Hunting Sweetie Rose

CHAPTER 26.

I called Jennifer as soon as Plinnit pulled away.

“Housebreaking?” I asked.

“That was close, wasn’t it? I’d just come out when you arrived in a very official-looking car.”

“That was Lieutenant Plinnit, who’s heading the search for Sweetie Fairbairn. He wanted to rub my nose in my trail, to make sure I understood he knew I’d been in Fill’s apartment. What were you doing there?”

“Your bidding, remember? You want me to find Andrew Fill. What better place to start than his apartment?”

“How did you get in?” It wasn’t important, but the woman was fascinating.

“The building’s back door was open. Upstairs, for the apartment, I used picks.”

“Aren’t you too recognizable for that?”

“I have a wig and a very long coat.”

I remembered the red-haired woman in the turquoise coat on the sidewalk. “Good thing you chose subdued colors.”

“They draw the eye from the face.”

“Not that face,” I wanted to say, but asked instead, “Did you learn anything?”

“I’ll pick you up. We’ll talk as we drive.”

“Drive where?”

“Oh no you don’t, Dek Elstrom. This one I’m in on from the beginning.”

“Don’t you have to work?”

“Only until three o’clock. I’ll pick you up after that.”

I checked my phone for messages. Amanda had called twice. George Koros, once.

I got right through to Amanda. “I need to show you something,” she said.

“It’s lunchtime,” I said.

“I can’t do a restaurant,” she said quickly.

“I’ll come to your office.”

“No.” She said it just as fast, and then I understood why she didn’t want to meet in a restaurant, or in her office. She couldn’t afford to be seen with me.

“Messenger it to me, then,” I said.

She thought for a minute and said, “The hell with it. Sandwiches, in Millennium Park?”

We used to meet at noon there, back when they were finishing up the grand new park. It seemed that all of Chicago had been excited about what was coming. Like us, before we got married.

“I’ll get those roast beef sandwiches with the horseradish mustard, the ones on jalapeño rolls,” I said.

“You remember the bench?”

I did. Our bench was east of the bean, that asymmetrical, mirrorlike wonder that tourists and locals alike sought out to see their reflections distorted. Our bench was out of the way, tucked behind some bushes.

I told her I’d pick up the sandwiches and see her there in an hour.

I returned George Koros’s call.

“I seem to remember Andrew Fill has a summer place, in Wisconsin, or maybe Michigan,” he said.

“You think he’s there?”

“I don’t think anything, Mr. Elstrom. I had to FedEx something to Andrew once, a Saturday delivery. He gave me the address of his weekend place. When I find where it is, can you get out there right away?”

“It’s the only lead we’ve got.”

I got to the park twenty minutes early. Amanda wasn’t there yet, so I took the sandwiches for a walk. It had been months, perhaps a year, since I’d last been there. The park looked different. Plantings had been changed, and some stone benches added. It wasn’t just that, though. The people looked different. I might have still had cellular communications on the brain, because it seemed everyone was on the phone. Headsets, handsets, everyone appeared to be talking to someone far away. There were no couples simply strolling, that lunch hour, like Amanda and I used to do. Everyone looked to be alone, and on the phone.

I saw her then.

For an instant, I almost didn’t recognize her. The spring was still in her step; she still moved with the same purpose and grace. Her features were as fine and as beautiful as I always saw them, though now that was usually only in my mind.

Something, though, had changed. There was a tension to her; she seemed somehow coiled. Perhaps it was me.

Our embrace was too fast; her kiss, on my cheek, was too cordial. We sat on the bench, and I spread out the sandwiches.

“Same sandwiches, certainly,” she said.

“But not the same old Amanda,” I almost said, but didn’t. I bit the sandwich instead.

“How is Sweetie Fairbairn?”

“Still gone.”

Strangers on a bench, stiff and formal and guarded.

“No inside dope, things I haven’t been hearing on the news?” she asked.

“Nobody knows anything. Especially me.”

“Why did she hire you?”

I hesitated, as I had the first time she’d asked about Sweetie Fairbairn, the night we’d met at Rokie’s.

“I have a real need to know, before I show you something,” she added.

I told her what little I knew, about a blond woman in a limousine, and James Stitts, and Andrew Fill.

“And the dead guard?”

“Sweetie was there, and then she took off.”

“She never told you how all this might relate to her?”

“She’s extremely guarded. She intimated that someone was impersonating her.”

“That woman in the limo, for blackmail?”

“Andrew Fill could have set that up with an actress.”

“Why? He already has her money.”

“A half-million dollars of it. Maybe he wants more.”

“Then this makes everything doubly interesting. It arrived yesterday.” She pulled a folded sheet of paper from her purse and handed it to me. It was a photocopy of a check, payable to Memorial Hospital, Children’s Wing. The check was handwritten, for two million dollars. Sweetie Fairbairn had signed the check.

“A huge check, dated the day she disappeared.” I looked up.

“I’d suggested a contribution of one or two hundred thousand.”

“And she gave you two million?”

“Much more than I asked for.”

“You were very compelling?”

“It wasn’t just me. I know of two other people who also received much more from Sweetie than they’d asked for.”

“Checks also written the day she disappeared?”

She nodded. “It will become public today, tomorrow at the latest.”

“Tell me, Amanda.” I wanted her to say the words so that I’d have no doubt.

“Sweetie Fairbairn is giving away her whole fortune.”