His small nostrils flared a bit as he inhaled and began sifting through the documents once more. “No,” he said after what seemed like an hour. “There were no stipulations to the trust upon Muriel’s death. We cut him a check for the entire amount two days after his mother’s funeral.”
Take the money and run. Exactly what she’d thought.
Templeton dangled her badge at her knee.
Miranda leaned forward. “Mr. Jaworski, Adam Tannenburg is wanted for questioning in the murder case we mentioned earlier. Do you know his whereabouts?”
The look of shock came over Jaworski’s face again. Miranda hoped he wouldn’t keel over from a heart attack before he answered.
“I’m not sure.” Once more he flipped pages in the file, this time urgently. Page after page. Page after page. Stopping to read this or that fine print. Finally when he was near the end of the pile he raised a finger. “Yes. I have his whereabouts. Or at least, the last address he gave us.” He held up a paper.
“Can we see it?” Miranda asked, jumping up and snatching it out of the man’s hand before he could reply.
She showed it to Templeton.
“South side,” she said.
Miranda waved the paper toward Jaworski. “We’ll need a copy of this.”
“Of course. I’ll have my clerk make you one. Is that all?”
“That’s it for now.” With an air of triumph, Miranda reached into her pocket and gave the man her card for the perfunctory farewell. “Call me if you think of anything else.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“Whoo hoo!” Miranda glad-handed Templeton as soon as they got back in the SUV.
As the detective started the Tahoe and pulled out into traffic Templeton looked like her mouth might stretch her face out of shape from grinning so broadly. “Can’t believe we pulled that off.”
“You’re a genius, Templeton, for thinking of the lawyer.”
“Ah.” She batted a hand in the air. “You’re the one with the balls to wrestle the information out of him.”
“You weren’t so bad yourself throwing that badge of yours around. Couple of times I almost laughed.” She did now. In fact, she howled.
Templeton gave her a friendly punch on the arm. “No, you wouldn’t. You’re too much of a professional.”
The first time someone from the police had said something like that to her. Miranda was touched. But she couldn’t let Templeton see that.
“Thanks,” she said softly.
She grew quiet as they bumped over the bridge across the Chicago River and then turned onto the ramp for the Dan Ryan.
Miranda studied the paper from Jarworski. “This is off Halsted.”
Templeton nodded. “Back-of-the-Yards.”
“Where the old stockyards used to be?”
“Yeah, but they’ve been closed since before we were born.”
Still it was a landmark the city was known for. And not a very glamorous one. “Not what you’d call an affluent area.”
Templeton considered the statement. “You’re right. What would a rich white kid like Adam Tannenburg be doing in that neighborhood?”
“Especially one who’d just inherited a big trust fund.” Maybe he was a miser.
Miranda gazed out the window at the knobby towers of a polish church and the silhouette of the aging buildings in this area of the city. A worn billboard advertised reruns of an old TV show.
For Adam Tannenburg the south side would be a one-eighty from what he grew up with. Had he gone there overcome with grief after the loss of his mother and his girlfriend?
She hoped they’d find out. Along with a few other things. Like his relationship with his mother and whether he killed Lydia Sutherland.
After about forty minutes Templeton turned off the highway and they cruised through the old side streets flanked by the occasional eighteen wheeler heading somewhere for pickup or delivery. It was as blue a blue collar neighborhood as there was in the city, mixed with a good bit of low income residents. There were the usual homes and office buildings from the twenties or thirties, interspersed with convenience stores and drug stores and a little take-out boasting polish sausages and gyros and tacos and fresh cut fries.
If Parker were along he’d insist they’d stop to eat.
Instead they pressed on. They crossed Halsted and after a while turned down a shady street lined with pretty frame houses. Most were painted white with an occasional blue or even a pink one.
Miranda dared to let her hopes rise. Were they really going to find Adam Tannenburg here? Confront him? Get a confession out of him?
One step at a time, she told herself. Like everything about this case, each of those steps was a long shot. But she couldn’t help thinking about what she might say to the last person who saw Lydia Sutherland alive.
###
Finally Templeton slowed at the corner. “Is that it?”
Miranda checked the address on the paper. Then she double-checked it. “Yep, that’s it.”
Her heart sank to the Tahoe’s floorboards.
Rusty cyclone fence guarded a lawn overgrown with knee high grass and weeds. The structure on the corner was an old sienna brick two-story that might have been built at the turn of the previous century. Every window and door was boarded up. There was a For Sale sign posted in the corner window.
“Dammit,” Templeton grunted under her breath.
Miranda wasn’t ready to give up yet. She opened the passenger door and hopped out. “Maybe he’s squatting here.”
“For fourteen years?”
Ignoring the comment Miranda pushed open the rusty gate and made her way up the cracked walk to the porch, bugs and butterflies in the grass taking flight as she went.
“Careful, Steele,” Templeton called out behind her. “That porch is ready to collapse.”
“Yeah, I see that.” Miranda picked her way up the better looking planks and tiptoed across the creaking floorboards to the door.
