Bernie had brought a toothbrush and a nightshirt in her backpack. The armchair opened into a narrow bed. I found a set of sheets on a shelf in the closet and made it up.
Despite my anger and my worries, I fell deeply asleep. My dreams were turbulent, though: Bernie’s arrival added to my worries.
My hopes that she’d be back in Chicago by Sunday night were undone by her father’s phone call Sunday morning. He spoke to us on a conference hookup—he wanted to make sure I knew exactly what he was saying to his daughter. He was as furious as Arlette that Bernie had come down from Chicago without permission from her coach or from the school. He wanted to pick her up and take her back home himself to make sure she apologized to her professors and her coaches.
“Otherwise she will do what she has done since she was three years old: try to charm her way out of trouble. But I cannot be in Kansas before Tuesday, Vic, so I must ask you to shoulder this burden for another forty-eight hours. And, Bernadine, you are in deep disgrace. You have known since you first put on skates that you do what your coach says, hein? If this happens a second time, you will leave university and return to Quebec. Comprise?”
Bernadine said, “Oui, Papa,” in a small voice, but when Pierre had hung up, she said, “Well, at least I have two days before I need to leave. What can we do?”
“Go to church.”
Her mouth dropped ludicrously. “This is a joke, right? Since when have you ever gone to church? And if you think I need to attend Mass—”
“I need to go to church.” Mindful of the mike under the desk, I didn’t elaborate. “Did you bring anything respectable to wear?”
“I thought we would be detecting. I have only jeans and sweatshirts.”
“Then that’s what you’ll wear to worship.”
I put on my new jacket, a new superfine wool top in my favorite rose, my new jeans, and my Lario boots. Since Bernie was wearing jeans and her Northwestern Wildcats shirt, I had her run with Peppy up and down the hills on the university campus on our way into town.
When she was back in the car, I told her about the mike and explained why I wanted to attend worship: to see if there was any possibility that St. Silas or Riverside was harboring August and Ms. Ferring.
At that, of course, Bernie became animated, even excited, and was annoyed with me for stopping at the Hippo. We still made it to North Lawrence in good time for St. Silas’s morning service, but the church doors were locked: a notice in a plastic sleeve reminded parishioners that they were worshipping this morning at Riverside United Church. Great. I’d be able to see everyone. I drove back across the river, Peppy leaning out the window, happily anticipating a swim, Bernie chattering brightly about the possibility of locating August in Riverside’s basement.
The lot was full, with two buses labeled st. silas ame parked near the entrance, alongside vans from several assisted-living facilities. There was even one from St. Raphael’s. I managed to slide in between an SUV and the church’s garbage cans.
The service started at ten. We were fifteen minutes late, but not the only stragglers: a family whose mother was shouting in a whisper at her bickering daughters blocked the entrance until an usher hurried over to move them on.
Another usher handed us programs and escorted us to stairs that led to a balcony. As we climbed, the joint choirs of the two churches were singing a prelude, the music so loud that my diaphragm vibrated.
We squeezed into a spot in the middle of the right side, which gave me a good view of most of the main floor. Nell Albritten was in a front pew, flanked by her son and a tall teen who I supposed must be a grandson, perhaps a great-grandson. Bayard Clements, her pastor, was in the chancel with a large number of other people.
Gertrude Perec, also near the front, was next to the banker I’d met on Thursday at the clothing drive. Cady wasn’t with her. At first I thought she hadn’t come, but I finally spotted her in the sea of choir members. The red robe didn’t suit her copper hair and freckles, but she was talking happily with her seatmates.
Lisa Carmody, Riverside’s associate pastor, was the only other person I recognized. When a short, stocky man with graying hair got up to start the service, the program told me he was the senior pastor at Riverside, Theo Weld.
It was a long service, as both choirs were offering anthems. Bernie was restless: we needed to be up and moving about, not sitting through some Protestant idea of worship. I hushed her so sternly that she actually subsided.
