That did the trick. They handed over the notebook and I gave each of them a five, which made their faces light up. I also handed each of them a card.
“I’m a detective, private, and so was Miles. You know the dead man who was found over in the cemetery?” I jerked my head toward Mount Moriah. “That was Miles. I agreed to take on his old cases and try to solve them for him, but I think the murderers broke into his car to keep me from finding out what he was working on. So if you see anything, or hear anything, give me a call. And for pity’s sake, don’t tackle them on your own. You are two very brave and resourceful young men, but the killers are ruthless.”
Their eyes grew big with excitement. “What’s that, miss, ruthless, that where they were born?”
“It’s a word meaning they are utterly cold-blooded with no regard for human life.”
“So was your friend killed by a vampire, like they’re saying?”
“Nope. Not a vampire. A very human sort of being, just not a nice one.”
They raced down the street on their boards, so excited they almost collided with a woman pushing a baby carriage. By five p.m., everyone on the street would know they were helping to track down the vampire.
I took the notebook back to my car. When I opened it, I couldn’t believe my luck. It was Wuchnik’s mileage log. I started to read it but realized how much I’d exposed myself, identifying myself to the boys, asking questions, and now sitting near Wuchnik’s own car. Since I had no idea what the vampire killer looked like, it could be any of the people looking at my Mustang as they walked up the street. Not enough of them were buried in their texts for my comfort.
I turned back to Ashland Avenue. Traffic had become marginally lighter; I made it home in half an hour. Jake was leaving for Marlboro in the morning. We were going out for dinner and dancing, and I was not bringing my cell phone with me: no one was going to break up my evening, not even if the Malina Building was on fire and Petra was stuck on the top floor with fifteen screaming twelve-year-olds.
Back home, I showered and put on a pair of black silk pants and a shimmery silver top. I wished I’d kept my scarlet dress for tonight, instead of letting it get wet and dirty Saturday night. My cleaners had said they’d do their best with it, but they hadn’t been optimistic. Maybe Joseph Parecki could make me a new one, if I made some money this month. I taped up my blistered feet with enough padding that I could put my dancing shoes on without feeling the pain, or at least, without feeling much pain.
While I waited for Jake to finish his packing, I started working through Miles Wuchnik’s mileage log. Some of the entries were in pencil, which had smeared and blurred with time, others in ballpoint. He seemed to have entered every place he went, with dates, times, and miles. The last column on each page identified the client, or at least the case he was working on, but he’d used a code here, probably the case number he assigned to the investigation, and I didn’t have a way to crack the code. Somehow it made him become a real person to me, touching the numbers he’d written moments before his death.
Wuchnik had been a busy detective, so busy that the notebook covered only the last four months and was already almost full. He’d trekked from the county buildings dotting Greater Chicago’s six counties to the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District’s headquarters, to hospitals, restaurants, and to Ruhetal in Downers Grove.
I put the spiral notebook down, carefully, as if it were made of glass and might shatter. Ruhetal, the state mental hospital where Leydon had spent the month of June. This was Gordian indeed.
I picked up the notebook again. Wuchnik had made six trips to Ruhetal, starting on the Wednesday before Memorial Day, with the last one ten days before he died. I’d have to get the exact dates Leydon had been out there.
Wuchnik had also carefully noted the eight-point-nine-mile trip from his home to the parking space on Augusta. The code in the margin was the same as for the trips to Ruhetal. I tried to analyze Wuchnik’s numbers. All of them ended in eleven, so that probably referred to the year. Brilliant, V.I. Keep this up and you’ll have a job at Langley in no time.
But the first two numbers couldn’t possibly be a date. It had to have something to do with how he labeled his cases.
“Victoria Iphigenia. You are the most beautiful thing I’ve seen—I don’t know—in my whole life, maybe.”
I’d left my front door open for Jake but hadn’t heard him come in. I sprang to my feet—a skintight top that wows your lover—the best cure for the puzzled and weary detective’s sore feet and baffled brain.