Spur of the Moment

by David Linzee

  “So Chase knew? That Helen put you up to filing the complaint, to knock him out of the professorship?”

  “Oh yes. He knew. That I dropped the complaint as soon as Helen let me—that made it even worse, as far as he was concerned.” She pushed back in her chair. “God, what a mess. How I wish you hadn’t come here. It was horrible enough, Helen dying. And this … this scandal. People treating her death like a dirty joke. And now ….” She looked at Renata. “Do you have any reason for thinking your brother didn’t do it? I mean, aside from he’s your brother and you love him?”

  “Yes. He told me what happened between him and Helen in her house on Saturday night, and it sounded plausible to me.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said she was perfectly calm. She’d gotten over the scene with her husband. She told Don she wasn’t going to let Bert demand the money back. If he delivered on his threat to go public, that was his problem. She was going to divorce him anyway. Don said he was out of the house in less than fifteen minutes. Well, from what I saw of Helen Stromberg-Brand, that sounds like her.”

  “Yes. It does sound like her.” Patel sighed and shook her head. “Bert. What a piece of work he is. Do you think he’ll be … going public, as you put it? Defaming Helen’s memory any more than he has already?”

  “I don’t think so. But it was a narrow escape yesterday. He was planning on telling the media that the affair started earlier than people thought. That Don seduced her to make her give the money.”

  “What a disgusting mind he has. That can’t be true, can it?”

  Renata shrugged. “They were all three supposed to go to Chicago about ten days ago to see Carmen. Bert dropped out, so Helen and Don went on their own.”

  “To Chicago?” Patel asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What happened? Was Bert right?”

  “I don’t know,” said Renata.

  “Do you have an idea, Dr. Patel?” asked Peter.

  “No idea at all. How would I?” She got to her feet, looking at her watch. “I have a lab meeting in fifteen minutes and that’s nowhere near long enough to pull myself together. I will not snitch on you, Peter from PR, but I will not talk to you again. It will have to be the police.”

  “Fair enough,” said Peter, also rising.

  In the corridor, Renata started back the way they had come, toward the elevators. He caught her arm and pointed to the stair door. “It’s just one flight.”

  “To where?”

  “Dr. Chase’s lab.”

  “Oh no.”

  “He shoots himself in the foot a lot, Patel said. Maybe we can take him by surprise and make him do that.”

  “But we can’t talk to him. He … he could be a murderer.”

  “I interviewed a few murderers, when I was on the paper. They were pretty much like anybody else.”

  Chapter 39

  Schaefer entered the Ezlyon reception room. Jayson was sitting behind the desk. Bistouri was standing in front of it.

  “Mr. Schaefer, meet Mr. Won’t-Give-His-Name. He wants to see Keith Bryson, and that’s about all I can tell you.”

  Bistouri looked Schaefer up and down and seemed to recognize him, but said nothing. Schaefer closed the door and leaned against it, folding his arms.

  “Are you connected to the guy who came in this morning?” asked Jayson.

  “Forget about him. I just sent him to test your set up. You’ll be dealing with me from now on.”

  “You’re not gonna have any better luck than he did, unless you tell us more than he did. So let’s try again. Why do you want to see Keith?”

  Bistouri said nothing.

  “What’s your name?”

  Bistouri said nothing.

  “Where are you from?”

  Bistouri said, “Chicago.”

  Schaefer straightened up and let his arms fall to his sides. “Okay, Jayson. We’re gonna need the room for a minute.”

  Jayson turned to look at him. “What?”

  “Give us the room, please.”

  “The room you’re talking about happens to be my office.”

  “Get the fuck out of here, now.”

  Jayson rose grudgingly and went out, slamming the door behind him.

  Bistouri said, “The kid is very slick. He’s got a switch under the desk that turns on a recorder. You probably want to turn it off now.”

  Schaefer went to the desk, opened a bottom drawer and reached in. There was a click as the recorder went off. He straightened up. “What have you got?”

