The Bad Kitty Lounge (19 page)

Lucinda asked, “Any reason that someone from back then would want to harm Judy?”

Louise Johnson squinted at her, then at Terrence, then me. “This isn't about a will.”

I showed my palms. “Not just a will. Judy Terrano was killed.”

She considered that. “The Bad Kitty Lounge was a long time ago. What's it got to do with anything?”

“That's what we're trying to find out,” Lucinda said.

“Would anyone want to harm her?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said and she finished off her spiked coffee. “Judy was there the night the Bad Kitty burned. She saw them light the fire. She testified against the family in court. And then she disappeared.”

“THAT'S A SPOOKY WOMAN,”
Lucinda said as we sped north again.

“Sad woman,” Terrence said.

“She's protecting someone,” I said, “and maybe protecting herself.”

“Could be,” said Terrence.

I checked my cell phone. It said I'd gotten a call from my home number. That would be Corrine. She'd left a message on my voice mail. I knew what she would've said about me in the message, and I knew she would be right—I was late and I was screwing up again. I turned off the phone and tucked it back in my pocket. I would listen to the message later. It would still be true, probably truer than it was now. I would face Corrine later, too. I might even face myself.

I accelerated.

“Where are we going?” said Lucinda.

“To the Bad Kitty Lounge.”

She looked at me like I'd lost my mind. “The Bad Kitty's long gone.”

“Nah,” I said. “It just looks different. Bigger, probably thirty or thirty-five stories high, lots of polished steel and glass, underground parking, maybe a doorman to help you carry your packages.”

Lucinda and Terrence exchanged glances.

Ten minutes later we pulled up in front of a construction site. The building rose a full thirty-five stories from the street. Workers halfway up the side were framing plates of thick, reflective glass into a steel framework. A tower crane lifted another sheet of glass high into the air. Blocked by construction barricades, a wide driveway curved down under the building to a parking lot. There was no doorman yet, but the two-story, glassed-in lobby said there would be one soon.

“Wow,” said Lucinda.

“Man,” said Terrence.

They weren't looking up at the building, admiring its fine modernist lines, and they weren't looking at me, admiring my act as Joe the Clever Clairvoyant. They were looking at the big sign posted outside the building. The sign showed three images. One was the building as it would look when completed, with a caption: “City Living at Its Best.” A second was a man and a woman lounging in a white bed with drapes open to a plate-glass window showing sparkling city lights on a clear Chicago night, also with a caption: “Urban Luxury and Comfort.” The third was a handsome woman's face. She smiled warmly, decently. Under her portrait in italics were the words, “Come home to Stone Tower,” and a tag that said the woman was Dorothy Stone. A painted scroll at the top of the sign said, “Lakeview
Commercial and Residential Real Estate Development—Your Kind of Living.”

I read the sign and said nothing. I'd seen the building before in architectural renderings framed on Mrs. Stone's office walls, and Eric Stone had asked me to keep the family name out of my report when I turned Greg Samuelson over to the cops because he wanted to avoid bad publicity as the family started to sell the condominium units.

We got out of the car and walked into the fenced-in construction area. The ground was a mix of sand, asphalt, and the clay soil that had supported the city for two hundred years. A group of five Mexicans, four in yellow hard hats, one in orange, stood by an electrician's van, looking at a blueprint. We went to them and I asked where we could find Eric or David Stone.

They gave me blank looks.

Lucinda spoke.
“Con permiso, dondé esta Eric o David Stone?”

The guy in the orange hat grinned at her. “Try the site office.” He pointed into the building.

We walked through the concrete cavity that would become the lobby. Huge vertical supports rose through a network of steel rebar and more concrete. Water had pooled on the floor, and the place had the dank cold feel of a cave. In six months it would cost a million dollars to walk through that lobby and go upstairs to a condominium.

