She swallowed some coffee and set the cup on the table next to her with a small snap. “I have known Dr. Herschel for close to twenty years. It is inconceivable that she would commit such a murder, as those who know her well should have realized at once. I don’t fault the police, but others should have known better: she is hot tempered. I’m not saying killing is beyond her-I don’t think it’s beyond any of us. She might have taken the statue and smashed Dr. Caudwell’s head in in the heat of rage. But it beggars belief to think she went home, brooded over her injustices, packed a dose of prescription tranquilizer, and headed back to the Gold Coast with murder in mind.”
Max felt his cheeks turn hot at her words. He started to interject a protest but bit it back.
“Dr. Herschel refused to make a statement all week, but this afternoon, when I got back from my travels, she finally agreed to talk to me. Sergeant McGonnigal was with me. She doesn’t deny that she returned to Dr. Caudwell’s apartment at ten that night-she went back to apologize for her outburst and to try to plead with him to return the statue. He didn’t answer when the doorman called up, and on impulse she went around to the back of the building, got in through the service entrance, and waited for some time outside the apartment door. When he neither answered the doorbell nor returned home himself, she finally went away around eleven o’clock. The children, of course, were having a night on the town.”
“She says,” Gioia interjected.
“Agreed.” V. I. smiled. “I make no bones about being a partisan: I accept her version. The more so because the only reason she didn’t give it a week ago was that she herself was protecting an old friend. She thought perhaps this friend had bestirred himself on her behalf and killed Caudwell to avenge deadly insults against her. It was only when I persuaded her that these suspicions were as unmerited as-well, as accusations against herself-that she agreed to talk.”
Max bit his lip and busied himself with getting more coffee for the three women. Victoria waited for him to finish before continuing.
“When I finally got a detailed account of what took place at Caudwell’s party, I heard about three people with an ax to grind. One always has to ask, what ax and how big a grindstone? That’s what I’ve spent the weekend finding out. You might as well know that I’ve been to Little Rock and to Havelock, North Carolina.”
Gioia began jingling the coins in his pockets again. Mrs. Caudwell said softly, “Grif, I am feeling a little faint. Perhaps-”
“Home you go, Mom,” Steve cried out with alacrity.
“In a few minutes, Mrs. Caudwell,” the sergeant said from the doorway. “Get her feet up, Warshawski.”
For a moment Max was afraid that Steve or Deborah was going to attack Victoria, but McGonnigal moved over to the widow’s chair and the children sat down again. Little drops of sweat dotted Griffen’s balding head; Gioia’s face had a greenish sheen, foliage on top of his redwood neck.
“The thing that leapt out at me,” Victoria continued calmly, as though there had been no interruption, “was Caudwell’s remark to Dr. Gioia. The doctor was clearly upset, but people were so focused on Lotty and the statue that they didn’t pay any attention to that.
“So I went to Little Rock, Arkansas, on Saturday and found the Paul Nierman whose name Caudwell had mentioned to Gioia. Nierman lived in the same fraternity with Gioia when they were undergraduates together twenty-five years ago. And he took Dr. Gioia’s anatomy and physiology exams his junior year when Gioia was in danger of academic probation, so he could stay on the football team.
“Well, that seemed unpleasant, perhaps disgraceful. But there’s no question that Gioia did all his own work in medical school, passed his boards, and so on. So I didn’t think the board would demand a resignation for this youthful indiscretion. The question was whether Gioia thought they would, and if he would have killed to prevent Caudwell making it public.”
She paused, and the immunologist blurted out, “No. No. But Caudwell-Caudwell knew I’d opposed his appointment. He and I-our approaches to medicine were very opposite. And as soon as he said Nierman’s name to me, I knew he’d found out and that he’d torment me with it forever. I-I went back to his place Sunday night to have it out with him. I was more determined than Dr. Herschel and got into his unit through the kitchen entrance; he hadn’t locked that.
“I went to his study, but he was already dead. I couldn’t believe it. It absolutely terrified me. I could see he’d been strangled and-well, it’s no secret that I’m strong enough to have done it. I wasn’t thinking straight. I just got clean away from there-I think I’ve been running ever since.”
