Bad Memory_A Jake Abraham Mystery Novella

by Jim Cliff

  I made it easy for him to keep up, except for when I walked up the stairs onto the L train platform at Randolph, along the platform and down the stairs again, just for fun.

  Ernie’s shop was small and old fashioned looking. The kind of place that only survives in a world where the internet exists because they provide a personal service and the owner knows everybody. Ernie was short, with thick curly hair and bricklayers’ hands. He shook my hand warmly, invited me in and made me feel like I’d known him for years.

  “I don’t mind telling you, Jake. It really knocked us sideways when Elizabeth died. She was the linchpin of the group. She made us want to get out of our warm beds on a cold Chicago morning and spend a couple of hours talking and eating breakfast. She made it fun.”

  “What were the meetings like?”

  “Have you ever been to a breakfast networking group Jake? Back then they were pretty new, but they’re everywhere these days.”

  “Never.”

  “You should. It would do wonders for your business. Word of mouth is the best marketing. Am I right?”

  I couldn’t help but smile at the man’s energy. “Right,” I said.

  “We ate and talked, then everybody stood up one by one and introduced ourselves, then we split off into groups of three and got to know each other, talk about challenges in our businesses, share tips, and best practice. It was really useful. I got more than half my customers through the group.”

  “Did you ever meet a mortgage broker by the name of Grady Caldwell?”

  “No, the mortgage guy in the group had a Scandinavian name. I don’t remember what it was, but definitely not Caldwell.”

  “Sorensen.”

  “Wow, that’s right! You’ve really done your homework, Jake.”

  “Was Sorensen in the group all the way up until Elizabeth died?”

  “Let me think,” said Ernie, and he literally scratched his chin while he thought. “Now you mention it, he left a little while before we lost Elizabeth. I heard he lost his job.”

  “Right. So after he left, might another mortgage broker have come along?”

  “You mean this Caldwell guy? That’s some smart thinking.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But no. We never had another mortgage guy. Group folded about a year later.”

  “I understand. Never mind.”

  “Unless he was a guest, of course,” he said.

  “A guest?”

  “Members were allowed to bring guests sometimes. Once a month. They weren’t allowed to join if there was already a member in their profession, but it spread the word about the group.”

  “And Caldwell might have been a guest?”

  “Could be, but I can’t help you there. The guests only ever came once and Elizabeth liked to make sure she met with them. Get them to tell their friends about the group, you know? I wouldn’t remember someone from that far back even if I did meet them.”

  “OK, well thanks anyway, Ernie.”

  “I’ll tell you what though, Jake. You should talk to Lucy.”

  “Who’s Lucy?”

  “Lucy Hopper. She was the membership secretary. She kept the records. If anyone could tell you, it’d be Lucy.”

  Chapter 20

  Lucy Hopper lived in a single story house in Oak Lawn, a half hour from the city. From her voice on the phone, I was expecting a friendly schoolmarm with a little gray in her hair, so I was a bit taken aback when the door was answered by a woman who looked like she babysat Lincoln when he was a kid.

  She was about five feet tall and stood hunched over a walking frame with a crocheted purple shawl over her shoulders. I seriously doubted she would be able to find any evidence Grady had ever visited the networking group, but I was here now, so I figured I might as well go through the motions. Perhaps if she was OK with me taking the paperwork away with me for a few days I could find something.

  ”Now, dear,” she said, her voice completely free of the fragility of her body. “You wanted to know about guests we had in the early nineties, correct?”

  ”One specific guest, actually. I know it’s a long shot, but if you still have the records...”

  ”Nonsense. Of course I still have them. If he ever visited us, we’ll find him. Come on through.”

  I followed Lucy into her living room, which looked uncannily like my grandmother’s. Floral patterns were everywhere. She had wall-to-wall carpeting, velvety curtains and two couches with lacy covers on the arms. I started heading for one of the couches but she carried on through the room, down a small hall, and into a room I assume had once been a bedroom.

  ”This is where I do my work,” she said as she opened the door. It wasn’t what I was expecting. The room contained a huge glass and chrome desk which held two large PC monitors apparently connected to a glowing tower under the desk, and a huge iMac screen. Next to the desk was a rack of shelving containing tablets of various sizes and makes, topped off with a stack of three or four laptops.

  “What work do you do?” I asked.

  “I design apps.”

  “For smartphones?”

  “Sometimes. Also iPad, Android tablets, whatever my clients need. Now, the files you’re looking for are on one of these,” she said, holding up an old 3.5-inch floppy disk – the one that looks like a save button. “These babies weren’t designed to last twenty years, and when I tried to read it I had a few access problems, but I’ve been running some data retrieval software I designed, and I think it’s got most of it.”

  “Wow. I don’t know why, but I kind of expected your records to be on paper.”

  “Oh no, I was using Lotus 123 right from the start. Of course, I don’t have Lotus anymore, but you can still open the files in OpenOffice. Let’s take a look. What was the name?”

  “Grady Caldwell.”

