Spur of the Moment

by David Linzee

  “I guess that’s true.”

  “Too bad you’re not the one in here. You’d do well. But I … I’m driving myself mad, thinking what people must be saying about me. You have no idea what it’s like. No use expecting sympathy from you.”

  Right. She had let him talk long enough.

  “Listen, Don. I know you’d prefer to have a sister who’s as silly as you are, who thought that your biggest problem was that you are no longer in with the in-crowd. But at least you have a sister who is trying to clear you of murder. So make the best of it.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “I want to know what happened in Chicago.”

  “We’ve been over this before. I’m not keeping back anything that will help my case. So why go into it?”

  “Because I’m asking. I’ve been knocked on the head and humiliated and have lost my job, and now you will tell me the truth.”

  Don sighed and shrugged, and listlessly began the tale. “I didn’t think the trip was going to come off, even the day before—”

  “This was Friday, May fourteenth?”

  “Yes. Bert wasn’t even talking to me by this point. Helen was willing to see Carmen, but she kept asking, does it have to be Chicago? Why not somewhere else?” He smiled sourly. “She seemed to think operas were like movies, that they were playing everywhere.”

  “Why was she reluctant to go to Chicago?”

  “I don’t know. I sang the praises of the hotel and the restaurant where we’d have dinner, and she came round. And there I was, eleven a.m. Saturday morning, pacing the concourse at Lambert airport, and she walked in alone.

  “She was in a filthy mood. She’d had a flaming row with Bert, saying they were not going to give to an opera company, and apparently throwing in a lot of abuse aimed at me personally. It was a bad moment. But then I thought, Hang on a moment, she is here. The husband’s against SLO and she’s mad at the husband. I can work with this.

  “So I was jollying her along, saying, well, sucks to Bert, we’ll have a lovely time in Chicago. And it seemed to be working. It got her through security and onto the plane. But then I put a foot wrong. I said, ‘We’re of age. We don’t need a chaperon.’ And her face turned to stone. She looked out the window and didn’t say a word to me all the way to Chicago. When Helen ignored you, were you ever ignored.”

  “Did you ever find out what offended her?”

  “I think I made a mistake mentioning age. Reminded her she was a good deal older than me. Women worry about that sort of thing.”

  “I doubt Helen Stromberg-Brand did.”

  “I’d laid on a limo, and kept it a surprise, and that turned out to be a mood-changer. She livened up a good bit on the drive into town. The hotel was a hit—she’d never been to the Palmer House, and she liked the painted ceiling in the lobby. The restaurant too. I suggested New York strip steak with a side of frisée salad sprinkled with shaved beef tongue, which was risky, but she adored it. And she laughed at the Bizet anecdotes I’d swotted up.”

  Renata was finding her brother’s conversation as jejune as ever. She reminded herself to bear down and pay close attention.

  “We get to the gorgeous Civic Opera House, are shown to seats down front, and the overture begins. By the time the curtain rose, she had zoned out.”

  “Zoned out of Carmen? You’re joking.”

  “You remember, one of Bert’s nasty lines was that she never listened to a piece of music lasting more than five minutes. Well, I’m afraid he was right.”

  “She fell asleep?”

  “No. But she wasn’t applauding when everyone else did, and she was looking everywhere but at the stage. Her thoughts were elsewhere. I was wondering what I could say at the interval. Turned out I didn’t get the chance. She said she was going to see somebody.”

  “What did you do?”

  Don shrugged. “Saw her to the limo. Once Helen made up her mind, you could not get in her way and live to tell the tale. She didn’t say when she’d be back, and I thought she would not be returning to the theatre in any case. So I walked back to the hotel. I thought I could at least save the cab fare. This weekend was looking like a complete waste of a lot of money. Those were two-hundred-fifty-dollar seats we’d abandoned.

  “SLO simply had to have a large gift soon. The alternatives wouldn’t bear thinking on. So I sat in the lobby, with a view of the entrance, and made calls, trying to set up meetings with other possible donors, while I waited for her to come back.”

  “And did she?”

  “Yes. Two hours later.” He smiled unpleasantly at the memory. “I almost didn’t recognize her at first. It was the same red silk opera frock, but the face was different. She looked … deflated.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Like she’d been taken down a peg or two since I’d last seen her. She was actually looking to me for a kind word, and I thought, Right, I’m back in business. I’ve been given one more crack at her.”

  His expression was grim. Even vindictive. Not kind at all.

  “She tried to dismiss me at the door of her room, but feebly. She didn’t really want to be alone. The minibar had Bailey’s Irish Cream, her favorite late-night drink, and I gave her that and ordered a big bottle from room service. Then I helped her out of her pantyhose—”

  “Don, tell me now. Does this end with you being Don Giovanni?”

  “You’ve known that all along. Haven’t you?”

  “No. I wasn’t sure.”

  “She was feeling low. I was trying to make her feel better. I knew her favorite movie was Dirty Dancing and when the hotel couldn’t provide it, we watched it on my laptop in bed. And she kept getting cuddlier.” He shrugged.

  “And afterward?”

