Total Recall

by Sara Paretsky

  “Was he renting month-by-month, or is there a lease?”

  He’d gone to month-by-month. She agreed to lend me a spare office key that she’d kept, but the thought of having to get all those files packed up by the end of September, and of having to work with the various companies to shift active policyholders to a new agency, made her droop further into her yellow shirt.

  “I don’t know what I thought you’d be able to tell me, but it doesn’t seem like you’re going to be able to find who killed him. I gotta lie down. Somehow, all this, it has me worn out. You’d think all you’d do is cry, but it’s like all I can do is sleep.”

  XXIII Fencing in the Dark

  My long trek north to Morrell’s took me through the disturbing vistas of the western suburbs: no center, no landmarks, just endless sameness. Sometimes row on row of ranch houses, sometimes of more-elaborate, more-affluent tracts, but all punctuated with malls showing identical megastores. The third time I passed Bed Bath & Beyond and Barnes & Noble I thought I was driving in circles.

  “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, a long way from home,” I sang, as I sat in a stationary lane at one of the everlasting tollbooths on the rim road around the city. I was motherless, after all, and forty miles from Morrell’s home.

  I flung my change into the box and scoffed at myself for melodramatic self-pity. Real grief lay in Rhonda Fepple’s story: the childless mother. It’s so out of the order of nature, and it exposes you as so fundamentally powerless, to have a child die before you: you never really recover from it.

  Howie Fepple’s mother didn’t think her son had committed suicide. No mother would want to believe that of her child, but in Fepple’s case it was because he was excited-he finally understood how Rick Hoffman had made enough money out of his book to drive a Mercedes-and he was going to get one for Rhonda.

  I pulled out my phone to call Nick Vishnikov, the chief deputy medical examiner, but the traffic suddenly cleared; the SUV’s around me quickly accelerated to eighty or ninety. The call could wait until it didn’t put my life in danger to make it.

  The dogs panted gently over my shoulder, reminding me that it had been some hours since their last run. When I finally reached the Dempster exit I pulled off at a forest preserve to let them out. It was dark now, the park officially closed, with a piece of chain blocking me from going farther than a few yards off the main road.

  While Mitch and Peppy excitedly set off after rabbits I stood at the chain with my cell phone, calling first Morrell to tell him we were only eight miles away, then trying Lotty again. She had left the clinic, her receptionist, Mrs. Coltrain, told me.

  “How did she seem?”

  “Dr. Herschel is working too hard: she needs to take some time off for herself.” Mrs. Coltrain has known me for years, but she won’t gossip about Lotty with anyone, not even to agree with Max when he mocks her imperial manner.

  I tapped the phone thoughtfully. If I was going to have a heart-to-heart with Lotty I should do it sitting down at home, but this was Morrell’s last night in Chicago. The dogs were crashing around somewhere near me. I called to them, to remind them that I was here and in charge of the pack. When they’d run up, sniffed my hands, and torn off again, I reached Lotty at home.

  She cut short my attempt to express concern at her collapse yesterday. “I’d rather not discuss it, Victoria. I’m embarrassed that I created such a disturbance in the middle of Max’s party and don’t want to be reminded of it.”

  “Maybe, oh physician, you should consult a doctor yourself. Make sure you’re okay, that you didn’t hurt yourself when you fainted.”

  Her voice took on a sharper edge. “I’m perfectly fine, thanks very much.”

  I stared into the dark underbrush, as if seeing it would enable me to penetrate Lotty’s mind. “I know you weren’t in the room with Radbuka last night when he was going on about his past, but did Max tell you Radbuka found a posting on a bulletin board from someone wanting information about Sofie Radbuka? I went on the Web today and found the site. Radbuka is convinced she must have been his mother or his sister; at least, he wrote a long message to that effect. Lotty, who was she?”

  “You found Sofie Radbuka on the Web? That’s impossible!”

  “I found someone who wanted information about her, saying that she lived in England during the forties,” I repeated patiently.

  “Max didn’t think fit to tell me that,” she snapped. “Thank you very much.”