  Lucy opened up a spreadsheet in OpenOffice and hit Ctrl-F to bring up the find menu. She typed Grady’s name and hit enter.

  “One result. August 16, 1993. Told you I’d find him.”

  “That’s amazing, Lucy. Thank you. Do you think he would have met with Elizabeth?”

  “Let’s see. Yes, she was at that meeting. She always met with any guests attending. Do you want me to export the whole of ‘93 as a .csv file and email you a copy?”

  Chapter 21

  I made it back to my office soon after six, and before I even had a chance to sit down, the office door crashed open, hitting the wall so hard I thought the glass in the window might shatter. Grady burst in, red-faced, as if he’d just run up the stairs.

  “You spoke to my fucking wife?”

  “Ex-wife,” I clarified.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? You have no right.”

  “I’m investigating.” I smiled but Grady didn’t smile back.

  “You’re investigating me!”

  “Your story has more holes than a Shia LaBoeuf movie.”

  “You think this is funny?”

  “I thought that was pretty funny. Why don’t you start by telling me where you met Elizabeth Weber?”

  “What? We’d never met.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Seriously Grady, you’re going to have to start telling the truth soon. I have evidence you met Elizabeth at a networking meeting. I think she wanted you to get involved in some business of hers. Why would you lie about it? Makes you look guilty.”

  He stopped yelling for a moment and just looked at me. He took a deep breath, gritted his teeth, and conceded the point.

  “Fine. I met her before. I didn’t recognize her that night in the woods.” I shot him a skeptical look. He continued “It’s true. I barely knew her. I didn’t realize it was her until I saw her name in the papers. I didn’t tell you because it wasn’t relevant. We met once at her group, I spoke to her on the phone a couple of times. That’s it.”

  “Yeah, see I just don’t believe you.”

  “I don’t give a
shit what you believe.”

  “Who’s Samuel Lynem, Grady?”

  “I have no idea. You’re crazy, and you’re fired!”

  Grady looked smug. I smiled again

  “I’m sorry Grady,” I said, “it doesn’t really work like that. Jane hired me”

  He started to say something, but my logic was impenetrable. He couldn’t tell me what to do, and we both knew it.

  “Stay away from my wife,” he said, his index finger an inch from my face. I stayed calm to try to annoy him as much as possible.

  “Is that a threat?”

  “Just stay away from her or you’ll be sorry.”

  That one made me chuckle a little. “Or I’ll be sorry? Good one Grady. Did you see a tough guy in a movie say that?”

  “Fuck you”

  Chapter 22

  After Grady left, I finally found the time to look into Samuel Lynem. It seemed obvious now that Grady was behind the tail, so I was hoping to find some kind of connection between them, or maybe a criminal record. I came up empty on both counts. I was on my third database search when I discovered Samuel had a son, Isaiah, who was a named driver on the car insurance for Samuel’s Honda Civic. After a little more digging and some mild social media stalking, I established that Isaiah was a biochem student at the University of Chicago, and that during the semester he lived in student housing on Ingleside, near Washington Park.

  Which is how I came to be standing outside the student housing at eight on Wednesday morning with a picture of Isaiah Lynem, hoping he had an early class. It was a quarter ‘til nine when he finally came out and I called his name as he walked past me. He looked like he wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to know who I was.

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you drive a blue Honda Civic, license 207 TFH?”

  His eyes widened. “Have you found it? Oh God, they didn’t, like, torch it or something did they?”

  “Who?”

  “Whoever took it.”

  “It was stolen?”

  “Yeah,” he said, confused. “Wait, you’re not the cops?”

  I shook my head. “Private detective. When was it taken?”

  “Monday night. So, like, you don’t know where it is?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Oh, man, my Dad’s gonna kill me.”

  “If it’s any consolation, last time I saw it, it was still in one piece. Do you know anyone named Grady Caldwell?”

  “No, man. Is that who took it?”

  “What about a big bald white guy? About six-five?”

  “I don’t know anyone like that. Look, I got to get to class. If you find it, will you let me know?”

  “Sure.”

  Back at the office, I called Felicity McGinley. She said she hadn’t told Grady that we talked – she hadn’t spoken to him in months, in fact. So Grady was definitely the one having me followed. I wondered why he didn’t want me talking to her. She didn’t seem to know anything useful, but he was more than just pissed off that I’d gone to see her. He was nervous.

  This much I knew: Grady Caldwell and Elizabeth Weber knew each other. Elizabeth was defrauding banks, and lost her inside man a month before she died. Grady was in a position to help her but, instead, she died and Grady was first on the scene. Now I was investigating and Grady was having me followed. Meanwhile, he lied about working in mortgages, and he lied about where he found the body. I figured maybe Elizabeth tried to get Grady involved in the fraud, but he decided to blackmail her instead and things turned violent.

  But no matter how much I wanted to believe Grady killed Elizabeth Weber, one fact was inescapable. He was in a car with Jane Parker at the time of the murder.

