December 2, 1922 PARIS: Gare de Lyon train station: The train, typical of the time, had compartments to provide passengers with privacy. Feather Cat handed her baggage to the porter, keeping the small valise. She went straight to her compartment. Before departure, she left to check on her luggage and purchase a newspaper. The valise was gone when she returned.
December 3, 1922 LAUSANNE: The train station: The husband met Feather Cat when the train arrived. She wept uncontrollably, unable to tell him what was wrong. Poo comforted her, saying that no matter what had happened, nothing could be that bad. She told him of the missing valise and his work.
December 3, 1922 LAUSANNE: The train station: Disbelieving, the husband immediately boarded the next express train for the twelve hour journey back to Paris. Poo left Feather Cat in Switzerland.
December 4, 1922 PARIS: 74 rue de Cardinal Lemoine: The husband inquired at the Gare de Lyon train station. He searched the entire loft. He found only one story, "Up in Michigan," in the back of a drawer. Three years of writing, including the carbon copies, were gone. He was especially angry about the carbon copies.
DAY 1 -SUNDAY
Love is like a war-Easy to begin-Hard to end.
-SCOTTISH PROVERB
MY NAME Is DD MCGIL, and please don't ask what the DD stands for. I'm female, blonde, a Scot, and in the insurance investigations business -all of which, I frequently remind people, doesn't necessarily make me a bad person. I make my living in and around the Windy City-quite a nice place, politics aside. Chicago strives to be an elegant city, but somehow it never gets too far from its name which, taken from the Chippewa, means "skunk."
I used to have my feet firmly planted 579 feet above sea level on terra Chicago-but not lately. I'd like to start at the beginning, but there wasn't really a beginning. Just an ending. It happened eight months ago-eight long months ago when I was in the midst of a great relationship with a terrific guy named Scotty Stuart. Eight long months ago when I didn't believe in curses' until my doorbell rang, and I got the news. Since that day I've been fighting desperately to keep my head above water.
The problem was that things had been going so well I'd forgotten one of my Auntie Elizabeth's favorite maxims. She warned me at least a hundred times that we Scots must always pay attention to the cogs in the universe and keep watch over our shoulder-most especially when things are going well. I didn't, and that's when the universe ran me over.
It happened on a Tuesday, a frosty Chicago evening with the wind howling and the stars so bright and clear any sailor could have easily navigated his way to my third floor walk-up apartment in Wrigleyville. When Scotty failed to appear for our tete-a-tete dinner, I remember I wasn't the least upset. He was involved with the International Monetary Fund doing all kinds of top-secret things with worldwide currency and was often called away unexpectedly, especially in the wake of the current global economic crisis. So I shrugged it off, sipped my pinot grigio, petted my cat, and watched the clouds obscure the moon, never seeing the big wave headed right for me. I thought I knew everything there was to know about Scotty Stuart, but I didn't know what I really needed to know.
After two frantic days, the cops finally agreed to list Scotty as a missing person. Then for the next four months, I investigated. I should say tried to investigate. There were no leads, no clues as to what had happened to him or where he'd gone. His car was gone. His cell phone and credit cards hadn't been used, and no one had heard from him. He hadn't bought an airline ticket, a train or a bus ticket. He hadn't paid any of his bills, either. I harassed the cops at the police station every day. I harassed Scotty's friend in the Treasury, Harry Marley, who I'd met working on the HI Data counterfeiting case. For all my hot shot investigating, I uncovered a big zero. No one had seen him-nobody knew his whereabouts. Even my Aunt Elizabeth, who often has premonitions, was no help. The fact that there wasn't one single clue made me even more frightened and more obsessed. I had to find out what happened. I dropped all my other jobs, made it my only case and kept investigating, using every angle I could devise.
Then late one night my doorbell rang. I was curled up with my cat on the sofa, and a sudden chill ran up my spine. Scotty! I rushed to the peephole, hoping, wishing, praying. No luck. It was someone I'd never seen before-a big guy with broad shoulders and a good haircut wearing glasses with steel frames. He didn't look like a cop, but you never know. Sighing, I opened the door on the chain-wide enough for me to see him but not wide enough to let my cat, Cavalier, run into the corridor. How was I to know that even that little opening was enough to let the wave crash in on me.
"DD McGil?"
"Who wants to know?"
He flashed a Secret Service identity badge at me but held his thumb over his name. My knees buckled. I grabbed the doorknob for support.
"Stop searching for Scotty Stuart," he whispered in a low voice.
"What?"
"Listen to me. I'm only going to say this once. He's in witness protection, and you're not doing him or yourself any good."
11 "But... .
"No buts. You're causing problems you can't even imagine," he hissed. "For God's sake stop looking for him if you want him to stay alive."
He was alive! But could I believe him?
"Where ... .
Before I could say another word, he'd already turned and hurried along the hallway and down the stairs and was out the door before I reached the landing.
Now its four months later and I've given up the investigation. I had to. There were no more leads, no more clues, and I couldn't-wouldn't -take the chance that I might put Scotty in more danger. I went through the worried stage, the anger stage, the horror stage and the grief stage. I'm past all that. I've even outgrown the "We'll always have Paris" stage. Now I'm in the anti-social stage. I generally spend evenings at home with Cavalier, my Ragdoll cat. We share TV dinners and watch the tube like an old married couple.
My father had a favorite saying, "Let your wants hurt you," and that's exactly what I was doing. I remember I had done the same thing after my fiance's death a few years ago. I was in a rut, and that was part of the trouble. I guess that's why Tom Joyce, my erstwhile friend who runs the wellknown Joyce and Company bookstore in Chicago, handed me a ticket to a Hemingway docu-drama performance at Northwestern University.
