biographies and from his own writings. Hemingway was a native son of Oak Park, Illinois. After high school, he went to work as a reporter for the Kansas City Star. Six months later, he sailed to Europe on the ship Chicago with other Red Cross volunteers. He drove an ambulance and was wounded in Italy in July of 1918. According to some reports, he was where he shouldn't have been, breaking the rules by handing out chocolate and cigarettes to the men in the trenches. He recuperated in the American Red Cross Hospital in Milan and was later awarded the Italian Silver Medal for heroism.
After his discharge, he returned to Oak Park where his old English teacher, Frank Platt, arranged for him to speak to the Burke Debating Club. On September 3, 1921, he married Hadley Richardson in the Horton Bay country church. She was eight years his senior. They sailed for Paris where the couple could live more inexpensively while Ernest developed his writing career. He was only twenty-two and not yet published. While in Paris, Hemingway worked as a correspondent for the Toronto Star and supplemented their income from Hadley's inheritance. He wrote short stories and poems, and associated with other authors such as Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, James Joyce, and Ford Maddox Ford.
The incident of the missing valise is accurate. All but one short story had been packed into it when it disappeared from a Paris train station that day in December of 1922. Another story, "My Old Man," had been sent off to Cosmopolitan. Hemingway immediately returned from Lausanne, Switzerland, to search for the missing manuscripts. But, despite offering a small reward, nothing was ever recovered. Hemingway and his author friends blamed Hadley for the loss.
Hemingway and Hadley had a son, John Hadley Nicanor Hemingway, nicknamed Bumby, born March 16, 1924. Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas signed the baptismal certificate as joint godmothers. But Hemingway's marriage to Hadley was never quite the same, and they separated in 1926. Ernest filed for divorce on December 8, 1926. The divorce was final on April 14, 1927. After the divorce, Hemingway married Pauline Pfeiffer, who worked for Paris Vogue, on May 10, 1927. Hadley returned to Chicago and married a banker.
Hemingway's novel, The Sun Also Rises, was published in September of 1926. It was well received and sold almost 7,000 copies in the first two months. He assigned all the royalties to Hadley.
Hemingway married four times. He committed suicide in Ketchum, Idaho, on July 2, 1961, with a double-barreled Boss shotgun he'd used for shooting pigeons.
FOR HEMINGWAY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baker, Carlos. Ernest Hemingway, A Life Story. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1969.
Denis, Brian. The True Gen: An Intimate Portrait of Ernest Hemingway by Those Who Knew Him. New York: Grove Press, 1988.
DeVost, Nadine. "Hemingway's Girls: Unnaming and Renaming Hemingway's female characters." Hemingway Review, Fall 1994.
Griffin, Peter. Along With Youth: Hemingway, The Early Years. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Hemingway, Ernest. A Moveable Feast. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1964.
Hemingway's two Love Poems and "Hemingway in Cuba," by Robert Manning. The Atlantic Monthly, August, 1965.
Hotchner, A. E. Papa Hemingway: A Personal Memoir. New York: Random House, 1965.
Lyttle, Richard B. Ernest Hemingway: The Life and the Legend. New York: Atheneum, 1992.
Manning, Robert. "Hemingway in Cuba," and Hemingway's two "Love Poems." The Atlantic Monthly, August 1965.
Meyers, Jeffrey. Hemingway: A Biography. New York: Harper & Row, 1985.
McLendon, James. Papa: Hemingway in Key West. Key West, FL: Langley Press, 1990.
Miller, Linda Patterson, ed. Letters from the Lost Generation: Gerald and Sara Murphy and Friends. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991.
Murphy, Michael. Hemingsteen, A Novel Based on the Life of Ernest Hemingway. Shropshire, UK: Autolycus Press, 1977.
Reynolds, Michael. Hemingway, The Paris Years. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1989.
Plimpton, George, ed., "Interview with Ernest Hemingway," Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Second Series. New York: Viking Press, 1963.
PAPA DOBLE
HEMINGWAY'S DAIQUIRI
As served in La Florida, Havana, Cuba
21/2 jiggers Bacardi White Label Rum
Juice: 2 Limes
1/2 Grapefruit
6 drops maraschino cherry juice
Place in electric mixer over shaved ice. Whirl vigorously and serve foaming.
If you enjoyed Hunting for Hemingway, read on for an excerpt from the next DD McGil Literati Mystery by Diane Gilbert Madsen.
The Conan Doyle Notes
ONE
Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to the roote Chaucer, Canterbury Tales Pprologue
Monday morning
T. S. ELLIOT WAS right: "April is the cruellest month." And April in Chicago is even crueler. It wasn't winter, and it wasn't spring. It was that lousy Chicago in-between weather-damp and windy, offering the promise of warmth but not delivering. I'm Chicago born and raised and should be used to it by now. But, like the Cubs, I always expect it to be better every year.
I'd spent all night sitting in my rental car watching the Romani house. I was chilly and stiff and resented the fact that Woodley, damn him, was late again. I yawned and slipped the micro DV camcorder back into my glove box. This nifty gadget has night vision and is small enough to fit in the palm of my hand. It's got a wide-angle field of view that never misses any action. Of course, tonight there wasn't any action to miss. Nevertheless, I don't go on a job without it, and I routinely check to make sure it's charged and ready to record the sins of whatever insurance scofflaw I happen to be investigating. The trusty camcorder, two chocolate bars and the bottle of Macallan twelve-year old Highland single malt scotch whisky also nestled in my glove compartment comprise the tools of my trade. Armed with these devices I generally feel ready to meet any challenge.
My name is DD McGil, and I freely admit to being female, blonde and smart-assed. I don't admit to much else ever since the seventh grade, when I learned to keep my chin up and never end a sentence with a preposition. Now I'm an ex-academic-turned-insurance investigator and, perhaps most importantly, about to turn forty.
