Hunting Sweetie Rose

CHAPTER 23.

Sometimes, when I call Amanda, I forget and think that nothing has changed, even though I’m dialing a new daytime number. The illusion lasts only until her phone gets picked up, because it’s never Amanda who answers. It’s always her assistant, Vicki, or an electronic device.

“Amanda Phelps’s office.”

“Hi, Vicki. It’s Dek. Is the tycoon in?”

Vicki always laughs at that, but I always suppose that’s because she’s paid to. That morning, though, she was all business. She must have heard the news.

“I’ll see if I can find her, Mr. Elstrom,” she said, with just a bit of frost.

Amanda picked up in less than fifteen seconds. “Are you all right?” Like the last time I’d called, there were other voices in her background.

“In the news, but I guess you know that.”

“You’re safe and being looked after?”

“I’ve got a high-profile attorney. About the news, they’ll probably trot out the old stuff, Amanda.”

“It’s already started.”

“You? Your father?”

“Both of us, popular again.” She forced a laugh. It was brittle.

“How badly will it affect what you’re doing?”

“It will pass.”

“They’re waiting, Amanda,” Vicki’s voice said in her background.

“Just a second,” she told her. Then, to me, “Listen, Dek, something’s happened.”

“What?” I asked.

“Amanda,” Vicki said.

“I’ll call you later.”

She hung up.

No surprise, the one-two stabbing of Sweetie Fairbairn’s bodyguard and her own disappearance led the noon television news broadcasts. No surprise, either, that in the absence of other developments, they trotted me out, via video. They played footage, recorded the night before, of me skulking out of the police station, then seeing the reporters, waving and smiling like a crooked alderman.

When the video ended, the anchor wrinkled his sincere, spray-tanned brow. “Regular viewers will remember Vlodek Elstrom for his role in the Evangeline Wilts trial. Elstrom, a sometimes records researcher, was accused of falsely authenticating bank records for Mayor Wilts’s defense. Elstrom, husband at the time of Amanda Phelps, daughter of community leader and businessman, Wendell Phelps, maintained his innocence. And, in fact, charges were subsequently dropped.

“Now the shadowy Elstrom has reappeared, this time amid the murky details surrounding the disappearance of missing heiress Sweetie Fairbairn. Police are not yet willing to discuss Elstrom’s alleged role in the Fairbairn case, saying only that he was brought in for questioning last evening as a person of interest in her disappearance. Elstrom has not been charged in the murder of Ms. Fairbairn’s bodyguard, Robert Norton. However, Elstrom has retained the services of John Peet, one of Chicago’s most prominent, and expensive, defense attorneys, leading some to question just how extensive Elstrom’s involvement is, and who is going to pay for such a high-ticket legal defense. Attempts to reach Peet, Elstrom, Wendell Phelps, and his daughter Amanda, a wealthy philanthropist in her own right, have been unsuccessful.”

The anchor then treated his viewers to a professionally whitened smile, and said, “Related to these events, but on a lighter note, there is this: It unfolded just a short time ago, at Mr. Elstrom’s residence in Rivertown.”

The screen switched to a shot of Benny Fittle, leaning against his corroding Maverick, working his jaws with the strength of an industrial composter on something he’d snagged from the doughnut box. From there, the camera zoomed over his shoulder, to Leo and Endora, in tangerine, chartreuse, and neon yellow, looking up at the turret. The lens then rose, to close in on the king-sized salad dressing label that hung from the second-floor window.

“‘You can’t always believe what you read,’” the news anchor read, chuckling so that we at home would know to laugh, too. “That flapping bedsheet refers, of course, to the case pending against Elvis Derbil, zoning commissioner in Rivertown. Sources tell us he is about to be indicted for switching out-of-date salad oil labels before reselling the product.”

It was diverting, indeed, and it was all the mirth I could stand. I switched off the tiny television, walked to the window to look out. The news vans had all left.

They’d done their work.

I’d hit the fan… and splattered all over Amanda.

That afternoon, I worked wood, ate Ho Hos, and listened to my landline phone transfer one reporter after another to my answering machine. The recording device maxed out at five o’clock, which was also when I ran out of Ho Hos. And self-control. At the next ring, I hefted a particularly nicely figured piece of oak that I’d just cut perfectly, and considered throwing it like a spear through one of the windows. Interior carpentry, sugar fueled, can only be battered by a ringing phone for so long.

I edged to the window to look out, at the ready to duck back before some cameraman could record my peeping face. Framed by one of the turret’s narrow slit windows, I’d photograph like a man looking out of a prison.

No vans had returned. Only one vehicle had come to park in front of the turret. A Prius. Jennifer Gale leaned against it. She wore a black skirt and a black sweater and was sipping an enormous Starbucks coffee.

She smiled up, raised the cup, and toasted me with it. She was at the door when I got downstairs.

“Dusty,” she said, eyeing my work duds. “I’ve been drinking coffee all afternoon. Can I use your bathroom?”

“It’s on the third floor. It is a man’s bathroom, a man who lives alone. It’s particularly dusty.”

“It’s a question of need,” she said, going up ahead of me.

I waited in my office.

“Besides the dust, closets are also a problem here,” she said, when she came down.

“I’ll build some, someday.”

“You’d better, if a woman is ever to occupy this place.” She sat down on one of the card table chairs. “About you standing me up last evening?”

“I got detained.”

“So I saw, on the news-our news, in fact.”

“I really am sorry. I was looking forward to dinner.”

“You were on the news again today, at noon.”

“Nothing substantive. Just for comedy.”

“We’ll have dinner now?”

My instinct was to say no-not with a news reporter; not with a beautiful woman; not now. Then I had the thought that it would give me the opportunity to show off the expensive new duds Buffy Griselda had gotten me that morning. It was rationalization, and it was enough. I went upstairs, showered quickly, and descended, transformed, ready for applause.

“Don’t you ever wear anything but khakis and blue shirts?” she asked.