She banged on the plywood boarding up the door and heard the sound of tiny feet scurrying about. Rats.
“Mr. Tannenburg?” she called. “Are you in there?”
No answer.
She banged again. “Adam Tannenburg. We’re here on behalf of the Chicago police.”
Templeton remained on the sidewalk, scanning the upper story. “No sign of life up there.”
Miranda gave the door one last pound. “Tannenburg. You’re wanted by the police for questioning.”
A sash creaked open along the side of the building next door, and the dark gnarled face of an old woman appeared. “Lord Almighty. You trying to wake the dead? Keep it down.”
Miranda picked her way to the far corner of the porch, avoiding the rotten spots and peeked around the two-story to get a better look at the woman.
“Hi there,” she called. “Are you the neighbor?”
The woman frowned and shook a pair of dark leathery jowls at her. “I live in this house if that’s what you mean.”
“Yeah, that’s what I mean. How long have you lived there?”
“Long time. Who’s asking?”
“I’m a private investigator. I’m looking for the guy who lives here.” She jabbed her thumb toward the boarded up place.
The woman squinted and shook her head again as if she smelled something bad. “Ain’t nobody lived there in a long while.” She reached for the window. “I need to get back to sleep. I work the third shift.”
“Sorry to disturb you.” Miranda gestured back toward Templeton who was still on the sidewalk. “My partner and I are looking for a guy named Adam Tannenburg.”
Looking annoyed once more the woman shook her head. “Don’t ring a bell.”
“He might have moved here about fourteen years ago? Would have been around twenty? Shaggy blond hair? Might have driven a silver Mustang?”
The woman’s lips went back and forth as if she were trying to think back that far. At least she was trying to help now.
“He came from an afflu
ent family in Evanston,” Templeton added.
“He played the clarinet.”
“Clarinet?” Now the woman chuckled as she shook her head. “Nobody like that ever been in that house. Only people in there for as long as I can remember are drug dealers crashing for the night. Police run them out.”
“But fourteen years ago? Are you sure Adam Tannenburg never lived here?”
The woman rolled her head back and laughed out loud. “A rich clarinet player from Evanston? Somebody like that would stick out like a sore thumb in this neck of the woods. I would have remembered him. Sorry I can’t help you, but I’ve got to get some sleep.”
And she closed the window.
Wanting to kick something Miranda made her way back across the porch and returned to the Tahoe with Templeton.
“We struck out,” she groaned as she climbed inside once again.
Templeton brooded quietly behind the steering wheel as she pulled away from the curb. “Sure as hell did. Tannenburg probably picked this address out of the damn phone book.”
She was right. He’d never lived here. Never intended to. The address was a total fake. So shortly after his mother died and the will was settled, Tannenburg took the money from the trust fund, gave his lawyer a phony address and took off for parts unknown.
Sure smelled like guilt to her.
Staring out the window at the rows of houses as they headed back to the highway Miranda let out a deep sigh. “Where the hell is this guy?”
“At this point, your guess is as good as mine.”
“Yeah.”
Miranda had a sinking feeling they might never know.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Parker followed the police captain down the cinder block hall of the massive four-story concrete-and-barbed-wire structure that encompassed the eight city blocks making up Division One of Cook County Jail.
He could hear shouting in the distance. And as they passed several rank smelling inmates being ushered through the hall by guards, Parker wondered, not for the first time in his career, how anyone survived in such a place.
“I apologize about Borkowski,” the captain said over his shoulder.
“Not your fault.”
When he’d arrived this morning and explained his mission to the executive director, Parker had been informed one of the men on his list, Samuel J. Borkowski, had been shanked that morning.
Stabbed in the abdomen with a spoon from the infirmary whose end had been sharpened into a point.
Borkowski was in surgery and not seeing visitors today.
That left Reed W. Morgan, the fifth man on Demarco’s list. The one with the green eyes.
They turned a few more corners, went down another long corridor and finally arrived at a heavily reinforced door. The captain unlocked it and Parker stepped into a narrow space housing a long counter divided into a row of visiting booths. The air here had a stale odor.
The only sound came from the corner where a woman sat weeping into a phone, her yearning eyes fixed on a deadpan figure behind the glass. Their age and demeanor told Parker he was her son.
Another heart broken by a heartless and foolish young man.
Through the divider Parker saw a correctional officer ushering another man in the standard orange attire into the room on the other side.
“That’s him,” the captain said.
“Thank you.” Parker took the stool across from the prisoner and picked up the phone.
The officer guided the prisoner into his seat. As he sat the man cocked his head at Parker and gave him a surly grimace.
He lifted the phone to his pock marked cheek. “Who the hell are you?”
Reed W. Morgan wore his stringy mud gray hair to his shoulders. He had thin lips and a narrow chin. His eyes were the color of emeralds but that was the only appealing thing about him.
“My name is Wade Parker. I’m a private investigator doing research on the facilities here.” It was a flimsy cover but good enough for the few minutes he needed.
Morgan’s lip curled up to his hook nose. “You want me to tell you how crappy the food is?”
