Hunting Sweetie Rose

CHAPTER 24.

She probably took it as gentlemanly that I said I’d drive us to dinner. She didn’t complain when we had to walk along the river to get to where I’d hidden the Jeep from the reporters. She climbed into the car without commenting on the splotches of rust, or the strips of duct tape that covered the slashes on the plastic side windows.

After buckling her seat belt, though, she made a point of touching the wires protruding from the dash where the radio used to live.

“You’re an outdoorsman, right? A rustic? This vehicle is for fishing and hunting?”

“This is my principal mode of transportation,” I said, sounding every bit the college graduate that I am.

“How interesting,” she said, though whether it was about the wires or me, I couldn’t tell. Then, “Where shall we have dinner?”

“Someplace well lit,” I said, a bit too quickly.

Barely a foot away, she smiled. Or at least her perfume, a heady, floral mix, did.

“I meant someplace where I don’t have to worry about someone breaking into this fine car,” I said, fumbling the joke.

She was too smart. “Rich girlfriend,” she said.

“Rich girlfriend,” I agreed.

I knew a diner with big windows, lit brightly enough for microsurgery, and parked on the street. “We’ll sit by the window, to make sure nobody peels off my silver tape,” I said.

“Of course.”

We both laughed, getting out, but that just made me more edgy.

“You’re Jennifer Gale,” the woman behind the cash register said when we walked in.

The diner was only half full. It was easy to hear. Most of the heads turned.

Smiling as though delighted to be recognized, Jennifer turned to me. “That booth in the back corner, away from the windows, you said?”

“Perfect.”

I sat on the side facing the rest of the diner, so people coming in wouldn’t notice her. We ordered mushroom burgers and Cokes, because I wasn’t elegant and she was.

“How’s your investigation into Rivertown coming?” I asked, hoping to steer the conversation.

“Elvis Derbil hasn’t even been indicted yet.”

“The Feds are taking their time?”

“I suppose.”

She was being deliberately vague. I remembered the morning I’d found her sitting on the bench by the Willahock. She’d made herself almost unrecognizable behind huge sunglasses, wearing dressed-down clothes. She’d said she’d been in the neighborhood and had thought to drop by. She’d been evasive then, just like now. Something very hushed was going on between Elvis Derbil and the Feds, and Jennifer knew what it was.

“You do recall my bringing you the photos of the clown going off the roof, and getting you in to see the rope?” she asked, changing the subject. “How you agreed you’d give me the complete Sweetie Fairbairn story?”

“I don’t recall Ms. Fairbairn’s name coming up in those negotiations.”

“Well, surely you remember calling the police to her penthouse yesterday?” A smile played on her fine face. “Why are you now trying to divert me from Sweetie Fairbairn, the biggest story in Chicago, and her connection to that poor clown?”

“What makes you think there is a connection?”

“I don’t think you’re working two separate cases. Just a little over a week ago, you were spending your time painting windows. Clients, for you, are rare.”

“Interesting observation.”

“Accurate?”

“I have competing commitments. One is to my client-a rock, so to speak.”

“Let’s call her Sweetie Fairbairn,” she said.

“My other commitment is to a hard place.”

“That would be me, the all-too-accommodating television reporter?”

Our mushroom burgers came, and with them, the opportunity to fill my mouth with meat instead of an answer.

“How do we resolve this?” she asked, as I raised the hamburger to hide behind it.

I thought quickly; I never like to dither when food has just been served.

“I trust you,” I said. “You’ve not traded on your inside knowledge that James Stitts, the clown, may have been murdered.”

“What is the link between him and Sweetie Fairbairn?”

I inspected my hamburger. It looked like it was topped with sufficient mushrooms. Then again, it was why I’d chosen the joint. That, and the big front windows we decided to ignore.

“Impasse?” I asked.

“Only until we’re done eating.”

We talked of rich people, and people who merely acted rich, and geese, and then she asked something strange.

“Ever hear of citizen boards in Rivertown?”

“Citizen boards? You mean, like in Mayberry, where the town folk get together to help ol’ Andy discover who’s been sticking hungry thumbs into Aunt Bee’s apple pies, cooling on the windowsill?”

She laughed. “That’ll work.”

“No such thing as citizen boards, not in Rivertown. It’s not a democracy.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“You didn’t think they existed?” I asked.

“I didn’t think anybody would know if there were any.”

“Look, corruption is everywhere in Rivertown. Hookers work Thompson Avenue unmolested by the police. Taverns stay open past mandated closing times. I’ve heard there are at least three chop shops working out of old factories, converting stolen cars into used parts. The lizards have a piece of all of that. They would never risk involving the citizenry in city government.”

“You mean any ordinary citizenry.”

“How does any of that tie to Elvis?”

“Elvis is small potatoes.” She took a bite of her hamburger.

“Is this why you suggested dinner for last evening? To ask me about citizen boards?”

“No; I’m killing time until we can abandon our impasse. Things changed when a guard got killed at Sweetie Fairbairn’s, Dek. Now I need to know everything about you, her, the clown, and the guard.”

“I’m willing to work for it,” she added, after I’d said nothing.

“How?”

“Right now, you’re too interesting to the media. They’ll watch your every move, at least until something else in the Sweetie Fairbairn case becomes more interesting. Such scrutiny will limit your ability to detect, or whatever it is that you do. As I keep telling you, I’ve got resources you can never match. I help you find out what you want to know, and you give me the story.”

I put down the defense of my hamburger. “Sweetie Fairbairn might show up today or tomorrow and confess she was having an affair with the guard. They quarreled; she killed him. End of another tawdry celebrity miniscandal.”

“You think?”

“Not a chance.”

“Then tell me what you know, with our same guarantee: I don’t use anything you don’t authorize. But I need to know everything, now.”

She was right: She had resources. But I had a client.

“I’ll get the story anyway, you know,” she said. “All of it.”

“No angle to Amanda Phelps,” I said.

“How does she fit?”

“Sweetie Fairbairn learned about me through Amanda, at some social gathering. That’s all.”

“Ms. Phelps has already been brought into your troubles, mentioned on the news because you were once married.”

“I’m hoping that link will fade.”

“A chivalrous man. I like that. I agree, so long as your Ms. Phelps has no other direct involvement.”

We finished our burgers and left, because I didn’t want to talk further in a diner. Driving north, I told Jennifer Gale everything I knew about the clown, the guard, and Sweetie Fairbairn.

“Someone’s blackmailing her?”

“It’s all I can think.”

I pulled up in front of an apartment building.

“What’s this?” she asked, when I stopped.

“Inside that building is an apartment. The door upstairs might still be unlocked. The apartment might still stink, from a roast and a couple of potatoes that have gone very bad in too many days of heat.”

“Who lives there?”

“A man named Andrew Fill.”

“Andrew Fill? Didn’t he just resign as head of the Midwest Arts Symposium?”

“He’s had issues with some of Sweetie Fairbairn’s money.”

“She fired him?”

“For theft. It’s the best lead I’ve got for now. I want you to help me find where he might be.”

I drove us back to the turret, parked behind her Prius, and we both got out. She looked for a moment at the timbered door, perhaps thinking.

Then she shook her head almost imperceptibly and stuck out her hand. “I’m an old-fashioned girl, Dek Elstrom.”

“Thank you,” I said.

She drove away, leaving me with just the slightest remaining scent of a heady, floral perfume.

“Thank you,” I said again, this time to no one at all.