I pushed my failing luck on the Drive going home, but managed to make it to Belmont without a blue-and-white pulling me over—the Impala didn’t attract the same kind of attention the Trans Am got. Once on Belmont I had to take it easy because of the traffic. I drummed impatiently on the wheel at lights and took stupid risks around double-parked delivery trucks.
It wasn’t until I got to Racine that I remembered to look for tails. At this point I couldn’t be sure I didn’t have one, although I didn’t think anyone had followed me to Luke’s to begin with. I certainly didn’t want to make their job easy by parking near the building where they could see what car I was driving. I found a space on Barry and sprinted the two blocks home.
When I rang Mr. Contreras’s bell, Peppy barked sharply from behind the door, but the old man didn’t appear. I bit my lip in momentary indecision. He had the same right to his privacy that I demanded for myself. Unfortunately the attack on Lotty had made me too jumpy about the welfare of my friends to leave room for Ninth Amendment debates. I ran upstairs to my own place, dug my state-of-the-art picklocks from the jumble in the basket by my front door, and made my first illegal entry of the day.
Peppy kept up a steady, extremely fierce barking while I worked on the locks. I hoped she would frighten off a genuine housebreaker—even though Mr. Contreras had two locks, they were woefully easy to undo. As soon as she realized it was me, she wagged her tail perfunctorily and returned to her squealing offspring.
The old man wasn’t in the building. I checked the back in case I’d made a fool of myself while he was nurturing his tomatoes, but he wasn’t outside, either. Peppy came to the back door with me while I looked.
“Where’d he go, huh? I know he told you.”
She gave an impatient bark and I let her out briefly. He hadn’t been attacked and dragged from the building by force—there were no signs of battle. I gave it up. Something had come up and I’d hear all about it in due course. I checked Peppy’s water bowl, then left a note on top of his phone telling him I’d been by and would see him tonight.
After relocking his door I stopped in my own place for a glass of water and a sandwich. I also left the Smith &
Wesson—I didn’t think anyone was going to take potshots at me on Racine.
Marjorie Hellstrom was in her backyard doing something to a rose bush. Except for Mrs. Frizell and me, the block was infested with fanatical gardeners. I couldn’t grow parsley in a window box, while Mrs. Frizell’s yard was returning to native prairie—native prairie replete with hubcaps and beer cans, just the way it was when the Indians lived here.
Mrs. Hellstrom came over to the fence separating her hand-clipped turf from the dump. “Are you going into Hattie’s place, Miss… uh? I washed some of her clothes yesterday and took them over to the hospital, but she didn’t know who I was. I don’t think they’d been laundered since she bought them. Mr. Hellstrom didn’t like me washing them, he was afraid I’d catch something from touching them, but you can’t leave your neighbours in the lurch, and we’ve lived next door for thirty years.”
“How did Mrs. Frizell seem?” I interrupted.
“I don’t think she even knew I was there, to tell you the truth. She just lay there with her eyes half shut, kind of snorting but not saying anything, except calling for the dog every now and then. So if you were thinking of taking her some of her things, I wouldn’t bother, Miss… uh.”
“Warshawski. But you can call me Vic. No, I just wanted to make sure her papers were in order.”
Mrs. Hellstrom frowned. “Isn’t that what Chrissie Pichea is supposed to do, with her and her husband taking over Mrs. Frizell’s affairs for her? It’s awfully generous of them to take it on, when they have their own work to do, although I don’t think they should have been in such a hurry to put the dogs to sleep. At least they should have talked to me first, they must have known I’d been looking after them.”
“Yes, I agree. I have some financial expertise that Todd and Chrissie lack. And I feel some responsibility to Mrs. Frizell—I should have done something to protect the dogs.”
“I know how you feel, dear—Vic, did you say?—because I feel just the same. You go on in, but you may want to open a window. Even though I tried cleaning the floors a bit, the place, well, to be frank, dear, it smells.” She lowered her voice on the last phrase as if using a word too dreadful for polite conversation.
I nodded portentously and let myself in the back. I’d half expected Todd and Chrissie to have changed the locks, so I’d brought my picks with me, but they must not have felt there was anything in the place that needed guarding. So technically I wasn’t breaking, just entering.