I heard grease sputter: Jeanine had the phone tucked between head and neck while she stirred something into a pan. Mushrooms and broccoli, I imagined, feeling suddenly hungry.
There was a muffled conversation in the background. Jeanine came back on the phone and asked for more information, first about Martin, then about me. After another consultation, she decided I could come to their house when they’d had supper. She wasn’t enthusiastic, but who could blame her—a strange woman claiming to be a private eye, wanting to talk to her son, calling at the end of a long workday—I wouldn’t be enthusiastic, either.
I had about two hours to get home, walk the dogs, and eat my own mushroom broccoli surprise. Instead, I picked up the phone and dialed an old friend at the public defender’s office. Stefan Klevic had stayed on long after the rest of us gave up in despair.
Stefan wasn’t any more excited than Jeanine Susskind at hearing from me. “I’m on my way home, Warshawski. Can’t it wait until morning?”
“A guy named Derrick Schlafly was killed down in Palfry yesterday morning,” I said.
“I’m fascinated. Especially since I never heard of Schlafly or Palfry.”
“A hundred miles down I-55. Schlafly was a meth maker.”
“If the killer is arrested in Cook County, I’ll put up a spirited defense of whoever shot him,” Klevic promised. “Now, Doug has dinner waiting for me, so if you don’t mind—”
“Schlafly operated around here for fifteen years or so. I need to find some of the scum he knew then, to see if any of them can help me find a woman who was living with Schlafly. About the time he was killed, she called up crazy scared, then vanished.”
Klevic sighed audibly. “Leave her to the police, Warshawski. Turn over the details to them. If she shot Schlafly, it’s the Palfry County PD’s job to look after her, not mine, assuming their budget extends to public defenders.”
“The missing woman’s name is Judy Binder,” I continued. “That’s B-i-n-d-e-r. She’s a protégée of Lotty Herschel.”
Lotty had saved Stefan’s sister’s life several years ago. I heard him grind his teeth, but he muttered that he’d see what he could find out.
“Thanks, Stefan,” I said. “I knew I could count on you.”
“You know you’re no better than a frigging blackmailer, V.I.”
“Am too,” I said. “A frigging blackmailer doesn’t get nearly as good results as I do. Say ‘hey’ to Doug for me.”
I checked my e-mail one last time before I left. My note to Martin had bounced back with the long message about “fatal errors” you get from sending to a nonexistent mailbox. I double-checked Jari Liu’s message, but I’d entered Martin’s address correctly. I tried the cell phone number Liu had given me. I was not astounded to learn that the number was not in service.
I forwarded my fatal-error message to Liu. “Any more recent address you want to share? Any other cell numbers? The one you gave me isn’t answering.”
As I locked up my office for the day, I wondered if I should call one of my contacts in the Chicago police as well. If Schlafly had a sheet, which was probable, they’d have his pals listed. Kitty Binder had been so insistent about not talking to the police that I hesitated: her daughter probably had a sheet, too. I could picture the tormented evenings when Judy was a teenager, the calls from the police, the fights with the daughter coupled with anger at the police. I’d wait to see what Stefan Klevic turned up before going to the boys in blue.
On my way home, I took a detour to the emergency vet to check on my waif. They’d done surgery to remove a ruptured spleen; while they were inside they took out her ovaries and uterus. She had some sepsis in the wound so she was on high-dose antibiotics for that. She had heartworm, which required a special regimen all its own. At some point in her short life—the vet reckoned she was about three—she’d broken a leg that had healed on its own.
“For all she’s suffering, and considering the abuse she took, she still has a pretty sweet disposition,” the vet said. “A little nervy, but she hasn’t tried to bite anyone, so you may be able to take her home.”
“Maybe,” I said doubtfully. “I have two dogs already and a full-time job. If she recovers in good shape, I’ll help find the right family for her.”
The receptionist asked me to pay the bill to date. Forty-eight hundred and counting, but I handed over my credit card without complaint. So many of the humans I work with have a tendency to bite no matter how well they’ve been treated that it seemed like a good expenditure to rescue an uncomplaining Rottweiler.