by Tracy Clark
“Oh, sure. Let’s sit.” She led me to a small sitting area in the middle of the shop, one with couches, overstuffed chairs, the perfect spot for curling up with a good book. Soft music played, and everything smelled like new books and fresh-ground coffee beans. There was no one browsing the shelves, but it was early afternoon on a weekday.
“Get you something? Coffee?”
I politely declined as I sank into a chair. “Nice place you have here.”
Her blue eyes twinkled as she took in the shop. “It’s my baby. I love everything about it, except the lack of foot traffic today. How can I help? You said on the phone this has something to do with Benita Ramsey? That’s a name I haven’t heard in years.”
I eyed my phone, which I’d set on the chair beside me. I didn’t want to miss a text or a call. “I’m hoping you can tell me a little bit about her, as much as you remember from your time at UIC. Anything would help.”
“My memory’s good, but that was more than thirty years ago.” She chuckled. “She’s changed a lot since then. Not just the name, but her entire personality, from what I’ve seen. I suppose everyone has the right to change their name, reinvent themselves. Heaven knows, I’ve thought about dumping Patsy often enough.”
“Honestly, anything you can recall.”
“Well, when I first met her, she didn’t look at all like she does now. I guess money makes all the difference. She was a little chubby then, or at least she started off that way. She managed to lose it. I kept asking her, ‘What diet are you on?’ You always try to find out what’s working, but she would always say she wasn’t doing anything special, that it was good genes. Don’t you just hate those people?” She chuckled. “Benita wasn’t much for sharing.”
I took out my notebook, pen, poised and ready. “Did she ever tell you why she transferred from Northwestern?”
She pulled a face. “She wasn’t much for bonding, either. We were just passing acquaintances, really. Somebody you studied with or got coffee with. I did ask her once about the transfer, curious as to why she had picked UIC after a school like NU, and she gave me some vague answer, which let me know I was venturing into forbidden territory. I didn’t push it after that. Benita wasn’t the kind of person you could really do that with.”
“Was there anyone who might have known her better? A boyfriend? Girlfriend? Someone she might have confided in?”
“I’d have to say no on all counts. She was the same with everyone, as far as I could see—cool, distant. Smart, of course, but not a joiner, not someone you got buddy-buddy with. We worked on the paper for almost three years together, and I don’t think in all that time we ever had a conversation that didn’t have something to do with what we were working on. No boyfriends that I knew about, or girlfriends. I never saw her with anyone, really.”
I thought back to the photograph. “What about Dennis Seymour?”
O’Keefe nodded in recognition. “I saw Dennis at the last reunion. He edits medical magazines now.” She shrugged. “I guess neither one of us turned out to be either Woodward or Bernstein, but we’re doing what we love. Benita . . . oops . . . Vonda, never comes to the reunions. But as far as dating? Dennis never mentioned going out with her, and he would have, believe me. Frankly, I don’t think he ever worked up the nerve to ask her out.”
“Angela Dotson?” She was the other woman in the photo, the one with her arms around Allen and the others.
“She’s Angela Dotson-Hughes now, and the only one of us who got close to the Woodward/Bernstein thing. She’s a reporter at the Sun-Times. She’s won a number of journalism awards, too. I read her stuff all the time.”
“You three obviously stay in touch.”
“Alumni newsletter. I’m a real sucker for all that, and it’s good to have the contact information through the directory. It helps with networking.”
“Do you have Allen’s number?” I was fairly sure I knew the answer to that, but I asked, anyway. “Or would anyone in your group likely have it?”
“Oh, no. She’s not listed. She’s a celebrity now. I suppose that’s why. But if anyone really wanted to call her, all they’d have to do is contact the magazine, right?” O’Keefe watched me. “This is about those shootings, isn’t it? And that thing at the signing? You haven’t said, but that has to be why you’re here. It sounds like some crazy fanatic.”
“The police are hard at work on it. Did Allen have any problem with anyone, enemies, that you knew about?”
