She pouted, an exaggerated, self-spoof of a crybaby, but she held the flashlight steady until the tumblers clicked back. We climbed three flights to her place where I repeated the maneuver. In my hip pocket, her phone rang two more times before I got her front door opened. Her keys were on the floor just inside.
She gave another husky laugh. “Look at that! I dropped them on my way out. I was so late, I guess I grabbed them with my coffee and my phone and didn’t see they weren’t in my hand when I left. Oh, Vic, you are a genius. Thank you, thank you, thank you. What can I do for you? Would you like a free invite to our fundraiser out on Navy Pier? It’s twenty-five hundred a head. Brian’s going to be there. Wouldn’t you love to meet him? The president may stop in, although we’ve been told not to count on it. We’ve rented the whole east end of the pier, it’ll be so cool. And, Uncle Sal, you should come, too.”
I’ve been to too many fundraisers for my heart to skip a beat at the prospect, but the invitation thrilled Mr. Contreras. An inside seat at a high-end event: it would raise his prestige at his weekly trips to the lodge, where his old union buddies meet to shoot pool along with the breeze.
“Do I need a tuxedo or something?” the old man worried as we turned to leave.
“Wear your overalls and your union badge. Krumas probably wants to look like he’s the people’s candidate,” I advised.
“Vic! Don’t be so cynical,” Petra scolded. “Although, do you have a union badge, Uncle Sal?”
“No, but I got me a Bronze Star, you know, from getting nicked at Anzio.”
Her eyes shone. “Oh, wear your medals, that’ll be so fab. I’ll come over and trim your hair. Kelsey and me, we got pretty good with the shears, primping each other in Africa.”
As we drove home, Mr. Contreras chuckled to himself. “She’s quite a gal, your cousin. She could charm the socks off a rock. You could learn a thing or two from her, you know.”
“Like how to charm socks off a rock?” My memory from this afternoon, my old supervisor telling me to “flash my assets,” came to mind. “You think I’m too surly?”
“Wouldn’t hurt you to smile more at people. You know what they say, doll: you catch more flies with honey.”
“Assuming you want a whole bunch of flies filling up the place.” I waited while he opened the front door, then took the dogs for a final skip around the block.
Would Petra have charmed Curtis Rivers’s socks off, gotten him to tell her all he knew about Lamont Gadsden? I tried to imagine myself skipping into Fit for Your Hoof, a jolly laugh bubbling out of my throat. It was easier to imagine myself tap-dancing backward in high heels.
I poured a glass of whisky and watched a few innings of the Cubs-San Francisco game. Pitching, the perennial Cubs weakness, reared its ugly head again. I went to bed with the good guys down by three runs in the fifth.
I was in the middle of a terrifying dream, Petra laughing heartily as a swarm of flies crawled down my cleavage, when the phone rescued me. I sat up, heart pounding from the horrific image, and grabbed the phone.
“Is this the detective?”
It was a woman, her voice soft and deep, but in my groggy state I couldn’t place it. I looked at the clock: it was three in the morning.
“I’m sorry if I woke you, but I’ve been thinking and thinking about Lamont. If I let it go another day, maybe I won’t have the nerve to pick up the phone a second time.”
“Rose Hebert.” I said her name aloud as I realized who she was. “Yes, what about Lamont?”
A pause, a sucking in of breath, preparing for the high dive. “I saw him that night.”
“Which night?” I leaned back against the headboard, knees drawn up to my chin, trying to wake up.
“When he left home. January twenty-fifth.”
“You mean Lamont came to you after he left his mother’s house?”
“He didn’t come to me.” She was speaking hurriedly. Behind her, I could hear the sounds of the hospital, the incessant pages, an ambulance siren. “I was . . . I was out after church. Wednesday night, you know, midweek church. Daddy was meeting with the deacons after the service, so I left alone. I went for a walk. It was so warm, you remember?”
The record heat for January before the big snow began. Everyone who lived through it still marvels at it.
“I went looking for Lamont. I was so confused, I wanted to see him. And I was pretending it was church business, pretending in my head, the way you do, that I wanted him to come to the youth group and tell us what it was like to work near Dr. King, although Daddy didn’t approve of churches getting involved in social action.”