  “A video recording made between nine seventeen and ten oh four p.m. May twentieth, at apartment B-218, 1396 Kominsky Avenue, Chicago, Illinois. Picture and sound quality are very good.”

  Schaefer’s face showed no reaction, but he was silent for a long time. Finally he said, “I’ll need to see it, eventually. For the moment, how much do you want?”

  “I want to see Bryson.”

  Schaefer shook his head. “You’ll be dealing with me.”

  “Has to be Bryson.”

  “He’s authorized me to handle this matter.”

  “Yeah, I know how authorized you are, Schaefer,” Bistouri said. “You were the guy your boss took to Chicago. But I want Bryson.”

  The two men stared at each for a moment, unmoving. Then Schaefer said, “How can I reach you?”

  Bistouri put a slip of paper bearing a telephone number on the desk and left without a word.

  Chapter 40

  As they approached Dr. Chase’s lab, a tall, heavy-set man with a knapsack slung over one shoulder backed out of the doorway, pulling the door closed behind him. Hearing their footfalls, he turned. Renata had no difficulty recognizing the man she had seen at Carmen’s Cornucopia. His large glasses were trifocals, and they seemed too heavy for his knobby nose. The nose was about all she could see of his features; half his face was covered, though not adorned, by his beard. It was the patchy kind, sparse here, thick there, brown mixed with gray, and badly in need of a trim. His blue jeans hung low under his belly and his plaid sports shirt bared hairy, powerful forearms.

  “Dr. Chase, may we have a word?” said Peter.

  But Chase’s gaze fastened on Renata. It was intent enough to raise the butterflies in her stomach. Was this the man Reyes had seen, the man who was not walking a dog? Was he the murderer of Helen Stromberg-Brand?

  “I’ve seen you on TV,” he said. “You’re the guy’s girlfriend. No, sister.”

  She nodded. She was too nervous to speak.

  “Renata Radleigh, mezzo-soprano. Are you in this thing tonight? How is it? My girlfriend is threatening to drag me.” Without waiting for a reply he shifted his gaze to Peter. “Who are you?”

  “Peter Lombardo. We exchanged emails yesterday.”

  “Refresh me.”

  “About Dr. Stromberg-Brand’s obit.”

  “Oh gawd. What did I say? No, never mind. What do you want today?”

  “We’d like to talk to you for a few minutes.”

  “Haven’t got ’em. I’m late for a meeting. You can ride down in the elevator with me if you want.”

  He set off down the corridor. They fell in on either side of him. It was like keeping pace with a bear. He had a hunched posture and a heavy, waddling gait. She wondered how much weight he had in his backpack.

  “I’m sorry for your brother,” he said to her.

  She still could not find her voice, so Peter filled in for her. “Jail is tough on anybody.”

  “No, I mean having to sleep with Helen Stromberg-Brand. Gives me chills. He did it just for the money, I assume?”

  “I don’t know,” Renata said. Such was the force of Chase’s personality that he was towing them along, making them answer questions rather than allowing them to ask any.

  Peter must have felt it too, because he decided to assert himself. “We’ve just been speaking to Dr. Patel.”

  “Oh gawd. Don’t get me started.” They had reached the bank of elevators. Chase pressed th
e call button, then looked from one of them to the other. “Say, what’s going on here? You’re trying to dig up dirt on Stromberg-Brand to drum up some sympathy for your brother. That’s obvious.”

  He turned to Peter. “But why are you helping her? You’re from PR. One of the dessert chefs. Forever circling the great big angel food cake that is Adams U Med, looking for another ass-kissing doc to squirt a little icing on.”

  He leaned confidentially toward Renata, “You must have used your wiles to get this guy on your side. Doesn’t he know he’s toast?”

  “I know,” said Peter.

  “Not that I’ll rat you out. But they’ll find out. They always do.”

  “In that case I might as well get some answers in exchange for my job. Was Patel’s complaint justified?”

  Chase gave a bark of laughter. “Let me make one thing clear. I never laid a finger on Patel.”

  “She didn’t say you had.”

