Life Without Parole: A Kate Conway Mystery (18 page)

One of the great privileges of my profession is the opportunity to meet people from all walks of life, spend time in their world and ask whatever questions pop into my head—and whatever questions get the kinds of answers my clients want.

As I stared at the SUV in front of me, I ticked through a mental list of cool experiences my job had given me: trying on Mike Ditka’s Super Bowl ring, attending an Oscar party (I was treated as a nuisance, but it was still an Oscar party), touring FBI headquarters, eating fried chicken with a presidential candidate. It made me feel almost lucky. Almost, because without my job, I wouldn’t be feeling sorry for two killers or have nearly tripped over Erik’s dead body. There are some experiences in life that you don’t want to have, and I seemed to be cramming them all into one week.

This was the sort of day when I really missed being married. In the early years Frank would have listened, given me a foot rub, and ordered mushroom and spinach pizza from my favorite Italian restaurant, a place that had long since closed. Like so many other things, it just hadn’t lasted.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I grabbed my cell phone and dialed. I figured it couldn’t be breaking the law if my car wasn’t actually moving. I waited a few rings for Ellen to answer the phone, but when voice mail picked up, I didn’t know what to say, so I hung up.

Ellen would kill me for not leaving a message. She was always on my case about something, always quick to let me know the many ways my life could stand a little of her brand of improvement. It was odd,
but there was something kind of reassuring in that. Ellen was the most normal part of my life at the moment, maybe the most normal part of my life always.

I hit the “redial” button and waited for the voice mail.

“Hi, we’re the Becketts.” The outgoing message was a recording of Ellen using her most cheerful voice. “No one is here right now to take your call, so leave a message for Ellen, Tony, the kids, or the dog, and we’ll get back to you.”

“Hey, Ellen, it’s Kate,” I said. “Sorry, work is crazy. Just wanted to touch base. Talk to you soon.”

I felt better. I spent too much time hiding from people. I didn’t give others a chance to care about me, or show their best selves. I was too cynical. That’s what I decided until the car behind me honked long and loud because I’d delayed three seconds in pulling forward the thirty feet that had suddenly opened up.

“Detective Makina came to my house.” Vera called me just as I was settling down to a quiet dinner of microwave pizza. It had taken me nearly two hours to get home, and I was starving and tired. It was as if Vera had a sixth sense about when I was least interested in talking, and that’s when she chose to call.

“What did you tell him?” I asked.

“Don’t be mad.”

Not just my heart, but all of my internal organs fell, collapsing to the ground and leaving a mere skeleton of me standing at the phone, waiting. “What did you say?”

“He checked the phone records and saw the time gap, just like we thought he would. I told him what we decided I would say, that I was flustered. Which, really, I was. But he didn’t think a person would be flustered for forty-five minutes.”

“So please tell me you told him you were protecting Doug, and that’s why you didn’t call the police.”

“Not exactly.” She hesitated. “I told him the story about the phone being dead. I couldn’t think of what to say.”

“
But that won’t fit the facts, Vera.”

“I know. But I didn’t know what to say. I’m sorry, Kate. I got very scared. I kept thinking about what you said, about people getting convicted with less evidence than what they have on me.” Vera was crying on the other end of the phone. “But I’m going to call Detective Makina and explain to him what really happened, and put an end to this nonsense right now. I know it’s going to make me look guilty, but it’s better than dragging you into this mess any further.”

“Don’t,” I said. “Not yet. Let me think.”

“Are you sure?”

“No.” I took a breath, but I couldn’t seem to take enough air in. My lungs sputtered, like a car running out of gas. “Have you heard from Doug?”

“No. Nothing. What do you think happened to him?”

“I don’t know,” I said, not wanting to play that game with her again. “Keep your doors locked. Call me if Doug, or anyone, calls you, and let me think before you call Makina, okay?”

“Okay.”

But I didn’t have time to think. Ten minutes after I hung up with Vera I got another call—this time from a number I didn’t recognize. If I’d been clearheaded, I would have let voice mail pick it up, but like an idiot, I answered.

“Mrs. Conway?” A deep male voice was on the other end. “This is Detective Makina. I need to speak to you.”

“Sure.” I tried to sound calm. “I got your message. I can come by the police station tomorrow.”

“I’m actually in your neighborhood. Why don’t I stop by your house in, say, fifteen minutes?”

“I was just on my way out.”

“It’s really important I speak to you now, Mrs. Conway,” he said, his voice getting even deeper. “Besides, it shouldn’t take long. See you in fifteen.”

I probably should have straightened up the house, which was beginning to look like it had been ransacked, but instead I used the fifteen minutes to do some research on exactly how much trouble I was in.

According to various websites, obstructing justice carries a one-to three-year sentence in Illinois, and about the same for an accessory-after-the-fact charge. Maybe I could get a suspended sentence and pay a hefty fine. I could take a second mortgage out on the house, I decided. Maybe community service. It’s not as if I’d lived a life of crime—I came to the aid of a friend and tried to help. It was stupid, that’s all. The police would believe me. I popped open a can of Pepsi and tried to tell myself it wasn’t going to be that bad.

Of course, if it was determined that Vera had murdered Erik, and I’d helped cover it up, I could kiss the next twenty years of my life good-bye.

When the doorbell rang, I nearly jumped. I closed the computer and went to answer the door, wondering if spending the night in prison was just as unpleasant as spending the day there.

M
s. Bingham said she’d been getting threatening phone calls.” Detective Makina was standing in my kitchen, sipping from the glass of water he’d asked for the moment he’d arrived at the house.

