I put a sympathetic arm around him—I sure knew that feeling. “There is something you could do.” I told him about the guy who’d come by Mrs. Polter’s claiming to be Mitch’s son. “Can you talk to Jake about that?”
He brightened somewhat. It wasn’t as good as the possibility of slugging someone with a pipe wrench, but at least it was action. I told him I’d be out all day, but I’d check in around five.
“Mind you do, doll. Maybe you could call me around one or something—I don’t want to spend the whole day wondering if someone took after you with a bulldozer.”
Normally his protectiveness makes me prickly, but the attack on Lotty had shaken me. I could see how you could sit around worrying about someone you loved. I promised, kissed him on the cheek, and took off.
It was past noon by the time Luke finished his funeral oration on the damage to the Trans Am. Since he wouldn’t hand over the keys to the Impala until he’d had a chance to say everything he wanted on the subject of the state of modern car manufacture in general, Pontiac more specifically, and my car as a particular example, I had to listen with what grace I could muster.
He was right about the Impala: it rode like a bus after the Trans Am. But its engine felt like spun silk to handle. I maneuvered it cautiously into traffic, getting a feel for its sidelines, and keeping an eye out for uninvited company. I didn’t think anyone had followed me to the garage, but I didn’t want to be foolhardy.
Remembering my promise to Mr. Contreras, I phoned from the lobby of the Herald Star. When he didn’t answer I figured he was out with Peppy and went on up to the news floor to talk to the young reporter Murray had assigned me to.
Lydia Cooper, Murray’s gofer, looked as though she was fresh from journalism school. In fact, with her red, round cheeks and fluffy black bangs she looked as though she were on her way to a high school class. She had a thick Midwestern twang; when I asked, she grinned and said she came from Kansas.
“And please don’t ask about Toto or whether everything there’s in black and white. Believe me, I’ve heard it a million times already and I’ve only been in Chicago eleven months.”
Murray had apparently passed along my request without any baggage—she cheerfully offered to fix me up with the Lexus system as soon as we finished talking.
I gave her the details of the attack on Lotty. With Lydia dutifully taking notes at my shoulder, I called Max to see how Lotty’s tests had gone. As Audrey thought, Lotty had a hairline fracture of her left arm, but the CAT scan didn’t show clots or other head-problems. Carol, shocked by the attack, was coming in to the clinic for a few hours a day, but Lotty was fretting to get back to work herself.
Lydia went through a conscientious list of questions, but she had a lot to learn about probing behind partial answers. When she finished, she led me to a computer with a modem and called up Lexus for me.
“Murray said I should warn you that we might not use the story,” she drawled. “But thanks for talking to me. Just exit the system when you’re done—you don’t need to see me before you go.”
When I got the Diamond Head file I felt a stab of frustration, and a sweep of irrational anger. The only name given was their registered agent, Jonas Carver, at an address on South Dearborn. Perfectly aboveboard, since they weren’t a publicly held company, but I’d been expecting great things from the computer. I’d imagined finding some close associate of Daraugh Graham, who would quickly put pressure on Chamfers to talk to me.
Technology had failed me. I was going to have to do my detecting the old-fashioned way, by breaking and entering.
Chapter 22 - The Labors of Hercules
I phoned Mr. Contreras again from Murray’s desk before leaving the paper. He still didn’t answer. I tried not to worry about it—what could be wrong with him, after all? But he’d made such a point of my calling him at one, and anyway, he wouldn’t leave Peppy alone for so long. Maybe he forgot he had a doctor’s appointment when he was talking to me. Maybe Peppy had had some kind of veterinary emergency. He wouldn’t have slipped and fallen, be lying helpless on the bathroom floor like Mrs. Frizell. Certainly not. I took the stairs from Michigan to the service road beneath it two at a time.
I’d parked the car illegally on underground Wacker, hoping the location was too remote for the traffic detail. Pulling one of the city’s new orange missives from the Impala’s wipers, I realized I should have known better: when the dice are rolling against you, the traffic cops will always find you. I’d have to pay it too—Luke’s histrionics if the Impala got booted didn’t bear imagining.