My brows went up. “It sounds extraordinary. How on earth did this deal get set up?”
“It was in old Edward Breen’s will. He didn’t sell the coach house when he moved out in 1961, just the big house. When Julius’s mother died, the Breens said he could move into the coach house and live the rest of his life there. If he dies or moves out, we have the first right to buy it from the Breen family, thank God! Anyway, we bought here three years ago when my husband took a job in the anthropology department, and I guess that’s why he’s okay with Julius—my husband looks at him as if he were a science project.”
Her phone rang and she started talking into it.
“Ms. Basier—I’ll get out of your hair in a minute, but when did you last see Julius?”
She told her phone she’d be right with it and put a hand over the face. “I can’t remember. Sunday, maybe, when he got back from bird-watching. He started making a huge racket out in the alley. When my husband went to look, he was breaking china into a garbage can. I didn’t see him myself. Okay? I’ve got to go.”
She started talking to her phone again.
“Was someone else in the coach house today? Someone besides me?”
“Cece, someone keeps interrupting me; I’ll have to call you back.” Basier turned to me. “I’m at work all day. Does it matter?”
“It does, rather. Julius Dzornen’s half sister was murdered last week and I’m investigating her death.”
Basier looked at her children, her expression changing from annoyance to alarm. “You think he killed her?”
“No. But there’s something in his and her past that has been weighing him down, making him the disturbed and disturbing man he is. I think someone was in his house while he was out today, but it’s hard to tell. You could call the police, of course, but with no sign of a breakin they won’t do much about making it a crime scene.”
Basier bit her lip, looked at the children again, and asked me to wait where I could keep an eye on them. She went into the house and returned with a young woman, about college age.
“Mindy is one of my husband’s graduate students; she does a little housework for us and looks after the kids between the end of school and dinner,” Basier explained.
I went through my spiel again. Yes, Mindy had been in the kitchen around one o’clock and seen someone at Julius’s door.
“I think it was the police, though, checking up on him, because the man turned around as he was opening the door, and I saw he was wearing a shoulder holster. I was kind of freaked out, seeing a gun, but then I looked out front and saw the police car double-parked outside. So I went back to work.”
When I’d thanked the two women, Ms. Basier was still worried enough to ask Mindy to stay outside with the children. She wasn’t worried enough to stop talking to her phone: as I rounded the corner of the house I heard her having an animated conversation with it.
42
CRASH LANDING
THE MAN WHO LOST CONTROL of his car on Sheridan Road early this morning when it flipped over into a ravine has been identified as Julius Dzornen, only son of Nobel Prize–winning physicist Benjamin Dzornen. He is in critical condition at Evanston Hospital.”
I was half listening to the news as I sat in heavy traffic on Lake Shore Drive, but that jolted me so much that I almost lost control of my own car. The announcer moved on to a story about a lost dog returning home after thirteen months. I tried other stations but couldn’t get any more news on Julius’s accident.
An SUV riding my tail honked loudly. I realized I’d committed the sin of allowing a car length to develop in front of me. Instead of closing the gap, I inched over to the right-hand lane and exited at Navy Pier.
I drove out to the end of the pier and sat looking at the water. Julius had been angry when he arrived at the Breen estate last night. In any meeting between Cordell and Julius, Cordell would always have the upper hand because he was the cool, successful guy; Julius was the angry dropout living on Breen family charity.
He’d driven up furious about someone using his name at the library, but maybe that old Metargon sketch played a role in the quarrel as well. However the conversation went, by the time he left, Julius must have been in a blind rage, so angry he drove off the road.
A gull swept down to the water in front of me, screeching over a piece of garbage. Four other gulls arrived, all of them screaming, pecking each other out of the way until one rose triumphant with a french fry.
Breen was the tough gull. Nice gulls finish last. Julius wasn’t a nice guy, merely one who found life overwhelming.
I left the pier and rejoined the slow crawl northward. The hospital where they’d taken Julius was only half a mile from Max’s home. I stopped there on my way.
Julius was in critical condition, they told me at the front desk.