Barbara D'Amato - [Cat Marsala 09] Page 10

  "Lieutenant, please sit down. We're not getting anywhere this way. Do you have a car downstairs with a driver? If he'd like to come up, I'll give you both coffee."

  "No, he wouldn't like to come up." However, Hightower did sit, taking the only comfortable easy chair. Well, heck. That's what I have the chair for, right? To make my life easier.

  "Look," I said, "we don't have to like each other. But you know I'm not going to stop trying to figure out what happened at the festival. Not without a court order, anyway, and I don't think you can get one. I know my rights and responsibilities. I've been a reporter for fifteen years. Now, you probably want to hear about what I observed when Plumly and Jennifer were killed. And I want to know just two simple facts that you certainly can tell me."

  He didn't specifically agree. "Tell me what you saw during the murders."

  I told him. In full, and fully honest, detail. When I was finished, he just nodded, acting as if he knew it all already. Ass.

  I said, "Now, you can answer two questions for me."

  "Maybe."

  Don't grind your teeth, Marsala. Think of the dental bills. Don't clench your jaw; it gives you a headache.

  "First question," I said. "You've had the autopsy done by now." He nodded minutely. "Where exactly was the wound? Or to put it another way, how fast did he bleed to death?"

  "Hoping to save your brother, huh? Plumly was stabbed in the right upper abdomen, just under the ribs. The knife entered the liver and as they phrase it, 'transected the hepatic artery.' You bleed fast from one of those wounds, but it's not like you got your aorta cut. It's possible he was stabbed half a minute or a minute before he collapsed. The ME says running would make him bleed out faster, but he couldn't have been saved unless he was already in a surgical suite."

  "Oh." Hightower had been more forthcoming than I had expected. But since I didn't like him, I assumed that he was just showing off.

  "But," he added, "the bleeding would have started immediately."

  "Oh. So when he collapsed, was he dead?"

  "Probably not. They say he probably lost consciousness, lay there bleeding internally and externally, and died several minutes later."

  "Oh."

  "That's two questions," he said nastily.

  "Not really. Whose fingerprints were on the knife?"

  He smiled. "Plumly's." He paused, just to upset me. "And your brother's."

  12

  I AM DOROTHY, THE SMALL AND MEEK

  "LJ," I said when Hightower had left, "we've got a problem. Barry touched that knife when he clutched at Plumly. He must have. He might not even remember doing it. The knife didn't fall to the ground until Plumly did. That's gotta be the explanation."

  LJ didn't speak, but instead sat on my knee and looked directly at me out of that bright right eye, then swiveled that flexible birdy neck and looked out of the left eye.

  "I cannot believe that Barry would shoot at Jeremy. But somebody certainly did!"

  LJ waved a wing out to the side, then hopped on one foot, which often means a speech is coming. Finally the bird uttered, " 'So may the outward shows be least themselves.' "

  "That's a big help. It's precisely the interpretation of the outward shows that I'm having trouble with. I know it can't be right."

  " 'So may the outward shows be least themselves.' "

  "Now don't get stuck in a loop. I need to think, and you're distracting me."

  " 'So may—' "

  "Stop it! Here, have a grape." Next to banana, grapes are LJ's favorite things.

  Wait.

  Why did I think the stalker was shooting at Jeremy? Because I was so worried about protecting Jeremy, that's why. "The outward shows." Classical misdirection, as in a magic performance. The audience will focus on what it thinks is important. Jeremy was my most important job.

  But what were the facts?

  When the shot hit the nose of Jeremy's merry-go-round monkey, I had been standing near the nose, closer, in fact, to the nose than Jeremy was. The monkey's head and neck were maybe twenty-four inches long and Jeremy was even farther back than that, sitting on the saddle behind the brass pole. Probably three feet from where the shot hit. But I was right there, close enough to be clipped by a fragment of nose.

  When the next shot had buzzed past me and hit the paramedic, it passed close to my left side. Jeremy was standing on my right.

  In the Grant Park Underground Garage, the shot again came close to me. Not Jeremy. Maybe the guy wasn't a sharpshooter, but he was consistently missing Jeremy by a mile.

  So maybe whoever it was had no intention of shooting Jeremy. Jeremy's presence could have been incidental.

  And if somebody wanted to kill me but not Jeremy, did that make it more possible that it was Barry? Is killing your child more difficult than killing your sibling? Well, Cain and Abel might be a case in point.

  The killer shot Jennifer because he assumed that she had witnessed something important. He assumed I had, too, but that Jeremy hadn't. Or that Jeremy, being a child, hadn't noticed, or wouldn't be believed if he told what he saw, whatever it was. Or at very least, that Jeremy couldn't convincingly testify to a jury about it if the case ever went as far as a trial.

  Which meant, of the witnesses the shooter had been trying to kill, maybe I was the only one left alive.