  “Once she fell asleep I went back to my own room. I called her at nine a.m. and it was obvious she’d woken up feeling like Scrooge on Christmas morning. Happy as could be. She wrote out the check on the airplane. Didn’t even make me go through the paperwork with her.”

  “That’s it?”

  “I told you there was no point going into it.”

  “You never asked where she went? Who she talked to?”

  “I’ve already told you, I was trying to make her feel better. Answering those questions wouldn’t have done.”

  “She didn’t want to talk the thing through? Americans love to talk things through.”

  “Couldn’t take that chance. Might have got quite messy, and I’d have been out of my depth. I’m not a psychotherapist.”

  “But later … I mean, you had a love affair, didn’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t say it amounted to that. We met a couple of times. But once she got back home … well, she had a lot on her plate.”

  “And you’d cashed her check.”

  Don sat up straight and folded his arms. “This is what you really came for, isn’t it? Another chance to feel superior to me. People like you have plenty of time to cultivate their finer feelings. You think singing about love is a living.”

  Chapter 58

  It was only mid-morning but already the sun was baking the plaza of St. Louis County Government Center, across the street from the jail. The benches between planters full of marigolds were unoccupied, except by Peter. Seeing her, he smiled and rose.

  Renata had a flashback: one day last winter she had been walking by a bench in Hyde Park, and a young man had stood up, smiling past her at his approaching girlfriend, and she’d been transfixed by a cold shaft of loneliness. Now she took a moment off from thinking that her last chance to help her brother was gone and she had failed completely, losing her job in the process. Instead she thought: This handsome young man is waiting for me.

  “Let’s sit,” she said, taking his hand.

  “Oh. I was hoping we might be going someplace.”

  “No. He told me about Chicago, but it was nothing useful.” She shook her head. “He knows nothing about Helen Stromberg-Brand. Aside from her taste in liqueur and films. I don’t
think he knows anything about anybody, really. He isn’t even curious.”

  “Easy, Renata. We don’t want him to go to prison just for being shallow. Tell me what he said.”

  “Well, something did happen. She walked out of Carmen, got in the limo SLO was paying for, and went to see someone. Two hours later she was back, looking glum. Apparently she’d got some bad news. But that’s all we have.”

  “If we could track down the limo driver, maybe—”

  “Grasping at straws.”

  “Start from the beginning. Tell me everything he said.”

  “Oh, all right. I warn you, it’s not an edifying story.” She started, and soon her gloom and irritation faded as she concentrated on reproducing the conversation as near verbatim as she could. Peter was one of those good listeners who made a talker of you. He sat very still, looking at the ground, and said nothing apart from an occasional “uh-huh.” The sun was hot upon her head, and she was sweating freely by the time she got to the end. “There you have it,” she said. “And sordid enough.”

  “Not especially. I kind of figured it went something like that. Though Dirty Dancing was a surprise. Tell me again what he said to her on the plane. His ‘faux pas,’ he called it.”

  “He said they were of age. He thought he shouldn’t have mentioned age. She went silent for the rest of the flight.”

  “He said something else.”

  “That they didn’t need a chaperon.”

  “That was the word that got to her. Age had nothing to do with it.”

  “Chaperon?”

  “It’s a term they use in the lab. It’s something in a cell, a protein that guides pilus subunits to their assembly point and makes sure they fit together.”

  “Pilus subunits. You’ve lost me.”

  “In Helen’s research, it’s the pilus that bacteria use to cling to the bladder lining and inflict a UTI.”

  “Oh, what Bryson compared to a grappling hook.”

  “Right.”

  “So Don’s chance use of that word … I’m still not with you.”

  “Earlier, Don said she was willing to go see Carmen, but she preferred not to see it in Chicago.”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s say there was someone in Chicago, a colleague, someone connected to her research. And she figured she ought to see him but she didn’t want to.”

  “What? Sorry to be so thick.”

  “These big shot research docs, they have more to do than people like us can imagine. People they ought to talk to but don’t want to talk to naturally fall to the bottom of the list and don’t get called for months. I know, I’ve been that person a few times. But if she was actually in Chicago—”

  “Yes. It can be harder not to go see someone when you’re there than to avoid calling them long-distance. You’re thinking that this person and Helen talked about the research, and he told her there was some problem with the vaccine.”

  “It’s a guess.” He stood up. “Let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “To see Dr. Patel. She’s the only person we know who worked on Helen’s project.”

  As they walked to the car, Peter took his iPhone out of his pocket and tapped keys. He handed it to her. The little screen was dense with print. It was Helen’s article in Nature, he explained, the big one announcing her discovery.

  “Oh, I see. You want me to read it and figure out what problems there could be with these pilus whatsits. By the time we get to the medical center.”

  “No. I want you to see if any of the co-authors live in Chicago.”

  All through the drive to the medical center, Renata picked at tiny keys and squinted at the screen. There were eight co-authors listed, all researchers at great universities, none of which were located anywhere near Chicago.

  Chapter 59

  Anisha Patel was sitting on a stool with her back to them when they entered her lab. It was busier today, full of students and technicians who stopped what they were doing and stared at Renata and Peter. Patel noticed and swiveled round. Stuffing her hands in the pockets of her lab coat, she came toward them frowning.