Bare bulbs lighted the way past the concrete columns to a temporary office. I knocked on the door. No one answered, so we let ourselves in. The office had a central room with a metal desk and several chairs. Architectural blueprints and diagrams
of plumbing and electrical systems were tacked to the walls. Four doors led to smaller rooms, one with a photocopier and office supplies, the others with desks, computers, and file cabinets. A quick check of the desk in the main room showed it was used for reception and nothing else. We split up and searched the other rooms with desks.

The file cabinets in the room I searched held more diagrams and construction specs, building permits, permitting guides, and sheets of numbers that made no sense to me. One drawer held paper plates, plastic utensils, and a six-pack of Michelob, minus a can. Another held a folder of photocopies of construction contracts and, behind it, a folder of land titles and deeds. I took the folders to the desk and sat down. A screen saver played repeatedly across the computer monitor, showing a German shepherd fetching a throw-toy tossed from a beach into Lake Michigan. At the end of the video, the dog charged back onto the beach from the water, shook off, and ran to the camera. Its eyes were ferocious. It looked like it would drop the toy and bite the lens.

The contracts folder showed that LCR had committed over twenty million dollars to the first stages of the building that would become Stone Tower. I put down the papers and shook the computer mouse. The German shepherd disappeared and I got a blank screen with icons. I started with one for NetSuite. Nothing showed dangers of bankruptcy, obvious signs of number juggling, or evidence that the Stones were siphoning funds from their project and hiding them in the Caymans, at least nothing to eyes that were used to calculating the loose change I kept in my checking account. But a spreadsheet showed the sale prices of the condo units in the buildings. They started at
$450,000 for less desirable one-bedrooms and climbed to $2.7 million for luxury penthouses. Plenty was at stake.

I turned back to the folders. The one with deeds and titles was thick with photocopies of papers that ranged from the late 1800s to last year. I started leafing through them when a man stepped into the doorway. He was short but powerfully built the way short guys who spent long evenings at the gym are powerfully built. He wore jeans a size too tight, a flannel shirt layered over a long underwear shirt, and a tool vest. He carried a hard hat. He didn't worry me much. But the German shepherd at his side did. The dog had ferocious eyes and looked like it had just dropped its throw-toy. It glared at me like I was dinner.

The man stepped into the room, the dog at his side. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I'm interested in buying one of the penthouses,” I said, “but I'm worried about the riffraff I might have as neighbors.”

His eyes got almost as ferocious as the dog's. “What are you—?”

“What do you think I'm doing? I'm searching your office.”

That slowed him momentarily. “Why?”

Explaining that a dead nun had hung out in a house that had stood on the spot where he was constructing a residential high-rise seemed too complicated. “I'm a private detective,” I said and I reached for my wallet to show him my license.

But when I moved, the German shepherd read the man's nerves and growled. I stopped moving. The man smiled. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”

I nodded.

The dog growled again.

“Who are you?” the man asked.

“I was reaching for my detective's license,” I said. “I'm Joe Kozmarski and I'm working a case that involves Mrs. Stone and her sons Eric and David.”

“My aunt and my cousins,” he said like there was power in the name Stone. I suppose there was.

“I came here looking for Eric and David.”

“They're not here.”

I shrugged. “I should've tried them at the Loop office.”

“They're not there either,” he said.

“Then if you'll hold your wolf, I'll catch them at home.”

He shook his head. “I'll call the police. And then I'll call my aunt.” He stepped toward the phone on the desk.

But he stopped when a deep voice spoke from behind him. It said, “Sit.” Terrence filled the doorway, his Smith & Wesson in his hand, his gentle eyes on the dog. The dog had turned at the sound of him entering and it looked at him with its head cocked to the side.

Then it sat.

“Good girl,” he said and he stepped into the room. He pointed his gun at Mrs. Stone's nephew. Lucinda followed him into the room. She pointed her gun at him, too.

I got up from the desk. The dog growled, then looked at Terrence. Terrence turned his head a quarter to the left and eyed it. It stopped growling. “Sit,” Terrence said to the nephew. The man glared at him but he sat at the desk.

Terrence asked me, “Did you get what you were looking for?”

