Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 07 (42 page)

“How
much did she have in certificates of deposit?” I asked.

Ms.
Wolfe shook her head. “You know I can’t tell you that.”

I
turned the letter over in my hand, studying it, but it didn’t tell me anything.
No one else had written those words, and they didn’t sound as though she’d been
under duress, although there was no real way of telling.

“Did
she keep a safe-deposit box here?” I asked abruptly.

The
loan officers exchanged guarded glances. “No,” Ms. Wolfe said. “I talked to her
about it a few times over the years, but she preferred to keep any important
documents at home. I didn’t like it, but she wasn’t the kind of person you
could tell things to: she pretty much had her mind made up before a
conversation started.”

I
handed the letter back to Ms. Wolfe. As I thanked her for her help, I wondered
where Mrs. Frizell’s private records were. Todd and Chrissie wouldn’t have been
trying to pry the information from her if they had them.

“You
get what you need, Vic?” Alma interrupted me.

I
hunched a shoulder. “It’s something, but I’m baffled. What I’d like to see is
her account with U.S. Met, find out what on earth they were offering her that
paid that kind of money. And I’d like to know where the title to her house is
if she didn’t keep a safe-deposit box.”

“That’s
disappeared?” Ms. Wolfe asked, alarm flickering in her pale-brown eyes.

“The
kids who’ve taken over her affairs don’t have it: they showed up at the hospital
on Thursday with a song and dance about not being able to raise the money to
pay Mrs. Frizell’s bill. Of course, she’s at Cook County— they’re not going to
throw her‘ out—but since she owns a house they do expect her to pay for her
care.”

Ms.
Wolfe shook her head. “I don’t know where she’d have it, have the title. But it
must be in the house someplace.”

I
thought of the great heap of papers still untouched in the secretary. But
surely Todd and Chrissie had searched the place thoroughly by now. If the title
was there they must have found it. I wondered if Mrs. Hellstrom might know. I
thanked the bankers again, and went back into the muggy June day.

Mrs.
Hellstrom was in her garden, doing something industrious with a huge bag of
peat moss and a hoe. A straw hat shaded her face from the sun while gloves and
a smock protected her hands and clothes. She expressed herself as happy to see
me, inviting me into the kitchen for iced tea, although she looked wistfully at
the yard on her way in.

She
laid her gloves and hat carefully on a small shelf just inside the back door.
“I was at the hospital last night. They told me you’d been around, that you got
Hattie to talk a little more than usual.”

My
ministering angel routine apparently was what had earned me this tete-a-tete. I
didn’t spoil it by saying that I’d wanted to get Mrs. Frizell to talk about her
finances.

Mrs.
Hellstrom motioned me to a chair at the spotless Formica table. She pulled a
pitcher from the refrigerator and got two amber plastic glasses down from a shelf,
the same kind Dick had curled his lip at only a few hours ago. I wondered what
he was doing about his coffee-stained shirt and his meetings. Probably he had a
spare at the office. Or maybe his secretary raced up to Neiman-Marcus to buy
him a new one.

I’m
not much of a tea drinker and Mrs. Hellstrom’s stuff clearly had come out of a
package, but I sipped some in a sociable way. It had been sweetened with a
generous hand. I tried not to make a face as I swallowed.

We
talked for a bit about Mrs. Frizell, and some of Mrs. Hellstrom’s memories of
her. “Of course, she was my mother’s generation, but Mr. Hellstrom grew up in
this house and used to try to play with her son, but he—her son, I mean—wasn’t
the kind of boy other kids really liked much. But when you think how strange
she is, you can’t really wonder, can you? Although she’s always been a good
neighbor, all that junk in her yard and those dogs notwithstanding.‘’

I
didn’t get a clear picture of what Mrs. Frizell had ever done to merit the good
neighbor sobriquet. Maybe it was just that she minded her own business. The
conversation went from there to the selfishness of my generation, something I
didn’t feel able to dispute, but how happy Mrs. Hellstrom was to find young
people on the block who did embody the old neighborly values.

