The Dead Caller from Chicago

Forty-one

Jarobi led me to a Denny’s just north of Rivertown. After he parked, he came up to peer between the strips of silver tape keeping my back window together.

“I noticed this painting, back at Cassone’s,” he said.

“What’s going on, Jarobi?”

“Is it Leo Brumsky’s painting?”

I looked at him, a cop in a green coat, short and gray and too wise to what was going on in my life. “Why is Cassone’s house crawling with sheriff’s deputies?”

“How about I lock it up while we eat?” He fingered a loose curl of tape. One soft tug and he’d have the painting in his hands anyway.

I nodded; anything to speed him up. I got it out, he aimed a remote to pop his trunk and locked it up, and we went into the restaurant.

The hostess asked where we wanted to sit. I said any damned place. She gave me a harsh look and led us to a booth by the window.

“What’s going on, Jarobi?” I asked again.

“Amanda,” he said.

The waitress came over with a Thermos pitcher.

“Leave the coffee,” I said to her, keeping my eyes on Jarobi.

She banged down the Thermos.

“We’ll eat,” Jarobi said.

“Cheerios, then, small bowl, skim milk,” I said.

Jarobi took too long to tell her that no, we’d have pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon and sausage, and thick Greek toast.

“You must keep your strength,” he said, after she huffed away.

The blades were out now, fencing inside my gut. “What about Amanda?”

“And calm,” he added. “You must be calm.”

He looked around. Midway between the breakfast and lunch rushes, the restaurant was practically deserted.

“She’s been kidnapped,” he said.

I pushed up out of the booth fast, going nowhere but needing to tower over him.

“Sit down, or you’ll hear nothing.” He lifted his coffee cup like he had hours to kill before catching a bus.

I dropped back down. “Everything. Now.”

“Near as we can figure, she was grabbed just a few minutes after she left your place. Someone bumped her car, left a scrape. Most likely, he got out, waving what she must have thought was insurance information. It’s an old carjacking trick.”

I wanted to smash his face. “You came to me yesterday morning, just hours after she was abducted, and said nothing?”

“Mr. Phelps is running the show. You’re broke; you live in a turret. He thinks you’re involved. I came to check you out.”

“She’s my wife-” I stopped myself. “My ex-wife, but we’re on good terms. She’s safe? The kidnapper’s called? Why the hell are we just sitting here?”

“I just got the painting, Elstrom. Now we’re going to think.”

I must have slumped back in the booth. For sure, I remember going blank for a moment, unable to think. He was talking gibberish.

“The painting?” I asked, finally. “Amanda wasn’t grabbed for her father’s money?”

“Money? Sure, two million, but the bastard’s endgame is a painting.” He cocked a thumb toward the parking lot. “He didn’t specify, but it’s that painting? That purple barn? Those pink cows? Really?”

“Camouflage. Why are we here if the cops are at Cassone’s? He’s your man.”

“Because we’re going to think. Go slow. Don’t talk in riddles.”

“Cassone’s your man.”

“It’s a voice on the phone that wants two million in cash and that Brumsky painting. For now, we consider everything.”

“You’re sure Amanda’s not at Cassone’s?”

He nodded. “We don’t know where she is, which is why we’re going to think. Tell me about the picture, from the beginning.”

The waitress came with our plates. She set Jarobi’s down carefully. Mine, she dropped from an inch up. Jarobi dug right in.

When she left, I said, “A punk named Snark Evans stole the painting from Cassone years ago. Evans gave it to Leo Brumsky. Not knowing it was stolen, Leo kept it down in his basement ever since. Leo’s away. I’ve been watching his house. I stuck signs in the lawn, advertising residential security systems, to see who got nervous. Cassone came around, sniffing. I played along, gave him a tour, telling him about a system I was supposedly installing. He left, but not for long. Middle of the night, day before yesterday, I drove past Leo’s house and saw someone prowling inside. I waited by the back door. A burglar came out carrying something. I clubbed him and took what he had. It was that painting.”

“It was Cassone you clubbed?”

“Yes.”

“With what?”

“What does it matter?”

“With what?”

“A baseball bat.”

“Go on.”

“We’re wasting time, Jarobi.”

“Just go on.”

“I called Amanda because she knows art.”