  She hung up, leaving me uncomfortably alone in the dark woods. A sense of being both forlorn and ridiculous made me call the dogs back to me again. I could hear them thrashing around, but they wouldn’t come. I had kept them penned up all day-they weren’t going to reward me by being good dogs now.

  Before going to the car for a flashlight so I could track them, I made one last call-to Nick Vishnikov at the morgue. After all, the place never closes. When I dialed the number-which I know by heart-I got the one thin piece of luck the Fates were allowing me today: Vishnikov, who pretty much chooses his hours, was still there.

  “Vic. How’s Morrell? He in Kabul yet?”

  “Tomorrow,” I said. “Nick-there’s a guy with a head wound who came in this morning. The police are calling it suicide.”

  “But you murdered him and you want to confess.” Autopsies make him ferociously cheerful.

  “Howard Fepple. I want to be a hundred-fifty percent certain that he put that SIG Trailside to his head all by himself.”

  He hadn’t done Fepple’s case. While he put me on hold to check the files, I fiddled with the dogs’ leashes, wishing I hadn’t let them disappear into the dark-I couldn’t hear them now.

  “I handed it off to one of my juniors since it seemed straightforward, and he treated it as routine suicide, but I see he didn’t check the hands for gunpowder-he relied on the fact that the victim ate the gun. We still have the body-I’ll review it before I leave. Do you have evidence of murder?”

  “People do the darnedest things, but I have a guy who told his mother he was on to something hot, and I have a mystery visitor to his office. I’d love it if the state’s attorney pulled Fepple’s phone logs.”

  “I’ll let you know if there’s anything to change the verdict. Later, Vic.”

  I wondered whether my client had gone around with a gun to threaten Fepple, but Isaiah Sommers didn’t strike me as the kind of person who would set up an elaborate trap. If Fepple had been murdered by the person who called him when I was in the office on Friday, that was someone who was planning to kill and planning a way to avoid being seen. He had gone in and out of the building with big enough groups of people to avoid notice. He’d shown Fepple how to get away from me. It didn’t sound like Isaiah Sommers.

  Momentarily forgetting the dogs, I got the Sommers number from directory assistance. Margaret Sommers answered, her voice heavy with hostility, but after a moment’s pause, in which she couldn’t think of a reason not to, she brought her husband to the phone. I told him about Fepple’s death.

  “I searched both the office and his home and couldn’t find a trace of your uncle’s file,” I said. “The police are labeling this a suicide, but I think someone killed him, and I’m sort of thinking they killed him to get that file.”

  “Who would do that?”

  “It could be that whoever perpetrated the fraud to begin with left some kind of record behind that they don’t want anyone else to find. It could be someone got pissed enough at the guy over something else to kill him.”

  When I paused, he exploded. “You accusing me of going in there to murder him? My wife was right. Alderman Durham was right. You never had the least-”

  “Mr. Sommers, I’ve had a long day. I’m out of finesse. I don’t think you killed the guy. On the other hand, you’ve clearly got a temper. Maybe your wife or the alderman pushed you to stop waiting for me to get results, to go see Fepple yourself. Maybe his smirking do-nothing attitude goaded you to act.”

  “Well, it didn’t. He did
n’t. I agreed to wait for you and I am waiting for you. Even though the alderman thinks I’m making a big mistake.”

  “He does? What does he recommend?”

  Peppy and Mitch bounded up to me. I smelled them before I saw them, darker shapes against the darkness of the clearing where I stood-they had rolled in something rank. My hand over the mouthpiece, I ordered them to sit. Peppy obeyed, but Mitch tried to jump on me. I pushed him away with my foot.

  “That’s just it. He doesn’t have a plan I can follow. He wants me to initiate a suit against Ajax, but like I asked him, who’s going to pay all those legal bills? Who has that kind of time? My wife’s brother, he took on a big lawsuit, it dragged through the courts for thirteen years. I don’t want to wait thirteen years to get my money back.”

