The Confessors' Club

FORTY-FOUR

I called Wendell’s home as I pulled away from Leo’s. The woman who answered had a Latin accent. She said he wasn’t home.

‘Call him on his cell phone. This is urgent.’

‘He not to be disturbed.’

‘Delores, then. Is she home?’

‘She with her pigs.’ She pronounced it ‘peegs.’

‘I need to talk to Wendell now.’

‘No.’

‘You’re going to lose your job.’ It was the cheapest of false threats, and remarkably ineffective. She hung up on me.

I called Amanda. ‘I need to speak to your father.’

‘What’s going on? What have you learned?’

‘A couple of small things.’

Her voice got scared in an instant. ‘What small things?’

‘Damn it, Amanda. Your father is still my client.’

‘He’s playing golf.’

‘Where?’

‘Crest Hills, north of the city. I think he teed off at ten o’clock. He switches his phone off when he’s out there, so your best bet is to catch him in the bar, afterward.’

She started to ask a question. I told her I had to run.

Better she worried about what I didn’t say than about what I did.

I’d passed by Crest Hills Country Club several times in the past, seen the colorfully clad players driving slowly in electric carts as their white-uniformed caddies followed on foot. Though the golf bags were in the carts, I supposed course rules required that every player be tended by someone to replant the huge chunks of turf that golfers launch when flailing at such little balls, though the folks hustling behind might be better termed gardeners rather than caddies. I’d heard it cost half a million dollars to join Crest Hills, plus tens of thousands more each year for dues and fees. If I’m ever that rich, I’ll go dig holes for free in a prairie somewhere, and spend the money instead on employing a world-class pastry chef.

I drove through the stone arches and parked in the lot adjacent to the white stucco clubhouse. The bar, a room of dark paneling with a wall of glass facing the course, was in back. Wendell sat at a table with three other men who were all drinking clear drinks made with sparkling cubes of ice and slices of preternaturally green lime. He wore a lavender shirt and pale blue trousers, and had a yellow bucket hat tilted back on his head. His colorful clothes and sun-pinked skin combined to remind me of an Easter egg.

Oddly, I got right to him. There were no security men hulking anywhere in sight.

‘Mr Elstrom,’ he said, frowning but not surprised. One of his secretaries, or even Amanda, must have given him a heads-up that I’d be rolling in. He didn’t stand, or extend his hand.

The other three men at the table were also dressed in country-club pastels. Together, the entire foursome suggested a giant basket of jovial, decorated eggs. They turned to Wendell, expecting to be introduced. Wendell said nothing.

‘Dek Elstrom,’ I said to them. ‘I’m here to repossess Mr Phelps’s car.’

That popped Wendell from his chair to grab my elbow and hustle me outside through a service door.

‘Was that necessary?’ Most satisfyingly, his face had gotten darker under the pink.

‘Tell me about the Confessors’ Club.’

‘I don’t know that club.’

‘How about you and I have a glance at your day planner? If you attended other engagements on the second Tuesdays of even-numbered months, I’ll back off.’

The red beneath the pink darkened even more.

‘Or you can tell me about Eugene Small,’ I went on, after he said nothing.

‘Ineffective,’ he said.

‘Particularly now that he’s dead?’

I watched his face, looking for change, but it stayed tight, in control. He knew.

‘Small’s office got tossed,’ I said. ‘If it wasn’t you, then someone else took one of the invoices he sent to clients. I think that person also took a file. I’m guessing both had your name on them.’

Surprise hit his face, but it could have been shock, or fear. He said nothing.

‘Do you understand, Wendell? Someone has now linked you to Small, and what he knew. Maybe what he knew got him killed. Maybe it will get you killed.’

‘Let this alone,’ he said.

‘Where are your guards? I breezed right in.’

‘Unnecessary.’

‘Unnecessary because you now know your friend Arthur Lamm’s been behind the killings? Or unnecessary because he’s gone into hiding?’

‘Don’t be a fool,’ he said, but his voice was wavering.

‘Did you send Whitman’s daughter that anonymous hundred grand from guilt, or are you hoping she’ll drop her interest in her father’s murder?’

‘You’re fired, Elstrom,’ he said, starting to turn.

‘You already did that. When did you first suspect Lamm was behind the killings?’

His back stiffened as he headed toward the clubhouse.

‘The cops have discovered that third floor,’ I called after him.

He stopped cold and turned, confusion on his face now. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘The room with all the recording equipment, in the house on Delaware Street. Were you listening, too?’

The pink had drained away from his face. I’d gut-punched him with something he didn’t know. He headed into the clubhouse, walking jerky-legged, like he’d just torn a ligament. Or ten.

I let him go. He was no ordinary ex-client. He was Amanda’s father.

I walked back to the Jeep. For a time I sat behind the wheel, drained too. And wishing that somehow I’d managed to fly to San Francisco, and lost my cell phone on the way, before Amanda had ever thought to call me about her father.

Time passed. Then, ten or fifteen minutes later, loud laughter came from the portico of the clubhouse. Wendell’s three fellow colorful eggs were coming out. He lagged several paces behind them, shuffling like a ninety-year-old man. He reached in his pocket, came out with keys and fingered a remote lock.

His car chirped and flashed its headlights.

I knew Wendell drove a vintage Mercedes. Not today. The car he got into wasn’t expensive. It was a medium-priced sedan, the kind of car that retirees, merchants and countless thousands of other ordinary people drive.

It was older and tan, the one I’d seen in Wendell’s garage the day I’d first gone up to speak with him. The kind of car that had swerved in front of me on South Michigan Avenue, wanting to trigger that memory.

The kind with holes on the side, the kind Mrs Johnson had seen Jim Whitman coming home in the night he’d been murdered. A Buick.

Wendell Phelps had driven Jim Whitman home the night Whitman was murdered.