Thinking about the control Spike had over the legislature made my head ache again. In my own lifetime, four Illinois governors have gone to prison for fraud. As has the mayor of Cicero, numerous Cook County judges, Chicago aldermen, and state and federal representatives. What a place. Maybe I should move to Vermont or Oregon, where people are still shocked by violations of the public trust, and are willing to take action to stop them. Moving would also get me far away from the Cubs. I couldn’t see a downside.
Back in my office, I had an alert on my computer, reminding me that I owed one of my regular clients a report on an internal auditor suspected of skimming. Senior staff were meeting on Saturday so they could get together without alerting the suspected auditor. The company had let me insert keystroke software into the suspected skimmer’s computer, which showed him sending a penny on every hundred dollars to an account in Liechtenstein. I took a heavy-duty decongestant and was pulling together the final report—with ten minutes to get it to the client—when Stella Guzzo phoned.
I stared at the caller ID in disbelief, but let the call go to voice mail while I did a final proofread and e-mailed the report to the client. We were handling the meeting via videoconferencing, so I got myself hooked up to the meeting room before playing Stella’s message.
“You need to come to South Chicago this afternoon to see me.” The recording accentuated the harshness in her deep voice.
My impulse was to phone her back, but I thought of all the changes she and Frank—and Betty—had been putting me through. She could summon me, and then have me arrested for violating the restraining order. I copied the message and e-mailed it to my lawyer’s office.
Is there some way to find out what she wants? Is she vacating the r.o.? Going into a meeting; will call back in an hour.
I sat through the meeting in profile, good eye to the camera, answering questions more or less on autopilot, trying to imagine what Stella wanted. When I’d finally fielded the last of the financial VP’s questions—he kept asking the same thing, hoping for a different answer—I checked my messages.
Freeman Carter had called to say that the restraining order was still in place. “Her lawyer is doing a very annoying dance. The short answer is don’t go near the Guzzo family until I tell you I’ve got a document signed by a judge lifting the order. Call or e-mail me to confirm that you will not go down there.”
The urge to drive to Stella’s house, to burst in on her and turn her house inside out, was strong, but even more than dismembering Stella, I wanted to sleep. I called Freeman to confirm that I was following his advice. Between the decongestant, the injuries and the pain meds, I could barely keep my eyes open. I staggered to the cot in my back room and was asleep almost before I was horizontal.
The phone dragged me awake an hour later. It was Natalie Clements, the young woman in the Cubs media relations department.
I felt drugged, but Natalie was bright and peppy and delivered a breathless monologue. “Your name came up last night when Mr. Drechen and I went to visit his old boss. Mr. Villard is the gentleman who had the pictures we showed you of your cousin. The day after our press release, his house was broken into and somebody stole a lot of his photographs. They took Billy Williams’s first home run ball, oh, a lot of treasures. It’s horrible—they’re his memories!
“Anyway, he’s cleaning out his house, or his daughter is—he has to move, which is really sad, but he has diabetes, same as Ron Santo, and it’s getting hard for him to walk or climb stairs. He asked if you were still interested in photos of the day your cousin came to Wrigley Field. I said I didn’t know how far along you were with your book, but I’d ask you.”
“Not very far,” I admitted.
My voice came out as a thick croak. I carried the phone with me to the bathroom and tried to gargle in a discreet and soundless way while Natalie went on.
“Well, his daughter came on a box of photos up in the attic, and some of them are from the day your cousin came to the open tryouts. Mr. Villard would love to show them to you.”
I told her I was a little under the weather but would be glad to visit Mr. Villard early next week.
“I’m sorry if you’re not feeling well, but it would be best if you could come today. His daughter is packing up his baseball collection, what the thieves didn’t steal—she’s going to auction it off to give to Cubs Care. He’s afraid if you wait, she’ll get rid of all those photos.”
That threat gave me enough of an adrenaline boost to say I’d be at Villard’s place within the hour. I held an ice cube over my eyes for a few minutes to make my sinuses retreat, washed my face, decided makeup would only make my green-and-purple eye more lurid, and headed north, to the Evanston address Natalie had given me.
Pierre Fouchard called while I was driving. “Bernadine called me. She seems well, but what do you think?”