Bayard Clements preached on the prelude to Thanksgiving: We were suspended between the Day of the Dead and the offering of thanks, and what did we propose to do about it? He was a good preacher, but my attention wandered, especially during a detour through the wise and foolish virgins.
It gave me a chance to study the church windows. The stained glass seemed to be a combination of biblical stories and the Riverside Church’s narrative—pioneers on the prairies, a hand holding a cup of water to a slave in chains, the same hand holding a cup of water to Jesus on the cross. It was almost noon when the service ended.
“Now do we question people?” Bernie demanded.
“Now we talk to people. No one is going to reveal anything to a stranger, especially not one whose idea of subtlety is to knock someone into the boards.”
Bernie shrugged. “It often works.”
“Do you want to wait in the car with Peppy? If not, show the manners that I know Arlette taught you. These are older people who should be treated with respect.”
The tide of worshippers carried us to the parish hall, where coffee and snacks were laid out. I was thankful that they had cheese and hummus amid the requisite cakes and brownies—I hadn’t had breakfast, and hunger was starting to be my dominant feeling.
Nell Albritten was sitting at one of the round tables that dotted the room, her grandson next to her. When I went to pay my respects, Bernie stayed at the table, helping herself to an astonishing number of muffins. Members of the St. Silas congregation moved closer to Albritten, protecting her. Among them I saw Phyllis Barrier, the head librarian. I almost didn’t recognize her in her church clothes—at the library she wore casual trousers and knit vests or cardigans. Now I realized she’d been one of the women in Albritten’s photo of St. Silas’s 150th-anniversary celebration.
Barrier saw me staring at her and quickly turned, walking out of the church. I realized that Albritten had been speaking to me, and I knelt to ask her to repeat herself.
“You found Doris McKinnon, I see,” Albritten said.
When I squatted next to her to hear her over the hubbub, her grandson put an arm around her waist.
“Yes, ma’am. It was a second shock to find her a second time.”
“And they don’t know who that woman was, laying on Doris’s kitchen floor, hnn? Who you going to find next? I hope it’s not me.”
“Mother!” Jordan had appeared behind her with a plate of food and a glass of iced tea. “Please don’t. And you, you’re the detective, right? Don’t come bothering my mother. You almost cost her her life last week. She doesn’t need your kind of excitement.”
There was a murmur of agreement from the St. Silesians behind him, but Albritten laid a hand on my knee. She had so little flesh around the bone that her tendons stood out, ropes between fingers and elbow.
“Ms. Chicago Detective is doing her best for Emerald, Jordan. Don’t fault her for that.”
Jordan folded his lips in disapproval; they’d probably had this argument a few hundred times over the last two days. I pushed myself up to standing and kissed her lightly on the cheek.
“Don’t lose heart, Ms. Detective,” Albritten said. “That isn’t your own daughter paying you a visit, is it?”
“No, ma’am. She works with August in Chicago. She’s the person who came with August’s cousin and asked me to look for him.”
That caused a new murmur, this time of interest, but none of them said anything, no volunteers of information about where August and Emerald were hiding.
Cad
y Perec had been hovering. When I moved away from Albritten, she demanded to know when we were going to break into Sea-2-Sea’s experimental farm. I’d forgotten that part of my agenda, hunting for the places where McKinnon had been digging. I urged Cady not to bellow her felonious urges to the world, but she only laughed.
“If we tried to whisper, everyone would lean in to eavesdrop. Me shouting is just one more clanging gong among all these wagging tongues.”
Bernie had moved up closer to us, unfortunately. “You are going to break into a farm?” Her eyes sparkled. “Why? Can I come?”
“No!” I cried. “And I’m not sure it’s a useful idea.”
“But we need to know what Doris thought was going on with Sea-2-Sea, and I can help you find the place where she might have been digging,” Cady argued.
We changed the subject as Barbara Rutledge came over. I didn’t want a relationship between Bernie and Cady to blossom—Cady’s ardor, and her desire to explore the ground where she’d been born, would inevitably ignite a wildfire in Bernie.