“Of
course, I think it was wrong for those young people to put the dogs to sleep,
but they did leap in to look after Hattie’s affairs. And it can’t be a lot of
fun for them to take on a cranky old lady like her.”

“No,
indeed,” I murmured. “I guess they’re kind of stymied, though, by the fact that
they can’t find the title to Mrs. Frizell’s house.”

“Title
to her house?” Mrs. Hellstrom asked sharply. “What do they want that for?”

I
tried to look innocent, even naive. “I expect it’s for the hospital. They need
to provide some kind of proof of her financial situation. They might even need
to take out a mortgage, since it looks as though she’ll be laid up for quite a
while.”

Mrs.
Hellstrom shook her head helplessly. “What are we coming to as a country?
Here’s an old lady who worked hard all her life and now maybe she has to give
up her house just because of a little fall in her bathroom? It makes you scared
to get old, it really does.”

I
agreed. I’ll be forty in a year. It didn’t need Mr. Contreras to make me
nervous about what happens to elderly, indigent private eyes.

“She
didn’t give her private papers to you to look after, did she?”

“Oh,
no. Hattie isn’t the kind to trust anyone with her valuables. The only thing of
hers I have is her box of dog things—their pictures and pedigrees and stuff. I
took it along when we found her that night, because I knew that was what she
really cared about.”

“I
wonder if I could take a look at it.” I tried to speak casually.

“Honey,
if it’ll make you happy you can study every photo in it. It’s not much of
anything, but she got herself the nicest little box to keep their papers in.
Trust Hattie to pay more attention to something for the dogs than to her own
records… More tea, honey?”

When
I turned it down she bustled into the front of the house. She was back in a
minute, carrying a black lacquer box about eighteen inches long by four deep.
It was a beautiful piece, inlaid with a brightly painted picture of a dog
resting its nose on the lap of a girl as the two sat under a pear tree. The
workmanship was so good that the lid fit firmly inside the box but came out
with only a gentle tug. I found myself staring at an out-of-focus portrait of
Bruce.

“I
want to get back out to my plants, honey. You can just leave it on the table
when you’re done looking at it. And be sure to help yourself to more tea if you
want some.”

I
thanked her and carefully started pulling papers from the box. Underneath
Bruce’s face was a group picture of the other four dogs standing at the back
fence. She’d somehow persuaded them all to get up on their hind legs and put
their paws on the railing. Although also out of focus, it was a pretty cute
shot. Maybe it would cheer her up to have it next to her hospital bed. I put it
to one side to take with me on my next visit.

A
series of photos of what must have been earlier dogs lay below those two, along
with Bruce’s Kennel Club paper and papers for other dogs long gone. A handful
of yellow news clips told of Mrs. FrizelFs glory years when she’d shown black
Labs and won prizes for them. No one had ever suggested that she’d done
something that disciplined.

Finally,
at the bottom of the box, I found a small bundle of personal papers. The title
to the house. And three bonds, each with a face value of ten thousand dollars.
Coupon bonds paying seventeen percent, issued by Diamond Head Motors.

I
stared at the bonds for a long while, trying to will them to reveal something
more than their face value. Or face valuelessness. In February Mrs. Frizell had
closed her account at Lake View, transferred her funds to U.S. Met, and bought
thirty thousand dollars of Diamond Head paper. Since her letter to Lake View
explained that she was going to receive seventeen percent interest at U.S. Met,
it seemed like a fair bet that the bank had sold her the bonds. And that meant…
something so ugly I hoped it wasn’t true.

Mrs.
Frizell’s private papers had been safe at the bottom of the lacquered box for
some weeks, but I hesitated to leave them there. Since Mrs. Hellstrom thought
Todd and Chrissie were sweet, helpful neighbors, she would surely show them the
cache, too, if it dawned on them to ask her. I tucked the title and the bonds
into my bag, arranged all the canine glory in its proper order, and carefully
fit the lid back into its grooves. Just to add to my own reputation for sweet
helpfulness, I rinsed the iced tea glasses and left them on the drainboard.

Mrs.
Hellstrom was weeding on her hands and knees when I came back out of the
kitchen. “You go through all that stuff, hon?”

