Hunting Sweetie Rose

CHAPTER 25.

I started waiting outside Tim Duggan’s office at nine the next morning. It was south of the city, on the second floor of a three-story building next to a discount tire store. The green hall carpet hadn’t been cleaned in quite some time.

He stepped out of the elevator at ten fifteen and stopped when he saw me. His hand went into his suit jacket.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he called from down the hall.

“Did you read that Tribune you’ve got under your arm?”

“It doesn’t exonerate you. It reports only that Plinnit has dropped you as a person of interest. You could still be involved.”

“I am involved. Now I need to be effective. Let’s go inside and converse.”

Duggan looked at me for a long minute, thinking, as I was, that his bulk was better and harder than mine. He could snap me like a twig. Or, more sociably, he could merely throw me into the elevator and press the down button. Either way would remove me effectively.

Instead, though, he said, “I need to call a client. Wait here.” He unlocked his office and went inside.

The call didn’t take long. After only a couple of minutes, he opened his office door and told me to come in.

The office coordinated well with the hall. Beneath the dented metal desk, one beige file cabinet, and three vinyl chairs, there was more of the same stained green carpet.

I went for truth: “What happened at Sweetie Fairbairn’s apartment?”

He went for incredulity. “You’re asking me? You were there.”

“Your perspective.”

“It was my day off,” he said. “Bob Norton was a reliable man. No way he’d let anybody into that penthouse.”

“Not even if that person had a gun?”

“There’s a camera in the lobby, aimed at the penthouse elevator door. One monitor is in a cabinet upstairs, in the penthouse foyer. Bob would never have let the elevator come up without positive ID of who was inside.”

“Is there tape?”

“Off the downstairs monitor, maybe.”

“The back door, or another broken window?”

“The police won’t let me back in the penthouse. They’ll have to tell you whether there was forced entry.”

“You haven’t asked them?”

“It’s their investigation. I’ll ask when they’re done.”

“There’s another possibility.”

“No way in hell Sweetie Fairbairn shot Bob.”

“Who, then?”

“I sent you to George Koros, to find out about Andrew Fill. You said Fill embezzled from Ms. Fairbairn.”

“Fill has gone away. I don’t know where he is.”

“I don’t have any other names. Nobody has reason to want Ms. Fairbairn dead. She helps people-children, hospitals, doctors. Her only offenses come from her good works, in choosing to help some while denying others. Those aren’t motives to murder.”

“You had to know she was afraid. She sent you to hire me.”

“She never mentioned anything specific. I did what she asked. I provided security. She didn’t hire me to ask questions.”

Someone knocked on his door. Duggan went and opened it.

It was Plinnit.

“Lieutenant,” I said, looking at Duggan, “what a sudden nonsurprise.”

“It’s a lovely day, Elstrom,” the lieutenant said. “I’ve come to take you for a drive.”

The gray-eyed, gray-haired man was behind the wheel. He didn’t wiggle his jowls or drool in excited recognition when I slid into the back of the unmarked car. He waited for Plinnit to get in, then drove us from the curb.

“Nice of Duggan to call you,” I said to the back of Plinnit’s neck.

The vinyl upholstery smelled funny, as if it had just been drenched with a cleaner to kill a smell. I reached down to touch the seat. Mercifully, it seemed dry.

“He doesn’t like trouble,” Plinnit said.

“I was invited in.”

“Like the person who killed Robert Norton, I’m sure.”

“You never got around to telling me if there was a lobby camera at the Wilbur Wright.”

“The quality’s lousy, but we could make out you. And Ms. Fairbairn, twice. She went up, apparently forgot something, changed her clothes, and came back down the rear stairs because we don’t have that recorded. Then she went up again. She’s an obvious candidate for shooting Norton, Elstrom.”

“If you ever find motive,” I said. “Where are we going?”

“You’ll recognize it,” Plinnit said.

Five minutes later, I did. It was Andrew Fill’s apartment building.

I also recognized Jennifer Gale’s green Prius. It was parked down the block.

The car looked empty. So did the sidewalks, except for a redheaded woman in a turquoise coat strolling down the block.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Oh, please,” Plinnit said.

In the foyer, Plinnit buzzed someone on the second floor, who let us in. We took the elevator up.

The pleasant older man who’d held the door for me the last time I’d come was waiting in the hall. At the sight of me, he widened his eyes and nodded exaggeratedly at Plinnit. Plinnit thanked him a fraction of an instant before the old man slammed the door.

“Last time, I came cleverly disguised as a painter,” I said.

“Ah, Elstrom,” Plinnit said. We went back to the elevator and rode it up to three.

“What are we doing?” I asked, too loudly, when we got to Fill’s door. If Jennifer was in the apartment, the best she could do now was hide under the bed.

Plinnit gave me a puzzled look and withdrew a key from his pocket.

“Aren’t you going to knock first?” I asked, again too loudly.

“Losing your hearing, Elstrom? Or are you expecting Fill to be home?”

We went in.

Fill’s apartment no longer smelled of spoiled meat. It smelled of Jennifer Gale’s perfume.

“The place has been gone over, so you can touch,” Plinnit said, then added, “some more.”

“You found my prints?” It was my last loud attempt.

Plinnit laughed. “Certainly not on the roast.”

“The door was open. I stepped in, looked around, saw the apartment was immaculate. I left.”

“How did you think to come here in the first place?”

“Same reason as you, Lieutenant. Andrew Fill had a dispute with Sweetie Fairbairn. It was in the newspaper.”

“George Koros told us Fill took money from something called the Midwest Arts Symposium.”

“Sweetie Fairbairn had Koros fire him.”

Plinnit’s face tightened and then relaxed. “The question is, Elstrom, did you come here to snoop or to abduct?”

“Abduct Andrew Fill? Why?”

“For Sweetie Fairbairn. She could have hired you to muscle the money out of Fill.”

“No need. Koros can confirm that Fill has been paying it back.”

“Koros did. But perhaps Fill was paying back too slowly for Ms. Fairbairn.”

“I got involved in this long after Fill disappeared. He’s been gone at least a month.”

“The stinking roast gave you that?”

Plinnit was too smart for too many lies. I gave him something he already knew.

“I went through his mail,” I said.

“We know. We took your prints off the box. We’ll probably add violating federal postal laws to your growing list of crimes.”

“I wanted to see how long the mail had been piling up.”

“You were thinking Andrew Fill went away for a month, then decided to come back to kill Ms. Fairbairn?”

“I don’t know what to think. Koros says Fill is an embezzler, nothing more. I’m just assembling facts that might help find Sweetie Fairbairn.”

“Why didn’t you toss the apartment, Elstrom?”

“What?”

“When you broke in here before. Why didn’t you toss the place, do a thorough search?”

“For what?”

“For all that money, Elstrom. Or for clues as to where Fill might be, with all that money.”

Something itchy started working at my scalp.

“Want to know why you didn’t need to toss this place?” Plinnit went on. “Because you already knew what was here: Nothing, with a capital N. You came back just to make sure the place looked good enough for us. Now there’s nothing here for anyone to find.”

It was enough. “If you want to talk more, let’s invite John Peet.”

“Not yet, Elstrom. Maybe soon.”

We went down to his car.

Nobody said anything on the ride back to Duggan’s office building. As the gray-haired, gray-eyed man pulled us to a stop, Plinnit turned around to look at me.

“Care to guess whose face keeps popping up where it doesn’t belong, Elstrom? First in Sweetie Fairbairn’s penthouse, then in Andrew Fill’s apartment?”

I reached for the door handle. “Thanks for the ride, Lieutenant.”

“Don’t pop up again until I come for you,” he said.