Rutledge merely wanted to report that she hadn’t found a connection between Doris McKinnon and Francis Roque, the dead pathologist. “I thought maybe they were cousins or in-laws or something, but he moved here from South Dakota when he finished medical school. He doesn’t have any family in the area.”
“His tech seems to think it was because he’d done high-profile work on a murder case some years ago that involved black mold,” I said. “Ms. McKinnon wanted soil samples tested. Maybe she thought her soil had black mold in it.” When the words came out, I wondered if that was the case: not radiation poison in her farm but something almost as toxic.
After that, it seemed as though everyone in the room wanted to talk to me, or at least about me. I could make out some of the comments, since most people weren’t bothering to whisper:
That’s who’s hunting Emerald Ferring? She found Doris down by the Kaw? No, the Wakarusa. Didn’t Gisborne arrest her? Did she murder Doris? Who’s the girl with her, her daughter? No, it’s a student she’s training to become a detective.
I claimed a need for a toilet. Barbara offered to escort me, but under cover of taking my dirty dishes to the kitchen I slid out through a rear exit. Bernie was still in conversation with Cady, but that couldn’t be helped.
A door there led into the church proper. It was empty now, the white-painted pews and simple stained glass a respite for the spirit. I climbed the two shallow steps to the chancel. During the service the pastor and lectors had entered via a curtain behind the choir stalls. I went through it and found what I was looking for: a door that took me to a flight of stairs leading to the church basement.
Riverside had been rebuilt thirty years after Emancipation, but they were proud of their abolitionist heritage. In the basement they had re-created the rooms where fugitive slaves were harbored. One inner door was locked. I took out my picks and worked it open, holding my breath, but on the far side I found a strong room, not Emerald Ferring or August Veriden. There were shelves bearing silver and gold goblets and plates, some probably very valuable indeed. Labels in front of the items identified the families who’d donated them: a who’s who of transplanted New England aristocracy—Cottons, Pearsons, Cabots, and so on.
“I assume you have a reason for being here?”
The hair stood up on the back of my neck, and my heart lurched. Theo Weld, the pastor, had followed me, and I’d been stupid enough not to keep watch.
“I was hoping you were sheltering Emerald Ferring and August Veriden. I’d like to know they’re safe.”
“They’re not hiding inside Emerson Prence’s Communion chalice,” he said dryly. “You can leave now.”
He stood with his hand on the doorknob, but I stopped when I passed him. “Ms. Ferring and Mr. Veriden might have seen something or someone out on Doris McKinnon’s land that puts their lives at risk. I hope they’re still alive. If you know where they are, please send a message to them. Please get them to tell you what they saw. If I can find that out, then maybe I can clear things up so that they can come out of hiding.”
Weld wasn’t any taller than me. Standing next to him, I could see he had the pale blue eyes of a Scandinavian sailor. They stared at me with all the coldness of the North Atlantic.
“I don’t know where they are, Ms. Warshawski. I’m not sure I’d tell you if I did, but I don’t know.”
40
Polar Bear
I left the church, rather embarrassed, and was in a nearby field with Peppy and Bernie when my phone buzzed against my hip. I glanced at the screen and froze: the ICU nurses’ station.
A woman was on the other end, rattled and not completely coherent. “Can you come? I didn’t know who to call, but Sandy, Sandy Heinz, she said you were reliable and to call—”
“Can you start with who you are and what’s happening?” My voice was sharp, a slap to settle her nerves.
“Tricia. Tricia Polanco, I’m the ward head at the ICU today. Sandy said to call you if something went wrong with Sonia Kiel, and it has. Her brother . . . I don’t know which one—”
“Call Sergeant Everard at the police department. I’ll be with you in five.”
I grabbed Peppy’s leash and told Bernie we had to leave. As we ran to the parking lot, I explained that I had to go to the hospital as fast as possible; she’d have to stay in the car with the dog or walk Peppy around the hospital perimeter.
Cady and Gertrude were leaving as we reached our car. They heard Bernie’s piercing questions, including a demand as to why we had to go so instantly to the hospital.
“Sonia?” Cady asked.
