“No, but you were undercover. I asked you point–blank and you lied. You might have told me when you came to me asking for help.”
“I really was arrested. Just as I told you, because Robert Baladine accused me of kidnapping his son. The cops sent me out here because I got arrested on a holiday weekend. I decided to stay to try to find out what happened to poor young Nicola. I didn’t dare tell a soul. Not just to protect myself: you have a lot of influence here with the other women, and even the guards mostly treat you with respect, but you’re here and you’re vulnerable. I didn’t want harm to you to haunt me for the rest of my life.”
She thought it over and finally, grudgingly, decided maybe I hadn’t abused our relationship. I stayed to tell her the whole story, the story I’d given to the press. She liked having an insider’s look at the news, and she especially enjoyed hearing about my confrontation with Baladine and Lemour at St. Remigio’s.
“Girl like you who took on Angie and the Iscariots, you were plenty tough enough to go up against a bent cop. Glad to hear about it. Glad to know about it.”
Before I left, I handed her a little bag of cosmetics I’d brought with me, buried under a stack of legal documents that hadn’t been searched thoroughly. CO Cornish watched me but didn’t try to intervene.
“Revlon! You remembered. Moisturizer, cleanser, new lipstick in my favorite color—you’re a good woman, even if you did come to me under false pretenses. Now, since it turns out you’re really a lawyer and a detective and all those things, maybe you’ll write one of your famous letters for me. I’ve done fourteen years, that’s already way over average for murder in this state, but I’ve got eight more to go. See if you can help me on my parole. I’d kind of like to see my granddaughter before she’s a grandmother herself.”
I promised to do what I could. Back in the parking lot I stood with my hand on the car door for a long time before opening it. The car was a late–model green Mustang, a replacement for both the Rustmobile and the Trans Am. Freeman had tried to get me back my beloved sports car, but the police first claimed they couldn’t find it and then finally had to admit they’d pretty well trashed it. Luke went to the police pound to look at it, but the Trans Am was way beyond even his miraculous fingers. Freeman was suing the city for me to try to recover the price of the car, but I figured I’d be seventy before that case came to judgment.
Lacey Dowell had given me the money for the Mustang. She’d given me enough money that I could probably have bought a used XJ–12 convertible, but that was a fantasy, not a car for a working detective who has to use her wheels in the grime of Chicago.
Lacey came to see me at the end of the filming of Virgin Six. Father Lou told her that I’d solved Frenada’s murder and that even though Trant and Baladine would never be arrested for it, she should know that the two men had killed her childhood playmate.
“I told them at Global that I couldn’t work with Teddy anymore, that I’d stop production if he had anything to do with the movie. I guess I’m still a big enough star that they cared. They sent Teddy to Chile to head up their South American operation. But I understand from Father Lou that you put in a great deal of work on the case and never got paid. In fact, he told me you were badly injured as the result of your investigations. So I felt I should pay your fee, since Lucy and I were old friends, and we swore a pact when we were ten to help each other in the face of every danger. I didn’t do too well by him this year: the least I can do is thank you for looking after him for me.”
The check was for forty thousand dollars. Enough to take care of the bills that had mounted while I was out of commission. Enough for a car with only six thousand miles on it. Enough to pay some of Freeman’s fee. Money made from T–shirts sewn by women in prisons here or abroad. It was in my hands, too. I could have turned it down, but I didn’t.
I got into the car when the guard came over to see what the matter was. I sketched a wave and headed back to the tollway.
When I reached the city I drove to Morrell’s place in Evanston. I tried to tell him what I’d been thinking as I drove home.