  “We agreed yesterday that I would not speak to you again.”

  “Things have changed,” said Peter.

  “They certainly have. We’ve all received an email from your boss Roger, saying that we are not supposed to talk to you. Except to tell you that Roger is waiting for you to go to him and explain your recent conduct.”

  “That’s decent of him. In his position I would just fire me.”

  “The email also said that if you refuse to leave, we should call security.”

  “You weren’t entirely honest with us yesterday, Dr. Patel,” said Renata.

  The narrow dark face turned to her and the large eyes fastened on hers. “I told you all I know about Ransome Chase.”

  “No, I mean that bit at the end. You asked us what happened in Chicago. But you knew more about that than we did. Didn’t you?”

  Patel dropped her head. She was silent for a moment, thinking. Then she turned and led them into her office. She shut the door behind them but did not sit down. “What have you found out?”

  “Helen went to see somebody in Chicago the night of May fifteenth,” Peter said. “It seems the meeting did not go well. Do you know who that person was?”

  “It did not go well?”

  “Don said that Helen looked dejected when she got back,” said Renata. “That’s all we know. She went to see someone connected with her research, didn’t she?”

  Patel took a deep breath and made up her mind. “I think so.”

  “Is there some problem with the vaccine?” Peter asked.

  She looked at him blankly. “What? Oh … no, it was nothing like that. The vaccine’s fine. It was … I guess you’d call it personal. I’m sorry to hear it didn’t go well.”

  “Is this a friend of yours?”

  Patel dropped her eyes. “I would say yes. He would say I wasn’t much of a friend to him.”

  “Dr. Patel,” Renata said, “how much longer are we going to dance around this?”

  She flinched. “His name is Jeff Csendes. He was a postdoc in Helen’s lab, like me. I don’t know for sure that it was him Helen went to see. But I think it was. Since you came to see me yesterday, I’ve been trying to reach him, by phone and email. He hasn’t responded.”

  “Only one thing to do, then,” Peter said. “Knock on his door.”

  Patel blinked at him. “You mean go to Chicago? Now?”

  “Dr. Patel, you have nothing else this important to do today.”

  Patel shrugged out of her lab coat and hung it on a hook, then took her purse out of a desk drawer. She said, “Let’s go.”

  Chapter 60

  The Railsplitter Rest Stop on Interstate 55, midway between St. Louis and Chicago, was busy. The lot was three-fourths full and people were streaming into the building to check the map and visit the bathrooms or vending machines. Some were even reading the plaques about the area’s connections with Lincoln. Schaefer was on the far side of the building, pacing in a small circle as he talked on his phone. He put it away and walked quickly back to the Porsche Cayenne. He was wearing a baseball cap and he kept his head down.

  Schaefer got in the driver’s seat. Bryson, who was also wearing a baseball cap, was slumped against the other door. The line of demarcation of his beard was blurred; he had not shaved, and his eyes were bleary. He had on a fresh T-shirt, without bloodstains. At another rest stop, one hundred miles to the south, Schaefer had gone shopping while Bryson kept an eye on Shane as he napped behind the wheel. Now Schaefer looked through the windscreen at the gray Saturn parked a dozen spaces away. It was empty. “He still in the men’s room?”

  “Yeah. No, here he comes.”

  The kid was walking down the path, rubbing his eyes. He got back into the Saturn and started the engine. Schaefer fastened the seatbelt and twisted the key.

  Bryson raised his iPhone and looked at the screen. “Twelve p.
m. precisely. I’m supposed to be Skyping Angelina Jolie. She’s been after me for days for advice on her UN ambassadorial duties.”

  Schaefer hesitated. Bryson had been looking at his phone regularly and reciting what his schedule called for him to be doing. Schaefer had explained several times that he had called a staffer, not Jayson but someone competent and tactful, and this person was covering for him. That didn’t seem to help Bryson, so this time Schaefer said, “You’ll Skype her tomorrow.”

  This didn’t seem to help either. Bryson put away his phone. The Saturn was backing out of its space. Schaefer waited until it was halfway down the ramp to the highway, then followed.

  “You find out anything?” Bryson asked.

  “Yes. My friend ran the plate. The car belongs to Louis J. Bistouri, D/B/A Bistouri Surveillance and Security, with an office address in the South Loop.”

  Bryson straightened up. “Then that’s where the disk is.”

  “Could be. I’m not sure enough of it to let this guy go.”

  “Do we have anything on him yet? Does Bistouri Surveillance and Security have employees?”

  “No information yet.” Schaefer gazed thoughtfully through the windshield. “If there weren’t so many people around back there, I maybe would’ve grabbed him. If he stops again—”

  Bryson looked over in alarm. “No. Forget it.”

  “The thing is, sir, once we get to Chicago, it’s going to be a lot harder to follow him. And if we lose him, and if the disk’s not at Bistouri’s office, we got nothing.”

  “My God, Schaefer, do you realize what you’re saying? Are we going to beat him till he tells us where the disk is? Waterboard him in some motel bathroom?”

  “You wouldn’t be directly involved.”

  “Involved enough. No, Schaefer. There are things I am not prepared to do.”