by DC Brod
He gave me the name of his pilot and where I could reach him. “I’ll be at the airport before you get there to check out the airplane.”
“Are you a mechanic too?”
“No. But I know one.” It was time to get down to questions. “Who knows you hate to fly?” I didn’t want to use the word afraid.
He shrugged. “My family. My friends. Many of the people here. Some of the airport personnel.” He thought for a moment longer. “I’ve never made much of an effort to hide it. Anyone who is at all acquainted with me could know.”
“Okay, Mr. Hauser. I need some information before I can start to piece this together.” I pulled the files from my briefcase and dropped them on his desk. “Why these people? Why not others?”
Hauser studied me for a moment before replying. “There was one other.”
“Who?”
Hauser removed a manila folder from a desk drawer and, smiling, tossed it across the desk toward me. I looked at him, picked it up, and opened it, just as he hoped I would. I’m so predictable. You could tell that by looking at my rap sheet. It was only a half page long and pretty dull. Of course, it hadn’t been updated since I moved out of Maggie’s apartment. But everything else was there. The marriage, the divorce, the jobs. All of it. I was relieved in the same way I am when the squad car that has been following me for the last couple miles turns down another street. I really didn’t have anything to hide, but I guess I’m as paranoid as the next person. I was also annoyed at the
idea of this detective riffling through my private life. Hauser was watching me, amused. No one deserved to be that smug. I flipped the page over, glancing at the back. “This is it?”
He frowned slightly. “Should there be more?”
Arching one eyebrow, I made a show of reexamining the sheet. Then I inserted it back in the file and dropped the whole thing on Hauser’s desk. “No.”
Hauser looked from my file to me, then back again, opened his mouth as if to ask a question and apparently thought better of it. He leaned back in his chair, one hand clutching its arm. We were both a little startled when his watch blurted out its tinny beeping noise. He reached into a drawer for his vitamins.
Here we go again.
“Tell me about Judson.” I wanted to hear what Hauser had to say about his golden boy.
Hauser removed each of the five vitamins from their containers and poured himself a glass of water. First things first. I shook my head as he offered me one, then he held up a finger motioning me to wait until the ritual was complete. What else could I do? One capsule, two swallows of water, one capsule, two swallows of water, until they were gone. He replaced the containers in the drawer and then looked puzzled, as if trying to recall where he had left something.
“What was that you asked me?”
“What about Judson?” I asked again.
He sighed as if he were about to tell me about a son who had gone astray. “I’m perplexed about Art.” Hauser seemed thoughtful as he absently rubbed his right temple. “He’s been with me for five years. I hired him directly out of school. We were quite close for a long time.” He shrugged and sighed. “One might regard it as rather a father-son relationship. I’m quite fond of him. But lately …” His voice drifted off.
“Lately?” I prodded.
“I don’t know. He’s rather distant, angry. I give him free rein in the public relations end of the business, but he has always asked my opinion before launching a new project. Lately he’s been disagreeing with everything I suggest. Rather obstinate. About seven months ago I loaned him some money to pay off his gambling debts. No interest.” Hauser had been stroking the finish of a ceramic coffee mug and now he took a drink from it. “After that he seemed to change. I suspect it was the loan. Some people feel awkward when they are loaned money. You know, rather unsure of how to act toward the person who has provided the loan.”
“According to this file he still has a gambling problem.”
Hauser nodded. “Once a gambler …”
“If he owes all this money, why do you think he’s still walking around without holes in his kneecaps?”
Hauser flicked a piece of lint off the cuff of his jacket. “Perhaps he has found another loan officer.”
“Who do you think sent the letters?” I tried the direct approach since my subtle touch wasn’t working.
He seemed to have been expecting that question and kept his eyes on me as he took another drink of coffee. I think he was trying to read my mind.
I snatched at the most convenient straw and pushed the issue further. “Do you think Diana is involved?”
Hauser gasped and his eyes widened. I thought for a moment that the question had landed right in the strike zone. Then he cried out and slammed down on the desk face first. The glass toppled, sending ice cubes and water streaming across the leather blotter.
7
WHEN I LOOK back on the moments that followed Hauser’s collapse, I sometimes see myself springing from the chair to somehow save the dying man, instead of sitting there stunned for several seconds that will forever be recorded as an eternity in my conscience. Then it helps to tell myself that it wouldn’t have made any difference. It helps, but not much.
I sat, frozen to the chair, until Hauser took his next breath. It was labored and obviously required a whole lot of effort. Reaching across the desk, I felt for his carotid pulse. It was faint and rapid. That was when he began breathing convulsively. I pushed him back in his chair so I could loosen his tie and unbutton the stiff shirt collar. His eyes were wide and dominated by the whites. I didn’t need a first-aid course to know the man was beyond my help.
“Irna!” I yelled. “Get in here!” I was afraid Hauser would, in his convulsions, swallow his tongue, and I was trying to pry his mouth open. His teeth were clamped shut. Damn that woman. What the hell was she waiting for?
“Irna Meyers! PLEASE.”
Maybe she’d been powdering her nose because that last entreaty brought her running. When she saw Hauser, she clamped her hands to her mouth and froze.
