The Herald-Star had found a good headshot of Wuchnik, but when I showed the picture to the manager, he said he’d never seen him.
“I’ll check with Rafe—the doorman—but realistically, if someone comes around snooping on one of our tenants, Rafe tells me right away. It happens, you know, stalkers, or even”—he lowered his voice, as if about to say something too vile for normal speech—“repo men. These hard times affect our tenants along with everyone else.”
Feldtman made a stab at the papers, while I took the dishes to the kitchen and threw out the food. I emptied perishables from Leydon’s refrigerator, washed the dishes, then went back to the front room and picked up the lacy bits of Natori and La Perla. When I took them into the bedroom, I found Leydon had been writing on Post-its and sticking them to the wall around her bed. A whole box of them sat on the table by her bed, on top of a stack of books and magazines.
In death they were not divided, she’d written more than once, along with her messages about the catafalque and Happy Dale. And her crude comments to her brother. Sea-wall See-well Pee-well.
What I didn’t see was her computer. The printer was in the front room, buried under back copies of The New Yorker, but the computer itself was gone.
I pointed this out to Feldtman. He turned huffy, thinking I was accusing him, or Rafe the doorman, of theft, until I made it clear that I wanted to know only whether he or Rafe had seen Leydon leave with it.
“Maybe her brother took it when he picked her up in June,” Feldtman suggested.
“I don’t think so—she’s got printouts with dates from after she got out of the hospital. Maybe she took it in for repairs. Maybe it’s in her car; she said that was in the shop when we spoke Monday morning.”
Feldtman didn’t know where Leydon took her car for service but referred me again to the doorman, Rafe. Feldtman was getting beeped on his cell phone and was anxious to return to his battle station. I didn’t see what else I could do in Leydon’s apartment. In fact, the shambles was so disturbing, not just in itself but as a reminder of various past episodes I’d experienced with her, that I was eager to leave with him.
On my way out of the lobby, I stopped to talk to Rafe. He liked Leydon—a classy lady, not like some of the women in the building who were full of attitude because they were professors or something. He was sorry to hear of her troubles, but he didn’t remember whether she had her computer with her or not.
“Everyone has one these days, miss, so it’s not something you notice special.”
He did know where Leydon took her car for service, or at least he knew the garage he’d recommended to her. It was a place on Devon, about a mile from the apartment. I copied the name into my notebook and gave him a couple of bucks.
The garage manager didn’t share Rafe’s enthusiasm for Leydon. He’d done $2,700 worth of work on her car, and she wouldn’t pay for it. Her credit cards were maxed out, and her brother wouldn’t release any money from her trust fund to cover the bill. Leydon apparently had had a molten phone argument with Sewall in the garage manager’s office, and when that didn’t get her anywhere, she’d jumped into her car and tried to drive out of the garage, almost hitting one of the mechanics.
The manager was still angry. It didn’t calm him any to learn that Leydon was in a coma: “I’ve still got this car that no one’s paying for taking up room on my lot.”
“I’ll talk to her sister-in-law,” I promised. “She has Ms. Ashford’s durable power of attorney and can authorize getting the car paid for, even if the brother won’t release any money from Ms. Ashford’s trust fund. In the meantime, all I want is to find out if she left her computer in the car.”
The manager refused to cooperate, but on my way out, I casually waved a twenty at one of the mechanics. He waited until the manager was busy at another end of the garage, then led me behind the building to Leydon’s car. The car wasn’t empty: she’d filled the backseat with newspapers, magazines, recipes, and a few odd pieces of junk. But there was no computer, nor, as far as I could tell, anything that related to Miles Wuchnik and his trips to the hospital in Downers Grove.
20.
CHATTER IN THE PEACEFUL VALLEY
“RUHETAL? THAT MEANS ‘A PEACEFUL VALLEY,’” LOTTY SAID. “What an idyllic spot for the mentally ill—or any ill person, for that matter.”