"Something came up and I can't use it," he said, pressing the ticket into my hand. "You go."
"I ... .
"Go for my sake if nothing else," he pleaded. "You're getting positively moribund."
"Adjective, from the Latin, meaning in a dying state."
"Not exactly dying, DD, but I do think stale. You've lost your vitality. Yes, you've started working again, doing a few jobs for your attorney friends, but I've never seen you like this. You hibernate in your apartment every night with your cat, and believe me I like Cavalier, but you're stuck in time."
"It's not like that."
"I know you cared for Scotty. I liked-I like him too. But DD, if he's in witness protection like that Secret Service chap said, then you have got to make up your mind you'll never see him again."
"I won't accept that."
"And that's exactly your problem. Look, if they had to whisk him away in the dark of night like they did, it means something big and bad is after him. And it means it'll probably be after him for the rest of his life -and yours."
I knew he was right, and the "moribund" stung me into accepting the ticket and promising him I'd go.
Nonetheless, I was having second thoughts. I kissed Cavalier goodby, and his kitty meow sounded like he too was surprised I was actually leaving.
"It's not a date," I explained. "And I'll be home early." I grabbed my purse and left before I could change my mind again.
The stage production was entertaining and surprisingly historically accurate. It featured a Hemingway look-alike re-enacting scenes from the author's life. The theme was "A New Book For Every New Woman." I abruptly stopped paying attention when my old college flame, David Barnes,
appeared on the stage. I had no premonition he'd be back from Paris directing the production.
When the lights came back on, I sat staring at the empty stage. My feet were being trampled on by the usual scramble of exiting patrons, but I was immobile, damning myself for breaking my own cardinal rule. Years ago, I'd vowed to keep out of the clutches of academia, and most especially from anything to do with Hemingway. I guess some people never learn.
Not wanting to be within twenty feet of David Barnes, damn him, I joined the crowd heading for the nearest exit. Suddenly, in a flash of brown hair and blue eyes, there he was, saying in that unmistakable David voice,
"DD McGil. I thought that was you. Sometimes it's hard to see out from the stage through those lights."
There was no escape. Tom Joyce and his rotten ticket-I knew I should have stayed home with the cat.
I looked up at him. "Hello, David."
"Where the hell have you been, DD? I've been trying to find you for months. Nobody at the university knew where you'd gone."
"Guess I'm not the only one who's not so good at keeping in touch," I said, thinking about all the years he'd had to call or write.
"I know, DD. I'm sorry."
"Luckily I didn't hold my breath." I edged around him. We were nearly the only ones left in the rapidly emptying lobby. As I squeezed by, David put his hand on the back of my neck, under my hair.
"Wait a minute, DD. I really need to talk to you."
The intimate gesture stopped me. David hadn't changed much since I'd seen him last. He was still tall, handsome, trim, and boyish. And those piercing blue eyes hadn't changed either, except for a few small lines at the corners. He was more tan than I remembered, but that might have been from stage makeup.
I closed my eyes. Long suppressed memories of graduate school flashed through my consciousness. David had been an up-and-coming Hemingway scholar and my first grand passion. I remembered the hard work, the cold cast of light on campus during those Chicago winters, and the delirium of falling in love very fast and very hard. As it turned out, I'd fallen much harder than he, and he'd dumped me for a fellowship in Paris to study twentieth century American expatriate writers. "I'll write you every day," he'd promised at the airport. But that was over a dozen years ago, and we hadn't seen each other since. It was David Barnes who first taught me how complicated life could be. Then I'd met Frank. And then Scotty. Statistically speaking, my luck with men was really shitty.
"There's something I really need to talk to you about," he said. "I was looking for you because I've got big news. I finally made it. C'mon, have dinner with me. I need your advice."
The David I knew never needed anybody's advice, least of all mine.
I looked into his eyes, trying to read him. Damning myself for a fool because this is how I impulsively get into trouble, I asked: "Just what do you have in mind?"
"You always could put things in perspective," he said, flashing that old David Barnes smile.
If I really were to put things into perspective, I'd run for the door.
"DD, right now everybody around me has an axe to grind, and I can't trust them;' he said. "Will you help me?" My little internal voice was shouting no. But I was curious, and being an insurance investigator teaches you to listen. So instead of ducking out I said, "Okay, let's hear it."
PAPA DOBLE
Hemingway's Daiquiri
As served in La Florida, Havana, Cuba
2 ih jiggers Bacardi White Label Rum
Juice: 2 Limes
ih Grapefruit
6 drops maraschino liqueur
Place in electric mixer over shaved ice.
Whirl vigorously and serve foaming.
E O 0 0 x Q E 0 x I
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chicago native Diane Gilbert Madsen brings a real feel for the Windy City to her DD McGil Literati Mystery series. Madsen attended the University of Chicago and earned an M.A. in seventeenth-century English Literature from Roosevelt University. She was Director of Economic Development for the State of Illinois and oversaw the Tourism and Illinois Film Office during the time The Blues Brothers was filmed. She also ran her own consulting busines and is listed in Who's Who in Finance and Industry and the World Who's Who of Women.
Fascinated by crime, history, and business, her interest in writing murder mysteries was sparked when she met the suspect in a murder that occurred near her home. The suspect was convicted, then later exonerated of the crime, and the encounter caused her to rethink how people form their first impressions of murder suspects. Her Scots heritage and membership in Robert Burns, St. Andrews, and Caledonian Societies contributed to writing this book.
Recently Diane and her husband Tom moved to Florida where they live at Twin Ponds, a five-acre wildlife sanctuary. Check the latest news at http//dianegilbertmadsen.com
* "A Cadger's Curse," Midnight Ink (2009)
A Cadgers Curse Page 24