“Call an ambulance. This man is dying.”
His breathing had slowed and was coming in short gasps now. I looked back at the door. Irna was gone. As I held Hauser’s head back to keep his air passage clear, a shudder
rippled through his body and he exhaled a long, final sigh. I didn’t need to feel for a pulse to know he was dead. His eyes were flat and glassy, as devoid of life as a lunar landscape.
I glanced at the telephone. None of the outside lines were lit. Irna must have called the ambulance already. I picked up Hauser’s private line and dialed the police. When I hung up, Irna was watching me from the doorway. Maybe she was afraid to cross the threshold.
Without taking her eyes from Hauser she said, “He’s gone, isn’t he?”
“Yes.” I braced myself for an emotional outburst.
She stared at him for a long time, then, without taking her eyes from him, asked, “What happened?”
“I’m not sure. I think it was something he ate.”
Without turning her head, her eyes slowly met mine. It was eerie. “What do you mean?”
I shrugged. “It happened just a few minutes after he took his vitamins.”
She turned her gaze back to Hauser and put her hand to her mouth. Then she approached the desk with slow, jerky steps, the way a cat hedges around a suspicious object. If there was going to be an emotional outburst from this woman, it was slow in coming.
She reached across the desk to pick up the overturned glass. I grabbed her hand. “Don’t touch anything, Irna. The police will want things just the way they were.”
I glanced at the colorful, possibly libelous files on Hauser’s desk and realized I had to get them out of here before the police arrived. “Irna, get Roger Munro. Tell him to show the cops where to go, and tell him to make sure no one else comes up here.”
Irna’s reaction to my order wasn’t what I’d call instantaneous. She glared at me as if to ask where I
got off telling her what to do. Then, with an obvious effort to collect herself, she left the room.
There wasn’t any place in Hauser’s office to hide the files so I crammed them back into my briefcase, careful to retrieve the one labeled with my name, as well. I dropped the briefcase next to the chair I’d been sitting in and hoped that Irna didn’t speculate aloud as to the whereabouts of the files that had been on Hauser’s desk.
I heard commotion outside the office. Seconds later, Fred Morison ushered two uniformed policemen into the room. Irna followed them.
“I thought I said Munro,” I snapped, realizing too late that I really didn’t have the authority to order Irna around and I didn’t need to give this woman any more reason to dislike me. Still, the last person I wanted around was Fred Morison.
“What’s going on here?” Morison demanded, then saw Hauser slumped in the chair. “What happened to the old man?” He bounded toward the desk as if he might be able to bring him back to life, though he obviously knew damned well Hauser was dead. Fred never would have referred to Hauser as the old man, even if he were in a coma and there were so much as the remotest possibility that the words could have registered somewhere in the back of Hauser’s subconscious.
“He’s dead, Fred,” I said in a tone I usually reserve for children who are slow to realize that the charm in responding to every sentence with “Why?” has worn very thin.
Meanwhile, I wanted to know what prompted this man, who had been known to turn his back on a shoplifter in the act of pocketing a designer watch in order to avoid the inconvenience of detaining someone, had taken it upon himself to hustle the police to Hauser’s office.
One policeman was keeping the curious out of the room and dissuading Fred from touching anything, while the other asked me what had happened. He was very young and visibly anxious to turn this over to a higher authority.
So was I. When the detectives finally arrived, I answered some of the same questions and a few more.
I was talking to a Sergeant O’Henry—fiftyish, with sparse gray hair and small sharp eyes. He examined the scene carefully without touching anything before he began questioning me. I showed him the vitamin bottles and explained Hauser’s ritual.
“How long after he took these did he keel over?” O’Henry wanted to know.
“No more than five minutes.”
“Hmph,” he said, eyes narrowing. He looked at me and then, as if he were making a confession, said, “I take a vitamin C every day. It’s my wife’s idea actually. She claims it wards off colds. The thing is, you never really know if it does work. I mean, how do you know how many colds you would have gotten if you hadn’t popped one of these every day?”
He seemed to need a response, some endorsement of his health plan. “It can’t hurt,” I said. “Not usually anyway.”
O’Henry smiled weakly and shook his head. Then he asked me why I was meeting with Hauser, and I told him I wanted to speak privately. We walked to the window, away from the others, leaving Fred Morison trying to look like he belonged somewhere.
I told O’Henry about the letters Hauser had received and that he had hired me to investigate them. While I was talking, O’Henry unwrapped a stick of gum and stuffed it in his mouth.
Then he gestured toward my briefcase. “That yours?” I nodded, and he didn’t pursue it.
“He hired you to find out who wanted to kill him?” He glanced at Hauser’s body, then back to me. “Bang-up job you’re doing.” He spoke matter-of-factly and I didn’t think he intended that statement to sound as insulting as it did. But I could have been wrong.
I found myself working very hard to justify my lack of
success. “Look, Sergeant. Hauser hired me yesterday, almost two months after he got the first letter. I don’t think he ever felt the person intended to kill him.”
O’Henry was watching me, listening and chewing his gum. He didn’t interrupt, although I was beginning to wish he would. It was difficult to explain Hauser’s lack of concern, and somehow I didn’t think telling O’Henry, “You had to be there,” would cut it.
