by Joan Boswell
I smiled. We made a dinner date, and I headed for home. Time to clean up. I was having company, after all.
My apartment was one of many identical shoeboxes in a shabby high rise in the west end of Ottawa. Apartment 904, home sweet home. The Tweetster greeted me as I stepped through the door. Tossing seeds was his way of saying hello.
I took a quick, cool shower and slicked back my hair. It wasn’t blow-drying weather. Anyway, my hairspray had already given up its last squirt, and digging the mini-bottle out of my purse just wasn’t worth the effort.
Sophie arrived, a cold bottle of Chardonnay in hand. She was a cheap date; a couple of glasses and she was ready to talk.
“So you want to know what they’ve got on that Rapture woman, huh?” she asked around a mouthful of pizza.
“It would help me know what I’m up against.” I reached for another gooey slice.
“Well, everything seems to point to her.”
“Everything would be what exactly?”
“They found him in the bathroom of the hotel room. He was fully dressed except that . . . well . . . let’s just say he was exposed.”
“Umm . . .” I said.
“Apparently he looked perfectly normal except for the big hole in his chest. And the blood, of course. Whoever shot him nailed him right in the heart.”
“None of that necessarily implicates my client.”
“No,” Sophie said, “but they found cigarettes in the ashtray with lipstick stains on them. A colour called Rubicund Red—apparently a favourite of Ms. Rapture’s.”
They couldn’t possibly be harassing my client with only that scanty bit of evidence.
“As I understand it,” Sophie continued, “they found traces of lipstick on certain other things as well.” She gave me a look.
“Ah.”
“Our investigator says word on the street is that Chicago was going to drop her. He was eyeing up someone else.”
I contemplated another slice of pizza but had begun to feel queasy.
“There’s more.” Sophie patted her throat and the back of her neck with a tissue. “They found your client’s fingerprints on the doorknob and the phone. When the DNA comes back, they’ll be picking her up.” She raised her glass in a mock salute. “It looks like you played the wrong hand this time, Ronnie.”
I lay awake half the night wondering why a murderer would hire someone to find out who killed the victim. Did she think I was so stupid that I’d just meddle around causing problems?
In the morning I called Ms. Rapture and didn’t waste any time on preliminaries. “They found your fingerprints in the hotel room,” I paused. “What have you got to say about that?”
Just as I began to wonder if she planned to reply at all, her shaky voice came over the line. “Gary left me a message to meet him at the hotel at nine. When I walked in, he was already dead.”
I rubbed my temple, “You didn’t think I needed to know about that?”
“Oh, God! It was so horrible!” Her voice caught in her throat. “I loved him.”
“Why didn’t you call 911?”
“I was going to. I picked up the phone to call,” she said, “but I realized it might look bad for me. So I left him there. God forgive me, I just left him there!”
She cried while I sifted through the new information. “Why should I believe you?” I asked.
“You have to! Someone is setting me up. You’re my only chance.”
I sighed. “All right,” I said. “I’ll see if I can get the family to talk to me. But don’t get your hopes up.”
I called ahead, and Mrs. Chicago reluctantly agreed to meet me. She opened the door of her million-dollar-tons-of-curb-appeal home and fixed me with a stare that would have made a lesser mortal cringe. I handed her my card and held my ground. “Mrs. Chicago, thanks for meeting with me. I know this must be difficult for you.”
She ignored my out-thrust hand but took the card and stepped back, waving me in. Amber liquid sloshed from her glass onto the marble floor. “I don’t know why you’re here,” she said as I pushed the RECORD button on the tape recorder and followed her into the depths of the house.
In the kitchen, she picked up a knife and began slicing a lemon. She finished her drink in one quick toss-back.
“I’ve been hired to look into your husband’s death,” I said.
She glared at me as she dropped a handful of ice into her glass, poured three fingers of Scotch and added a slice of lemon on top. “I’d offer you a drink,” she said, “but I don’t like you.”
