Hunting Sweetie Rose

CHAPTER 63.

I woke up to sunlight streaming in from the east, over Lake Michigan. Alone, in Amanda’s guest room.

She’d put my terry robe on a chair close to the bed. That robe had survived our marriage, our estrangement, a divorce, and the beginnings of a reconciliation. I was not sure if it was surviving anything now, but I took comfort in the fact that it was still in Amanda’s home. I slipped it on and crossed the room to the guest bath-with much grace and good balance, I thought, being that everything hurt.

She’d set my spare shaving kit on the vanity, another sign that my presence still survived in that otherwise redone high place. The mirror showed me a face that had been scratched raw, top to bottom, twenty times. Shaving would be out of the question for some days. I took a long, careful shower, and emerged, perfumed by her soap, robed in terry, and moved as jauntily as I could out to the living room.

Amanda and Leo were drinking coffee on the balcony. I split my face, lined as it was in red like some crazed map showing only north and south routes, into an idiot’s smile.

“He returns from death,” Leo said, through the screen. They both got up, made appropriate fussing gestures, and got me settled onto a chair. Amanda gave me the kind of brief peck on the top of the head one would give a visiting nephew with acne, and went inside to get me some coffee.

“I bought you clean clothes,” Leo said. “Alas, they are identical to your other clothes: blue shirts and khaki pants. At least they are not bloody.”

My raw face pulsed hot. “You’ve got to stay away from the turret. There’s a killer out there, maybe still looking for me.”

“A half-pint cross-dresser, smaller even than me?” he asked, laughing. “Fear not, because the turret for now is the safest place on the planet. I’d barely come to a stop in front of your abode, still mulling whether it would be better to treat you to a new image from the Discount Den”-he paused to finger the hem of the day’s shirt, an atrocity of pink birds-“when, suddenly, two plainclothes cops were all over my Porsche.”

“Rivertown?”

“They were Chicago cops, detailed there by Plinnit. I showed them my driver’s license; they called Plinnit. He agreed I could go inside so long as one of the cops accompanied me. That guy came out shaking his head, asking over and over why your shower was hooked to a water heater with garden hoses. I told him that you’d not yet taken a course on plumbing.”

“Plinnit’s serious about finding who’s out there, hunting.” I was relieved.

“There’s more. Plinnit assigned another Chicago copper, uniformed, to keep Amanda’s security guys company down the hall. I think there’s another one, in plainclothes, down in the lobby. You’ve got heavy protection, my friend.”

Amanda came back with a carafe of coffee and a cup for me. “Leo and I have been sitting here, arguing over who would get the privilege of waking you, so you can call Plinnit to find out if he’s learned who your man-lady enemy might be.”

I took the cup Amanda filled, sipped at the coffee.

“Well?” she asked.

“I haven’t finished my coffee yet,” I said.

Leo shifted forward on his chair, as though to get up. “Amanda, can you help me throw him over this rail?”

“I doubt Plinnit’s going to know,” I said.

“They took scrapings from under your nails,” Leo said. “They’ll know soon.”

“DNA tests are useful only if the person is already in their databases. You’ve been watching too much television.”

“Oh no. I no longer go near television,” Leo said quickly.

By the way Amanda laughed, Leo had made some sort of joke.

“What are you two talking about?” I looked back and forth, between them.

“You’ll have to see for yourself, when you’re better,” Leo said.

“Lieutenant Plinnit is not going to get any answers about that man’s identity?” Amanda asked me.

“He’s somebody Darlene and Koros knew. He’s probably an amateur, like them, and might not be local. For sure, the name he gave the Michigan City police won’t check out.”

“Amateur or not, he almost got you in Indiana,” Leo said to me.

“What’s he talking about?” Amanda asked me.

“My little murderous bike-riding friend had been dispatched to Indiana by Darlene and Koros, to hang out until Koros could get me to go there,” I said.

“To torch the trailer with Dek near by,” Leo said.

“Their plan was to get me blamed for Fill’s death.” I pulled the robe tighter. “We must have shocked the hell out of our little friend, when we showed up early.”

“We? Who were you in Indiana with, Dek?” Amanda asked.

“Remember, that night you drove out to the turret? The news reporter who dropped me off-”

“Jennifer Gale? She keeps figuring into things, doesn’t she?”

Like that silver-haired commodities fellow keeps figuring in, I wanted to say, but that was the kind of pettiness I’d slipped into, before Amanda and I divorced. I’d spent my energies looking for ways to accuse, instead of finding ways to fix.

I wasn’t going there again. “I’m going to get dressed,” I said, standing up.

“You don’t need to explain,” she said.

“I have to get on with things.”

“What things?” Her eyes were intent. Her concern was real.

“Finding who’s still hunting Sweetie Fairbairn.”

“My God; that’s for Plinnit. You’re safest here.”

I needed to leave. For her, and for me. I went inside, picked up the duffel Leo had brought, and got dressed. I didn’t know what to do with the robe, so I left it on the bed, hoping Amanda would know.