  Chase appeared not to hear. “It was strictly verbal harassment. That’s the thing bothered me most about this whole mess. That some people got the idea I was hot for scrawny little Patel.” The doors slid open. Two young Asians in lab coats were standing there, holding a caged white rabbit. There was a small bloodstain behind its ear. Chase took no notice of them as he got in. He pressed a button and leaned against the wall. “And what was the harassment? A few mild jokes about her Indian origins. Not that Patel even had much to do with India. You thought she clawed her way up from the slums of Bombay, or whatever they call it now? She was born in Houston. Her father’s a cardiologist.”

  “Do you think Stromberg-Brand put her up to it?

  “Sure. But you’ll never be able to prove that. The young girl network in this place is even tighter than the old boy network was. I know, ’cause I’ve had ’em both against me.”

  “Did it cost you the professorship?”

  Chase put a thumb in a belt loop and hitched his jeans up the downslope of his belly. “Put it this way. There were a lot of people on my side. But they were just the rank and file. The people who think our job is to heal the sick. The big shots wanted Stromberg-Brand. Patel gave ’em the excuse they needed.”

  He raised his voice. “Want to know how you get to be a name professor in this place? It’s simple enough. You kids listening?”

  The two young scientists smiled nervously and looked at the floor.

  “You bring in grant money. Lots of it. That’s what keeps the wheels turning around here. So the committee weighed up my grant-earning potential against Helen’s. They said, well now, Chase, if he finds the cure, it may save thousands of lives. Unfortunately, these are all brown or black people, in poor countries. The pharmas develop a drug for them, and what’ll be their reward? These countries will start demanding they give it away for free. Now, Helen, if she finds her UTI vaccine, well, it won’t prevent any deaths, but it will make millions of comfortable lives even more comfortable. The customers will be American and European and Oriental women. With health insurance. Helen was bound to bring in more grant money than me.”

  The elevator doors opened. They stepped out into a small, bare lobby. The young scientists were exchanging sidelong glances as the doors closed.

  “So the committee made their decision,” Chase went on. “I can live with it. A lot of people in Latin American couldn’t.”

  “Aw, come on, Dr. Chase. You’re saying you would have cured Chagas Disease?” Peter was taking obvious pleasure in waving the red flag at the bull.

  “The stars were aligned. If I’d gotten the Blix chair, I could have afforded to hire a couple of particularly brilliant postdocs from Penn. One of them had studied under Lehrer at Ohio State, and he would have agreed to collaborate with me. Lehrer’s in tight with the Brent Foundation and we’d have gotten a grant from them. Yes, by now we would have cured Chagas.”

  Chase crossed the lobby. He paused with his hand on the door. “But so what? I gotta admit, Stromberg-Brand delivered the goods.”

  “You’re impressed with the vaccine she developed?” Peter asked.

  “No, I’m impressed she snagged Keith Bryson as her venture capitalist. Running triathlons. Racing yachts. Screwing movie stars. The world thinks everything that guy does is cool. Now he’s going to make investing in Adams U Med startups cool, too.”

  Chase had more to say on the topic, but he looked over Renata’s shoulder and changed his mind. A shuttle bus was pulling up at the curb.

  “Got to catch that.” Before either of them could say anything, he was through the doors, pulling out his cellphone as he ran for the bus, his knapsack bouncing on his back.

  They looked at each other in silence. It took a moment to calm down, after Ransome Chase left you. She felt short of breath, her heart was pounding, and her fists were clenched. The very air of the small lobby seemed to be sloshing around, like the water in a pool after someone has dived into it. Chase was one of those self-righteous people who had the ability to infect you with their indignation.

  Chapter 41

  “What next?” Renata asked.

  They were sitting on a bench in the shade, on the edge of the Emerson Electric Picnic Lawn at SLO. It was only mid-afternoon, but already preparations were beginning for opening night: people were setting up tables and chairs on the lawn. Caterers’ trucks were unloading next to the pavilion. Gardeners were kneeling and snipping in the flowerbeds.

