* * *
No one knew that it was my twenty-third birthday. I’d thought about telling people but then decided against it. Birthdays should be happy occasions, and except for my satisfaction over duping Elmer, I wasn’t feeling particularly happy then.
On a long shot, I retrieved my box of family photos hoping I would discover something of value, something I had overlooked or that hadn’t made sense before but would now.
I examined a photo of a crowd of people in front of Wrigley Field—more specifically, in front of the blue and white HOME OF CHICAGO CUBS sign. It occurred to me that if someone had been taking a picture of the sign, it would have been centered in the photograph. Instead, the crowd of people was front and center. I stuck the photo in my pocket.
After wasting an hour looking at photos I had examined a hundred times before, I hopped on the bus to meet Fern for lunch, hoping I could draw out from her more information about Essie, things that could lead to her whereabouts—hobbies, favorite foods, friends, relatives. Sometimes the smallest tidbit of information could turn into a viable clue.
That day, I was traveling without Tymon, who had agreed that since Elmer thought the money was gone, it was safe enough for me to be out and about by myself. I suspected his need to protect me would end soon, but admittedly I had mixed feelings about that. I had gotten used to having someone looking out for my well-being—a male version of Minnie.
As soon as I got off the bus, the smoky aroma coming from Eddy’s Rib Joint hit me, reminding me of those special occasions when my father would bring home full rib dinners for us. I walked a half-block down the crowded sidewalk past a bank, two dress shops, a hair salon, and a drugstore until I reached the restaurant.
I spotted Fern seated in a booth next to the windows overlooking the sidewalk. We greeted each other with a quick hug.
As soon as we ordered, I showed her the Wrigley Field photograph.
“Look closely at the people in front of the building. Do you recognize anyone?”
Fern examined the photo and slowly shook her head. “No.”
“What about the woman in front who is gazing directly at the camera. Does she look familiar to you?”
“Not really.”
“Could it be Essie?”
She continued to stare at the photo. “Could be, but it’s hard to tell.” Several seconds passed. “It could be.” She turned the photo over and read the back. “1941.”
“How old would you say Essie is now?”
“I’d say somewhere in her fifties.”
“So let’s say she’s fifty-five. That would make her thirty-one in that photo.”
“The woman in the photo could be that age. What if it is her? What does that tell you?”
“Not much except that maybe she liked baseball, enough to have her picture taken in front of the stadium.”
“That photo was taken the year before we were born.”
“I know. I was thinking about that.”
“Any leads on finding her?” she asked.
I told her about my calls to Essie’s clients.
“Needle in a haystack,” she said.
“Something like that. Do you know what kind of car she drives?”
“She doesn’t. Takes public transportation everywhere.”
I got excited. “Really? Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
“I didn’t think it was important.”
“It’s important. Knowing that, and being fairly sure she still has ties to Baird & Warner to finish up any sales she started before she left, I’d guess she must still be in the area, close enough that she can take public transportation.”
“That must be why you’re the PI. So now what?”
“I’m going to call for information in every suburb to see if they have a new listing for her.”
“What about right here in Chicago?”
“I’ve got that covered. I called for a Chicago listing on her every day for two weeks after she disappeared. They would have had one by then if she was here, so I stopped.”
“Unless she doesn’t have a phone. Or is staying with someone.”
“She has to have a phone—she’s a real estate agent. But she could be staying with someone. She never mentioned being close to anyone?”
“No. She was pretty quiet about herself. I had a hard time getting anything out of her. She talked about a niece, but I don’t think she ever mentioned her name.”
I told her about tricking Elmer into thinking the Irish money had been given to O’Gowan’s relatives.
“Nice one! So are all your boyfriends gone then?”
“Very funny. No, not yet. Tymon is being extra cautious.”
“So what else is new?”
“I know.”
We finished our lunch, said goodbye, and headed for different bus stops.
When I arrived home, I found Tymon on the patio drinking a cup of coffee.
“Did you have a nice lunch?” he asked.
“Yes, and I was only mugged twice.”
“I won’t rest until that hoodlum is completely out of the picture. You know that.”
“Out of the picture? What do you want...him dead?”
“I’d settle for incapacitated. Sit for a minute, I have something to tell you.”
His expression was serious.
“What’s wrong?”
“I went over to Jake’s while you were at lunch and ran into Henry Sikes.”
“I thought he was dead!”
“Looks like that’s what Elmer wanted you to think.”
Now I felt stupid for not having checked that out.
“So what did he have to say?”
“A lot. Henry develops a very loose tongue when someone buys him drinks.” He leaned in toward me, his arms resting on his thighs, his hands clasped together. “Gracie, Elmer Berghorn was responsible for your parents’ deaths.”
THIRTY-ONE
Revoked
My body went numb. I wanted to ask Tymon to repeat what he had just told me but was unable to speak.
“Breathe, Gracie.”
I hadn’t realized I wasn’t breathing.