  I went over and over the investigator’s report and the autopsy file to see what I’d missed and somewhere between the third and fourth reads through, it hit me. What if Tutin, the medical examiner, didn’t get the time of death wrong? What if Elizabeth wasn’t killed that evening, but earlier in the day? That would explain why she was missing from work all day, and free Grady up to commit the crime. It would be easy to rig up some kind of tape recorder to play the sounds Dr. Parker heard. It didn’t explain the importance of Grady’s ex-wife, but I would think on that, and as soon as I came up with the right question to ask, I would go back to see her again.

  Chapter 23

  Jane Parker was in a lecture when I arrived at UIC, but I only had to wait ten minutes before she finished. As her students filed out, I caught her eye and she beckoned me inside. The lecture theater was large, with tiered seating for about a hundred students. Our voices echoed a little in the almost empty room.

  “I have a problem,” I said.

  “And you think I can help?”

  “I have a suspect, but it’s going to sound weird. It’s Grady.”

  Dr. Parker laughed. “That’s impossible. Aside from myself, he is the one person who I can guarantee did not commit the murder. Unless you think I’m lying, too.”

  “No, I’m confident what you wrote down that night is what really happened. But I don’t think she was killed in the night. I think she was already dead. I think maybe Grady shot her that morning.”

  “But why?”

  I told her about Elizabeth and Grady’s meeting at the networking group, and about her fraud scheme. I told her my theory about the blackmail.

  “I think they met in Thatcher Woods that morning and she brought her gun. They fought, she got shot.”

  “So why go back there that night?” I didn’t need to answer – she’d understood before the question was out of her mouth. “To give himself an alibi. No, I can’t believe it. Grady’s not a killer. What evidence do you have that she was killed that morning?”

  “Well, I can’t prove it yet. But she bought gas at six a.m. about a mile from the woods and nobody saw her after that. Also, she was dressed for work, but she didn’t go in.”

  “That’s it?

  “Not quite. Grady claims he saw her body that night, but he was only out of the car for four minutes. The police say it was over a hundred yards from the parking lot. There’s no way he could have made it that far into the woods in the dark with no flashlight without knowing where he was going, and then back to the car in four minutes. He just didn’t have time. There was no moon that night - it didn’t rise until 9:05. It was pitch black, like you said, and he described her right down to what she was wearing He said he knelt down in the mud next to her. Do you remember if he had mud on his pants leg when he got back in the car?”

  “I have no idea.”

  I knew better now than to press her on exhuming a lost memory, so I moved on.

  “What about Grady as a person? If you accept for the moment the idea that she was killed in the morning, do you think he could be capable of killing someone?”

  “No, I really don’t think so. He was never aggressive, certainly not violent. I don’t see it.”

  “What if the killing was accidental? It was her gun, apparently. Maybe they struggled and it went off. If that happened, could you see Grady covering it up?”

  She thought for a moment. “I suppose so. I mean, he lied to his wife every day about me, and I’m sure I wasn’t the first. Sometimes, when someone has a guilty secret, and the most important thing to them is making sure that it doesn't come out, people can act quite out of character, and justify even worse behavior to themselves out of desperation or fear of discovery. Of course, that doesn’t mean he killed her.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “I just have one question.”

  “Yes?”

  “Was he sleeping with her, too?”

  Chapter 24

  Of course he was. I don’t know why I didn’t see it myself. When Elizabeth got Terry Sorensen involved in her scheme she didn’t just ask him, she seduced him. That was her MO. Of course she would try the same thing with Grady. Maybe that was why Grady was upset I’d talked to his ex. Maybe she knew about the affair.

  It was raining hard when I left the office, so
I took the Pedway to Felicity McGinley’s apartment. The Pedway is a series of underground streets that covers most of downtown Chicago and there’s an entrance on Columbus right beneath the Aqua so by the time I got into her lobby I had dried off. I looked out for Watch Cap and Kojak the whole way there, but I didn’t see either of them. Maybe they’d backed off, or maybe Watch Cap was going hatless to blend in with the crowd.

  When Ms. McGinley opened the door she seemed amused.

  “What is it this time?”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, I have some questions I neglected to ask yesterday. I won’t take up much of your time.”

  “I guess you’d better come in.”

  I got right to it. No time for pleasantries and admiring the view. “I understand Grady used to work late a lot.”

  “Yes. That’s what he called it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Come on Mr. Abraham, we both know Grady had affairs.”

  “You knew, then?”

  “I don’t understand the point of these questions.”

  “I’m just trying to build up a clearer picture. In a case like this, sometimes it’s not clear which questions will be relevant until later, so the more information I can get, the better. When did you discover Grady was unfaithful?”

  “I suspected for a long time. He would be out late once, twice a week at times. He would smell of perfume occasionally. There were times when I called the office late and he wasn’t there. Then at one point, he started staying out most nights. He told me he was working on some important projects but I knew it wasn’t true. It turned out he had started two affairs at the same time. He was sleeping with two other women.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “I hired a private detective.”

  “Did you consider divorcing him?”