“You!” McGonnigal shouted. “How come we haven’t heard about this before?”
“Because you insisted on focusing on Dr. Herschel,” V. I. said nastily. “I knew he’d been there because the doorman told me. He would have told you if you’d asked.”
“This is terrible,” Mrs. Gildersleeve interjected. “I am going to talk to the board tomorrow and demand the resignations of Dr. Gioia and Dr. Herschel.”
“Do,” Victoria agreed cordially. “You could also tell them the reason you got to stay for this discussion was because Murray Ryerson at the Herald-Star was doing a little checking for me here in Chicago. He found out that part of the reason you were so jealous of Caudwell’s collection is that you’re living terribly in debt. I won’t humiliate you in public by telling people what your money has gone to, but you’ve had to sell your husband’s art collection and you have a third mortgage on your house. A valuable statue with no documented history would have taken care of everything.”
Martha Gildersleeve shrank inside her sable. “You don’t know anything about this.”
“Well, Murray talked to Pablo and Eduardo… Yes, I won’t say anything else. So anyway, Murray checked whether either Gioia or Mrs. Gildersleeve had the statue. They didn’t, so-”
“You’ve been in my house?” Mrs. Gildersleeve shrieked.
V. I. shook her head. “Not me. Murray Ryerson.” She looked apologetically at the sergeant. “I knew you’d never get a warrant for me, since you’d made an arrest. And you’d never have got it in time, anyway.”
She looked at her coffee cup, saw it was empty and put it down again. Max took it from the table and filled it for her a third time. His fingertips were itching with nervous irritation; some of the coffee landed on his trouser leg.
“I talked to Murray Saturday night from Little Rock. When he came up empty here, I headed for North Carolina. To Havelock, where Griffen and Lewis Caudwell grew up and where Mrs. Caudwell still lives. And I saw the house where Griffen lives, and talked to the doctor who treats Mrs. Caudwell, and-”
“You really are a pooper snooper, aren’t you,” Steve said.
“Pooper snooper, pooper snooper,” Deborah chanted. “Don’t get enough thrills of your own so you have to live on other people’s shit.”
“Yeah, the neighbors talked to me about you two.” Victoria looked at them with contemptuous indulgence. “You’ve been a two-person wolf pack terrifying most of the people around you since you were three. But the folks in Havelock admired how you always stuck up for your mother. You thought your father got her addicted to tranquilizers and then left her high and dry. So you brought her newest version with you and were all set-you just needed to decide when to give it to him. Dr. Herschel’s outburst over the statue played right into your hands. You figured your father had stolen it from your uncle to begin with-why not send it back to him and let Dr. Herschel take the rap?”
“It wasn’t like that,” Steve said, red spots burning in his cheeks.
“What was it like, son?” McGonnigal had moved next to him.
“Don’t talk to them-they’re tricking you,” Deborah shrieked. “The pooper snooper and her gopher gooper.”
“She-Mommy used to love us before Daddy made her take all this shit. Then she went away. We just wanted him to see what it was like. We started putting Xanax in his coffee and stuff; we wanted to see if he’d
fuck up during surgery, let his life get ruined. But then he was sleeping there in the study after his stupid-ass party, and we thought we’d just let him sleep through his morning surgery. Sleep forever, you know, it was so easy, we used his own Harvard necktie. I was so fucking sick of hearing ‘Early to bed, early to rise’ from him. And we sent the statue to Uncle Grif. I suppose the pooper snooper found it there. He can sell it and Mother can be all right again.”
“Grandpa stole it from Jews and Daddy stole it from Grif, so we thought it worked out perfectly if we stole it from Daddy,” Deborah cried. She leaned her blond head next to her brother’s and shrieked with laughter.
V
Max watched the Une of Lotty’s legs change as she stood on tiptoe to reach a brandy snifter. Short, muscular from years of racing at top speed from one point to the next, maybe they weren’t as svelte as the long legs of modern American girls, but he preferred them. He waited until her feet were securely planted before making his announcement.