  In the background I could hear Margaret Sommers demanding to know why he wanted to tell the whole world her private business. Mitch lunged at me again, knocking me off-balance. I sat down hard, the phone still clutched to my ear. I tried to push Mitch away without shouting into the mouthpiece. He barked in excitement, thinking we were having a wonderful game together. Peppy tried to shove him out of the way. By now I smelled just as bad as the two of them. I clipped their leashes on and stood up.

  “Am I ever going to get any satisfaction out of this situation?” Sommers was demanding. “I’m sorry about the agent: that was a terrible way to die, but it’s no joke to come up with all that cash for a funeral, Ms. Warashki.”

  “I’m going to talk to the company tomorrow, to see if they’ll offer a settlement.” I was going to pitch it to them as a way of building PR ammo against Durham, but I didn’t think it would help relations with the client if I told him that. “If they offer you something on the dollar, would that be acceptable?”

  “I-let me think about it.”

  “Very wise, Mr. Sommers,” I said, tired of standing around in the dark with my smelly dogs. “Your wife should have a chance to tell you I’m trying to rob you. Call me tomorrow. Oh-do you own a gun yourself?”

  “Do I-oh, I see, you want to know if I’m lying about killing that agent.”

  I rubbed a hand through my hair, realizing a second too late how much it stank of rotten rabbit. “I’m trying to assure myself that you couldn’t have killed him.”

  He paused. I could hear him breathing heavily in my ear while he thought it over and then reluctantly revealed that he owned a nine-millimeter Browning Special.

  “That’s reassuring, Mr. Sommers. Fepple was killed with a Swiss model, different gauge. Call me tomorrow about whether you’ll take a deal from the company. Good night.”

  As I yanked the dogs toward the car, a forest-preserve deputy pulled into the clearing behind my Mustang, shining his searchlight on us. He demanded over his bullhorn that I come over. When we got to the car, he seemed disappointed to find that we were a law-abiding trio, with both dogs hitched up: the deputies love to ticket people for disobeying the leash laws. Mitch, incurably friendly, lunged toward the man, who backed away in disgust from the stench. He seemed to be looking for some grounds for a ticket but finally said only that the park was closed and he was going to watch to see that we moved on.

  “You are an evil animal,” I said to Mitch when we were back on Dempster, the deputy ostentatiously tailing us. “You not only stink yourself, but you’ve gotten that gross smell all over me. It’s not like I have clothes to burn, you know.”

  Mitch stuck his head over the backseat, grinning happily. I opened all the windows, but it was still a tough ride. I had intended to stop at Max’s, to find out how they were doing and to see what Max could tell me about Lotty’s history with the Radbuka family. Right now all I really wanted was to fling the dogs into a tub and dive in after them, but to be prudent, I swung past Max’s house before going to Morrell’s. Leaving Mitch in the car, I took Peppy and a flashlight and walked through the park across the street from Max’s. We surprised several bundles of students tied up in love knots, who backed away from us in disgust, but Radbuka at least didn’t seem to be hovering nearby.

  At Morrell’s, I chained the dogs to the back-porch railing. Don was out there with a cigarette. Inside, I could hear Morrell tinkering with a Schumann piano concerto, too loudly to hear my arrival.

  “Warshawski-what’ve you been doing?” Don demanded. “Arm-wrestling skunks?”

  “Don. This is great. You don’t get enough exercise. You can help me wash these wonderful animals.”

  I went in through the kitchen, taking a garbage bag to wrap my clothes in when I stripped. I put on an old T-shirt and cutoffs to bathe the dogs. My suggestion that he help wash them had made Don scuttle. I laughed as I scrubbed Mitch and Peppy, then went into the shower myself. By the time the three of us were clean, Morrell was waiting in the kitchen for me with a glass of wine.

  Pre-departure nerves had turned Morrell edgy. I told him about Fepple, and the depressing life he seemed to have led, and how the dogs had rolled in something so rotten that they’d scared off a sheriff’s deputy. He expressed shock and amusement in the right places, but his mind wasn’t with me. I kept the news of Radbuka’s stalking the Loewenthals, and Lotty’s disturbing behavior, to myself-Morrell didn’t need worries about me to take with him into the Taliban’s world.

