The old man and the terrier were sitting on a bench reading the morning paper when I got back to the Chevy. Neither of them looked up even when I slammed the car door shut. I headed over to the Ryan at a brisk clip. The Chevy started its hideous grinding when I pushed it to sixty on the expressway but quieted down at forty. I made it home in time to catch the Bears’ opening kickoff against the unbeaten Bills. Like all good Chicagoans, I turned the TV sound off and caught the radio commentary—we like Dick Butkus’s knowledge and his partisanship.
With the Bears cruising at halftime, I looked at the Sunday papers. I was flipping idly through the Star’s “Chicago Beat” section when the Seligman name jumped up at me. The company offices on Montrose had been burgled. Mrs. Rita Donnelly, fifty-seven, a thirty-year employee, had been killed.
Behind me Jim Hart and Butkus were carrying on about the fine points of Dan Hampton’s first-half play. I switched the radio off and read the story slowly.
The Star had only given it five inches. I went through the Tribune and the Sun-Times and finally found enough detail to let me know the time the police thought it had happened—late Friday afternoon—the mailman’s discovery of her body on Saturday when he went in through the unlocked front door with a registered letter, and Mr. Seligman’s shock. Mrs. Donnelly had left two daughters, Shannon Casey (thirty-two) and Star Wentzel (twenty-nine), both married, and three grandchildren. Mass would be at St. Inanna’s parish Tuesday afternoon; visitation at the Callahan Funeral Home Monday evening. In lieu of flowers money should be sent to the St. Inanna scholarship fund.
The Bears and Bills were stacked in a violent heap on the silent TV screen—the second half had started without me. I switched off the set and went to the window to look out. It could have been random violence—money came into the office. Someone knew that, staked it out, killed her before she could get to the bank.
“Just don’t forget that’s possible,” I lectured myself out loud. “Don’t get so wound up in your favorite theories that you ignore the amount of random ugly violence in this town.” How could it have been random, though, with Cerise dead, the attack on Elena and me, the two fires. It all connected someplace. The murderer had ransacked the files, but no money had been taken, either from the office or from Mrs. Donnelly’s own bag.
Mrs. Donnelly’s death made me do something I had felt too churlish to do earlier—call Furey to see what he knew about Elena.
He sounded pleased enough to hear from me, although I could tell by the background noise I’d interrupted a party. “You got us all kind of worried, Vic. You doing okay?”
“I was feeling better until I went to the hospital this morning to visit my aunt. They told me you’d come around to talk to her and that they gave you all the details.”
“Yeah. I tried calling you a few times but just got your answering service. I was hoping you might have some idea where she went. She’s our only real lead on Wednesday’s fire.”
“Besides me.” I told him about Montgomery’s theory.
“Oh, Monty—he gets a little off balance sometimes. Don’t pay any attention to him. What about your aunt? I checked that hotel on Kenmore, but she hasn’t been back there since she skipped ten days ago.”
I suggested the abandoned buildings on the Near South Side and he promised to get a patrol unit to check them out. The pals had all come over to watch the game—he kind of wanted to get back to it, but he’d talk to me later in the week.
The phone rang as soon as I’d hung up. It was my uncle Peter, frothing because of my letter: What did I think he was, some cretin that he’d expose his children to someone like Elena?
“It’s okay, Peter—she’s vanished. No one’s going to ask anything of you.” Actually I was planning on calling Reese tomorrow to make sure they had his name and address as Elena’s financial guarantor, but I didn’t see it would help him any to learn that this afternoon.
The news didn’t mollify him. “Just get this through your head, Vic—if I’d wanted to stay tied to a bunch of losers, I wouldn’t have moved away from Chicago. If that offends you, I’m sorry, but I want more for my children than Tony wanted for you.”
I was about to launch a full-scale counterattack on how Tony wouldn’t have wanted sleaze for me, but even as I started it I realized the futility of saying anything. Peter and I had been around this track together a good many times. Neither of us was going to change. I hung up without saying good-bye.
I went back to the window and looked down at the drab bungalows facing my building. Maybe Tony would have wanted a mansion in Winnetka for me, but he’d only known bungalows and walk-ups—he wouldn’t think they were any disgrace for me.
My fight with Peter had exhausted me more than carrying around that tropical rain forest had this morning. If I wanted to prance around the rooftops tonight, I needed some rest. I switched off the phones and fell into my bed.
31
House Calls