Hunting Sweetie Rose

CHAPTER 44.

A riot of color moved next to me, no doubted a cheery nurse in a cheery tunic. I rubbed at my eyes, to see through the fog of drugs they’d used to quiet me for the night.

“Morning, Killer,” Leo said.

His shirt was brighter than the blue of any sky, except in those spots where it was orange, or red, or green, or pink. A riot of color, for sure-and of relief.

“They’ve cuffed me to the bed, Leo.”

“At the direction of Lieutenant Plinnit, who is outside, dying to talk to you.”

“You’ve kept him away?”

“I told him I’m here because John Peet is addressing the Supreme Court.”

“Dressed like that? You, a lawyer?”

“I never used the L word. I merely said I was representing you. As far as the clothes, I implied I practice in Miami.”

“Practice?” I repeated, not understanding because there was still a residue of drugs. “In Miami?”

He stepped back and did part of a dance thrust. “Samba,” he said.

I would have laughed at the nonsense of it, but that would have hurt.

“Anything you want to tell me, before I let Plinnit in?” he said.

“I’ll fill you in later, when we’re away from here.”

He left the side of the bed and came back with Plinnit.

“Killer, Lieutenant Plinnit is here,” Leo announced.

“Your smart-assed tone isn’t helping your client, Mr. Brumsky,” Plinnit said.

“Why the cuffs, Plinnit?” I asked.

“Suspicion of murder.”

“That’s what the sheriff said. Still Robert Norton, the guard? Or are you still flailing away at Andrew Fill?”

He held up a small plastic evidence bag. Inside was a spent bullet. “The sheriff just gave me this. They dug it out of your side. It matches the gun that fell from your hand.”

“Why would I go off and shoot myself in some remote woods?”

“Remorse. You crawled there to die a sorry death, after you shot yourself. And it wasn’t just any old remote woods. Sheriff Ball found blood at a small farm nearby, owned by a woman named Darlene Taylor. We’re hopeful it’s your blood, like we’re hopeful this bullet will match two we recovered from behind the left ear of one George Koros, late of Chicago, Illin-”

“Koros is dead?” I struggled to sit up. A chained left foot and a shot right side brought me down, fast.

“Two shots to the back of his head, as you well know. Cleaning staff found him facedown at his desk.”

“I killed Koros, then came up here to shoot myself?”

Plinnit nodded too happily. “Fits together nicely, doesn’t it?”

“It’s crap.”

“It’s enough to hold you for some time. If you’ve got other thoughts, tell me now.”

“When was Koros killed?”

“The ME hasn’t issued his final report, but it was the day before yesterday. We’ve been looking for you ever since. Your ex-wife said she didn’t know where you were.”

“I was here, in Hadlow.”

“Beyond you possessing the gun we think killed George Koros, we found a credit card statement lying next to his head,” he said, ignoring my alibi. “He’d pulled it off his online account. It shows you’ve been making substantial cash withdrawals against his card.”

“He sent me that card. I used it for traveling cash, to get to Missouri, then up here.”

“To find Sweetie Fairbairn?”

“Yes.”

Plinnit wasn’t taking notes. He knew I didn’t kill George Koros.

“So what have you found?” he asked.

“A concrete Indian chief.”

He frowned.

“And, of course, someone with a gun,” I added.

“Rosemary Taylor’s sister’s cottage is what you found, Elstrom. Remember Rosemary Taylor, the girl who became Sweetie Fairbairn?”

“The truck,” I said. “Ellie Ball told you about the truck.”

“Uh-huh, and the copies of yearbook photographs she found in it. She contacted the high school. They said you’d stopped by. I looked at the photos. Sweetie Fairbairn, in high school, looked back.”

“Sweetie Fairbairn hasn’t been here for a long, long time.”

“Are you saying Darlene Taylor shot you and then beat you? A woman who, by most accounts, is small of stature and around sixty years old?”

When I didn’t respond, Leo said, “Dek’s never been good with women of any age, Lieutenant.”

Plinnit kept his eyes on me. “Did Darlene Taylor shoot you, Elstrom?”

“I can’t imagine.”

“For getting wise to her and Koros’s extortion of Sweetie Fairbairn?”

He’d learned a lot, none of which pointed to any wrongdoing by Sweetie Fairbairn. It was time to tell him more.

“That, and their murders of Andrew Fill and Robert Norton,” I said.

I told him I suspected that somehow Koros had discovered his old high school friend, Rosemary Taylor, living as Sweetie Fairbairn at the end of a rainbow in Chicago; that he convinced her to set him up with a monthly retainer and a fancy office on Wacker Drive; and that at some point, that hadn’t been enough. He killed Andrew Fill for a half-million dollars, but that wasn’t enough, either, not when there was so much more. So he brought down Sweetie’s struggling sister, Darlene, to help him with a crafty extortion plot, probably centered around getting Sweetie blamed for Fill’s and Norton’s deaths. She outfoxed them, though. She ran, but not before giving away most, if not all, of her money. It killed the plan. Darlene murdered Koros so there’d be no remaining witness to their plot, and ran back up to Hadlow to resume life in the slow lane, at least until she could ease away with what was left of the half million Koros had embezzled from the Midwest Arts Symposium.

The only things I left out were the clown and the woman in the limo who’d hired him. Those pointed too directly at Sweetie Fairbairn.

“Slinking back here, hoping nobody knew she’d even been away, she got a bonus: you, peeking in her kitchen window?” Plinnit asked when I was done.

“Why not? Koros had told her I’d been sniffing around. I was a loose end. She shot me, and tried to make it look like a self-inflicted wound. She figured on me bleeding out in the woods, perhaps clutching the gun that killed Koros.”

“You really think it was Darlene Taylor, a short, sixty-year-old woman, who shot and kicked the crap out of you in the woods?”

“She could have had help. There could have been two people.”

“Can you prove any of this?”

“Not a bit.”

“All I’m certain of is that you keep popping up where you shouldn’t be.” He treated himself to a false laugh. “Even up here, first thing you did was find the wrong side of the road, to run down a truckload of pigs.”

“You know I didn’t kill anybody. Not Andrew Fill, not Robert Norton, not George Koros.”

“Here’s all I need to prove for now, Elstrom: You were up here, with what we both believe is the weapon used to kill George Koros.”

“I have no motive.”

“He found out you were tapping his charge account. He got mad, said he was going to report you to the police.”

“Cash for airplane tickets.”

“Plus another ten grand for crashing your rental car. People get killed every day for a lot less.”

“Bullshit, Plinnit.”

“That’s what I think, too.” He started for the door. “Until I think otherwise, you and the bed are chained.” He walked out of the room.