I tuned the app on my iPad to the Midnight Special, streaming from WFMT in Chicago, which made me feel that I was at home. I fell asleep in the middle of Gordon Bok singing “The Golden Vanity.” The music played through my sleep, and my dreams were pleasant, not the nightmares that had dogged me lately.
Leg pains were what woke me, shooting across the feet and up the shins. As I massaged my calves, I heard noises in the parking lot. Four-eighteen, an odd time for people to be coming back to their rooms in a town whose bars all closed at midnight on Saturdays. I parted the curtains. Two men were taking a crowbar to the trunk of my Mustang.
I pulled on jeans and a T-shirt and was in the hall, gun in hand, without bothering to find my shoes. I sprinted down the hall to the door that overlooked the parking lot, pushed it open just enough that I could see the men.
The two froze briefly, then turned more energetically to my car. I dashed barefoot across the lot, but they had the trunk open before I got to them. They grabbed the drawers and were bolting toward their own waiting car when the papers I’d wrapped in plastic fluttered to the tarmac. I got to them first, but one of the punks ran back and tried to grab them from me. In the tug-of-war, the paper disintegrated.
I slugged the thug across the jaw with the handle of my gun. He yelled in pain, his hands clutching his face. His partner had gotten into their car and swung it around for him. I tried grabbing him by the shoulder, but he broke free and made it into the car.
I fumbled in my jeans for my car keys, but I’d left those inside along with my room key and my shoes. My trunk was open and empty. I had caught their car model, a Dodge Charger, but I’d been fighting so hard that I didn’t get the license plate. I was too angry with my own stupidity even to swear.
Several people appeared in the doorway, shouting out confused questions. I stuck the Smith & Wesson inside my waistband at the small of my back.
“Someone was breaking into my car out there,” I said. “When I called out, they dropped their crowbar and took off.”
My fellow residents streamed past me, looking for damage to their own cars. I went to the front desk, where I had some trouble rousing the night clerk. I explained what had happened, but that in my haste to drive off the intruders I’d locked myself out of my room.
The clerk wanted proof of my identity, which was also in my room, but she finally agreed to come with me to open the door. She stood in the entrance and told me to describe what was in the room.
“I left a beige jacket and a rose-colored silk shirt on a hanger in the closet. The briefcase on the desk has my iPad and my wallet in it, and I have the code to unlock the iPad.”
Now that I’d gotten her up, she was determined to be zealous: she watched me unlock the iPad, which was now playing a Haydn sonata, incongruously enough, before returning to her desk to call the sheriff.
The night deputies, two men I hadn’t encountered before, met me at my Mustang. By then I was dressed again in my silk shirt and jacket and had my gun in my tuck holster. I’d double-checked all the surfaces in the room for my belongings. I didn’t have much—iPad, phone and Roberta’s Palfry Panthers T-shirt. I packed those into my briefcase, along with odds and ends like my picklocks.
When I told the deputies what had been taken from the trunk, they didn’t roll their eyes or give the blank stares I’d expected.
“Oh, yeah. You’re the Chicago detective who found buried treasure at Schlafly’s. How valuable was it, you think?” The taller, older deputy felt compelled to lean into my face, which meant I could read his name badge in the dim light: Herb Aschenbach.
“I don’t think it was valuable at all,” I said. “It had sentimental meaning for Roberta Wenger because the dresser once belonged to Agnes Schlafly.”
“Not what we heard,” Herb said. “Talk was about gold.”
I sighed. “Ms. Wenger said the drawers used to have gold handle pulls. If someone passed that story along I suppose it could have grown into a stack of gold, but all I found were chicken bones, ether cans and tampons.”
As I’d hoped, the word “tampon” made Herb back away from me. “What were you looking for, anyway? Why did you take the drawers?”
“I’m not the one who committed a crime here,” I said. “I’m the victim. The punks drove off in a Dodge Charger, in case you have one zooming around the country connected to B-and-E’s.”
The two deputies looked at each other, startled. They knew the Dodge.
“You must have been looking for something,” the younger deputy said. “We went and took a look at that pit out back of Schlafly’s. You got it pretty well cleaned out.”
“Since you know everything I’ve been doing, Jenny Orlick must have told you I’m looking for a young man named Martin Binder. He was at the Schlafly house a few weeks ago. He might have dropped some papers in the pit which could shed some light on where he went next.”
“Seems like a lot of trouble for not much to me,” Herb said.