  13

  AND YOUR LITTLE DOG, TOO

  "These are your observations, Cat," McCoo said. "How can I know what you saw?"

  "I just want your take on it. The more I think about it, the more certain I am that the gunman was shooting at me, not Jeremy."

  This issue was just too important for me to decide by myself. McCoo understood that, being both smart and sensitive. Eventually, he would tell me what he thought. Now he swung his rolling, swiveling, reclining chair away from me and scooted to his stainless steel coffeemaker. It was already perfuming the air. The aroma of great coffee calms me down.

  "From Maui, I have yellow caturra, red catuai, moka, and typica, but under the circumstances, I started typica when you came in the door."

  "McCoo, do you ever wonder whether you drink too much coffee?"

  "Certainly not. Coffee is good for you. Millions of people safely self-medicate for mild depression with a cup of coffee. Coffee in moderation may even help prevent Alzheimer's disease. There's a slight inverse correlation between coffee drinking and Alzheimer's. This may be the result of caffeine increasing dopamine levels, but no one is quite sure."

  "Good heavens."

  "In moderation, of course. Like anything else, in moderation. Now, try this brew. Typica is considered rich and rejuvenating."

  I watched him take real cream from his tiny refrigerator. His coffee grinder showed flecks of brown bean residue in the hopper, not that I would ever have doubted that his beans weren't fresh-ground. Not McCoo. On my own, I've been known to nurse a mug of instant coffee with cream substitute, but McCoo would be horrified, and frankly, I do know the difference.

  Sputtering noises signaled the end of the brewing process. McCoo poured coffee, and passed cream, knowing that I didn't take sugar. He watched as I tasted it.

  "Oh, my," I said. "Oh, my."

  For a highly caffeinated beverage, it was very soothing.

  McCoo said, "About your question. I'm not trying to duck it. On the whole, I would say that I would trust your observations. In my opinion, you always pay close attention to details. So yes, probably they were shooting at you. If you think Jeremy is safe, why not relieve Barry's mind and tell him so? Anyway, you've both told what you know."

  "Can I call from here?" This was not going to be a fun phone call, but it had to be done.

  "Go ahead."

  But Barry wasn't in the festival office. I didn't want to call Maud, for fear of having to explain more than I wished to, so I called my folks' house, hoping he was there.

  "Mom?" I said, when she picked up.

  A spate of indignation greeted me.

  "Mom, let me talk for a second. I was just tell
ing what I saw— Mom, is Barry there—?"

  My mother had hung up.

  "What happened?" McCoo said.

  "My mother already took Jeremy back home. Him and the cat. Right after he and my dad got back from the vet this morning."

  * * *

  The two major papers, the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times, both run what-to-do-around-Chicago sections. Both published reviews of the Oz Festival. They had been written during a preview, before the murders.

  Benjamin Ward in the Tribune "Tempo" section said:

  …with your best choice for parking being, of course, the Grant Park Underground.

  Despite the charm of the festival for a child, we can't help wondering why so much emphasis is placed on the all-too-familiar MGM movie elements.

  L. Frank Baum wrote thirteen Oz books, with a fourteenth published posthumously and written partly by another author. The series was taken up by several other authors with permission of the Oz estate. Over the years a total of twenty-six additional books were written. These forty books are filled with inventive characters and exciting, colorful events. While the Chicago festival does not entirely limit itself to characters from the movie, it fails to use as many of the other wonders of the Oz oeuvre as it might.

  George Hill in the Sun-Times wrote:

  …running through next Saturday in Grant Park.

  In a festival that is in every other way a delight for children and adults alike, in terms of the Oz canon, the organizers are trying too hard. Most people derive their knowledge of Oz from the Judy Garland movie. But the Chicago Oz Festival struggles mightily to include the lesser-known works. There is a Gump ride, for example, made of sofas and ferns, and a pleasant but odd child-participation ride of rotating rubber mountains.

  Possibly a festival with a through-line similar to the movie, in which festival-goers could walk among the movie events in the order in which they happened, would have had more universal appeal.

  All in all, though, a pleasant way to spend a day with a child.

  The banker Edmond Pottle said, "You're not a cop. You can't question me."

  "Sure I can question you. You just don't have to answer, that's all."

  "I'm glad you realize that."

  "But I don't see why you wouldn't." I used the same line I'd used on Mazzanovich. "Is your information a secret?"

  We were in Pottle's office in the Lake State Bank, Pottle's bank. The walls were dark walnut. The floor was an even darker parquet on which a Tabriz rug near the desk glowed like a stained-glass window.

  Pottle's desk showed me how he saw himself. It was eight feet long, with a heavily carved base, in other words, important. Pottle was important.