“That’s hard to believe, Tymon. But you said Henry was drinking, so how can we...”
“Henry wasn’t crazy drunk when he told me that. And my experience with people and alcohol is that it doesn’t create thoughts, it just brings them out.”
The notion that someone—someone I knew, for Pete’s sake—had done something that resulted in my parents’ deaths was incomprehensible.
“What did he do?”
“Now bear with me. It’s a bit of a long story. We know Henry left the boardinghouse the same day O’Gowan died—Minnie told us that. And we know from the bartender at Jake’s and others that Henry started flashing money around about that same time, so I figure he broke into O’Gowan’s room at some point after his death, stole whatever cash he could find, and fled.”
“What a creep.”
“This next part, I think, will surprise you. Apparently, right after O’Gowan died, Berghorn was arrested and went to prison.”
“Prison! For what?”
“Henry said embezzlement and a bunch of other stuff.”
“Holy...”
“I know. Meanwhile, from prison, Elmer is hounding Henry to locate Al, the boarder who had the room over Anna’s bedroom.”
“Why?”
“Al left the boardinghouse right after Anna was killed—the next day, in fact. And Henry had told Elmer at some point that he had seen Al and O’Gowan talking with each other on more than one occasion. And since O’Gowan was such a recluse, Elmer thought it odd that he would be talking to Al. He thought maybe Al had found out about O’Gowan’s money and had somehow gotten his hands on it after O’Gowan died.”
“Whose mind works like that?”
“Berghorn’s, apparently. Anyway, as Henry put it, ‘He wasn’t the boss of me, and he was in prison, so he couldn’t see what I was doin’ or not doin’.’ S
o without putting much effort into it, Henry kept an eye out for Al, and…what do you know? One day, he sees him coming out of your house on Ferdinand Street.”
“My house?”
“Your house.”
“So Al knew my parents.”
“It looks that way.”
“So what year was this?”
“He didn’t say, but I got the impression it wasn’t long after O’Gowan’s death.”
“He died in June 1943. I was just a year old.”
“Okay. So to appease Elmer, Henry said he just made something up about keeping a watchful eye on Al and every once in a while seeing his car at the Ferdinand address. And he does this periodically throughout Elmer’s prison sentence.”
“So then Elmer gets out of prison—”
“How long was he in prison?”
“I don’t think Henry said. Anyway, he gets out and sets up this law practice—”
“How did he do that with a criminal record?”
“I don’t know, but we both know he did. Well, he couldn’t make enough to properly take care of his son, and he couldn’t stop thinking about O’Gowan’s winnings even after all that time.”
“Okay, so stop there for a minute. You’re saying Elmer was obsessed over O’Gowan’s money so he could provide for his son?”
“According to Henry.”
“Naomi told me his son was ill. Did Henry give you the impression that Elmer’s son had a long-term illness?”
“No, he didn’t say that.”
“Did he say that’s why Elmer went to prison? The embezzlement and other stuff, did he take those risks for his son?”
“You ask good questions. I don’t know.”
The thought of Elmer doing it all for his son was no justification for it, but it sure made me think about him as a man. What that meant to me was that his bad behavior wasn’t an indication of his character. It was an indication of his situation—a situation so dire that it blinded him to ethical concerns.
“I’m sorry. Please continue.”
“Would you like to take a break?”
“No, I’m good.”
“So Elmer tells Henry to show him the house on Ferdinand where Al keeps going, and he gets it into his head that whoever lives there may have a connection to the money.”
“That seems so far-fetched.”
“I thought so too. So he digs into your parents’ business and finds out they have this nice home with a very small mortgage, a new car, and some other things all on your father’s wages at the Soo Line Railroad. He becomes convinced your father somehow benefited from O’Gowan’s fortune.”
“So he kills them?”
“Hold on. I’ll get to that.”
“It’s hard to hold on when—”
“I know. I know. So Elmer wants to search the house, but of course he can’t do it when there are people living there, so he gets this harebrained idea to force them out long enough for him to snoop around. It was winter, according to Henry, and really cold.”
I was unable to hold back the tears—it was like being confronted with their deaths all over again.
“March 18,” I said through my blubbering. “Extremely cold…sub-zero.”
“So his plan was to cut off their gas line so they would have no heat, forcing them out of their house until the gas company could find the problem and fix it.”
“But why did he have to kill them?” I cried.
“According to Henry, he didn’t intend to. He just wanted to force them out long enough for him to search the house.”
“But that’s crazy!”
“I know that, and you know that, but my impression from Henry was that Elmer was a desperate man. Desperate men don’t think logically.”
“Go on.”
“Whatever he did caused carbon monoxide to back up into the basement, where apparently they were at the time. And they were overcome by it.”
I struggled to speak. “Had he picked another time, I would have been in the house too.”
“I know, sweetie.”
“So did the rotten...did he get what he was looking for?”