“He just wanted to know who was sending the letters,” I concluded.
O’Henry regarded me for a minute, then turned his head so he could view the scene on Michigan Avenue. It was a messy winter day, and cars sprayed slush as they made their way down the Magnificent Mile. Fred stood next to Irna, talking to her quietly. She wasn’t speaking, just nodding or shaking her head.
Without turning back to me, O’Henry asked, “Did Hauser have any theories?”
“If he did, he didn’t share them with me.”
“Where are the letters?”
I gestured toward one of the detectives who was placing the clipping in a plastic bag. “There is the last one. The other three are being analyzed.”
“Oh? By whom?”
I gave him Harry’s name. He just nodded, but I could tell by the slight widening of his eyes that he was impressed. Harry was still regarded as one of the best pathologists around.
The police photographer had arrived and was taking pictures of Hauser’s body. For some reason this had always seemed to be the worst part of a murder investigation. The final sitting.
It occurred to me that Diana didn’t know she was a widow yet. “If you’re through with me for now, I’m going to see Mrs. Hauser.”
O’Henry raised his eyebrows. “You two friends?” Apparently the Diana and Preston saga was the stuff of which legends are made.
I didn’t think his remark deserved an answer. Instead, I wrote Elaine’s address on a piece of paper and handed it to him. “In case you need to reach me.”
“I’m sure we will,” he said, folding it carefully and placing it in his jacket pocket.
The Hausers had two places of residence in the Chicago area. One was in a very high-class bedroom community in a far west suburb. Like many of the homes in that area, the eight bedroom house was situated on a four or five acre lot complete with stables and the requisite number of Arabians. Minus one. They also owned a condominium, which was situated on a very exclusive stretch of Lake Shore Drive.
I was reasonably certain that Diana Hauser would prefer the Limelight to the Hunt Club any day of the week. I was right.
When she opened the door she was wearing a blue-and-white-striped, French-cut leotard, blue tights, and white leg warmers. A mist of perspiration masked her face, throat, and chest. She was an incredible sight as she dabbed at the back of her neck with a towel.
“Why, Mr. McCauley. Did you bring me something?”
Her smile invited me to places I had only imagined, and I tried to keep my voice as noncommittal as possible. “I’m afraid I brought you some news. May I come in?”
She hesitated, trying to read something from my expression, then moved back, making way for me. “What do you drink?” She draped the towel around her neck and walked to a wet bar adjacent to a large window overlooking Oak Street Beach. “Something tells me this is the kind of news that will call for a chaser.”
“Nothing for me, thanks,” I said and watched her drop a couple ice cubes in a glass and pour herself something from a leaded crystal decanter.
“This is very bad news,” I said, not sure whether I was trying to break it to her gently or there was another reason for my hedging.
Diana sipped on her drink. “Share it,” she said.
“Preston is dead.”
There was a flicker of something in her eyes. I wasn’t sure whether it was pain, anger, shock, or some other emotion, but I didn’t think it had much to do with what she said next.
“What happened?” she asked; then, without missing a beat, added, “Did he choke to death on his ego?” She turned sharply and looked at the scene from the window.
“They don’t know yet. He might have had a heart attack.”
“Might? That means it might have been something else.”
I nodded and waited for her to continue.
She shook her head, frustrated, as if she ha
d just realized there was a game going on here and, if she didn’t like the rules, she was going to have to change them. Let her try. The fact that she was up for a game after learning that her marital status had abruptly changed said something; but then so did the fact that she apparently didn’t know how Preston might have died. If she had anything to do with it, she would be playing this scene a lot cooler. Unless she was way ahead of me.
She paced back and forth across the room, sipping her drink, as if trying to piece something together. Then she stopped in midstep and turned to me. “Okay, I’ll bite. What else might it have been?”
“Some kind of poison. Probably slipped into his vitamins.”
For several seconds there was dead silence. Then she
started to giggle. The giggles escalated into laughter. I’m not without the ability to know a good example of irony when I see one. And I was aware that if Hauser had bought the farm via a strychnine-laced vitamin ? complex, then his death would definitely classify as one of life’s zingers. But, given the fact that we were talking about a death here, I’m not sure I would have reacted with unbridled hilarity the way Diana Hauser was doing.
The giggling fit crumpled her onto the floor in a lotus position. Miraculously, she did not spill a drop from her glass. I sat on the edge of a sleek, gray leather recliner, which threatened to engulf me as I waited for Diana to finish her act. It had to be an act because if it were the real thing, she wouldn’t have sneaked several glances in my direction to see how she was doing.
I sat there, elbows on my knees, hands folded, smiling politely.
After a minute or two the giggles receded, and in between gasps for breath, she shook her head and muttered, “Perfect. Perfect Preston.”
Nice touch, Diana. Just don’t overdo.
“Well,” I said, rising. “I guess I can leave without fear that you might put a gun to your head or do a half gainer off the balcony.”
“Wait,” she said as I reached for the doorknob. She stood, leaving the drink on the carpet. “You don’t understand how it is, uh, I mean was between Preston and me.”