I nodded. “I’m not sure what, but it sounds frightening.”
Cady offered to take Bernie home to lunch, which made Gertrude’s face tighten with annoyance. “Not the dog,” she said.
“Right,” I agreed. “Dog stays with me. Bernie, I’ll call you as soon as I know when and where I’ll be.”
I bundled Peppy into the Mustang and took off with a great squealing of rubber. I tried phoning Everard, but my call went to voice mail. He was in church or on a golf course. Or lying in on Sunday with some woman or man I hadn’t met.
At the hospital I sprinted across the lobby to the ICU elevators, skidding on my boot heels. Slow it down, take it easy: not good if I ended up in an emergency ward myself.
Tricia Polanco was waiting near the elevator when I got off. A woman in her late fifties, with hazel eyes, she was probably usually as calm and commanding as Heinz, but today she was frightened. Her face lightened when she saw me, which made me feel as though a yoke loaded down with steel buckets had been plopped onto my neck.
“What happened?”
“Sonia’s brother—at least a man who said he was her brother—he’s been calling every day. I recognized his voice from the phone. I took him back to see her. She’s been waking up more, been more alert all weekend, but she’s often belligerent, so when she said, ‘Not my brother,’ I thought she was . . . you know, the way she can get.”
“And then?” I prodded.
“I left them together. In about one minute, she flatlined. We ran in at once—the emergency-response team is there now, and our security team, but the brother disappeared. Hospitals—so many exits and stairwells—people can vanish in a blink.”
“What do you think he did—if he did do something?”
She shook her head. “Her IV lines are intact. We replaced all the bags, the saline and so on, just in case, you know, in case he . . .”
I nodded. “Good thinking.”
“We’ve sent them to the path lab. But honestly, I think he put a pillow over her head and . . . and held it. The bedclothes are disturbed, as if she’d been thrashing her legs, trying to fight—her arms are in restraints—light ones, you understand—to keep her from pulling out her lines. The response team is using defibrillators now, and they don’t need me for that, but I have to monitor how she’s doing.”
I trotted into the back with her, t
hrough the wide doors that hissed open and shut as we passed. When we got to Sonia’s room, it was packed with the emergency crew. It was impermissible for me to join the throng, but what would I have done anyway, besides peer anxiously over the professionals’ shoulders?
I stood in the hall listening to the sounds of controlled excitement. Not the shouts of a TV show, where someone is yelling “Clear!” and other characters are calling back, but urgent voices speaking too softly for me to understand.
While I waited, my own mind began to clear. A brother had come to visit. I had never gotten around to calling either of Sonia’s brothers.
Cell phones were strictly prohibited in the ICU. I don’t know if they really interfere with heart defibrillators, but I didn’t want to be the person to conduct the experiment. I left a note for Nurse Polanco with the woman at the ICU information desk and went down to my car, where I could call up my case notes on my iPad; I’d entered the two brothers’ phone numbers there.
Stuart, the math brother, was just about to set out for an afternoon’s sailing with his husband—it was two o’clock in Maine; I’d caught him in the nick of time, right before they cast off. No one had told him Sonia was hospitalized, but when I explained who I was and gave him a précis of the week’s events, he seemed more saddened than distressed.
“She was such an energetic little girl, whip smart, but our mother—she was drunk too much of the time to pay attention to her, and Sonia started acting out. I see now, now that I’m a teacher, that she was doing anything to get attention from Mom, but at the time I was six years older and I only thought of her as an annoying brat. She came to Boston for a few years—she had some real talent in the arts—sculpting, painting, even a bit of performance studies—but she couldn’t stay focused. Kevin—my husband—Kevin and I tried to help her, but she couldn’t or wouldn’t accept any medical treatment, and finally, when she was broke and got arrested for disorderly conduct, she went back to Kansas.”
“There’s some issue with one of your dad’s experiments that seems to lie behind your sister’s first collapse back in the eighties—do you know anything about it? Matt Chastain, a student who she was infatuated with, disappeared after supposedly making some colossal mistake.”
Fallout Page 27