“I don’t know.” I ignored her sarcasm. “It seems to be a picture that meant a lot to Miles Wuchnik and Leydon both, but it isn’t in her apartment. If I can find it, maybe it will tell me the whole story.”
I went up to my own place to wash and to change clothes. I was meeting Max and Lotty for dinner at Max’s home in Evanston. He and Lotty were taking off for Cape Cod at the end of the week, and would drive from there to Marlboro.
“You’ve created a situation for yourself, haven’t you, Victoria?” Max said, as we sat on his patio, discussing Wade Lawlor, the Salanters, and my meeting with Tommy Glover. “Getting this man’s hopes up when you think he’s guilty.”
I grinned. “It’s Murray whose hopes are riding high. Poor Tommy Glover—his biggest expectation is that I’ll get his picture back. I wonder if he’d settle for a calendar of firefighters—I ought to be able to find one of those easily enough.”
Lotty shook her head. “He wants something specific. It will make you seem untrustworthy if you offer him a substitute. You’re sure that this photograph matters that much?”
“Xavier Jurgens took Wuchnik up to Tommy’s room, completely against the rules. I learned that this afternoon. And from Tommy’s account, Wuchnik and Leydon fought over the photograph. Whatever it showed to Leydon, to Wuchnik it opened a door on blackmail. I guess I’ll go back to Leydon’s apartment in the morning and give it another sweep, but—”
“What about the sister?” Lotty asked. “That is, as you pointed out, the situation is filled with sisters. I mean the blackmailing detective’s sister down in Danville.”
“Yes,” I said slowly. “If Wuchnik stole the photo, he might have sent it to Iva inside a hollowed-out book, although I didn’t see it in the books I inspected. I suppose she could have put it in a bank vault.
“Your comment about sisters: Leydon told Wuchnik that if he understood the Bible verse In death they were not divided, he would understand everything. I can see her in Tommy’s room, laughing at Wuchnik, spinning words around him, getting him furious.”
I toyed with the stem of the wineglass. “Her saying that means the picture may have something to do with Magda and Wade Lawlor’s relationship. If it showed brother and sister in some compromising situation, everyone who saw it in Tommy’s room for the last twenty-odd years would have recognized it, too. And I cannot for the life of me imagine a photograph that would involve Tommy, the firefighters, and the Lawlors.”
Max and Lotty played around with the idea, too, but neither of them could come up with any believable possibilities, either. I left soon after. At home, I prowled restlessly around my apartment. Miles Wuchnik had worried that Leydon would muscle in on his blackmailing turf. Of course, that was ludicrous. She’d seen the picture, and it had agitated her, but its full significance hadn’t dawned on her until after Wuchnik’s death, or she would have tried to call me sooner.
Maybe Fred had stolen the picture. If it was valuable enough that Xavier Jurgens could get the price of a Camaro from blackmailing someone in it, then perhaps Fred was trying to cash in on it himself. In which case, he was probably as good as dead.
At eleven, Jake called from Marlboro; he’d finished an exhilarating day of music-making and he missed me. That cheered me. He might be surrounded by young violinists or bassists who had no white in their hair or spider veins in their legs, but he still missed me.
“Come out next week with Max and Lotty,” he coaxed.
“I miss you, too,” I said. “If I can clear up this problem—”
“Oh, don’t put conditions on it, V.I. Just come. If you haven’t solved it by then, a break from it will do you good. At least it will do me good.”
I felt better after the call and went straight to bed. The thrumming of the air conditioner, the laughter from the drunks straying away from the bars on Belmont, the honking, all blended into an urban lullaby that rocked me into an easy sleep.
47.
CLEANING UP FOR A CHANGE
IN MY DREAMS, FIRE TRUCKS WERE CHASING LEYDON AND ME across the University of Chicago campus. Leydon’s red-gold hair was streaming behind her in the moonlight; she was throwing jelly beans onto the quads, shouting, “They took my picture, they took my picture.”
I sat up, waking myself so abruptly that I almost fell out of bed. It was five-thirty, but the sky was a dull lead: more rain was coming.
If Leydon had taken Tommy’s photo, I might find it in the landfill in her condo. I pulled on cutoffs and a T-shirt, collected the dogs from Mr. Contreras’s place for a short walk, and then drove up to Leydon’s Edgewater apartment. The rain had just started to fall, heavy, greasy drops, when I found a parking space around the corner from her building.
Early though it was, Rafe, the doorman, was on duty. He remembered me from last week and asked after Leydon.