The Confessors' Club

TWENTY

Rikk, at Carson’s life insurance carrier, sounded half asleep when he picked up the phone.

‘Did anybody identify where Carson went, his last night?’ I asked.

He yawned, quite audibly. ‘You’re killing me, Elstrom. You already asked that. Our concern starts at the moment he got smacked. Dinner doesn’t matter.’

‘Didn’t your investigator ask, anyway?’

‘Maybe; probably; I don’t know. How does knowing where he ate help us?’

‘You never know,’ I invented. ‘Maybe he was fed something that disoriented him, made him step out in front of traffic.’

‘And we could sue the restaurant or his dinner companions to recover our payout? You think he was murdered? For what purpose?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

‘You’re reaching.’ He yawned, and added, ‘As well as holding back.’

‘I’m wondering if someone was with Carson, in the car.’ I said, thinking specifically of the man in the tan Buick who drove Whitman home.

‘Listen, Elstrom, asking these questions helps us only if the passenger was wealthy, had a hand in forcing Carson in front of the kill car, and we could sue to recover. We discussed all this. Vehicular homicides are too chancy. There are better ways to kill.’

‘That’s what any right-thinking person would think. That’s what makes it a clever way to murder.’

‘Give me a motive.’

‘I don’t have one.’

‘There were no witnesses, remember? Even if you found a motive, we can’t prove anything.’

‘At least find out where Carson went, before he got killed.’

‘If I call our investigator, will you leave me alone?’

‘If you will also check Grant Carson’s appointment books for the last two years, to see if he went to that same place on the second Tuesday evenings of every even-numbered month.’

That woke him up. ‘What the hell do you know that you’re not telling me?’ he shouted.

‘Help me here, Rikk.’

‘How can I rationalize asking for his calendars?’

‘With creativity.’

‘You’re nuts, Elstrom,’ he said, and hung up.

I called Leo after I’d gotten on the tollway, southbound. ‘You said you’re buying lunch?’

‘Yes, but I’m dieting.’

Leo’s metabolism runs as fast as his intellect. There’d been no change in his 140 pounds since high school. ‘You’re porking up?’ I asked anyway.

‘A pound and a half since Christmas.’

‘I can achieve that with a lone raspberry Danish.’

‘So I noticed on my front stoop, very recently. See you at Kutz’s.’

I’d saved the worst call for last. I thumbed on my cell phone directory and clicked Amanda’s number. ‘Hey, sorry I haven’t been returning your calls,’ I said. ‘I’ve been swamped…’

Her voice was barely audible in the headset I’d bought cheap at the Discount Den. Then again, I was surrounded by trucks.

‘I can’t hear you,’ I yelled, speeding up to get clear of the trucks.

‘Do you miss me?’ she shouted.

‘Like there’ll be no tomorrow, Amanda,’ I screamed, joking, at last getting free of the trucks.

‘Jenny,’ the voice yelled, horribly clear. ‘Jenny Galecki.’

‘Ah,’ I said, hearing too perfectly. For sure, jackasses should not be issued speed-dial features, or thumbs, or headsets. Or mouths.

‘Talking with Amanda, are we?’ she asked.

‘It’s that case involving her father that I told you about,’ I said, fighting the urge to say I wasn’t lying.

‘Did you get my little package?’ There was frost in the words that I couldn’t blame on the cheap headset.

‘Package? No.’

‘I sent you a little something, to keep you thinking of me. It seemed funny at the time.’ She clicked off.

In the eight months since Jenny went west, we sometimes went weeks without speaking. Still, an hour didn’t pass where I didn’t think of her, hoping an hour hadn’t passed where she hadn’t thought of me. And somehow San Francisco seemed closer.

Now I’d messed things for sure by fumbling my mention of Amanda. San Francisco felt like it had moved to another continent.

The phone rang again as I got off the tollway. ‘Listen, Jenny-’

‘Damn you, Elstrom,’ Gaylord Rikk corrected. It had only been twenty minutes since we’d spoken. I ripped the headset off and pressed the phone to my ear, in clear violation of Illinois law.

‘That seems to have already happened.’

‘I got intrigued, but only because I’m bored. In some disgusting way, you liven up my dreary existence.’

‘You’ve got something?’ I asked.

‘It only took two phone calls. Turns out our people did ask where Carson had gone, the night he was killed. No one seemed to know, not his wife or his secretary, and we dropped it because it didn’t seem relevant. So…’ He lingered in silent smugness, waiting.

‘So?’ I asked, accepting the cue.

He dropped his voice, a secret agent for sure. ‘I called Carson’s secretary, saying I was tidying up the last of our paperwork, and needed to know where he’d been that night. She said she already told the police she didn’t know, which I knew.’

‘And?’ I asked, anxious. He’d learned something.

‘Nothing,’ he said.

‘You struck out?’

‘No, I mean Carson had nothing written on his calendar for that evening.’

‘I don’t suppose-’

‘I caught your drift earlier,’ he said. ‘I schmoozed. Carson’s secretary had his appointment books, five years’ worth, right at her desk.’

‘And?’

‘Nothing was written in for any of those Tuesday evenings.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Why do you sound so excited?’

‘I’ll tell you in a minute.’

‘His secretary thought it was unusual because he was always busy at night. But she double-checked because I was so persuasive. Nothing had been penciled in for any of those evenings. And that, to her, is inconceivable.’

It was inconceivable to me as well, almost.

‘Tell me how this is going to help me sue the beneficiary, Elstrom,’ he said.

‘Who is the beneficiary?’

‘I can’t divulge the entity.’

‘Entity? The beneficiary wasn’t family?’

‘I’m sure Carson had multiple policies. We only carried one of them, and the beneficiary wasn’t family. It was an organization, a company. Tell me how you’re going to help us.’

I told him I’d call him when I learned more, and clicked him away, but not before I heard him swear.

I swore, too, at the bulb flickering stronger in the back of my brain. Grant Carson had been careful to make no notation of where he’d been off to, those Tuesday nights. As had Benno Barberi. Jim Whitman had noted them in his appointment books only with the letter ‘C.’ Whatever those three men had been doing, they were doing it secretly, and they were doing it together.

Right down to getting killed, one after the other.