Life Without Parole: A Kate Conway Mystery (35 page)

I turned to where Andres was shooting. I watched the street for a
few minutes, looking at the cops milling about. The neighbor woman with her yappy dog was on the other side, looking just as confused as I was.

“We have an ambulance,” I said.

“I know. I just said that.”

“No, Andres. We have an ambulance. Not a coroner’s van. Whoever is in there isn’t dead. And they can’t be that hurt, because Makina was too casual.”

“Should we call Vera?”

Victor came toward us, smiling. “Already did. She’s on her way.”

“I don’t know if that was the best idea in the world,” I said.

“Why not?”

I watched as Makina approached us again. But this time he had an Oak Park police officer with him.

“I think he’s about to tell us,” I said. Makina came so close to me that I almost stepped back a few inches, but I didn’t. I wasn’t about to lose ground, symbolically or literally. “Someone inside Doug’s house is hurt,” I said to him.

“We’re establishing a perimeter around the house,” the uniformed officer was saying, but I didn’t move.

“Someone is hurt, and not seriously, or you wouldn’t be standing around. That’s not cause to set up any perimeters.”

The Oak Park cop spun around and looked about to shoot me, but Makina smiled. “One of the guys coming in from the back cut himself on some broken glass,” he said. “That’s why we have an ambulance.”

“So why move us back?”

As I spoke, another van pulled up, forcing us all off the street and onto the sidewalk. I looked at the side. It was a coroner’s van.

“Any more questions, Mrs. Conway?”

“Who is it?”

Makina wasn’t listening. “Now that’s an interesting development,” he said. I turned to see what he was looking at, and saw Vera walking toward us, looking worried.

“We called her,” I said.

“When?”

“Just now.”

“Which one of you is ‘we’?”
Makina looked at the three of us with equal suspicion.

“I am,” Victor said.

“So you called her a few minutes ago, and here she is. Unless Ms. Bingham took a helicopter from her home, she had to have been in the area when you called. By the way, the gun used inside, we recovered it next to the body. It’s the same gun Ms. Bingham registered with the police.”

“Of course it is.” The words came out of my mouth before I had a chance to censor them.

“You guys make my job so easy,” Makina almost laughed, but it came out as more of a sneer. “Move back behind the crime scene tape or I’ll have someone arrest you.”

This time I moved.

T
he local news channels were on the scene about twenty minutes later, and luckily for me, Andres and Victor freelanced for one of the stations. After a few minutes of chatting with the reporter, Andres came back with what he’d learned.

“Single victim, male. Gunshot wound to the head,” he said.

“Oh, God.” Vera turned pale. “Are you sure?”

“Vera, where were you when Victor called?” I asked.

“On the Eisenhower, on my way here,” she said. “Doug called me. He said he was all right, but he asked for a favor. He needed me to bring him some money. He can’t access his accounts right now because he’s being watched.”

“How much money?”

“Just a few thousand dollars,” she said. “Three.”

“In cash?” Victor seemed astounded.

“No,” she said. “I got a bank draft and then I came out here to meet him. He said he needed to get some things.”

“Did he say what happened at the apartment in Wrigleyville?” I asked her.

“He said someone is after him.”

“Who?”

“Kate,” Vera said, seemingly exasperated, “I didn’t interrogate him. He said he needed help, so I came to help him.”

“Why did he come back here if someone is after him?” Victor asked.

“His passport.” I said it at the same time Vera said it.

“He told me that I was safe as long as I stayed away from him,” Vera added.

“Except when he wants you to bring him money.” Andres was angry. He gets all big-brother protective sometimes, and I was alternately touched and amused by it. But this time I was in agreement. Doug was either trying to set Vera up as the killer or get her killed.

The thought must have occurred to Vera, because suddenly she started to cry. Victor put his arm around her and led her farther down the street. I was glad she was out of earshot, because what I wanted to talk about wasn’t pretty.

“That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “A gunshot to the head sounds like a suicide.”

“Or a professional,” Andres countered.

“Either way, at least we can make Makina see that it’s not Vera. If she got a bank draft this afternoon, she has an alibi. And since it’s likely that whoever killed Doug killed Erik, she’s off the hook.”

“And if he killed himself,” Andres said, finishing the thought, “it’s evidence of guilt.”

“That would be tidy.”

“Assuming the victim is Doug.”

“Well, if it isn’t, then Doug has to be the killer.” I let out a breath, tried to calm myself. The adrenaline that had started with the call from the neighbor was still in control of my system. “Either way, it’s really a win-win for us.”

There was movement from Doug’s front porch. Cops were gathering. I saw the news cameras moving closer to the scene. I looked at Andres. “I’ll get what I can,” he said, “but at this angle, it’s going to be crap.”

“Doesn’t matter. Ralph Johnson is getting the Business Channel doc of the century.”

“He’ll probably want a murder in every one we do.” Andres laughed and moved in for his shot. Knowing the way cable TV is going, Andres wasn’t far off.

The small tidbit from the local news was the last piece of information we got. The police weren’t talking and Makina glared at me anytime I even came close to the police tape. Andres had a parent-teacher conference at his son’s school, so after another hour, we called it a day. Victor offered to spend the evening with Vera in case she needed to cry, or talk—things Victor was much better at handling than I was. Andres dropped me at the auto shop, where I paid more than five hundred dollars to get the car running. The heat would have to wait.

I tried Dugan again, but nothing had changed since the afternoon. No incoming calls were allowed on the cellblock where Tim and Brick lived. I left a message for Joanie, but she’d gone home for the day.

When I got back to the house, my phone was ringing. I picked up to Ellen saying, “Oh good, you’re home.” Then she clicked off.