O’Keefe’s brows rose. “Enemies?” She took a moment to think about the question, looking very uncomfortable with it. “I don’t think so. I can’t imagine anyone I knew back then having an enemy. We were just kids . . . high on life, our whole lives ahead of us. Will you also be talking to Dennis and Angela?”
“They’re my next stop.”
“Good. Then maybe one of them will know more than I do.”
“One last question. Did Allen ever talk about her mother?”
O’Keefe’s expression turned grim. “She didn’t have to. She was there whenever Benita gave a speech or got an award. She was really a nice lady, too. Friendly, warm, polar opposite of Benita, to be honest. She did say once that her mother was pushing her to go to medical school, but medicine didn’t seem to be where her head was at. Benita always gravitated toward celebrities and society people. She knew about all the high-powered entrepreneurs and business titans. It’s like she kept a list or something. It was so sad when her mother was killed, and it happened right before graduation. She never mentioned med school again.”
“She had to have talked about her mother’s death.”
“No. We read about it in the papers. She never said a word or missed a single class, but people cope with things in their own way, don’t they?”
I stood, thanked her for her time.
“I would tell you to tell Benita hello if you see her,” O’Keefe said, “but I doubt she’d remember me. She had an innate ability to pick out the people who could help her get ahead, and that wasn’t me. It wasn’t any of us.”
Chapter 21
There was a tall, bulky man in a tight suit pacing around the reception area when I got to Dennis Seymour’s office. I assumed the man was Seymour; he resembled the young man in the photo, only now with twenty-some-odd years of wear added on to both face and frame. I hadn’t called ahead, so I assumed Patsy O’Keefe had done me the favor.
“You’re the detective,” he said.
“I see Ms. O’Keefe makes good use of her alumni directory.”
“Not every day you get on a PI’s radar. Patsy’s downright fascinated, but she reads a lot of Dashiell Hammett.”
“Thankfully, truth, in my case, is not as strange as fiction.”
He grinned, his brown eyes peering out at me from behind heavy glasses. His complexion was light, and his cheeks and the bridge of his nose were splashed with freckles. “Mind if we walk and talk? I need a break, and by break, I mean caffeine.”
We took the escalator down to the lower level and ended up at a Starbucks doing brisk business. Seymour ordered a large cup of coffee cultivated in Kathmandu, the Hindu Kush region, and I had a bottled water likely poured from the tap three states over. We sat at a small table by the window.
“It’s funny,” Seymour said. “You kind of forget that Vonda Allen was ever Benita Ramsey. Patsy said you asked about her having enemies. Sounds ominous.”
I took a sip of water. It was obvious that O’Keefe had done all the heavy lifting on this one. “Yes. You know of any?”
“I was about to answer no, but then I flashed on something I saw once. I thought at the time I’d walked up on a lover’s spat with her and some guy. If it were anybody else, I probably wouldn’t have paid much attention at the time, and sure wouldn’t still remember it, but with somebody like Benita, who always kept herself so private, it stuck out, you know?”
“Tell me what you remember.”
“We were supposed to meet up to work on a story or something. I remember
I turned a corner in the liberal arts building, on my way to one of the student lounges, and saw her having it out with this tall black guy. They were keeping their voices low, but you could tell they were angry and some tough words were passing between them. He grabbed her arm at one point, like he was going to yank her, but she pulled back, and then he hauled off and slapped her. Nearly knocked her off her feet, it was so hard. I didn’t know whether to step in or stay out of it. I guess I stood there for a while, not knowing what to do. That’s when they saw me.” Seymour took a sip from his cup. “The guy took off angry, and that was the end of it. I’d say he was an enemy.”
“Did you ask her about it?”
Seymour rolled his eyes. “You didn’t do stuff like that with Benita. I asked her if she was okay. She said she was. She acted like I’d been spying on her, which pissed me off, so I left her to it. She never mentioned it, and I never brought it up again. That’s how Benita was. I never saw the guy again.”
“Can you describe him?”
Seymour frowned. “After all this time?”
“Anything might help.”