  Don was going to stay on at Morrell’s while he worked on his project with Rhea Wiell, but Morrell said it wasn’t cowardice over dog bathing that had driven him away but Morrell’s own orders: he’d sent Don to a hotel so we could have this last evening alone together.

  I made up little bruschette with pears and Gorgonzola, then put together a frittata, taking elaborate care, even caramelizing onions for it. I’d laid by a special bottle of Barolo. A meal of love, a meal of despair: remember me, remember that my meals make you happy and return to me.

  As I should have expected, Morrell was completely prepared, with everything packed into a couple of lightweight bags. He’d stopped his paper, forwarded his mail to me, left me money to pay his bills. He was nervous and excited. Although we went to bed soon after eating, he talked until close to two in the morning: about himself, his parents-whom he almost never mentioned-his childhood in Cuba where they had come as emigrants from Hungary, his plans for his upcoming trip.

  As we lay next to each other in the dark, he clung to me feverishly. “Victoria Iphigenia, I love you for your fierceness and your passionate attachment to truth. If anything should happen to me-not that I expect it to-you have my lawyer’s name.”

  “Nothing will happen to you, Morrell.” My cheeks were wet; we fell asleep like that, clutched in each other’s arms.

  When the alarm woke us a few hours later, I quickly took the dogs around the block while Morrell made coffee. He had talked himself out in the night; we were silent on the drive to the airport. In the backseat, the dogs, sensing our mood, whined nervously. Morrell and I share an aversion to long farewells: I dropped him at the terminal and quickly drove off, not even staying to see him go inside. If I didn’t see him leave-perhaps he wouldn’t be gone.

  XXIV Walrus Duty

  At eight-thirty in the morning, traffic into the city was at a standstill. After last night, I couldn’t face another horrible commute. Don wasn’t coming back to Morrell’s until later this afternoon-I could rest there for a bit. Avoiding the expressways altogether, I entered the alternative morning rush hour-kids going to school, people arriving for jobs at the little shops and delis that dot the area. They accentuated my sense of instability: Morrell gone, a hole in the middle of my life. Why didn’t I live in one of those tidy white-sided houses, with children heading off for school while I went to some orderly job?

  As I sat at the light at Golf Road I phoned in for my messages. Nick Vishnikov wanted me to call him. Tim Streeter had said he would be happy to provide some security for Calia and Agnes until they left on Saturday.

  In my personal turmoil over Morrell’s departure, I’d forgotten Radbuka’s odd behavior. I stopped dawdling along with my maudlin thoughts and drove
over to Max’s as fast as I could. By this time of day, he’s usually already in meetings, but when I reached his house, his LeSabre was still in the driveway. His face was heavy with worry when he answered the door.

  “ Victoria. Come in. Has Morrell left?” Before shutting the door he peered anxiously across the street, but only a lone jogger was visible, a silhouette moving along the lakeshore.

  “I just dropped him at the airport. Did Agnes tell you I can arrange a little security for you?”

  “That would be a help. If I had known what a chamber of horrors I’d open by participating in that Birnbaum conference, putting Calia at risk-”

  “At risk?” I interrupted. “Has Radbuka been back? Did he make an overt threat against her?”

  “No, nothing that concrete. But his obsession with being related to me-I can’t understand it. This hovering around here-”

  I interrupted to ask again if Radbuka had been back.

  “I don’t think so, but of course this house is so exposed, with a public park across the street- You think I’m blowing my worries out of proportion? Maybe so, maybe so, but I’m not young, and Calia is precious. Still, if you can arrange for someone reliable to be here-and of course I will pay the fee.”

  Max took me back to the kitchen to use the phone. Agnes was sitting there, drinking coffee, anxiously watching Calia, who was alternating spoonfuls of cornflakes with pleas to go to the zoo.

  “No, darling. We’re going to stay inside and paint pictures today,” Agnes repeated.

  I took a cup of coffee to the phone with me. Tom Streeter promised to have his brother Tim at Max’s within the hour.

  “With Tim on the case, you can be pretty secure going anywhere you want,” I told Agnes.