“That’s okay, ma’am.”
“So, that woman hired you.” Mrs. Chicago looked me over. “She must be desperate.”
I forced a smile. “Can I ask you about your husband’s activities on the day of his death?” The alcohol vapours coming off her were making me dizzy.
“He got up in the morning like usual and went to work.”
“Did he seem different in any way? Was he nervous? Anxious?”
She swirled the liquor in the glass, the only sound was the tinkle of ice cubes glancing off crystal. Finally she looked at me, her face lined with sorrow. “I don’t know. I was still in bed.”
“What’s going on here?” I whirled around at the sound of a voice directly behind me.
“Oh, Amanda, I’m glad you’re here.” Mrs. Chicago pointed a finger at me. “She’s here about your father’s murder. She’s a private eye. A private dick.” She uttered a short, harsh laugh and stumbled out of the room.
The woman standing behind me had to be six feet tall and built like a linebacker. I glanced down. I could see the can of pepper spray, nestled against my wallet, waiting for its chance to shine. I shifted the tape recorder to my left hand.
Dark, glittering eyes fixed me to the spot. “What are you doing here? Why are you bothering my mother? Who hired you?” The questions came short and fast.
“My client’s name is irrelevant,” I said.
She laughed. “Let me guess. That stripper he was running with, right?”
I didn’t respond.
She tossed her briefcase on a chair. “What a joke.”
“So you know about your father’s girlfriend. Did your mother? Before this, I mean.”
“Of course, we knew.” She gathered the lemon slices and dropped them into the garbage. “She wasn’t the first.”
“How many were there?”
She turned toward me and shrugged. “Who knows. He did manage to survive the other relationships, though.”
“There must be other suspects,” I said.
“Like who?”
“Your father had some very shady clients. Do you think any of them would want him dead?”
Amanda Chicago leaned back against the counter and crossed her arms. “Why would they want him dead? He performed a service for them. You don’t kill off your service workers.”
“Maybe he knew too much.” I looked around the huge, gleaming kitchen. “Maybe he was shuffling a few cards from the bottom of the deck.”
She shook her finger at me. “No! My father had some less than respectable clients, but everything he did was strictly above board! He was well compensated for his knowledge, that’s all. Everything he had, he earned.”
“Okay!” I held up my hands in surrender. “It was just a thought.”
“You’re wasting your time. She did it. It’s obvious.”
Amanda herded me toward the door. “I’m sorry my mother and I couldn’t help.” She paused. “Actually, I’m not sorry. She did it. I just wish we still had the death penalty in this country.”
I stopped half in and half out of the door. “It’s all circumstantial. They won’t convict her on a little bit of lipstick that can be bought from any drugstore in the country.”
Amanda smiled. “I’m told that it can take months for the police to put together a critical mass of evidence. Eventually, it all stacks up. The fingerprints, the cigarette butts, the note—they all come together in time. My mother and I are pati
ent people. We can wait.”
I swung onto the Queensway and headed for home. All that remained of the sunset was a ribbon the colour of tomato soup in my rear-view mirror. Deep in thought, I crested Kanata Hill, barely noticing the lights of the city spread out below.
Everyone wanted to point the finger at my client. Abe Ivanov couldn’t wait to see her charged. But, in reality, he had inherited a lot of big-money clients.
The family. They had plenty of motive, but could they actually do the dirty deed? Not mama. Amanda? She could have, but why? She seemed fond of her father, and apparently this wasn’t his first affair.
Then there was Bolino. Had Chicago known too much? Was he stealing?
I sighed. Amanda Chicago had been right about one thing—all available evidence pointed to Dawn Rapture.
I pulled into the parking lot behind my apartment building. My brain itched with the knowledge that I was missing something. I ran through Ms. Rapture’s version again: arrival, body, phone, leave. Closing my eyes, I chanted it like a mantra—arrival, body, phone, leave.