His brows furrowed. “What do you need all this information for anyway, if you don’t mind my asking? Patsy said she thought it had to do with those muggings.”
I didn’t want to divulge too much. “There’s been some trouble. I’m trying to figure out where it started.”
Seymour watched me over the rim of his cup, savored the mouthful, then swallowed. “That couldn’t have been any vaguer.”
“Sorry. All I can say. You were going to give me a description.”
He sat his cup down. “Don’t remember the face, but he was tall. Hoops tall, you know? Our age. A brutha, like I mentioned, but if he played, it wasn’t for us. He wore a blue-and-white jacket. Phi Beta Sigma. I know because I was thinking about pledging at the time. My father was Sigma. Told me it’d look good on my college record and for networking after. I took a pass.”
“And you saw him just the one time?”
“That’s right. But if you want to know more, you’re going to have to talk to Benita. There’s no way in hell she could have forgotten that slap.”
* * *
Angela Dotson-Hughes sat feeding the pigeons little bread cubes from a plastic bag from a bench on the Riverwalk, just below the Michigan Avenue Bridge. I’d called her after talking to Seymour, and she had agreed to see me. She’d be wearing an orange baseball cap and a world-weary expression, she’d told me. I had no trouble picking her out. I introduced myself, then sat beside her, and the two of us watched a Wendella tour boat full of giddy vacationers sweep past us on choppy water. The pigeons didn’t appear to mind the hubbub.
I smelled French fries and looked down to see a large carton of McDonald’s fries sticking out of her jacket pocket. I hadn’t eaten since the apple and yogurt that morning, and now I regretted it.
“These fries are calling your name, aren’t they?” She hadn’t once taken her eyes off the pigeons. “Want some?”
“May I?”
She handed the fries over. “All yours. So, you’re the gumshoe.”
I popped a fry into my mouth, swallowed. “Yep.”
“Doesn’t look like it pays much. There’s an apple pie in my other pocket, if you need it.”
I shook my head. “The fries will do.”
We sat there for a time, me eating, her feeding the flying rats. I finished the fries and crumpled the box into a ball. “Thanks.”
She gave me a thumbs-up. “So, somebody’s after Benita, and you’re trying to find out who.”
Dotson-Hughes was direct. I liked direct. Direct saved time, and I didn’t have a lot of it. The pigeons crowded in, pecking around my feet and hers. She seemed to like it; I, not so much.
“Patsy O’Keefe called Dennis Seymour, and Seymour called you,” I said. “Like a daisy chain. It simplifies things. I’m here to ask you the same questions I asked them.”
“About enemies and her mother’s death. Strange about her people, though. If I were a suspicious person, which I am, I’d say something’s definitely up with that. Somebody’s trying to do that sick ‘I’m inside the house’ thing, for sure, put a little scare into her. Me? I’d go right for it, not get cocky. In and out.”
I turned to look at her. She chuckled. “Calm down, Nancy Drew. It’s not me. But the fact that you’re questioning us tells me you’re working an angle the cops aren’t. Mind sharing?”
“With an award-winning reporter? No.”
“A reporter whose fries you just inhaled.”
“I should have known they came with strings.”
Dotson-Hughes laughed. “That’s how the game of life is played, my dear.” She tossed the last cube of bread to the birds and then balled the empty bag up and slid it into her pocket. “Here’s your problem, though. You’re betting all this current mess has long tentacles that lead back to the old Benita. Only she’s about as unknowable as they come, which drops a big, fat nothing bomb smack-dab in the middle of your village.”
“You’ve sure got a way with words. I’d say you chose the right profession.”
She drew the apple pie out of her pocket, which got the pigeons’ attention. When she began eating it, I’d have sworn the birds gave her the evil eye. “You looking to screw her over?”
I eyed another tour boat as it passed and the blue-green wake it left behind. “Would you care?”
“Can’t stand folks—even Benita—getting the short end, so yeah, I’d care.”
“There’s a cop lying in a hospital right now. A friend. He was hurt when whoever he is came for Allen. That’s my immediate concern. I solve that, maybe I solve the other. Everybody wins.”
