Burn Marks

31

House Calls

It was six when I woke up again. My shoulder muscles had stiffened from the aftermath of carrying Ralph MacDonald’s flowers up to Elena. I wanted to soak them under a hot shower. That was impossible with my gauze mitts. Anyway, I needed to keep my hands protected for my upcoming labors.

Although I’d had a little peanut butter while watching the Bears, I hadn’t eaten a proper meal yet today. I still didn’t have any real food in the house. I’d planned to ask Robin to drive me to the store yesterday, but after his squib about taking me off the case it had gone out of my mind. I didn’t think I could do my Santa Claus imitation without dinner.

I pulled on the top to my long underwear and put a black cotton sweater on over that. It might be cool on the rooftops and I didn’t want anything as bulky-or as visible-as a jacket. Jeans and my black basketball high-tops completed the ensemble that the well-dressed burglar was wearing this year. I also needed some kind of dark cap or scarf to keep light from reflecting from my face or hair. I rummaged through my drawers and came up with a soft black linen square Eileen Mallory had given me last Christmas. I didn’t think the green and blue design woven into it would show up at night.

If I’m carrying my gun I usually wear a shoulder holster. Since I wanted to bring a few tools with me tonight, I dug out an old police-style belt with a holster and holes for slinging handcuffs or a truncheon.

My best flashlight was buried in the Prairie Shores rubble, but I had another one someplace. After rooting through the dining-room cupboard and the hall closet, I found it at the back of the refrigerator top. Although a little greasy to the touch, its battery still worked. I strung some twine through the hook on its end and tied it to my belt. A small hammer, a screwdriver, and a dark hand towel completed my supplies. I used to have a set of picklocks given to me by a grateful client in my PD days, but the police had confiscated those several years ago. I picked up my rolling footstool from behind the refrigerator and headed out.

I managed to slink out of the apartment without rousing Mr. Contreras, Peppy, or even Vinnie the banker. The fall twilight had set in, purply-gray and changing quickly to black. No passerby could make out my equipment belt. I stuck it in the Chevy’s trunk with the footstool and drove the four blocks to the Belmont Diner for dinner. After a bowl of hearty cabbage soup and a plate of roast chicken with mashed potatoes, I felt too stuffed to move.

Gluttony is a terrible enemy of the private detective. I’d have to wait a good hour before starting my trek, maybe even longer. You’re disgusting, I admonished myself privately as I paid the bill. Peter Wimsey and Philip Marlowe never had this kind of problem.

Back in the Chevy I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. If I returned to my apartment, the chances were good I’d run into the old man. If his jealous sixth sense warned him I was setting out on an adventure, I might not be able to get away without him. I didn’t want to go to a movie. I didn’t want to sit in my office with a novel.

I put the car into gear and went north, up to Estes. The Chevy seemed to be behaving itself again-maybe I’d been imagining the groan in its engine.

It was only eight when I got to Saul Seligman’s house, not too late for visiting even an old man. I could see a dim glow of light behind the heavily draped windows. A late-model Chrysler stood immediately in front of the house. I parked just behind it and went up the walk to ring the bell.

After a long wait the locks turned back. Seligman’s elder daughter, Barbara Feldman, answered the door. She was close to fifty, well groomed without being fashionable, her reddish hair dyed and carefully set, her sweater and slacks tailored but comfortable.

She looked at me vaguely, not remembering me from the visit I’d paid to her Northbrook home.

“I’m V. I. Warshawski,” I said loudly enough to penetrate the glass. “The private investigator who came to see you last week about the fire at the Indiana Arms.”

Mrs. Feldman cracked the door so she could speak without shouting back at me. “My father isn’t well this evening. He’s not up to seeing anyone.”

I nodded sympathetically. “Mrs. Donnelly’s death must have upset him terribly. That’s why I’ve come. If he’s really ill I won’t stay long, but it’s possible he knows something that would help me get a line on her killer.”

She frowned. “The police have already been here. He doesn’t know anything.”

“They may not have known the right questions to ask. I think I do.”

She thought it over, sucking on her upper lip, then shut the door. At least she didn’t rebolt the myriad locks. While I waited for her to come back I did some gentle quad stretches. I didn’t want to face a five-foot jump and miss because I hadn’t loosened up. A couple passing by with a small dog on a leash eyed me curiously but didn’t say anything.

Mrs. Feldman came back after about five minutes. “My father says you can’t help, that all you do is bring trouble. He thinks you caused Auntie Rita’s death.”

There’s always something unsettling about a grown person using childhood names to discuss friends and relations- as if the world around her is so kaleidoscoped that Auntie Rita or Mummy or Daddy means the same thing to everyone listening to her.

“No,” I said patiently, “I didn’t do that. It’s possible, though, that Mrs. Donnelly knew something the person who torched your father’s hotel didn’t want disclosed. She may not even have known it was a terrible secret. If I talk to Mr. Seligman, maybe we can find out what they’d discussed the last time they were together. That might give me a lead on why she was killed. And that can help us figure out who killed her.”