I rewound the tape of my interview with the Chicagos and hit the PLAY button.
I never did make it to my apartment. Instead, I headed downtown to have a little chat with Dawn Rapture.
“You ever been here before?” Dawn asked.
“No, can’t say I have.”
“Women come to the show sometimes. Usually with their husbands. I guess they figure it’s better to be embarrassed than bored.”
I shuddered. Even backstage, you could feel the thick aroma of loneliness and desperation pressing in from the other side of the curtain.
“I wanted to ask you about the message Gary left for you to meet him at the hotel.”
“Okay.”
“Do you still have it?”
“No.”
I stood back as Dawn caked her head in hairspray. “You erased it off your answering machine?” I asked.
“It wasn’t a phone message,” she said. “It was a note. He must have dropped it off when I wasn’t home. He’d been writing me little love notes for a few months.”
My mouth went dry. I fumbled through the contents of my purse before remembering that my phone had been turned into Toyota toe-jam.
“I’m up next.” Dawn headed for the door.
I snagged the cellphone that was sticking out of her purse. “Can I borrow this?”
“Knock yourself out,” she said.
It was impossible to get reception inside, so I weaved my way through the bar and out onto the street.
I dialled Sophie’s home number. As I waited for her to answer, I paced back and forth between the club and the neighbouring deli.
“Hi, Soph,” I said when she answered.
Static stuttered in my ear. “God, this is a bad connection,” Sophie said.
I walked a bit farther from the building. “I’m at Muffinz, that strip joint where Dawn Rapture works.”
“What do you want now?”
“When we were talking yesterday, you said the evidence consisted of fingerprints and cigarette butts, right?”
“Yeah.”
“What about the note?”
“Note? There wasn’t any . . .”
A large figure dressed in black charged at me from the doorway of the club. I cried out as strong hands pushed me backward into the dark, narrow space between the buildings. The phone clattered to the pavement.
“Help!” I yelled as I landed hard on my tailbone.
A big, gloved hand came down over my face. My assailant straddled me, holding my legs down.
I fumbled at my purse, but it was jerked off my shoulder and dumped onto the asphalt. The contents scattered.
My captor picked up the little canister of pepper spray. The face slowly lowered toward mine, the pepper spray held between us.
“Is this what you were looking for?” Amanda Chicago asked. She was dressed in black motorcycle leathers with a fuzzy mustache decorating her upper lip.
“Maybe I should use it on you.” She pointed the canister at me.
Clamping my eyes shut, I held my breath.
She laughed. “Relax.”
The hand lifted off my face, and I let my breath out in a whoosh.
“You have something that I want.” She settled more heavily on me. “I think you know what it is.”
My respirations were reduced to grunts. “The tape.”
“Smart, smart, smart.” She tapped my forehead with the pepper spray canister.
“It was in my purse. It’s on the ground somewhere.”
She reached into a pocket and pulled out a small, black revolver. Standing up, she said, “Then I guess you’d better find it.”
On my hands and knees, I sifted through the detritus of city life and quick, fevered love. I felt nauseous. “Why did you kill him, Mandy? That’s what he called you, wasn’t it? His little Mandy.”
“Shut up.”
I sat back on my heels and looked at her. My heart pounded at the back of my throat. “You could have killed her instead. She’s just a stripper. Who would care?”
“Keep looking!”
I continued moving garbage back and forth.
“You have no idea what it was like to watch my father turn into a simpering fool. Over a stripper! He belonged to me!”
“Maybe he loved her,” I said.
“He did not love her! He loved me! Not her.” Amanda kicked me in the ribs. I lay on my side, gasping.
She kicked me again. “Get up! Keep looking.”
It was all beginning to make sense. The little mustache. I hadn’t recognized her until she’d spoken. Anyone could be forgiven for mistaking her for a man. I wondered if she made a habit of visiting the club.
“Really clever with the cigarette butts.”
