Hunting Sweetie Rose

CHAPTER 17.

The next morning, I drove a half-baked plan and a full mug of coffee over to Leo’s.

I’d spent the previous evening trolling the Internet, trying to get a fix on Andrew Fill. His mentions were numerous, all accumulated from his stint as executive director of the Midwest Arts Symposium. During the years he’d headed that group, it appeared he’d gotten photographed alongside every writer, stage actor, and opera singer who’d come to Chicago.

He was a thin fellow, with a thin nose and thin hair, and a stoop to his thin shoulders. He didn’t look like a killer; he looked like the president of a stamp club. For sure, he looked smart enough to take a freebie Stay-out-of-Jail card offered by a charitable socialite. All he had to do was pay back the embezzled funds. He had no motive for coming back at her.

Certainly, not by killing a clown.

Besides, Bea Stitts had said it was a woman who’d hired her husband, a woman in a dark limousine, perhaps playing out some twisted fantasy.

I had to push my mind away from that. Andrew Fill was who I had.

Unless it was a twisted client.

Leo’s Porsche wasn’t in his garage. I knew Endora started at the Newberry Library at nine o’clock. Chances were, Leo was on his way home from her place. I decided to hum show tunes while I waited. That’s what one does when one doesn’t have a car radio.

I’d just gotten through an eighth rendition of the first verse of “Singing in the Rain,” which was what one does when one knows only the first verse, when my cell phone rang, spoiling what I was sure was an improving performance.

“How about buying me dinner?” Jennifer Gale asked.

“I thought you always worked.”

“This is my day off.” She told me she’d swing by the turret at seven thirty and hung up.

Leo’s Porsche’s exhaust sounded behind me before I could think to examine how I felt about seeing Jennifer Gale again, or, more futilely, begin another rendition of “Singing in the Rain.” Leo had the top down, a straw hat string-tied under his chin, and was sporting the huge sunglasses that, with his pale skin, made him look like a glaucoma patient escaped from a prison eye clinic. He gave me a nod as he pulled into his garage, trailing German exhaust and riffs of Brazilian bossa nova. I pulled up behind the big door and climbed out.

He made a disdainful show of surveying my attire. I was wearing painting clothes.

“Don’t start,” I said. “Don’t dare to stand there in yellow rayon, adorned with purple birds and what look like green tarantulas, and deign to mock my wardrobe.”

“Deign?”

“Deign,” I repeated.

“I consider this”-he fingered the hem of the shiny untucked shirt, which in double XL hung on him like a silk robe-“to be perfect attire to wear when deigning, whatever you might think that word means. More important, though, I am not speckled everywhere with crusted bits of white and black, from sloppiness with a brush.”

“It’s a disguise,” I said. “For breaking and entering, which we’re going to do today.”

“Unfortunately, my schedule, unlike yours, is cluttered. I must work today.”

A series of low beats began pulsing slowly from his bungalow.

“At nine in the morning?” I asked.

He stared at the back of his home, disbelieving. “I had to work last night. Ma had bingo at the church. They came over afterward. All of them. They stayed upstairs at first, having vodka and watching dirty movies. I thought it would be OK; I kept working. Then, at midnight, they came down the basement stairs, liquored up and ready to strut. It was too much. I fled to Endora’s.”

The bass beats were coming faster now, loud and deep enough to vibrate the clapboards on the old garage. He pointed to the stuff I’d piled in the back of the Jeep. “A stepladder, a paint tray, a gallon of paint?”

“And a brush. It’s part of the disguise.”

“You’re really going to break in someplace?”

I told him about my visits to Sweetie Fairbairn’s penthouse, the powder room fire, and my conversation with George Koros. “Andrew Fill had a beef with Sweetie Fairbairn. It’s all I can think to do.”

He looked back at the house. “I can’t go in there.”

He was weakening. “A home invasion always brightens the day,” I said.

He nodded, and we got in the Jeep.

As I pulled away, he asked, “How about we go out for pizza tonight? Real late.”

“Can’t.”

“Date with Amanda?”

“She canceled, for every night next week. She has meetings about her hospital renovation.”

“Important work.”

