“You know me, Bobby—I have an instinct for crime. Where evil flourishes, there I will be, on my self-appointed mission to stamp it out.”
Mallory turned redder. McGonnigal coughed diffidently and changed the subject before his boss hemorrhaged. “Do you have a client of some kind, Miss Warshawski?” he asked.
Of course I’d seen this one coming, but I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. However, she who hesitates is lost in the detective biz, so I opted for partial disclosure.
“I was hired to get Peter Thayer to agree to go to business school.” Mallory choked. “I’m not lying, Bobby,” I said earnestly “I went down there to meet the kid. And the door to his apartment was open, so I—”
“When you got there or after you’d picked the lock?” Mallory interrupted.
“So I went in,” I continued. “Anyway, I guess I failed in my assignment, since I don’t think Peter Thayer will ever go to business school. I’m not sure I still have a client.”
“Who hired you, Vicki?” Mallory was talking more quietly now. “John Thayer?”
“Now why would John Thayer want to hire me, Bobby?”
“You tell me that, Vicki. Maybe he wanted some dirt to use as a lever to pry the kid off those potheads down there.”
I swallowed the rest of my coffee and looked at Mallory squarely. “A guy came to me night before last and told me he was John Thayer. He wanted me to find his son’s girl friend, Anita. Anita Hill.”
“There’s no Anita Hill in that setup,” McGonnigal volunteered. “There’s an Anita McGraw. It looks like he was sharing a room with a girl, but the whole setup is so unisex you can’t tell who was with who.”
“Whom,” I said absently. McGonnigal looked blank. “You can’t tell who was with whom, Sergeant,” I explained. Mallory made explosive noises. “Anyway,” I added hastily, “I was beginning to suspect that the guy had sent me on a wild-goose chase when I found there was no Anita Hill at the university. Later I was sure of it.”
“Why?” Mallory demanded.
“I got a copy of Thayer’s picture from the Fort Dearborn Bank and Trust. He wasn’t my client.”
“Vicki,” Mallory said, “I think you’re a pain in the butt. I think Tony would turn in his grave if he knew what you were doing. But you’re not a fool. Don’t tell me you didn’t ask for any identification.”
“He gave me his card and his home phone and a retainer. I figured I could get back to him.”
“Let me see the card,” Mallory demanded. Suspicious bastard.
“It’s his card,” I said.
“Could I please see it anyway.” Tone of father barely restraining himself with recalcitrant child.
“It won’t tell you anything it didn’t tell me, Bobby.”
“I don’t believe he gave you a card,” Mallory said. “You knew the guy and you’re covering for him.
I shrugged and went to the bedroom and got the card out of my top drawer. I wiped it clean of prints with a scarf and brought it back to Mallory. The Fort Dearborn logo was in the lower left-hand corner. “John L. Thayer, Executive Vice-President, Trust” was in the middle, with his phone number. On the bottom I had scribbled the alleged home number.
Mallory grunted with satisfaction and put it in a plastic bag. I didn’t tell him the only prints on it at this point were mine. Why spoil one of his few pleasures?
Mallory leaned forward. “What are you going to do next?”
“Well, I don’t know. I got paid some money to find a girl and I feel like I ought to find her.”
“You going to ask for a revelation, Vicki?” Mallory said with heavy humor. “Or do you have something to go on?”
“I might talk to some people.”
“Vicki, if you know anything that you’re not telling me in connection with this murder—”
“You’ll be the first to know, Bobby,” I promised. That wasn’t exactly a lie, because I didn’t know for sure that Ajax was involved in the murder—but we all have our own ideas on what’s connected to what.
“Vicki, we’re on the case. You don’t have to prove anything to me about how cute or clever you are. But do me a favor—do a favor for Tony—let Sergeant McGormigal and me find the murderer.”
I stared limpidly at Bobby. He leaned forward earnestly. “Vicki, what did you notice about the body?”
“He’d been shot, Bobby. I didn’t do a postmortem. ”