The Confessors' Club

ELEVEN

There were two messages from Wendell on my cell phone. I returned neither. I hadn’t learned enough to dismiss his suspicions outright, or enough to interest any cop.

I called the Bohemian. ‘Arthur Lamm?’

‘No news might be good news, if he’s simply out in the woods, eating insects. Debbie Goring?’

‘No news is irritating news. She hasn’t called.’ Then, ‘How common is it for a company to insure the life of the CEO of another company?’

‘It’s done sometimes when a shareholder makes a big investment in the CEO’s company. The loss of a chief executive can be catastrophic to the investment, hence the insurance policy.’

‘Is the CEO, whose life is being insured, notified when a policy is taken out on him?’

‘Almost certainly, because medical history and perhaps even an actual physical will be required. Plus, CEOs are always in touch with their big shareholders. They need their support at shareholder meetings. Where are you going with this, Vlodek?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Do you want me to call Debbie Goring again?’

‘No. Give me her address. I’ll stop by.’

Debbie Goring lived in Prospect Park, a few miles east of O’Hare airport. Hers was a beige bi-level in an older mix of ranch houses and other bi-levels.

A green Ford Taurus station wagon with its tailgate up was parked in her driveway. A short, squarish, dark-haired woman in blue Levis and a plain black T-shirt was pulling grocery bags out of the back of the car. The T-shirt wasn’t long enough to cover the death’s head skull tattoo on her lower spine. I parked the Jeep in the street and walked up.

‘Debbie Goring?’ I said.

She straightened up, a grocery bag in each arm, and turned around. Most of her was in her early forties, but the skin around her eyes was deeply wrinkled, as though she’d spent sixty years squinting distrustfully at the world.

‘Unless you’re from the Illinois Lottery, bringing a check for a million dollars, she’s not home.’ Her voice was raspy from too many cigarettes.

‘I’m Dek Elstrom,’ I said. ‘I’m not from the lottery.’

‘No shit,’ she said.

‘An associate of mine, Anton Chernek-’

She cut me off. ‘I’ve gotten Chernek’s messages. I’m not interested in talking to any more insurance bastards.’

‘I’m not an insurance bastard.’

‘What then?’

‘A freelance bastard, with questions about your father’s death. Can I help with the bags?’

She hefted the bags closer to her chest and started to walk towards the front door. Tops of four cereal boxes – two Cheerios, two Cinnamon Toast Crunch – protruded out of the brown bags. Oats and sugar seemed a sensible mix; she must have been a sensible woman. ‘Adios,’ she called over her shoulder.

‘I’m serious about investigating your father’s death.’

She stopped and turned around, hugging the bags. ‘For who?’

‘I can’t tell you, but it’s not for an insurance company.’

She lifted her chin. ‘My father was murdered.’

I held out my arms for one of the grocery bags.

She shook her head. ‘There’s another bag in the car, and two gallons of milk. And slam the back lid.’

I went back for the bag and the gallons, closed the tailgate and followed her to the front door.

She led me through a living room that smelled faintly of old cigarette smoke. Pictures in gold frames of her with two young boys were on a spinet piano against the wall. ‘My boys are six and ten,’ she said as we walked into the kitchen. I set the milk and the last of the groceries on the counter and stood by the door as she put them away.

Without asking if I wanted any, she poured coffee into two yellow mugs, nuked them for twenty seconds and, after turning on the kitchen exhaust fan, brought them to the table. She lit a Camel from a crumpled pack and dropped the match in a cheap black plastic ashtray. ‘When I heard Chernek’s messages on my answering machine, I thought, “I’m not doing this crap anymore.”’

‘What crap?’

‘Trying to get deaf people to listen.’

‘About your father being murdered?’

She blew smoke towards the exhaust fan. ‘I was in an abusive marriage, Mr Elstrom. My husband took off, leaving me dead broke. My father bought me this house, so I would have a place to raise my sons. He was a very wealthy man, but he expected me to make my own way in the world.’

‘Yet he bought you this house,’ I said.

‘He drew the line at his grandsons doing without.’ She took a long pull on the Camel. ‘My father had pancreatic cancer; he knew he was dying for quite a while. He had plenty of time to get his affairs in order. He’d arranged for his stocks to be donated to various charitable causes in which he was involved, and had just finished cataloguing his art collection for museums. That, too, is set to be donated.’

‘Nothing for you?’

‘Not true.’ Her face was defiant. ‘Insurance was for me. He told me he had a two-million-dollar life insurance policy, naming me as sole beneficiary.’

‘He died from painkillers,’ I said.

Her eyes tightened, daring me to say the word.

‘Suicide,’ I said.

She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘No payout for suicide.’

‘Bad pain can make anyone desperate for relief.’

‘I was his only child. We didn’t get along great, but he adored his grandsons. If he’d been in the kind of pain where he needed to end his life, he would have changed his other bequests to make sure I got money for my sons.’

‘Still, sometimes pain-’

‘Please,’ she said, lighting another Camel. ‘His pain was being managed. He went to the office every day, kept up his schedule. For him to come home and swallow a bottle of pills is too much to believe.’

‘What do you know about the day he died?’

‘I was told he got to the office about ten in the morning, looked at his mail, and went out to lunch with his attorney. He had nothing pressing because, by this time, my father had shifted his responsibilities to others within the firm. Like I said, he had plenty of time to take care of things.’

‘Time enough to make sure there would be money for his grandsons.’

‘You got it. After lunch, he talked briefly to a few of his managers about small things and was driven home about three o’clock.’

‘Your father had a chauffeur?’

‘A hired driver was on standby for the last months, in case his pills made him woozy.’

‘And when he got home that day?’

‘He took a nap. According to Mrs Johnson, his housekeeper, he got up at six, watched the news as he got dressed to go out to one of his dinners. He left about seven.’

‘Do you know where he went?’

‘No.’

‘What time did he get home?’

‘Eleven-thirty, according to Mrs Johnson. And then he went into his study and died, still in his evening clothes.’

‘Not in bed?’ It was a wrinkle. I’d always assumed pill swallowers laid down, for the wait.

She’d caught the question behind my eyes. ‘At his desk,’ she said, a little too loudly.

‘There was no note?’

‘A pill bottle in his pocket doesn’t have to mean suicide,’ she said. ‘He didn’t even pause to take off his suit jacket, if the bullshit is to be believed.’

‘A medical examiner must have conducted an investigation.’

She stabbed the ashtray with the Camel. ‘Haven’t you been listening? What the hell kind of person sits at his damned desk, writes no note, and swallows pills knowing his adored grandsons won’t get one damned dime?’

I asked if she knew the name of Whitman’s chauffer.

‘We can get it from Mrs Johnson.’ She looked at the clock on the wall. ‘I have to pick up my boys from school,’ she said. ‘Be here tomorrow morning at eleven. I’ll take you to her. She’ll tell you about my father and my boys.’

At the front door, she said, ‘I’ll give you a hundred thousand dollars if you can prove it wasn’t suicide.’

‘I already have a client,’ I said, ethical purity spilling from my mouth like gospel washed in Listerine.

‘So you said. And just who the hell is that?’

I shrugged.

She smiled, softening the wrinkles at her eyes. ‘Tomorrow morning, eleven o’clock. Mrs Johnson will tell you.’

I walked to the Jeep morally intact, true to my first responsibility, my client Wendell Phelps.

And all the way to Rivertown, I fantasized about what I could do with a hundred grand.