  Peter replied, “We go to the cops and tell ’em we think Ransome Chase killed Helen Stromberg-Brand. We give ’em what we have and tell ’em to take it from here. That detective you mentioned—”

  “McCutcheon. A hard man to impress.”

  “He can laugh in our faces if he wants. But he has to file a report. And after that we keep the pressure on.”

  Renata smiled. “I love it when you say ‘we,’ Peter. But there’s a problem.”

  “You don’t believe Chase did it.”

  “The things he said to us today. Surely he wouldn’t talk like that if he were guilty.”

  “Problem is, Chase has always talked like that. He’s famous for it around the medical center. Maybe he figures, if he suddenly stopped slamming Helen Stromberg-Brand, it would be even more suspicious.”

  “You’re convinced, aren’t you?”

  “I had my doubts, until I met him. Now I’m convinced. Where there’s smoke there’s fire.”

  “But … Peter, did you notice what Patel said about Chicago, right at the end of our talk?”

  “You mean when she asked if Don slept with Helen that weekend?”

  “She didn’t ask that. She asked what happened in Chicago.”

  Peter’s hazel eyes narrowed behind his gold-rimmed spectacles. “I’m confused.”

  “It keeps nagging at me, what happened here yesterday. Bert Stromberg-Brand was threatening the SLO bigwigs. He was going to tell the media what happened in Chicago. And right then Keith Bryson popped up, and they all went into a confab, and nobody mentioned Chicago again.”

  “Bryson didn’t just happen to pop up,” Peter said. “My boss Roger went over to his condo Sunday night and convinced him that as Helen’s partner he should go to her defense. And he obviously convinced Bert to stop talking about your brother seducing Helen in Chicago.”

  “I’m not sure Don did that. Anyway I think something more important happened in Chicago.” She thought for a moment. “So Bryson was in St. Louis on Sunday? I’d very much like to know if he was here on Saturday, too.”

  “Wait … you suspect Bryson killed Helen?”

  She shook her head and winced. “I can’t even get that far. I have no evidence. Not even a theory. I just can’t help thinking, on one side of Helen Stromberg-Brand’s life, you have an opera. An envious husband. A bit of money, a bit of sex. And that’s the side everyone is paying attention to. But on the other side, you have her partner, a rich and powerful and famous man, and a vaccine that’s going to change millions of people’s lives and earn a vast fortune. I have this feeling everyone’s barking
up the wrong tree.”

  “Have you done anything about this feeling?”

  She laughed. “Nothing effective.”

  “Except get yourself that shiner?”

  “Aren’t you the clever one? Yes, all right.” She explained her misadventure of the night before. Peter listened gravely. He said, “Renata, please don’t do anything like that again.”

  “Not to worry. I won’t.”

  “This character, he may only have been spooked that you were following him. He probably had nothing to do with the vaccine or the murder.”

  “Yes, yes. Some crazed celebrity stalker or reckless paparazzo. Don explained it all to me. But I’m not convinced. I think this tattooed man is terribly important. Maybe it’s just because I’m the one he hit. But I have the feeling something is going on. Something is in play. And if I could find out what, I could help Don.”

  Renata broke off, because she had suddenly remembered Archibald Henderson. He could have told her where he had found her purse. And if she hadn’t been so busy being annoyed with him, she would have realized how important that could be.

  “Peter, I’ve been thick as a plank.”

  “What?”

  She had her cellphone out and was scrolling through stored numbers. “This man rang to say he’d found my purse. But he wanted too big a reward, and I told him to get stuffed. What time is it?”

  “Almost three.”

  “He gave me till five to reconsider. Let’s hope he’s as good as his word.” Archibald Henderson was presumably not behind the wheel of his truck, because he answered at once. “Well, hello, Ms Radleigh. You changed your mind?”

  “Yes. Sorry I got shirty with you.”

  “ ‘Shirty?’ That’s what y’all call it, on your side of the pond?”

  “In the mother country, yes. In fact, Mr. Henderson, I’m more interested in where you found the purse than in getting it back. You said it was quite a story.”

  “Yes, and I’ll be happy to tell you, as soon as you pay me the hundred dollars.”