“Loyalty to a friend. I like that.” She took another bite of pie. “Fair enough. When Dennis called me, I dug into my notebooks. I keep them close, always have. I pulled out the one I think you’d be most interested in. Just know, Benita never made Miss Congeniality, never even tried for it. She was bound and determined to lift herself up out of whatever hellhole she came out of, though. I respected that.”
“Dennis Seymour remembered witnessing what he thought was a lovers’ spat—Allen and a boy in a frat jacket.”
“He mentioned that when he called, too, and it started a bell ringing.” She reached down into the backpack at her feet and pulled out a reporter’s notebook, a small, narrow spiral pad whose pages flipped over at the top. It looked old and was bound by a thick green rubber band that had also seen a lot of days. “I write everything down. Big or small. You never know what’s going to be important.”
“Your notebooks go all the way back to college?” I asked incredulously.
“You scoff, but I got notebooks that go back to grade school. I was born a reporter. I’ll always be a reporter. When I stop being a reporter, I’ll be dead, and even then, I’ll likely rise up and cover my own funeral. That’s me doing me.” She winked. “Besides, the notes will come in handy when I write my autobiography.”
She flipped through pages, licking her thumb before she flipped each one back.
“You know Allen transferred in her sophomore year?” She didn’t bother looking up from the page.
“Yes.”
“And that her mother got killed outside that old dry cleaners she worked at?”
I leaned over to catch a look at the notebook. “What do you have on that?”
“Random thing,” she said. “Never caught the guy. They thought it might have been some zonked-out crackhead from the neighborhood who couldn’t even remember his own name, but they never got close on it. Benita just kept on rollin’.” Dotson-Hughes flipped to the next page.
“Excuse me.” My interruption lifted her head from the page. “Just curious. How many notebooks do you have?”
“Hundreds. I take notes on everybody, everything. Like I said, you never know what’s going to be important. In school I could tell Benita was going places. So, in preparation for my ‘I knew her when’ exposé, I wrote it all down. I’ll
take notes about this meeting when we’re done.” She peered over the top of her glasses. “Full disclosure. I’m mentioning the fries.”
“Please,” I said. “Go back to what you were doing.”
She read for a couple of minutes more, turning a page, flipping back, flipping ahead. And then, finally, she stopped and grinned triumphantly.
“I saw the guy. Sophomore year. March. Sporty, medium complexion, tall. He was waiting for Benita outside the library the time I saw him. She didn’t look like she was happy about it. I got the impression he’d been out there for a while, waiting. Did I mention it was March? We’re not talking balmy breezes. Whatever he had to say, he was bent on saying it, apparently. I didn’t hear the conversation, but not for lack of trying. I can smell a story a mile off, and this guy reeked. I just couldn’t get close enough. This was a different time from Dennis’s sighting, so I guess the guy hit campus at least twice. They argued about sex.”
My eyebrows went up. “How do you know it was about sex?”
“As he walked off, leaving her there, he said something. He was angry as hell and sort of growled it, barely holding back the rage. ‘You wanted it. I don’t owe you a thing.’ That’s what he said.”
“How do you get sex out of that?”
Dotson-Hughes nodded and smiled. “Body language. The ferocity of the delivery. The soul-crushed look on her face when he said it. Trust me. Sex.”
“You didn’t happen to hear her call him by name, did you?”
“Not unless his mama named him Piece of Shit.” She grinned devilishly. “However . . .”
I waited for the however, but Dotson-Hughes let silence hang there longer than I thought she needed to.
“Yes? However?”
She frowned. “PI’s aren’t patient people, are they? No appreciation for suspense.”
I sighed. “Not today. Sorry.”
“However, I had the good sense to read the name off his track pants. It was stitched down the leg, right side . . . Grissom. You’re welcome.”
Dotson-Hughes’s revelation was like finding a pinprick of light while trapped in a cavernous tunnel or stumbling upon a pool of cool water after walking blindly for days, ankle deep in blistering sand. My whole body suddenly felt light.