Little red spots burned in her cheeks. “That’s a lie! Mother was killed by some awful mugger who thought the office was empty and—”
“And broke in and stole only the documents relating to Farmworks’s offer to buy the Indiana Arms,” I cut in. “Come off it, Star. Ralph and Boots are spinning you a line. Your mother learned I’d gotten hold of a picture of you and she was afraid you’d get linked to the fire when I started showing it around. She went to Ralph and told him she was going to have to tell me all about his offer to purchase—she didn’t want you taking the fall in case someone could connect you with that arson. And he killed her. Or he got someone to kill her. How bad do you want to protect those cretins? Bad enough to let them get away with your mama’s death?”
“You’re making this up! Ralph and Gus told me you might be around to harass me. He told me what you might insinuate. You think you’re so smart, but he’s smarter than you.”
“Gus?” I started to ask, then realized she must mean August. “One thing’s for damn sure—he’s smarter than you! Don’t you realize that I didn’t know MacDonald was involved in Farmworks until you told me just now? It was a guess, but it sure was right on target. Shall I guess everything else that happened and you let me know if I’m right or wrong? Or do you want to tell me yourself?”
She pulled herself up in her swivel chair. “You’d better get out of here before I call the police. You’re harassing me in a private office and that’s against the law.”
“Let me make another guess.” I pulled her Rolodex toward me and started flipping through it. “You’ll call Roland Montgomery’s private number and he’ll send some uniforms hopping to drag me away. And Star! What a coincidence! Here it is.”
“I… uh …” She started a sentence several times but didn’t finish it. “You don’t have any proof.”
“No,” I had to admit. “It’s just another guess. But he— or at least Farmworks—is at the center of a whole lot of different action that he’d just as soon the FBI didn’t see. They’re going to, though, Star, because the Herald’s going to print the whole story. And then the feds will come subpoena your files and they’ll charge you with conspiring to commit fraud and arson and murder. And then you won’t just be a poor little orphan, you’ll be a poor little orphan in jail. Only if a jury hears how you let your own mother take the fall for you, they’re not going to treat you like a helpless waif.”
“Just because my employer tried to buy a building belonging to Mother’s employer does not mean he killed her.” Her voice was scornful.
“Ralph and Boots really wanted the Indiana Arms, didn’t they? Really badly. I know about their stadium bid—that’s not a secret. And it won’t take too much work to do a proper title search for the stuff back there, so you might as well tell me.”
She thought it over carefully, then finally conceded that Farmworks had been buying up property in the triangle behind McCormick Place and the Dan Ryan for several years now, positioning themselves for a bid on the stadium. The Indiana Arms was one of the few occupied buildings they hadn’t been able to acquire. Star had been keeping Seligman’s books for him at the time—she was a CPA. She thought he was foolish not to sell and tried to pressure him.
“He acted like that place meant more to him than his own children,” Star said resentfully. “You’d think he’d of been glad to get what they were offering—it would have been so much better for Barbara and Connie than inheriting that run-down junk heap. Even after—after things started going really wrong, like when the elevators broke down and no one would come fix them, he couldn’t see it was a losing proposition.”
“It had some sentimental meaning for him. So what happened next? You went to August Cray and Ralph and said if they’d hire you, you’d keep up the pressure on Seligman through your mom?”
She tossed her golden hair scornfully. “They made me an offer. They could see I was good, that I was wasted in that nickel-and-dime place.”
“What were you supposed to do? Forge a title transfer? Were you good enough to do that? Or just get your mother to keep the heat on the old man to sell?”
She smiled at me coldly. “You’ll never know, will you?”
“But then Rita learned that Mr. Seligman had given me a photo that had you and Shannon in it along with his own daughters. And she came to you, panicked. She was afraid if I started showing it to someone who had lived or worked at the Indiana Arms that they would recognize you. What had you been doing down there? Sabotaging the elevators yourself? Or just guaranteeing that no repair company would come fix them? So you told Ralph your mom was getting cold feet and he did the only decent thing—he got someone to kill her.”