“The board is bringing in Justin Hardwick for a final interview for chief of staff.”
“Max!” She whirled, the Bengal fire sparkling in her eyes. “I know this Hardwick and he is another like Caudwell, looking for cost-cutting and no poverty patients. I won’t have it.”
“We’ve got you and Gioia and a dozen others bringing in so many nonpaying patients that we’re not going to survive another five years at the present rate. I figure it’s a balancing act. We need someone who can see that the hospital survives so that you and Art can practice medicine the way you want to. And when he knows what happened to his predecessor, he’ll be very careful not to stir up our resident tigress.”
“Max!” She was hurt and astonished at the same time. “Oh. You’re joking, I see. It’s not very funny to me, you know.”
“My dear, we’ve got to learn to laugh about it: it’s the only way we’ll ever be able to forgive ourselves for our terrible misjudgments.” He stepped over to put an arm around her. “Now where is this remarkable surprise you promised to show me.”
She shot him a look of pure mischief, Lotty on a dare as he first remembered meeting her at eighteen. His hold on her tightened and he followed her to her bedroom. In a glass case in the corner, complete with a humidity-control system, stood the Pietro Andromache.
Max looked at the beautiful, anguished face. I understand your sorrows, she seemed to say to him. I understand your grief for your mother, your family, your history, but it’s all right to let go of them, to live in the present and hope for the future. It’s not a betrayal.
Tears pricked his eyelids, but he demanded, “How did you get this? I was told the police had it under lock and key until lawyers decided on the disposition of Caudwell’s estate.”
“ Victoria,” Lotty said shortly. “I told her the problem and she got it for me. On the condition that I not ask how she did it. And Max, you know-damned well-that it was not Caudwell’s to dispose of.”
It was Lotty’s. Of course it was. Max wondered briefly how Joseph the Second had come by it to begin with. For that matter, what had Lotty’s great-great-grandfather done to earn it from the emperor? Max looked into Lotty’s tiger eyes and kept such reflections to himself. Instead he inspected Hector’s foot where the filler had been carefully scraped away to reveal the old chip.
STRUNG OUT
I
PEOPLE BORN NEAR the corner of 90th and Commercial used to have fairly predictable futures. The boys grew up to work in the mills; the girls took jobs in the bakeries or coffee shops. They married each other and scrimped to make a down payment on a neighborhood bungalow and somehow fit their large families into its small rooms.
Now that the mills are history, the script has changed. Kids are still marrying, still having families, but without the certainty of the steel industry to buoy their futures. The one thing that seems to stay the same, though, is the number who stubbornly cling to the neighborhood even now that the jobs are gone. It’s a clannish place, South Chicago, and people don’t leave it easily.
When Monica Larush got pregnant our senior year in high school and married football hero Gary Oberst, we all just assumed they were on their way to becoming another large family in a small bungalow. She wasn’t a friend of mine, so I didn’t worry about the possible ruin of her life. Anyway, having recently lost my own mother to cancer, I wasn’t too concerned about other girls’ problems.
Monica’s and my lives only intersected on the basketball court. Like me, she was an aggressive athlete, but she clearly had a high level of talent as well. In those days, though, a pregnant girl couldn’t stay in school, so she missed our championship winter. The team brought her a game ball. We found her, fat and pasty, eating Fritos in angry frustration in front of the TV in her mother’s kitchen. When we left, we made grotesque jokes about her swollen face and belly, our only way of expressing our embarrassment and worry.
Gary and Monica rewrote their script, though. Gary got a job on the night shift at Inland Steel and went to school during the day. After the baby-Gary Junior-was born, Monica picked up her GED. The two of them scrimped, not for a down payment, but to make it through the University of Illinois ’s Chicago campus. Gary took a job as an accountant with a big Loop firm, Monica taught high school French, and they left the neighborhood. Moved north was what I heard.
And that was pretty much all I knew-or cared-about them before Lily Oberst’s name and face started popping up in the papers. She was apparently mopping up junior tennis competition. Tennis boosters and athletic-apparel makers were counting the minutes until she turned pro.