“Yeah.
No wonder her son feels so bitter: all her mementos are about her dogs. She
didn’t even keep his kinder-garten picture. I didn’t know she used to train
dogs for show, though.”

“Oh
my, yes.” She sat back on her heels and wiped the sweat from her forehead. “I
guess that’s why they didn’t bother me as much as some of the other folks
around here. I can remember when that yard was spick-and-span and she had seven
or eight Labs out there, all perfectly behaved. It’s only been the last few
years that she stopped being able to manage them like she used to. Maia Tertz
could tell you about it. She used to buy dogs from Hattie, for her family. All
her kids have Labs, descended from some of Hattie’s old Labs, my goodness, yes,
and I suppose her grandchildren too. I don’t expect young folks like Chrissie
to appreciate that.”

“Chrissie
seems to like to help people in other ways,” I ventured. “I hear she has quite
a lot of financial expertise.”

“Maybe,
honey, maybe, but Mr. Hellstrom and I, we prefer to make our own investment
decisions. We don’t have that much to lose, so we can’t afford to listen to
sales pitches.”

“I
took one of the pictures of her dogs. I thought maybe it would perk her up to
have it next to her bed.”

“Now,
why didn’t I think of that? That’s a wonderful idea. Just wonderful. And I
always figured you for such a snob—sorry, honey, that just slipped out.” She
smiled in embarrassment and got back on her hands and knees to continue
plucking invisible weeds from around her rosebushes.

As I
walked up Racine to Belmont I felt as though I had a big red X on my bag
indicating the location of the bonds. I kept a nervous lookout for anyone who
seemed to be dogging me too close. A bus was arriving just as I got to the
corner. I climbed on to ride the half mile to the Bank of Lake View, just to be
on the safe side.

Back
in its cool, musty recesses I rented a safe-deposit box. Alma let me use her
Xerox machine to copy the bonds and the title. I made two sets of copies. One I
folded and tucked in the inside of my jacket; the other I placed in an envelope
in my handbag. After putting the originals in the safe-deposit box I went back
to Alma’s desk. She finished a phone call and looked at me inquiringly. Her
warm smile-seemed to be wearing a bit thin where I was concerned.

“You
know how Lake View brags about being a full-service bank? I wonder if you’d
keep this for me.” I held out the key to the box.

She
shook her head, not even bothering with a smile. “I can’t do that, Vic. It’s
completely against bank policy.”

I
tapped my teeth with a knuckle, trying to think. “Could you mail it to me?”

She
made a face. “I suppose. If you address the envelope and seal it yourself.”

She
pulled an envelope from a drawer. I helped myself to a handful of scented
tissues from the corner of her desk and wrapped the key in them. I addressed
the envelope to myself in care of the owner of a bar I frequent downtown, the
Golden Glow, and handed it to her.

“Now
you have to admit that we are a full-service bank. Tell all your friends.” She
laughed merrily and put the envelope in a tray marked for outgoing mail.

“Will
do, Alma; you got my vote.”

I’d
seen a pay phone next to the ladies’ room in the basement this morning on my
earlier visit. I went downstairs to call Dorothy Fletcher, a broker I know.

“What
can you tell me about Diamond Head bonds?” I asked after we’d exchanged
pleasantries.

“Nothing.
Want me to look them up and give you a call?”

“I’m
not real reachable today. Could I hold while you check?”

She
warned me I might have a long wait, but agreed to do it. I ended up watching
the walls for nearly a quarter of an hour. Sylvia Wolfe came down to the
ladies’ room and we exchanged waves. Nothing else disturbed the basement’s
sepulchral air. As the minutes stretched by I regretted not carrying a book
with me. Even a chair would have been welcome.

Dorothy
came back on the line as I was counting the number of burned-out-bulbs in the
basement chandelier. “I hope you’re not thinking of buying these, Vic. They’re
trading at nineteen—off a face value of a hundred, of course. That may sound
like a bargain, but they didn’t meet their April interest payment and no one
here believes they’ll be able to do it in October, either. On top of that
they’re unsecured.”