The Confessors' Club

SIXTEEN

Two men in loose-fitting gray suits, one carrying a square carton, the other something the size of a wrapped painting, came out of the Whitman house the next morning, heading toward the black Ford Expedition parked at the curb. They stopped when they saw me pull up. The one with the painting gestured at someone in the big SUV, and a third man, also in a suit, got out from the driver’s door. All three stood motionless, watching me. I couldn’t see the guns, but I knew they had them. Whatever Jim Whitman had bequeathed, it was worth enough to merit three guards.

Mrs Johnson had followed the two men out of the house, saw them tense and stop on the front walk. She turned to look where they were looking. I waved out the Jeep’s open side curtain. She squinted, recognized my face. ‘We’re almost done,’ she called. And the world righted itself. The men carrying the box and the painting resumed walking toward the SUV, the driver got back inside, and I settled back to wait.

Ten minutes later, Mrs Johnson followed the armed men out with the last of the cartons, and watched them drive away. She came over to the Jeep. ‘You can’t imagine how relieved I am that those things are on their way to the Museum of Contemporary Art,’ she said. ‘The house has an alarm, but I’ve not been comfortable there, alone with all those valuable pieces.’

‘They’ll be exhibited soon?’ I asked as we went up the front walk.

‘The curator said they’ll be catalogued, then stored. In a year, maybe less, they’ll be rotated into exhibition.’

‘How valuable are the pieces?’

‘Millions,’ she said, as we entered the house. ‘Mr Whitman was a plain man, not the usual patron of the arts. Those pieces were recommended as investments. From what I understand, he profited quite handsomely from their purchase.’

‘Yet not even one was left to Debbie.’

The distress on her face seemed genuine. ‘Wealthy fathers can be especially difficult on young daughters. And Debbie, as you might imagine, was very strong-willed. But Mr Whitman cared for his daughter, and adored his grandsons.’

‘You find it odd that he left them nothing?’

‘It’s impossible to believe. And now you’ve come back because you’re wondering where he got the pills, haven’t you?’

‘Yes, and I’d like to see his calendar again. You’re certain there was only one bottle of Gendarin in reserve?’

‘Certain as I can be. As I said, Mr Whitman wanted to keep more on hand, in case the pain got worse, but his doctor wouldn’t go for it. Federally regulated narcotics are so very tightly dispensed.’

‘Could he have set aside a pill or two from each refill, to build up an extra supply?’

‘That’s very doubtful. He truly needed those pills, and skipping one would mean going twelve full hours in pain. And yes, Mr Elstrom,’ she said, ‘I told that to the police, but they didn’t seem interested.’

‘Any more thoughts on where Mr Whitman might have gone that last night?’

‘Mr McClain was no help?’

‘He dropped off Mr Whitman on North Michigan Avenue. Someone else drove him home.’

‘In that tan car I saw.’

‘Any idea whose it was?’

‘Only thing I know it was tan, and it was a Buick.’

‘You know cars well enough to spot a Buick?’

‘Goodness, no. All cars look the same to me these days, like jelly beans. It’s just that when I was young, Buicks had those holes…’ She stopped, searching for the words.

‘Like portholes, on the sides of the car?’

‘That’s it. Imagine Buick still doing those holes, only smaller, after all these years.’

We went into Whitman’s study. She picked up the calendar from the desk and handed it to me. I opened it to the page for December 13, the day he died, and looked again at the half-dozen entries. His first appointment was for lunch, at eleven-thirty. Other names were penciled in, beginning at one, ending at two-thirty. After that, the calendar was blank until the ‘C’ entry, scrawled across the lines for the evening. I pointed to it.

‘As I told you last time, I don’t know that one,’ she said. ‘After you and Debbie left, I flipped back a few months. There are other entries just like it.’

‘McClain said the same thing. He dropped Whitman at the same intersection, Michigan at Walton, every few weeks.’

‘You think he got the Gendarin there?’

‘I can’t understand why he’d need to. He had enough in reserve here to kill himself.’

‘I went through the whole house, Mr Elstrom. I found no third vial, no trace he’d hidden more Gendarin.’ She studied my face. ‘You came back because you’re thinking what I’m thinking.’

‘Two pills remaining in the vial in his jacket, as there should have been? Full reserve supply upstairs, as there should have been? Leaving us to accept he’d gone to the bother of obtaining the pills he needed to kill himself elsewhere, when he didn’t need to? Yes, I’m having a problem understanding why he’d go to that trouble.’

‘He didn’t commit suicide, did he, Mr Elstrom?’

‘I can’t prove that.’

‘Why would someone risk killing him? Why not simply wait?’

‘Did he have enemies?’

‘Business adversaries, perhaps, though Mr Whitman was not ruthless, not someone who took unfair advantage.’

I started turning back the calendar pages. ‘I need to know where he went that evening.’

The appointments looked to have been written by two different people. Most were in a feminine hand. ‘Did you make most of these entries?’

‘His secretary made those,’ she said. ‘The ones that are barely legible, like that ‘C’ for the night Mr Whitman died, he wrote himself.’

Almost every page had an abbreviation for an evening appointment. I started pointing randomly to different evening entries.

‘Y?’

‘YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago, usually a dinner meeting for the directors, every three months.’

‘MP?’

‘Millennium Park, the new park on Michigan Avenue. He donated one hundred thousand dollars.’

I came to another ‘C’ entry, two months earlier, in October.

‘That’s one of the others I found,’ Mrs Johnson said.

Again it was simple and cryptic, scrawled across the lines for evening appointments. Beside me, Mrs Johnson shook her head, offering nothing. I turned back more pages. There were ‘C’ entries in August, June, April and February.

‘Did he keep another desk diary at his office?’ I asked.

‘This was the only one; he carried it back and forth in his briefcase.’

‘Maybe the prior year’s book has more information?’

‘His secretary kept his old diaries,’ she said, picking up the phone. Then, while she was dialing, ‘Why would someone murder an already dying man?’

There was no answering that.