“I’m sure you would, ma’am.”
A legendary Illinois secretary of state, who lived in a fleabag in Springfield, left a closet filled with cash-stuffed shoeboxes when he died. Whenever someone needed to buy a favor, he supposedly rubbed his hands and exclaimed, “I can smell the meat a-cooking.”
“It’s not easy to be an elected official in Illinois,” Ms. Grigsby sighed. “You have to go to everyone’s fund-raisers in the hopes that they go to yours. Your staff is tied up selling tickets to the Speaker’s events, or the governor’s, or whoever is in power at the time, when they ought to be researching case law for you. It got so my friends wouldn’t answer the phone if I called during primary season.” She gave a merry laugh.
The drive from the Art Institute to LaSalle and Division doesn’t take long. We had already crossed the river and were waiting to turn left onto Ontario. I frantically tried to think of something to say besides, “Did the judge have an unusually large portfolio when he retired?”
The thought of large portfolios reminded me that I’d seen a photo of Grigsby with my most important client: Darraugh Graham had a large enough portfolio to own whole chunks of the Caymans if his tastes had run in that direction. “I understand that the judge knows Darraugh Graham. If you have any questions about me, Mr. Graham knows me well.”
“Does he, dear?” she said thoughtfully. “I don’t know if I would mention that to Elgin. He never felt that Mr. Graham responded appropriately to him. Of course, that may be because Elgin has a chip on his shoulder about elbowing his way out of Back of the Yards. He felt Darraugh Graham was looking down on him, although I always thought Mr. Graham was most painfully shy.”
I murmured agreement. Darraugh’s wintry manner didn’t exactly hide a heart of gold, but he’d definitely been a poor little rich boy.
The taxi pulled up in front of a women’s health clinic. Ms. Grigsby laughed again when she saw the surprise in my face.
“I volunteer here. You younger women think you have a corner on these issues, but believe me, I’ve been in these trenches since you were in kindergarten. I had to give it up when Elgin was on the bench; it wouldn’t do for a judge’s wife to be seen on one side of this issue or another, so I was happy for many reasons when he decided to step down.”
She handed the driver a twenty and told him to take me where I was going. He took me to my office—I’d driven down there with the dogs, since I hadn’t had a chance to run them this morning, and Bernie looked as though she was going to sleep until a second before her shift started.
The dogs were whining and pacing in my office. I drove them over to Lake Michigan. The water was bone-numbingly cold, at least for me—the past winter had been brutal, even by Chicago standards. In the middle of March we still had temperatures below freezing. Now, in April, no one trusted sunny days to stay warm. No country for old detectives.
I didn’t let the dogs go very far out, in case they got into trouble, but they were happy to swim and run. I was the one who got chilled, standing in the sand while the wind picked up speed again.
“What do you think, guys?” I asked the dogs on our way back to the parking lot. “Was Marjorie trying to tell me something that was too subtle for me to follow?”
Mitch lunged for a squirrel, but Peppy furrowed her golden brow, seeming to give the question serious thought.
“You think she was trying in a delicate way to suggest that Grigsby did favors for people who supported his election campaigns? And maybe Stella or Frank promised him something but couldn’t deliver, so there was no quid, since there’d been no quo?”
Peppy gave a sharp bark.
“You’re right: it’s a good guess, but it doesn’t explain where Stella got the money to keep up her mortgage payments. You know, it might be time to follow that money trail. After we do a little work to earn some money ourselves.”
Betty had mentioned Ferrite Workers S&L on Friday. It had been the bank of choice for most families in my neighborhood and I was betting they’d held the mortgage on the Guzzo house, too.
Of course, Ferrite didn’t exist anymore. Like a lot of neighborhood S&Ls, it had died in the savings and loan debacle of the 1980s, but Fort Dearborn Trust had taken over those accounts. And left the Ferrite name on the door in the hopes of keeping what was left of the steelworking customer base.