“It might be true,” I said.

“Of course,” he said, staring straight ahead.

“It might also be that she’ll be with that white-haired old commodities trader.”

“This will pass,” he said.

“I’m having dinner with Jennifer Gale tonight.”

He shifted on his seat. “Is that wise?”

“A potential disaster. She charged ahead after she gave me the clown photos. She got us in to see the rope.”

“And?”

“The rope was cut.”

“Murder for sure,” he said. “Does Jennifer Gale know Sweetie Fairbairn is your client?”

“I don’t even know if Sweetie Fairbairn is my client. It’s touch and go with her.”

“You’ve got to be careful around Jennifer Gale. Hell will pay if all this makes the news.”

“She’s smart; she’ll tumble to it sooner rather than later. For now, the best I could do was cut a deal with her. She stays quiet on everything until I approve. In return, I keep her informed about the clown’s death.”

“You are a man facing constant dilemmas.”

“I like her, Leo,” I said, after a minute. “She’s straight up about what she wants.”

“Jennifer Gale.”

“Jennifer Gale.”

“She’s beautiful. And Amanda is sending you bad signals.”

I moved on to tell him about the crime we were to commit.

“So what if his mail is piling up?” he said, when I was done. “He got fired, he swiped some money. He’s not finding another job. He might have gone home to see the folks, plot his next move. Or maybe he’s on a beach, spending his ill-gotten loot.”

“Then he wasn’t around to set the fire in Sweetie Fairbairn’s penthouse.”

“That’s reason enough to see if Andrew’s been at home?”

“A dead clown, and now a fire in her home. Someone’s applying pressure to Sweetie Fairbairn. Right now, Andrew Fill is the only one who’s got motive.”

“Unless Sweetie Fairbairn herself set that fire.”

“There is that,” I said.

People are honest. People want to trust. They want to trust working Joes most of all. Getting past the buzz lock in Fill’s building was simply a matter of setting my ladder, a tray, and a half-empty paint can in the foyer until an older man opened the door to come out.

“Hold the door for you?” the well-meaning soul asked.

“Thank you,” I said, all paint-splattered appreciation. I stepped inside with the paint can. “Thanks again.”

The paint and I rode the elevator to the third floor and walked down to Fill’s apartment. My hunch that the building’s contractor had been as chintzy with the locks as he was with the mailboxes didn’t matter. Andrew Fill’s door pushed open at the first touch of my Discover card.

“Mr. Fill?” I called from inside, after I shut the door.

Only a smell came back at me, thick and cloying from being shut up in an apartment.

Dead meat.

I took out my cell phone and called Leo in the Jeep. He was watching for anyone who looked like the picture of Andrew Fill I’d printed off the Internet.

“Something smells bad in the apartment,” I said.

“How bad?”

“Dead bad. Take my painting stuff from the foyer, put it back in the Jeep. We might be leaving in a hurry.”

With my cell phone still on, I took another few steps into the apartment. “Mr. Fill?” I said again, louder this time.

Still no answer. The bad smell was stronger.

Ahead lay the living room. It looked undisturbed. I took a right at the corridor and walked down to what looked like two bedrooms and a bathroom. The smell got weaker the farther down the hall I got.

Both bedrooms were neat, the beds made. No clothes were lying about. The bathroom was immaculate.

Only the kitchen remained. Where the smell was coming from.

I walked in, expecting to see a thin man dead on the floor. He wasn’t there. Only a roast was, on the counter, rotting next to two peeled and molding potatoes.

Nothing else.

“You broke in on a roast?”

Leo cackled like a crazed jaybird when I got in behind the wheel. I wanted to laugh, too, but the stench of the rotted meat was still too strong in my nose.

“You don’t understand,” I said. “The guy’s apartment was absolutely neat as a pin. Nothing was out of place. He even puts his toothpaste in a drawer.”

“Maybe to keep it from smelling like the roast.” He started laughing again.

“A man as neat as Andrew Fill would never leave a roast out.”

“Depends on how much money he absconded with.”

“Or whether he was abducted. Remember, the door was unlocked.”

“What now?” he asked.

“I go see what people don’t want to say about this.”