“I don’t think so. He died fifty miles from the hospital and there’s no suggestion that any of the patients was involved. But he wanted to go into the wing where the criminals are housed, and that’s a risky place to be. Did he tell you why?”
I eyed her surreptitiously as I wrapped a strip of paper towel around my bleeding finger, but her worried frown and head shake seemed genuine. I returned to one of her earlier comments.
“When Miles said you could retire, was he imagining that the two of you would live together?”
“We didn’t talk about that, because he has—had—his work in Chicago and I have a job here. Anyway, I moved in here when Mother passed.”
“Your mother’s house was too big for one person?” I asked, even though I sort of knew the answer.
“Sam and Pierce—my two other brothers—they made us sell the house after the funeral. Sam, he moved to Indianapolis, and Pierce went down to Louisville. They never even helped out when Mother needed nurses round the clock, even though they both have good jobs. You wouldn’t believe the medical bills, almost a hundred thousand and Medicare wouldn’t cover any of it. Anyway, Sam and Pierce, they said we had to sell the house, the place our parents bought back in 1958, they didn’t care for one second about sentimental value, let alone where was I going to live?
“Miles said I ought to get to keep the house, seeing as how I looked after Mother and Daddy and everything, but the other two wouldn’t give one nickel to help with the bills. Their wives, they’re just as bad.”
Iva Wuchnik paused, her jaws working, all the grievances of the last few years welling up as if they had happened yesterday.
I murmured something sympathetic, to keep the spigot flowing, while I tried hard to think what had scared her into dropping the tea glass. It was when I’d said her brother was generous, but before I mentioned the Camaro. Maybe she resented his bestowing that much money on a stranger, but it was the comment about Miles’s generosity that upset her. She was afraid I knew something particular about her brother’s money. The question was how to ferret it out.
“I’m trying to follow up on Miles’s open cases,” I said. “Did the police tell you someone had broken into his home and stolen all his papers, his computers, everything?”
She clutched involuntarily at her throat. “No.” She mouthed the word, cleared her throat, said it again in a harsh croak. “Everything? Who—was it—that means they know—they want—”
“Who will know what, Ms. Wuchnik?” I said gently when she stopped mid-dither. “You think the people who killed Miles may come after you?”
She gave another of her unconvincing laughs. “That’s ridiculous, when I don’t know who killed him myself.”
“He was sending you money, though.” I spoke with the kind of certainty we learned in the Public Defender’s Office: I know you were holding the gun for your homey. Better tell me now before we’re in front of the judge.
“How did—who did he tell? Your friend with the weird name?”
I smiled enigmatically. “He sent you cash. But did he tell you where he got it?”
“He—he thought it was better for me if I didn’t know. Is that why he was killed?”
“I don’t know why he was killed, but I’m trying to find out. How did he send you the money?”
Her eyes darted toward the front room and then quickly fell to her hands. “Your tea, I never made you a fresh glass of tea, and you did all that work cleaning up after me.”
Twenty questions. Miles sent his sister cash. And he sent it to her via something in the living room, and—the image of the dismembered book in Miles Wuchnik’s kitchen garbage popped into my head. I’d thought the intruder in his home had slashed a book to shreds, but it was Wuchnik himself, carving books like a pumpkin.
29.
TALKING TO A SPECIAL SISTER
I SLID OFF THE BAR STOOL AND RETURNED TO THE FRONT room. The old books that Iva had stacked on the teak storage cabinet made up one of those motley collections you see at garage sales. A Girl of the Limberlost, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Ramona.
While Iva twittered nervously behind me, I started flipping through them. The Better Homes and Gardens Junior Cookbook held more than two hundred dollars in twenties and fifties. An old twenty was stuck inside Daddy-Long-Legs but Sanders of the River was as dry as a dead riverbed.
I closed the books and put them back on the sideboard. “I don’t care about the money, Ms. Wuchnik. I mean, I don’t care if you give it to the Humane Society or use it for a trip to Poland. But I’d like to know where your brother got it.”
“He didn’t steal it!” Her square cheeks turned a blotchy mahogany.
“I’m not suggesting he did. But you must have wondered; you surely asked him when he started sending you hollowed-out books full of money.”