“I’m more interested in how you got here.”
Morgan’s eyes dulled. “I was framed.”
Hardly. According to Demarco’s information, Morgan had lived in Miranda’s old neighborhood since he was a boy. He’d resided with his mother until his first arrest. Morgan’s father had died when he was eleven and that was when Morgan had started peeping into the bedroom windows of his neighbors.
He’d been caught and sent to juvenile detention, the judge hoping he could be rehabilitated. That did not happen.
During his forty-two years Morgan had been arrested a total of nineteen times.
He was convicted twelve years ago for raping a woman who lived two doors down from him—in Miranda’s old neighborhood. He’d been out for three years but had recently been arrested for not reporting his address. His mother had kicked him out and he’d moved into a nearby hotel. He’d been picked up when he was caught peeping through the window of a female lodger at the hotel.
Parker gave the man as civil a smile as he could muster. “Tell me about your childhood. Your interests, your hobbies.”
“What? You wanna know if I spent my time after school pulling wings off flies?”
“Is that what you did?”
“That’s what some might like folks to think.”
Parker’s repulsion level went up a degree. “So you had an interest in entomology?”
“In who?” Morgan smirked and rolled his eyes. “I liked girls, if you really want to know. I developed early.”
“I see.”
“But I never hurt nobody.”
Parker pretended to consult his notes. “But as I understand, you served twelve years for—”
“Yeah, I did. For sexual assault.” He hissed through his teeth. “The bitch was asking for it. You know how some women are.”
Parker didn’t reply.
Morgan rocked back in his seat. “So what’s that got to do with the facilities?”
“Human interest. Do you feel you’re being treated fairly, given your…indiscretions?”
“Indiscretions, huh? You’re a real smart talker, ain’t you?” He eyed Parker as if he wished he could pull him through the glass and show him exactly what it was like in there.
Parker’s fist tightened as he wished he could show Morgan what he truly thought of him. He was letting his disgust for this man get the better of him.
He tried a different tact and softened his voice. “I understand your mother was a single parent.”
“Yeah, so?”
“It must have been difficult for her.”
He lifted a shoulder. “My old man used to beat her. I think she was relieved when he croaked.”
Such a tender-hearted human being. “She took care of you and your siblings by herself?”
“Pretty much. Me and my four sisters.”
One of those sisters had pressed charges against Morgan for inappropriate touching. His lawyer had gotten him off.
Parker glanced at his phone. He didn’t have much time. He decided to get to his real question.
“I understand you were living on the south side of Oak Park about fifteen years ago.”
Morgan’s head jerked back in surprise. “I lived there most of my life. So what?”
“Did you ever frequent the all-night grocery store off of Roosevelt Road in Lawnfield Heights?”
“Lawnfield Heights? Don’t remember it.”
“A woman claims she was accosted by a man matching your description in February of that year.”
Morgan sat back, pressed his lips together in disgust. “Now I get it. What are you? Her attorney?”
“Just an interested party.” He decided to play ignorant. And to put all his cards on the table. It was the only way he could get near the truth. “I believe the statue of limitations is up by now. But she’d just like to know who the man was. He’s the father of her ch
ild.”
Morgan stared at him a long moment. Then he snickered. Then he started to laugh. He put a finger under his nose and shook his head. “No. No way. That wasn’t me. I ain’t got no kid.”
“How do you know?”
Morgan began rocking back and forth in agitation. “No bitch is gonna pin that on me. I ain’t takin’ care of no kid.”
What a superlative human being. Parker leaned toward the glass. “She doesn’t want anything from you. She just wants to know if you’re the father.”
“Well, you can tell her she’s full of shit. It wasn’t me.”
“How can you be sure?”
Spit flew out of his mouth as Morgan spoke. “For one thing, I wasn’t there. I didn’t ‘accost’ nobody. I never ‘accosted’ nobody. And for another—”
Parker glanced at the phone. Time was up. The guard stepped forward.
“What were you going to say, Mr. Morgan?”
Morgan smirked. “That I couldn’t be the father of anybody’s child.” The guard put a hand on the prisoner’s shoulder.
Parker leaned nearer the glass, desperate for the answer. “Why do you say that?”
Morgan shook his head and started to rise and hang up. “I’m done here.”
Parker pressed a hand against the divider. “Mr. Morgan, please answer the question.”
Morgan’s jaw went back and forth as he glared at Parker, as if debating what to do. Then in a sudden move he swung his face down close to the glass and hissed into the phone.
“Because one time before he died, my old man kicked me so hard in the balls he made me sterile.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Twenty minutes later the captain had deposited Parker back at the office of Steven Novak, the man who had long been Executive Director of the facility.
Parker sat in a creaky old chair watching the bulky-framed, elderly gentleman with the pure white hair work at his computer.
After what seemed like an eternity the man nodded. “The information is correct, Mr. Parker. Reed W. Morgan is indeed infertile. His medical records indicate it’s a genetic disorder.”
Parker let out a long slow breath of frustration.
Trial by Fire (A Miranda and Parker Mystery Book 6) Page 16