When I’d finished picking up glass shards and mopping whisky I turned on the light in the living room and looked Todd Pichea up in the phone book. His home number wasn’t given, but he did list his office, at an address on North La Salle that I recognized.
I hunted around the living room for my private address book, which was usually interleaved in the papers on the coffee table. In my cleaning frenzy Tuesday morning I had tidied things so violently that I couldn’t find it. After half an hour of going through every drawer in the place I discovered the book inside the piano bench. Really, it was a waste of time to clean.
I dialed Richard Yarborough’s unlisted Oak Brook number. He answered the phone himself.
“Dick, hi. How are you?… It’s me, your good old ex-wife, Vic,” I added when ;t was clear he hadn’t recognized my voice.
“Vic! What do you want?” He sounded startled, but not actively hostile.
My normal conversations with him begin with a little brittle banter, but I was too upset tonight for cleverness. “You know a boy named Todd Pichea?”
“Pichea? I might. Why?”
“The one I’ve met lives across the street from me. About five-ten, thirtyish, brown hair, square face.” My voice trailed away—I couldn’t think of any way to describe Todd that would distinguish him from ten thousand other young professionals.
“And?”
“His law office seems to have the same address as yours. I thought maybe he was one of your hot young lawyers chomping at the bit.”
“Yes, I believe we do have an associate with that name.” Dick wasn’t going to give me anything willingly.
I hadn’t thought this phone call through before making it. Like everything else I’d done tonight, from ringing the Picheas’ doorbell to breaking a glass of whisky, it had been impulsive and perhaps stupid. I plunged ahead, feeling as though I were wrestling quicksand.
“He’s gotten involved in some extracurricular legal work. Extraterrestrial, really: made himself guardian of an old woman in the neighborhood who’s in the hospital, and had her five dogs collected by the county and put to sleep.”
“That’s not really any of my business, Vic, and I don’t see that it’s yours either. Now, if you’ll excuse me, we’re entertaining tonight.”
“The thing is, Dick,” I said quickly, before he could hang up, “the woman is a client of mine. I’m going to conduct an investigation into the process Pichea went through to become her guardian. And if there’s anything, well, unusual about it—I mean, it did happen very, very fast—then it will be in the papers. I just wanted you to know. So that you could be ready for phone calls and TV crews and stuff. And maybe warn your juniors not to let their enthusiasm exceed their legal judgment, or something like that.”
“Why do you have to come at me like a tank truck all the time? Why can’t you call up just to say hi? Or not call at all?”
“Dick, this is friendly,” I said reproachfully. “I’m trying to keep you from being blindsided.”
I thought I could hear him grinding his teeth, but it might have been wishful thinking. “What’s the old woman’s name?”
“Frizell. Harriet Frizell.”
“Okay, Vic, I’ve made a note of it. Now I’ve got to go. Don’t phone again unless you want to buy tickets to the next benefit we’re sponsoring. And even then I’d rather you spoke to my secretary.”
“Good talking to you too. Give my love to Teri.”
He snapped the receiver in my ear. I hung up, wondering what I’d done and why… So Mrs. Frizell was a client of mine? Now what? More long hours of wasted time when I needed paying jobs so I could buy running shoes? And what did I really expect Dick to do to Todd Pichea—go tell him what a tiger I was, to watch his step and bring those dead dogs back to life while he was at it?
It was nine o’clock now. I was grubby and tired, and I wanted my dinner. On a Friday night there wasn’t much I could do to track down actions at a probate court. I sponged myself off with the tepid bath water and put on clean cotton pants so that I could go foraging for food on Lincoln Avenue.
Chapter 12 - Whom Bruce Has Led—Welcome to Your Gory Bed
I spent six hours in bed, mostly as a way to pass the time until morning, since I couldn’t sleep. I hadn’t wanted the burden of looking after the dogs, so I’d forestalled Mr. Contreras from suggesting we take them in. I’d even been sharp and a little condescending when I spoke to him about it. And now they were dead. I tried not to imagine their stiff bodies in some dump, or wherever the county sends dogs it’s destroyed, but I felt ill, feverish, as if I myself had lined them against a wall and shot them.