Ten minutes later she was at my door. “Don’t say this isn’t a good time,” she told me as she walked in. “I’ve brought groceries and a few other things.”

“Why did you bring groceries? I can shop for myself.”

“Last time I was here, there were takeout cartons everywhere.” She opened my refrigerator and pointed out the contents to me as if she were entering evidence at my trial. Old milk, leftover General Tso’s chicken, and a quarter pound of Fannie May fudge.

“Listen, Ellen, I’m in the middle of this story, and it looks like another person has been killed. I’m not sure if it’s suicide—”

“For heaven’s sake, Kate, what is your obsession with death? You do realize that it’s just your way of dealing with Frank’s death, don’t you? You need to exercise some control over other people’s lives, because recent events have made your own life feel so out of your control.”

I was about to disagree, but there was a certain amount of truth to it. Besides, I’ve never once won an argument with Ellen. I changed the subject. “What did you bring me?”

“Food. Actual food.” She filled my freezer with portioned meals she’d made, and added fresh fruit and vegetables to my fridge. She replaced the milk with a quart that was still drinkable, and handed me a brownie from a dozen or more that were in a Tupperware container. “The kids made these for you.”

“Tell them thanks,” I said.

“Tell them yourself. Come over for dinner anytime,” she said. She put a dish of chicken and mashed potatoes into the microwave and sat down with me at the kitchen table. “So what’s this about someone committing suicide?”

“It’s this crazy show,” I said, then I told her about Vera and the
restaurant and the real identity of the man who’d been standing on my lawn. My mother always used to say sisters have a unique bond, which was just her way of trying to get Ellen and me to stop fighting. But she was also right. No one in the world drove me crazier than Ellen, but I could trust her to be honest with me in a way no one else would be. And honesty was what I needed even more than carefully portioned meals.

“Man, you get in the middle of things,” she said with what I hoped was a little bit of envy. “I’d say get the hell out of it, but it’s too late for that now.” She opened up the Tupperware and bit into a brownie as I ate the chicken and mashed potatoes. “I think it’s interesting that both of the women involved in the restaurant are getting undermined by the men,” she said. “That Vera woman is obviously too insecure to go five seconds without a man—”

“That’s a little harsh,” I said and was rewarded with an eye roll.

“And the other one, Ilena, she’s a minority investor in her own restaurant. Her husband actually controls the purse strings.”

“I suppose that’s true,” I said. It must have irritated Ilena, I realized. The restaurant was Ilena’s dream of independence, and Roman had squashed it with his constant presence.

Ellen checked her watch. “Speaking of men, if I don’t get home Tony will never put the kids to bed. They pretend to obey, but then they just play in their rooms.”

I walked Ellen to the front door. “Thanks,” I said. “I can’t remember the last time I ate a vegetable that wasn’t deep-fried.”

She sighed. “I knew Frank as long as you did, Kate. I know he would want you to get on with your life.”

“I am,” I said. But even I didn’t believe it.

“If you could get in a time machine and go back to when you were sixteen, and erase Frank Conway from your life, would you?”

“Of course not. But it would be nice to erase some of my regrets.”

“Don’t you think you would just have different regrets?” she asked.

“I suppose.”

She smiled. “Promise me your next show will be more life affirming than men in prison and murders in restaurants. Maybe a home-decorating show. Those are fun.”

A
fter Ellen left, I realized I’d forgotten my promise to drive down to check out Tim’s story, and considering the situation at Doug’s house, I was reluctant to go. But I told myself that it was the most constructive thing I could do until I knew the identity of the dead man.

I called Phil Garrett, the police detective in Peoria. I told him that I was working on a show about Tim Campbell. He’d been on the force for more than twenty years, mainly in homicide, but he didn’t even have to think to remember who I was talking about.

“I’ll meet you at the station,” he said on the phone. “Show you the files. Answer your questions. If you draw a different conclusion than the one I reached, well, then I suppose I’ll hear you out.”

“Do you think you could have been wrong about him?” I asked.

“No, ma’am. I think I have the right boy for the murder. But if you know different…”

“I don’t,” I said. “I’m just making sure.”

“Uh-huh. Well, tomorrow at nine, then.”

He hung up before I had a chance to suggest a later time. Peoria is three hours from Chicago. Getting up at five a.m. might be a small price to pay for proving a man innocent of murder, but it’s still a price.

Even though it was only seven thirty, I got ready for bed. Just a few weeks ago I was routinely going to bed early. Now it felt that there was too much going on, too many people to think about. Brick’s warning, Tim’s innocence, Doug’s possible murder, Vera’s emotional state. I sat on the edge of the bed and opened the drawer. I took out Frank’s picture from its hiding spot under a mass market paperback.

“I’m chasing bad guys and possibly springing an innocent man from prison,” I told the image of Frank.

I don’t know what he would have thought. More likely than not, he would have told me to mind my own business. “Let the cops worry about bad guys,”
he would have said. “And by the way, we’re supposed to go to my folks’ for dinner this Saturday. I told my mom you’d make dessert.” And that would have been the end of the discussion.

Or maybe he would have been proud. Maybe he would have talked over the details with me, gone over theories the way that I’d just done with Ellen. I’d uncovered so much about Frank after he died, I didn’t know how he would feel about my life now.

I looked over at the other person in the picture, me just a few years ago. Would the woman in that photo have been proud of how I was handling my life? Or would she have seen me as stuck, afraid that moving ahead meant leaving Frank behind? I don’t know. I glanced up and saw my reflection in the mirror across from the bed. One thing was sure.

“She would have said you look like shit.”

I got up, headed into the bathroom, and opened up the box of Nice ’n Easy.