She brightened at that. Yes, he’d made a lot of money this spring and he’d given her two hundred dollars to buy a really nice crib and everything for the baby. She was quite proud of that and rambled on about it for a while—the only thing she could brag about.
I asked her if she had a mother or a sister or anyone she could stay with. She shrugged helplessly again and said all her family lived in Oklahoma. I looked at her impatiently. She wasn’t the kind of stray I wanted to befriend—if I did it once, she’d cling to me forever. Instead, I told her to call the fire department if she went into labor suddenly and didn’t know what to do about it—they’d send paramedics over to help her out.
As I got up to leave, I asked her to call me if Howard showed up. “And for goodness’ sake, don’t tell him you told me—he’ll only hit you again. Just go down to the corner grocery and use their pay phone. I really need to talk to him.”
She turned pathetically forlorn eyes to me. I doubted very much if I’d ever hear from her. It would be beyond her powers to deceive her domineering husband even over so simple a matter as a phone call. I felt a pang of guilt leaving her behind, but it was swallowed by fatigue as I got to the corner of Addison and Pulaski.
I hailed a Yellow Cab there to take me crosstown to Lotty’s. Five miles on city streets is a slow ride and I went to sleep in the lurching, elderly vehicle about the time we crossed Milwaukee Avenue. The movement of the taxi made me think I was back on board the Lucella. Bledsoe was standing next to me, holding onto the self-loader. He kept staring at me with his compelling gray eyes, repeating, “Vic: I wasn’t on the plane. I wasn’t on the plane.”
I woke up with a start as we turned onto Sheffield and the driver asked me for Lotty’s apartment number. As I paid him off and made my weary way up to the second floor, my dream remained very real to me. It contained an important message about Bledsoe but I just couldn’t figure out what it was.
19
Pavane for a Dead Hockey Player
Lotty greeted me with a most uncharacteristic gasp of relief. “My God, Vic, it’s really you! You made it back!” She hugged me fiercely.
“Lotty, what on earth is the matter? Didn’t you think you’d see me again?”
She put me at arm’s length, looked me up and down, kissed me again, and then gave a more Lotty-like grin. “The boat you were on, Vic. It was on the news. The explosion and so on. Four dead, they said, one of them a woman, but they wouldn’t give names until the families were notified. I was afraid, my dear, afraid you might be the only woman on board.”
By now she had ascertained my disheveled state. She hustled me into the bathroom and sat me in a steaming bath in her old-fashioned porcelain tub. She blew her nose briskly and went off to put a chicken on to simmer, then came back with two tumblers of my scotch. Lotty rarely drank—she was clearly deeply upset.
She perched on a three-legged stool while I soaked my sore shoulder and related the highlights of my adventures.
“I can’t believe Bledsoe hired Mattingly,” I concluded. “I just don’t believe my judgment of character can be so wrong. Bledsoe and his captain roused my hackles. But I liked them.” I went on to tell her the same thoughts that had tormented my four-hour ride in from the Soo. “I guess I’ll have to put my prejudices aside and look into Pole Star’s insurance arrangements and their general financial health.”
“Sleep on it,” Lotty advised. “You have a lot of different avenues to explore. In the morning one of them will look the most promising. Maybe Phillips. He has the most definite tie to Boom Boom, after all.”
Wrapped in a large terry-cloth robe, I sat with her in the kitchen eating the chicken and feeling comfort seep into the worn spots of my mind. After dinner Lotty rubbed Myoflex into my back and arms. She gave me a muscle relaxant and I fell into a deep, peppermint-scented sleep.
The phone dragged me out of the depths some ten hours later. Lotty came in and gently touched my arm. I opened bleary eyes.
“Phone’s for you, my dear. Janet somebody—used to be Boom Boom’s secretary.”
I shook my head groggily and sat up to take the phone by the guest bed.
Janet’s homey, middle-aged voice woke me up more thoroughly. She was upset. “Miss Warshawski, I’ve been fired. Mr. Phillips told me it was because they didn’t have enough for me to do, with Mr. Warshawski gone and all. But I think it’s because I was going through those files for you. I don’t think they would have fired me if I hadn’t done that. I mean, there was always enough work before—”