Mrs. Donnelly had known something. I was sure of that. I hadn’t thought it had anything to do with the arson-more about her children, it had seemed, in some way that had made me wonder vaguely if Mr. Seligman might have been their father. I hadn’t thought it concerned either me or Ajax, but now it seemed I’d been mistaken.

Mrs. Feldman trundled back into the recesses of the house with my message. I felt a little absurd communicating this way, as though she were the wall and I was Thisbe. After a shorter wait she returned to tell me her father would see me.

“He says you’re like one of the plagues and if he doesn’t talk to you now, you’ll just hound him until he does. I don’t think he should, but he never listens to me anyway.”

I followed her into the stale hallway. We went down to the end of the passage into the kitchen, a room even more cramped and dingy than the musty living room where I had seen the old man before. He was huddled at the Formica table in a shabby plaid dressing gown, a mug of tea in front of him. Under the dim ceiling bulb his skin looked like a moldy orange. He kept his eyes on the tea when we came in, stirring it relentlessly.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Mr. Seligman,” I began, but he interrupted me with a snarl.

“The hell with that. If you were sorry to bother me, intrude on me, make my life miserable, why do you keep coming around?” He didn’t lift his eyes from the mug.

I sat down across from him, banging my shin against the refrigerator as I pulled one of the grimy chairs away from the table. “I suppose it does look as though I’m the one assaulting your life, since I’m the only stranger you see. But someone out there doesn’t like Seligman Property Management. They torched the Indiana Arms and they killed Mrs. Donnelly. I’d kind of like to see they get stopped before they do anything else, such as come after you.”

“I just want to stop you coming after me,” he muttered sullenly.

I held up my gauze mitts and spoke harshly. “Someone tried to do that last Tuesday, tried to burn me to death so I’d never go after anyone again. Was that your idea?”

He finally looked up at me. “Anyone can wrap bandages around their hands.” The words were truculent but he couldn’t hide the little hiss of breath when he saw the gauze.

I unwrapped the left hand without speaking. Now that the palm was healing it looked worse than before, yellow pustules surrounding the angry red line down the middle. He glanced at it, then looked away, scowling. He couldn’t keep his eyes from sliding back to it. Mrs. Feldman made an uneasy noise in the background but didn’t speak. Finally I put the palm down on my lap.

“After I came by here on Tuesday did you see Mrs. Donnelly or just talk to her on the phone?”

When Mr. Seligman hesitated his daughter answered. “She came by most evenings, didn’t she, Pop? Now that you’ve stopped going into the office every day.”

“So she came by after I was here? And what did you talk about?”

“My business. Which is none of your business, young lady.”

“When you told her I’d asked for a photograph, why did it upset her?” I kept my body completely still, my voice monotonous.

“If you know so much about it why are you asking me?” He muttered the snipe to his tea mug.

“Was it your children or her children she was worried about? Or is that the same thing?”

Behind me Mrs. Feldman gasped. “What are you trying to say? What’s wrong with you, anyway, to come around badgering him when he’s had such a shock.”

I ignored her. “How many daughters do you have, Mr. Seligman?”

I was way off target. I could tell by his look of outraged disgust. “I’m just glad Fanny didn’t have to live to hear this kind of garbage in her own kitchen.”

“So why did it bother her that you gave me the picture?”

“I don’t know.” It was a sudden, frustrated explosion. “She came by, we talked, I told her you’d been around, hounding me, still not letting me have my money, but you wanted a picture of Barbara and Connie. Then, when I told her I let you have the one taken at our fortieth anniversary, Fanny’s and mine, she got all excited. She wanted to know which picture it was. Of course I only gave you one I had a copy of, I don’t expect someone like you to return something sentimental, that’s why I picked that one. I told her all that and she started carrying on about how I was desecrating Fanny’s memory letting you have something from such a personal time.”

By the time he finished his orangey cheeks were spotted with red and he was panting. “Now are you happy? Can you leave me in peace?”

“I think so. Probably. When is the service for Mrs. Donnelly? Tuesday afternoon?”

“Don’t you go barging in destroying her funeral. I still think it’s all because of those questions of yours she’s dead.”

I met his angry glare sadly. I had an uneasy feeling he was right. I got to my feet, wadding the discarded gauze from my left hand into a tight ball.

“I’ll give you back your picture, Mr. Seligman, but it won’t be for a few more days. I won’t come back here again, but I would like to get into your office. Can you arrange that for me?”

“You want the keys? Or you want to just break in like those hoodlums that killed Rita?”

I raised my eyebrows. “I didn’t read about a break-in. I thought the door was open for normal business and they walked in.”

“Well, it’s locked now and you can’t have the keys. You’ll just have to do your grave robbing someplace else.”

Fatigue was starting to hit me. I didn’t have any more energy to give to arguing with him. I stuffed the wadded gauze into my jeans pocket and turned without speaking.

Mrs. Feldman bustled me down the hall. “I hope you can leave him alone now. I shouldn’t have let you in in the first place, but he’s never listened to me. If my sister’d been here-she looks just like Mother. Don’t come back again. Not unless you have his check for the Indiana Arms. It’s just a fire to you, but it meant something special to him.”

I started to say something about my own warm and wonderful character but broke it off-she wouldn’t care. I’d barely stepped across the threshold when she began snapping the locks shut.