“Probably from someone connected to the restaurant,” I said. “We were looking into it, just in the course of doing the show, and found out that Roman Papadakis had been involved in some shady business dealings. He may have been a suspect in the murder of his cousin, who was his business partner in a failing venture. Kind of like what’s happened here.” I was tying a bow around a great big present of a murder suspect, but Makina didn’t seem interested.

“Did you hear any of these calls that Ms. Bingham said she received?”

“Yes, I did. In fact, one of our friends taped it on his digital recorder. And he figured out that it was disguised with some sort of software you can download. He also said that a computer can be programmed to delay sending the message.”

“That can be done,” Makina agreed.

“Pretty amazing stuff.”

“What’s his name? Your friend who knew all about the threatening message?” Makina grabbed a small notebook from his coat pocket and turned to an empty page.

“Victor Pilot,” I said.

“Pilot? Is that his real last name?”

“No. It’s sort of a stage name.” I remembered Victor telling me that several years ago, when we first met.

“What’s his real name?”

I bit my lip. “I don’t remember. He never uses it. I have his cell number, though.”

“Where does he live?”

“
Victor kind of moves around a lot. Crashes with friends, that sort of thing. He’s not that responsible about paying his rent.” It sounded bad, so I tried to explain. “He’s a musician.”

“Victor Pilot,” Makina said. He flipped through the pages of his notebook and smiled. “He might be the kind of guy who could use a few bucks.”

I couldn’t figure out what Makina was getting at. “Victor would have no reason to threaten Vera.”

“But if Ms. Bingham paid him to set up the messages and send them to her so it would look like she was getting threatened…”

“Why would she do that?”

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

I stood for a moment, debating whether I should just explain what had actually happened, but I realized my doing that now would just make Vera look more guilty. “I think you’re getting the wrong idea about Vera. She wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

“She hurt you, didn’t she?”

“Excuse me?”

“Your husband, Mrs. Conway.”

“How do you know about that?”

“I asked Ms. Bingham.”

I smiled a little, tried to relax. “Well, there, you see? Vera came right out and told you something that makes her look bad. That’s how little she has to hide.”

“Or she knew I would find out anyway.”

He somehow managed to twist everything I said. It would have been an interview skill worth studying if I hadn’t been on the receiving end. “She didn’t kill Erik,” I said. “I was with her, remember?”

“She called you at seven fifteen. The call was made from her cell to your home phone.”

“I’d just gotten home. Hadn’t even taken off my coat, so I turned around immediately and drove to meet her.”

“You drove straight there?”

I’d stopped for a burger. What were the odds they would check that? What were the odds he already knew?

“I
went through the drive-in at Bucktown Burgers,” I admitted.

He nodded, relaxed his stance a little. He’d already known about the drive-through. I’d passed his little test. Things were looking better for me, but much worse for Vera.

“When did you arrive at Club Car?” he asked.

“I don’t know, exactly.”

“Twenty minutes later? Thirty? It was a pretty bad night for driving. You must have had to go slow, and on a good day, with no traffic, it’s still got to be a twenty-minute drive.”

“Maybe twenty minutes. I didn’t look at the time. When I got there Vera was waiting for me outside by the door. She was scared. We went back to the kitchen. That was—well, as you can imagine, it was very upsetting. We ran into the dining room and it took a minute for me to realize what to do next.”

“Which was to call 911.”

“Yes.”

“Because that’s what you do when you find someone’s been hurt or killed.”

“It’s not always easy to know,” I started. My throat was dry.

Makina cut me off. “But Ms. Bingham called you, then she called Doug Zieman at least fifteen times in the forty-five minutes between her call to you and your call to us.”

“She was supposed to meet him. She was concerned for his safety.”

“But she never called the police,” he said. “And when I asked her about that, she told me her phone had died. That couldn’t have been true.”

I was blank. I’d gone about as far in this as I could go. “Vera is worried that Doug did it,” I said. “You have to understand. She’s a romantic. She’s lonely. She met Doug and he’s obviously taken advantage of her.”

“You think he’s a con man?”

“I think he’s…” I needed to be careful. Was he baiting me? I couldn’t tell. “I don’t know.” I said. “What I do know is that Vera didn’t kill anyone. She got to the restaurant, she found Erik already dead. She’s trying to protect Doug. Find Doug and you’ve found the killer.”

“
Just that simple?”

I wasn’t getting anywhere with him, and my frustration was showing. “I don’t know everything that happened that night, Detective Makina. And neither do you. But I do know that Vera found that man already dead. She’s incapable of killing someone,” I said. “And she didn’t have time, anyway. I was with her for at least fifteen minutes before we called you. We were scared and upset. We didn’t think straight. You need to look for the real killer.”

He finished his water and put the empty glass in my sink. “You seem like a smart lady, Mrs. Conway, and I’m sure that you think you’re helping your friend. But the truth is you were at Dugan prison all day, drove home, got a phone call, and went to meet Ms. Bingham. You couldn’t have been at that place for more than five minutes before you called 911.”

“I was there longer than five minutes,” I said. “I rushed there because I was concerned about Vera. She said there was something off about the tone in Doug’s voice. Maybe if Doug didn’t do it, he knows who killed Erik.”

“You were so concerned that you stopped for a burger on the way?” He smiled. “Do your friends a favor, Mrs. Conway. Tell them to come clean now. Maybe this Victor Pilot guy can avoid jail time if he tells us that he didn’t know what Ms. Bingham was planning. And, if she’s smart, she’ll claim emotional distress and take a manslaughter plea.”

“If you’re so sure that Vera is guilty, why haven’t you arrested her?”

“I’m waiting on the autopsy results,” he said, “and I want to tie up some loose ends.”

“Like?”

“Like the argument Ms. Bingham had with the victim. I want to find out what it was really about.”

“It was about Erik’s interview with me. She was concerned he came off looking like a jerk, and that by extension the restaurant would look bad.”