An Old Friend of the Family

TWENTY-TWO

After the first preliminary session with Charley Snider and Franzen of the Glenlake force, Joe’s head was spinning with exhaustion. But he still held to his determination not to collapse, and not to let Kate out of his sight, until she was ready to collapse too. As for Kate, she swore that she was holding out until she’d seen her little sister.

Snider obligingly drove them from Glenlake to the hospital, over freshly plowed thoroughfares. On the way he told them about Walworth’s plunge through a broken window. Nobody knew yet whether it was suicide or not. But this time, the Homicide man made it plain, the authorities mean to get to the bottom of the whole business, once and for all—

Judy had been found at home, unconscious amid the ruins of the pottery collection. A pillow had been tucked neatly beneath her head and there were two blankets wrapped around her. Someone had called police about her and fortunately they had been able to get a four-wheel-drive vehicle to get her to the hospital. On regaining her senses, in a room near her brother’s, Judy had been unable to give any coherent account of how she had come to be where she was found. Examination disclosed that she had suffered a moderately serious loss of blood. Internal bleeding of some kind was diagnosed, because no wounds were visible that might account for the loss. When the news came that her older sister was after all alive, Judy accepted the happy shock with no apparent surprise at all.

“Tell me once more now,” Charley Snider asked, going up on the short hospital elevator ride with Joe and Kate. “Try to think. Where did you two first run into each other last night?”

“I told you, I’ve been drugged.” Kate looked happily giddy. There was a Band-aid on her arm where blood samples had already been taken for the police. “Somewhere on the Near North, I think it was.”

“I can’t remember,” Joe chimed in. “I can’t think very straight just now.” He felt horrible, out on his feet, and he knew he must look the same, quite bad enough to lend some credence to his story, or lack thereof.

Snider gave him a look that said: We’re going to have a long talk soon. Right now Joe did not care in the least.

“We got your grandmother dead,” said Charley, thinking aloud while he looked at Kate. “But so far all the other Southerlands are still alive, though some are damaged. We got Gruner dead. And now we got Walworth dead, right out of the building where Gruner was the doorman. This Corday is still missing. This Winter that you and Johnny describe is nowhere.”

“Try finding Leroy Poach,” said Joe, and giggled. The giggle had a strange sound.

“I think you better check in here yourself,” Charley told him.

“No.” Kate pressed his hand. “He’s going to come home with me and sack out there.”

“Thanks,” said Joe. “I will.”

The elevator stopped at Judy’s floor and they got out. Two rooms down, the hall had police bodyguards.

“Daddy still glowers at you,” Kate said. “He’ll glower worse when I bring you back home. And then I’ll punch him in the nose.” Now first she and then Joe were laughing uncontrollably. Snider shook his head and walked off somewhere. A nurse came to stand looking at them doubtfully. When they had done their best to try to look like decent visitors, the nurse said: “You can go in now, if you’re quiet. She’s been asking and asking for you.”

Snider reappeared from somewhere to follow them in silently. There was only one bed in the room, with a pale Judy lying in it. In a chair nearby Johnny sat in his bathrobe. Judy sat up with a jerk as they came in.

“We’re all right,” Kate got out. Johnny sprang up to give her his handless hug. She looked over his robed shoulder at Joe, appealing for some way to communicate the rest.

Joe tossed Judy a wink. “I have the feeling that the good guys are going to be all right now.”

The pale girl couldn’t help herself. “Dr. Corday too?”

Joe could feel eyes boring into the back of his neck. The ears of Homicide would be tuned in like dish antennas. What did he care? He was going to marry into quite a wad of money soon. “Him especially,” Joe said, and winked again. “He can take care of himself. If I was him I’d be going back to Europe as soon as I could.”

“The airports will be watched,” Judy worried weakly.

“There are night flights, aren’t there?” Kate commented. Let Homicide try to make something out of that. And Joe could hear Charley Snider’s shoeleather creaking quietly out of the room.

“Oh, Kate,” said pale Judy from her bed, “are you really all right now?”

“I think so. Listen, Jude. You and I are going to have a lot of things to compare notes on, when we get the chance.”

“Oh, yes. Yes, we are.”

“And then,” said Kate, “I think we’d all benefit from a winter vacation somewhere.”

“Great weather to go south,” Joe put in.

Judy took thought. “Yes, going somewhere to rest up sounds like fun. Only . . .”

“What?”

“Maybe not south . . . they say the off-season is a great time to visit Europe.” Judy’s eyes had begun to glow, to dance a little. With one finger she picked at a spot, a tiny pimple maybe, on her throat.