Spending all night in a car makes anybody feel rotten, and believe me for a girl it's even worse. I won't go into details, but it's not easy for us to make a quick pit stop. And when we do, statistics show that's when our subject invariably makes a move. This particular surveillance was in the middle of the city, which I like. With bumper-tobumper cars, my rented gray Nissan Sentra was totally anonymous. On a stake-out in the burbs, fewer cars on the streets and nosy neighbors get you pegged as a suspicious person after the first twenty minutes.
Tonight, for surveillance purposes, I was being uber-cautious and hadn't turned on the car radio. By three in the morning it had been an effort to stay alert. That's why I always pack the Macallan when I'm on a surveillance. My Scottish Aunt Elizabeth, known as the Dragon, swears by its medicinal purposes. For once I agree with her. I un screwed it and breathed in the hints of vanilla and ginger. One small sip of its smooth, balanced notes of toffee and dried fruit was enough to warm me and bring some blood back into my brain. The 87 proof helped a lot, too.
This wasn't the first all-nighter I'd pulled, but it certainly seemed one of the longest. It was cramped in the Sentra-barely enough room for both me and the Macallan-and my whole body ached.
The black sky was growing light enough to outline shrubs and trees mixed into the gray shadows. It was a quiet, mystical time of night before the regular routines of everyday living kick in. I rubbed my eyes and stretched, shaking off the lethargy.
I'd been watching the Romani house because Marcus Goodson, the chief claims guy for United Insurance and generally a pretty good guesser when it comes to fraud cases, had an itch, as he called it. Marcus Goodson reminded me of the insurance genius played by Edward G. Robinson in Double Indemnity, except Goodson was much younger, very handsome, and African-American. He had suspicions about Mrs. Claudine Romani and her claim of severe back pain. She'd had a slipand-fall about three weeks ago coming out of one of those big-box stores-Target, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, I couldn't remember which. Goodson had been ready to approve the claim when he found she'd lawyered-up immediately after the accident. "Something doesn't fit," he said. So the case is now on hold for settlement until he satisfies himself she isn't playing possum.
That's where I come in. United Insurance hired me to prove that Marcus Goodson's "itch" still had the magic. Goodson put Claudine Romani on a 24-hour watch-a lot of money for the insurance company and a big risk for Goodson personally, but that's how confident he was that she was scamming. In my experience, people are always doing something wrong. So far on this surveillance though Romani's done nothing suspicious. When I was on the day shift, there were a few trips to the grocery stores, drug stores, and her doctor, and several neighbors stopped by to visit. I couldn't make anything sinister out of it. I only hoped that my counterpart Jack Woodley and I would catch her at something soon and confirm that Goodson's "itch" was still on the money. Around the United Insurance lunchroom, legend has it that Goodson's "itch" was only wrong once in fifteen years, so I felt confident time would prove I wasn't wasting their money.
The problem was how many more nights of this surveillance could my body take? I would never admit to anyone at United that I might be getting too old for this kind of work, but that's how it felt this morning. Woodley was to relieve me at six AM, after which I get to briefly sleep, eat and shower and then take over again at six tonight. What I desperately needed was some deep REM sleep, but I probably wasn't going to get it at my mother's, where I'd been bunking for the past few weeks. She'd urge me to eat breakfast, take vitamins, and discuss my love life. She's a doll, but I wasn't looking for an Oprah tellall, just some sleep.
Truth be told, I haven't slept well since the damn practical jokes started about a month ago. Sometimes life is a gentle stream that takes you along on a pastoral boat trip. That's how things had been going for almost a year. A great love life, beautiful cat, good friends, and enough work. Then, in an instant, some unknown jerk was stalking me, and life hurled me down the rapids without a paddle. The trouble began with the threatening notes pushed under my apartment door. The notes stopped on the very day I installed a DVR nanny cam disguised as an air freshener in the hall
way outside my door. That same day my phone started ringing ten times in the middle of the night. After that came the nightly pizza deliveries and the small packages in my mailbox filled with dead shrimp reeking of Lake Michigan. Then someone slashed the tires of my Miata. I couldn't take it anymore. I moved in with Mother. Of course I've been investigating, but it looked as if the scientific search for the Higgs boson particle might be successful before I found out who was behind this harassment.
Two weeks ago, Woodley and I switched routines-that's why I'm now pulling the graveyard shift. I garaged my Miata and rented this Sentra. I even went so far as to buy a red wig to disguise myself. When I moved in with mother, I assured her-and myself-that it would be temporary, until I find the jerk or the jerk gets tired of harassing me. So far, although I haven't ID'd the culprit, he hasn't found me either, and thankfully there's been no more shrimp mail, phone calls, pizza deliveries, or midnight-notes. On the minus side, Cavalier, my Ragdoll cat, hates the red wig and throws a hissy fit whenever he sees me wearing it.
I checked the rear-view mirror. It was light enough now to reflect the messy red wig and the dark shadows under my eyes. I twisted the mirror back into position just as Woodley pulled up behind me in his black Lincoln Towncar. Finally. His chronic lateness grated-especially since he'd get to spend his twelve-hour shift in his big, luxurious Lincoln versus my little Sentra. Or should I say his eleven-hour shift vs. my thirteen-hour shift. It was a sore point between us, and Woodley knew it but kept it going. Generally I'm an easygoing Scot-a contradiction in terms, as Auntie Dragon points out. I didn't want to make a fuss with United Insurance over the problem. If Woodley doesn't straighten up soon, one of these days I'll sock him in the jaw. But he'd been decent about the red wig, not making fun and all, so I figured right now wasn't the time to make a stink.
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