“He didn’t get O’Gowan’s money, of course we know that, but according to Henry, he fraudulently got access to one or more of their bank accounts and then further took advantage of their deaths by buying the house.”
I shook my head in disbelief.
“How could he do that and still sleep at night?”
“Desperation is like an addictive drug—it controls your brain, your thinking. Nothing else matters.”
I closed my eyes and tried to make sense of it all.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I nodded with my eyes still closed.
“So let me try to recap here,” I finally said. “Henry finds out O’Gowan has a stash of money and tells his cousin Elmer about it. Elmer concocts a plan to rob O’Gowan, but before he can implement the plan, O’Gowan dies unexpectedly. Henry steals whatever he can from O’Gowan’s room and flees. They both know O’Gowan won a lot more than that in the sweepstakes, but Elmer can’t do much about it because he’s been hauled off to prison.
“Then Elmer gets out of prison and—thanks to Henry—thinks there’s some connection between Anna’s boardinghouse lover Al and my father, which by some convoluted logic makes him think there’s a connection between O’Gowan’s money and my father. So he can search our house, Elmer tries to force my parents out of it by cutting off the heat in freezing weather but bungles that and kills them. And like that wasn’t bad enough, he then takes advantage of this heinous act and buys our house—probably at a low price—and steals from my parents’ bank accounts.”
“That’s pretty much how I understand it...at least according to Henry, and I found him to be quite believable.”
“Right. He’s not smart enough to make this kind of stuff up. You know that’s probably why I was rushed out of that house afterward—because Berghorn was pushing to buy it. And I know from Naomi that he has connections with North Community Bank where my parents had a mortgage. He probably paid someone off to get me out of there as quickly as possible.”
“There are no words to—”
“Wait a minute!”
“What?”
“I don’t have it anymore because Berghorn stole it from me, but I found a statement from North Community Bank among my parents’ things. The name on the account had been torn off, but I’ll bet that was the account Berghorn stole from. If that was a current statement, there was close to $8,000 in that account. And there were two other bank accounts, one in San Diego and one in Mexico.”
“How much was in those?”
“I don’t remember now. That lousy...”
“So then Berghorn found you—”
“Thinking either I had O’Gowan’s money or I could lead him to it.”
Tymon didn’t respond.
I couldn’t stop shaking my head. This kind of thing didn’t happen to ordinary people.
“Elmer killed my parents.” My emotions completely took over again, and before I could do anything about it, I was crying uncontrollably. Tymon rushed over to me, placed his strong hands on my forearms, and lifted me up from the chair.
“Let’s go inside, Gracie.”
Once inside, I got hold of myself, and my grief quickly changed to anger.
“That son-of-a-bitch can’t get away with this!” I pounded the side of my fist on the kitchen counter, causing Tymon to jump and me to wince in pain.
Tymon led me to one of the kitchen chairs, put a pot of water on the stove for tea, and then joined me.
“What kind of person does that?” I asked.
“One desperate for money?”
I got up and grabbed a piece of paper and pencil from the kitchen drawer.
“What are you doing?”
“Wait here a minute.” I went upstairs to retrieve the envelopes that contained all my important papers and notes related to Anna and my parents.
“I’m cre
ating a timeline. I need to understand this better,” I told him when I returned.
When I was finished, I read him the following:
Nov 10, 1939
Anna buys the boardinghouse
Jan 4, 1942
Fern is born
Jun 28, 1942
I am born
Jan 23, 1943
Anna is murdered
Jan 24, 1943
Al leaves the boardinghouse
May 29, 1943
Minnie buys the boardinghouse
June 6, 1943
O’Gowan dies
June 6, 1943
Henry leaves the boardinghouse
Berghorn goes to prison
Berghorn gets out of prison
Mar 18, 1960
My parents die Elmer kills my parents!
Aug 10, 1964
I start working out of Elmer’s office
I glanced up at Tymon, who was intently staring at me.
“I wonder how much time Berghorn had after O’Gowan died and before he went to prison,” I said. “Why didn’t he break into the boardinghouse to look for the money?”
“Sorry. I forgot that part. Berghorn had told Henry to break into the boardinghouse and look for the money, but I’m not sure if it was before or after he went to prison. Anyway, Henry was content with what he had already stolen and gotten away with, so he lied to Elmer and told him that he broke in, searched every inch of the place, and didn’t find anything.”
I didn’t respond.
“You’ve got that look on your face. What are you thinking?” he asked.
“I don’t know yet. But one way or another, Elmer Berghorn is going to pay. And Tymon?
“Yes.”
“Today is my birthday.”
* * *
At three A.M., as I lay in bed wide awake, all I could think about was how Elmer had reeled me in like a fish getting me to sublet from him and then held me captive until he had no more use for me. And I’d been oblivious to every bit of it. Well, Mr. Berghorn, you will pay for everything you’ve done...if it’s the last thing I ever do.
If it hadn’t been for Berghorn, my parents would have still been alive.
Regarding Anna Page 22