The financial statements might be important but I didn't really know what I was looking for. “Sure,” I said.

“Then why don't you and Lucinda take off. I'll sit here awhile with Mr. D cell.”

“How will you get home?”

“Look at me,” he said, and he opened his arms wide enough to hug a football team. “Do I look like I'm helpless?”

He chose a chair, glanced around the room, and picked up the folders I'd left on the desk. We left him there reading, the German shepherd lying at his feet, Mrs. Stone's nephew glaring at him silently from across the desk.

Lucinda and I found our way out of the concrete cavern. We walked outside into the late afternoon sunlight. I looked up at the sky. The construction crane held a giant sheet of glass directly over our heads. The glass rose into the sky, swung toward the sun, and disappeared into the shadows of the building.

WE WOUND THROUGH THE
afternoon traffic toward the western suburbs. An El train shot along on the tracks beside us, then slowed for a station as gently as a bird landing on water. The faces in the train windows and in the cars and trucks on the highway were dull, consumed by the day that had passed. I glanced at Lucinda. Her face had the same dull expression but I knew better. I also knew better about the people in the train, cars, and trucks. Some of them were thinking murder, whether or not they ever got around to picking up the kitchen knife. Others were racing toward tragedy, though they kept their speed just below sixty with a foot covering the brakes.

As we neared the suburbs, the on-ramps flooded the highway with cars, and I cut around a pickup truck. I said, “There's big money in the Stone Tower project. I saw the papers.”

“No surprise.”

“I suppose,” I said. “What did you find?”

“Employee records. The Stones seem to have hired every one of their relatives to the tenth generation.”

We put back on our dull faces.

Then Lucinda said, “I'm glad we're doing this.” She kept her eyes on the road but her voice got soft. “You know, working together.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”

“It feels good.” She glanced at me. “To be together.”

Working with her felt to me like I was betraying Corrine, even if Corrine had walked out on me more than a year ago. “Yeah,” I said.

“You know, whatever comes of it or doesn't, this part is good,” she said.

I nodded and we rode together in silence.

David Stone's daughter, Cassie, answered the door. She'd changed clothes. Her little black skirt looked designed to make you wonder if she was wearing anything underneath. Her T-shirt exposed a belly with a stud in it.

“Don't you ever get cold?” I said when the door opened.

“You're silly,” she said.

“Is your father or uncle here?” I asked, then added, “Or your grandmother?”

“Sure, Grandma's here. You just missed Dad and Eric.” She turned and put a little wiggle into her black skirt.

Lucinda raised her eyebrows at me and mouthed, “You're silly.”

We followed her inside. She led us through the front foyer past the pulsing fountain, across the living room, and to a paneled reading room. Mrs. Stone sat on a sofa with a lamp on either side, reading a magazine called
Country Gardens
. She had on a
red wool dress and wore a strand of pearls. She had kicked off her shoes. She looked more like a rich lady enjoying her leisure years than the head of a family erecting thousands of tons of concrete, glass, and steel.

As we entered the room, her granddaughter drifted over to an unlit fireplace, and Mrs. Stone peered at us over the top of her reading glasses. “Ah,” she said with a smile that was one part pleasure and three parts disdain. “Mr. Kozmarski again—and a lady friend.”

Lucinda gave her the same. “Lucinda Juarez.”

Mrs. Stone tipped her head toward her, then said to me, “And you're not accompanied by bleeding killers this time?”

“I dropped mine off at the police station. The only ones you'll need to worry about live under your roof.”

“I feel we're quite safe then,” she said. “When you went to the police, were you able to avoid mentioning our name?”

“I was,” I said, “but I don't know why I bothered. I don't know why Eric even asked me to. The cops are a step behind on this but they'll catch up, and when they do they'll look at you. They'll look in your windows. They'll look through your desk. They'll have experts look at the hard drives on your computers. You'll be dead center.” I hit hard and wildly to see how she would take a punch. I didn't worry a lot about hitting her. She looked tough enough.