  Too important to do secretarial work. Not for Pottle the row of faxes, keyboards, monitors, and printers that most people today had in their offices. His sideboard held only cut-glass bottles filled with amber liquids, of which he offered me none. A glass— faceted, heavy, blocky, and no doubt very expensive— stood on a felt coaster, a few drops of liquid at the bottom. Pottle himself was slender but gave an impression of portliness, probably because he held himself as if his arms and legs were ever so valuable. His eyes were light green and reminded me of peeled grapes. The suit was navy blue summer wool, so light and soft-looking that you'd think the fabric could float on air. It goes without saying he was wearing black shoes.

  He thought over my question for several seconds, his words being ever so valuable, too, and then said, "No. I have no secrets. But I'm very busy."

  "Humor me. Just a couple of questions."

  "Well, hurry it up."

  The questions I had asked Taubman and Mazzanovich had stayed in my mind, although except for the obvious one, whether they'd stabbed Plumly, I wasn't quite sure why these questions resonated with me. Anyhow, you have to start somewhere. "What kind of a guy was Plumly?"

  "I was extremely disappointed in him. His security firm is rather new, and therefore we thought it was generous of us to choose him."

  "Generous? Hiring Plumly was charity? Or did he have connections? Did he know somebody?"

  "I have no idea."

  "Chicago is famous for its patronage problems."

  "The reputation is overblown," he said firmly.

  "Why were you disappointed? Did he do a bad job? He seemed to be working hard whenever I was there."

  "He worked hard enough, I suppose. But he stuck his nose into parts of the project development that weren't his business."

  "Such as?"

  "Artistic decisions. It turned out the man was an Oz fan!"

  "Uh— is that bad?"

  "It's childish. I am not saying there's anything wrong with having an Oz Festival. It's quite appropriate for a city the size of Chicago to produce events for children now and then. Certainly the principal festivals, such as the BluesFest and the GospelFest, are adult-oriented. But a security specialist ought not to be distracted by fantasies such as the— the Gump."

  "Oh yes. He told me he liked the Gump."

  "The Gump was made of flying sofas! With palm leaves for wings. This is a fantasy for three-year-olds. A creature like that would never fly. It's not aerodynamic."

  "I think that was sort of the point. That's why it's whimsical. What did Plumly want done about the Gump?"

  "We have a perfectly nice Gump ride for the youngest children. That's all right. It's made of sofas that move around on tracks. With elk-like heads on the front ends." The way he said this you'd think he was saying "with botulism."

  "Well, that's good, I guess."

  "But Plumly wanted real palm fronds. In fact, the plastic ones were much superior. You can't have real fronds dropping pieces off all day long—" He coughed, grabbed an asthma inhaler, and sucked medication. He sat back, catching himself. "Why am I troubling myself with this? Plumly was good enough in his way. He was just too childish."

  I absolutely did not know what to say to that. The argument sounded like the battles that rage over tiny decisions in theatrical productions. I once saw an entire cast come to blows, real physical blows, over whether the skull in Hamlet should be gleaming bone-white or caked with mud and disgusting. So Plumly meddled in things? That was interesting.

  "Mr. Pottle, Plumly ran away from you three men over to my brother. Why did he do that?"

  "I haven't the slightest idea."

  "Had one of you said something to upset him?"

  "Certainly not."

  "Did he say he was going to go to Barry for a reason?"

  "No."

  "What had you been talking about right before?"

  "We were talking about some of the food booths. One of them was using dangerous fuel and one of them had the bad taste to have a sign with nude women on it. Can you imagine! With children coming to the festival? Some people have absolutely no sense."

  * * *

  As I headed home, my cell phone rang.

  "Hello?"

  "Cat? It's McCoo."

  "What's happening?"

  "Hightower is bringing your brother in this afternoon. He's going to caution him."

  This meant Barry was formally a suspect in the murder. They'd "give him his rights," which meant reading the Miranda warning to him. It didn't necessarily mean they were arresting him, though. "Why now?"

  "The fingerprints on the knife."

  14

  SOMETHING WITH POISON IN IT

  The idea of going to my parents' house for Sunday dinner, what with Barry having been called in for questioning last evening, made me practically nauseated. My mother's cooking ought to take me the rest of the way to truly queasy.

  It was now Saturday morning. Yesterday being Friday and all. Why does my family have Sunday dinner on Saturday? It wasn't always thus. We started to do this when my mother, who insisted on everybody going to church before Sunday dinner, started fighting with one of my sisters-in-law who didn't want to go to church at all. Then my third-oldest brother— there are four older than me and one, Teddy, who is younger— converted
to Catholicism, which sent my mother into fits of upset. She didn't see any reason to keep her distress to herself, which meant that every Sunday dinner became a proselytizing session, and if arguments didn't work, she moved swiftly to "Oh well, don't listen to me. I'm only your mother!"

  My father was a peacemaker. He didn't often decree anything, but when he did, it stuck. He ordered that discussion of religion could only take place on Sunday. Then he decreed that Sunday dinner would happen on Saturday.