I actually first heard about her from my old basketball coach, Mary Ann McFarlane. Mary Ann’s first love had always been tennis. When she retired from teaching at sixty, she continued to act as a tennis umpire at local high school and college tournaments. I saw her once a year when the Virginia Slims came to Chicago. She worked as a linesperson there for the pittance the tour paid-not for the bucks, but for the excitement. I always came during the last few days and had dinner with her in Greek Town at the end of the finals.
“I’ve been watching Lily Oberst play up at the Skokie Valley club,” Mary Ann announced one year. “Kid’s got terrific stuff. If they don’t ruin her too young she could be-well, I won’t say another Martina. Martinas come once a century. But a great one.”
“Lily Oberst?” I shook my head, fishing for why the name sounded familiar.
“You don’t remember Monica? Didn’t you girls keep in touch after your big year? Lily is her and Gary ’s daughter. I used to coach Monica in tennis besides basketball, but I guess that wasn’t one of your sports.”
After that I read the stories in detail and got caught up on twenty years of missing history. Lily grew up in suburban Glenview, the second of two children. The Herald-Star explained that both her parents were athletic and encouraged her and her brother to go out for sports. When a camp coach brought back the word that Lily might have some tennis aptitude, her daddy began working with her every day. She had just turned six then.
Gary put up a net for her in the basement and would give her an ice cream bar every time she could hit the ball back twenty-five times without missing.
“He got mad when it got too easy for me,” Lily said, giggling, to the reporter. “Then he’d raise the net whenever I got to twenty-four.”
When it became clear that they had a major tennis talent on their hands, Monica and Gary put all their energy into developing it. Monica quit her job as a teacher so that she could travel to camps and tournaments with Lily. Gary, by then regional director for a pharmaceutical firm, persuaded his company to put in the seed money for Lily’s career. He himself took a leave of absence to work as her personal trainer. Even now that she was a pro Monica and Gary went with her everywhere. Of course Lily had a professional coach, but her day always started with a workout with Daddy.
Gary Junior didn’t get much print attention. He apparently didn’t share the family’s sports mania. Five years older than L
ily, he was in college studying for a degree in chemical engineering, and hoping to go off to Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati.
Lily turned pro the same year Jennifer Capriati did. Since Capriati was making history, joining the pros at thirteen, Lily, two years older, didn’t get the national hoopla. But Chicago went wild. Her arrival in the Wimbledon quarterfinals that year was front-page news all over town. Her 6-2, 6-0 loss there to Monica Seles was shown live in every bar in the city. Fresh-faced and smiling under a spiky blond hairdo, she grinned through her braces and said it was just a thrill to be on the same court with players like Seles and Graf. The city fell in love.
So when it was announced that she was coming to Chicago to play in the Slims in February the tournament generated more publicity than it had ever known. After a year and a half on the pro circuit Lily was ranked eighth in the world, but the pictures of her arrival at the family home still showed an ingenuous grin. Her Great Dane, standing on his hind legs with his paws on her shoulders, was licking her face.
Mary Ann McFarlane called me a few days after the Obersts arrived back in town. “Want to come up to Glenview and watch the kid work out? You could catch up with Monica at the same time.”
That sounded like a treat that would appeal to Monica about as much as it did to me. But I had never seen a tennis prodigy in the making. I agreed to drive out to Glenview on Friday morning. Mary Ann and I would have lunch with Monica after Lily’s workout.
The Skokie Valley Tennis Club was just off the Edens Expressway at Dempster. Lily’s workout started at eight but I hadn’t felt the need to watch a sixteen-year-old, however prodigious, run laps. I arrived at the courts a little after ten.
When I asked a woman at the reception desk to direct me to Lily, she told me the star’s workout was off-limits to the press today. I explained who I was. She consulted higher authority over the phone. Mary Ann had apparently greased the necessary skids: I was allowed past a bored guard lounging against a hall door. After showing him my driver’s license, I was directed down the hall to the private court where Lily was practicing. A second guard there looked at my license again and then opened the door for me.
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