“And because you knew she’d come to your place without question.”

“Yeah, and then I followed her to abduct her on the street, instead of just holding her at my place. Man, if I had that kind of genius I could be a cop.”

“Continue.”

“Later on, that evening, Amanda came over to my place. She’d already been working with Leo, researching the painting. She studied it, told me it was valuable, and left around ten. And none of this makes any sense.”

“Why?” He’d paused with a forkful of sausage halfway to his mouth.

“Because your people saw Cassone and me last night, talking calmly, having a beer. Cassone wanted his painting back and told me to deliver it this morning. No muscle, and no gun, and sure as hell no mention he was holding Amanda hostage.”

“Maybe you made it so easy he didn’t need any of that. Why cave so quickly? You clubbed Cassone to take the painting away, then overnight became willing to give it up? All before you knew Ms. Phelps was kidnapped?”

He’d cleaned his plate. He pushed it away. “Boy, if I had that kind of genius, I could live in a stone… whatever it is.”

“I had second thoughts. I realized I was in over my head with a guy like Cassone. I wanted to be rid of the painting and rid of him.” It was a lame lie, the best I could think up without telling him about Leo or that I wasn’t yet ready to trust an arrogant peacock like Wendell Phelps to engineer the safe return of his daughter. For now, Jarobi could think the painting in his trunk was the real thing.

“You’re lying, Elstrom, about a lot of things.”

“Go back to Falling Star, help the sheriff sweat Cassone, and keep your eyes open for somebody else. You know Cassone doesn’t need two million. He only wants the painting.” I made to get up. “Let’s go back to Falling Star.”

“Cassone’s dead.”

I searched his face for any hint that he was toying with me. “That can’t be,” I finally managed.

“He was found early this morning lying behind a used car lot halfway between Rivertown and Falling Star. He was shot four times and then beaten so brutally his face was hamburger, super rare. Both his shoulders were smashed and his kneecaps pulverized.”

“He was beaten postmortem?”

“I surely hope so. The sheriff’s deputies are scratching for a motive. That’s why they’re going through his house. They don’t know about Amanda or the fancy painting. Or, for that matter, the baseball bat you used on Cassone to get the painting back. If they did, they’d be real interested in you, Elstrom, because someone needed real rage to beat Cassone so badly after he was already dead.”

“You know damned well I didn’t kill Cassone.”

“I know because I had two men watching you last night.”

“Black Impala?”

“You asked that when you called from outside the bar. The answer’s still no. I had one man in a white Crown Victoria, the other in a yellow Ford Explorer. The Crown Victoria followed you shopping after you left the tavern. The Explorer slipped your lock and had a look around inside your stone tube. Neither was in the bar with you and Cassone. Help Amanda, Elstrom. What don’t I know?”

“Cassone noticed someone watching us.”

“You told me that last night, and I just told you the Crown Victoria was mine.”

“Someone else, inside the bar.”

“Wasn’t one of mine. Did you see his face?”

“No. I just felt a draft on the back of my neck as he left.”

“Who else wants the painting?”

“Snark Evans, because he was the one who stole it in the first place. A divorcing couple out in Hollywood. Underneath the cows is a picture of a flower, one in a set of four. The couple owns or has options on the other three. The value of their pictures and options would go up immensely if they recovered the long-lost fourth in the series.”

“We’re done for now,” he said, sliding out of the booth. “Mr. Phelps has got the two million ready, and now I have the painting. All we can do is wait, and be careful how we make the exchange.”

“Wendell’s the wrong man to be running this. He’s too cocksure, convinced of his own wisdom.”

“It’s out of my hands.”

“You can treat this as a kidnapping, have your people question anyone who might have been in the bar or on the sidewalk last night. Maybe someone saw somebody following Cassone.”

“Like you pointed out when I came to your castle, I have no jurisdiction.”

“Let me in on this, Jarobi.”

He shook his head.

“I’ll report her missing in Rivertown.”

“On what grounds? That she left your place and hasn’t been seen since?”

“Sure.”

“They’ll call Mr. Phelps. He’ll say everything is fine. He wants this hushed, so he can control it himself.”

Outside, I went to the trunk of his car, but it was for show.

“Not a chance,” he said.