She smiled. “Weeks ago, I came here to kill her. Then I saw the way the old men drooled over the dancers, and I realized he’d come back. I couldn’t kill them all.”
“Did you talk to her that night?” I asked.
“I bought her a drink. She was flirting with me. Unbelievable. I helped myself to a few cigarette butts on the way out. Now all will be well,” Amanda continued. “She’ll be in jail. You’ll be dead. Daddy will never give his love to anyone else again.”
I shifted a little farther down the alley.
Amanda’s toe touched something. She picked up my tape recorder and held it up for me to see. “Look what I found.” She played back the last few seconds of the tape, popped it out and tucked it into a pocket.
She smiled at me. “I guess this is it. Too bad for you.”
“Wait,” I said. “I need to know one thing. How did you get him to the hotel room.”
“I suggested to Sal Bolino that my father needed a little bonus. Something special to make him relax. He’d been under too much stress lately. So it was arranged.”
“Were you there? Did you watch?”
“I waited in the closet. I just kept telling myself it would be over soon. After the girl left, he went into the bathroom to clean up. I walked over and said ‘Hi, Daddy’, and shot him.”
“In the heart because he broke yours.”
She stared at me.
I inched away from her and felt around for something to use as a weapon. “Then you wrote the note to Dawn Rapture? So that she’d come to the room and leave evidence?”
She laughed. “You’re just too damn smart. For all the good it’s going to do you.”
“Where is that note? Dawn’s note?”
“She leaves her car windows open. How stupid is that?”
She crouched down directly in front of me. “I want to watch your face when it happens. My dad looked so surprised.”
She raised the gun.
I glanced down as my hand touched a cool cylinder. The dark blue hairspray can was nearly invisible in the poor light.
“Bye, bye,” she said.
I twisted to the left. There was a sharp “crack”, and the breeze of the bullet buffe
ted my cheek. I jerked the little bottle up and pressed the button.
Amanda yelped and staggered backwards, wiping at her eyes. I launched myself at her. She waved the gun wildly as we bounced back and forth between the walls of the buildings. I grabbed her hand and scraped it along the brick, pressing with all my strength, leaving skin behind.
The gun hit me on the shoulder, and we both dived for it, elbowing each other. She kicked it, then threw herself forward. I fell on top of her. Digging a knee into her kidneys, I lunged past her and snatched it, leaving her empty-handed.
She howled and arched back, scrambling toward the end of the alley. She never made it. Her feet tangled in the straps of my purse, and she went down with a bone-rattling crash. The alley filled with flashing lights and blue uniforms poured in.
Questions came from every direction.
When the furor died down, I picked up the phone and dialled Sophie.
“Oh, my God!” she screamed into my ear. “Are you all right?”
“Thanks for calling the cops.”
“I didn’t know whether to hang up and call them or keep listening.”
“You made the right choice.”
“I guess we’re even now?” she asked.
I hung up without commenting.
I was hot and dirty, and my ribs ached. I needed a change of scenery. At least until the heat wave was over.
I headed into the club. Dawn Rapture owed me some money, and I wanted to collect before leaving town.
Bev Panasky, thanks to repressed criminal tendencies, placed second in the 2001 Capital Crime Writers Mystery Short Story Contest. Unable to afford therapy, she spends her free time cruising the airwaves and plotting nasty ends for old enemies. “The Night Chicago Died” is her first published short story.
Wake Up Little Suzie
Mary Jane Maffini
Now that Pops wasn’t there to keep an eye on things, it was all up to Suze. Someone had to make sure Mike Jr. learned his times tables and saved his paper route money for a winter jacket. Someone had to check Mom didn’t fall asleep with her cigarette still burning and get them booted out of another apartment. Suze didn’t mind. She taught Mike Jr. her best arithmetic tricks and showed him how to tie knots and read maps so he could get his Cub badges. She was a light sleeper, so it wasn’t so hard to get up and check the sofa for smouldering butts. Pops always said you do what you have to.