Shell Game Read online

  I dropped him at the animal hospital and went on to Lotty’s clinic. The crowd inside was as heavy as before, but there was an unease in the air: Mrs. Coltrain looked troubled, which never happened.

  “It’s Lotty—I don’t like how she’s acting,” Jewel Kim said when I went into the back. “You can see how backed up we are, but she keeps telling me I can do a better job than her. Go talk to her, Vic.”

  Lotty was in her office, sitting completely still, hands folded across her abdomen, her face a mask set in lines of pain.

  I embraced her, stroked her hair, blinked back tears. Her hair was almost gray now, but it wasn’t the hair, it was the quietude. Lotty is small but fierce, constantly in motion, projecting six feet. Today she looked as though she’d abandoned hope.

  She finally took my hand. “There are days when it feels too enormous to me. Felix—he’s my hostage to the future. It’s why I’ve leaned on you so hard to help him. I look at him—he’s the image of my father—Hugo’s and my father—and he’s been like our little penguin baby nestled in our hands. If we lose him. . . . But my worries about him made me forget how hard it is for you with these nieces of Richard Yarborough. I don’t want you to kill yourself, working for me, for Felix, for your nieces, but you’re my only hope.”

  “I will work it out,” I said, trying to infuse a confidence I didn’t feel into my voice. “It will be easier to do if you go back to work. You can look after Harmony in her current condition: I can’t.”

  “Yes, Harmony.” She pressed her fingertips against her cheeks, as if she could physically push energy into herself. “She’s had too many blows lately. I’d like to recommend hospitalization, but I worry that cutting her off from anyone she knows might destabilize her further. And then, there’s always the wretched problem of insurance. You don’t know if she has any, do you?”

  “I guess I could call her employer in Portland.”

  “Get the phone number to Mrs. Coltrain; she’ll find out all that,” Lotty said. “In the meantime, I gave Harmony some Ativan. She’s sleeping in one of the exam rooms. If I send her home with you, will she be safe?”

  “I can’t look after her,” I said. “And Mr. Contreras isn’t strong enough to protect her if someone breaks in. Especially with Mitch recovering from a knife wound.”

  “There was a wound in her neck,” Lotty said. “Do you know if she was cut there?”

  “For much of the attack, I couldn’t see her.” I thought back to the morning, tried to reimagine it. “She wears a gold chain around her neck. If the assailant pulled hard on it?”

  Lotty nodded. “That makes sense, given the size and shape of the wound.”

  She pressed a button on her desk phone and asked Mrs. Coltrain if Harmony had had any jewelry on her when Jewel started treating her.

  “The necklace was gone,” Lotty said. “Could it have been a random mugging, someone wanting her jewelry?”

  “It’s possible, but it seemed that they were trying to carry her off. Losing the chain was a side effect. I’m drowning, Lotty. Flailing and drowning,” I burst out. “I can’t figure out one thing, one reason, for all that’s going on, with my nieces or your nephew. I’ve never felt so useless. I’ve been looking for Reno for a week now and haven’t turned up a single meaningful clue. Innuendos, suggestions, but nothing definite. Same with Felix. And as for my actual clients—” I broke off, too overwhelmed by it all to speak clearly.

  Lotty twisted her fingers together. “Victoria, about Felix—”

  “Has he been arrested?” I sat up straighter.

  “No, but he texted me this morning to say that the dean had called him into his office. The sheriff and then ICE were asking questions about him, and the school wants to know what he’s up to. He won’t tell his dean or his professors, which means they’re not eager with their support. He says the dean implied he could be asked to leave the Institute. I don’t know if that’s true, or if Felix is so angry and edgy that he imagines everyone is against him, but still. . . .” She didn’t finish the sentence.

  “Still, it’s a worry,” I agreed, trying to put some warmth in my voice. “He’s on my to-do list, Lotty. I won’t let you down.”

  “It’s an impossible situation. I know I’m asking too much of you, but I can’t stop myself.” Her black eyes glittered with tears.

  She went to a table in the corner for a thermos of the Viennese coffee she subsists on and poured out two cups.

  “If you don’t think it was a random mugging, how did it happen?” Lotty tried for calm.

  I told her my speculation that the creeps had called hospitals until they found Harmony at Beth Israel. “It explains how they knew where she was—they followed her and Mr. Contreras from the hospital, and tracked us to the park this morning.”

  “That means she’s still at risk,” Lotty said. “If I hospitalize her, I can’t guarantee her safety. Hospitals are porous, too many entrances and exits, too many people with reasons for being there. No one stops to question them.”

  “I’ll see if I can hire a bodyguard. Meanwhile, as long as she’s asleep here, let me leave her here for now. She should be safe until the end of the day.” I got to my feet. “Once more unto the breach and so on.”

  30

  All This Could Have Been Yours

  A certain type of architecture seems to appeal to super-wealthy people in modern subdivisions: thousands of square feet of burnished rare woods encased in pale brick or stone, festooned with turrets and pillars and a few dozen gables. Dick and Teri’s Oak Brook mansion had all these features along with an indoor-outdoor pool. They didn’t need a tennis court or golf course because those were provided by the gated estate that protected their home.

  It had taken me over an hour to reach their estate in Templeton Acres. Only part of that was due to traffic on the Eisenhower—most of the time I was hunting for access to the property. I hadn’t felt like dealing with the guard station at Templeton’s entrance, so I wound around the back of the development, where the golf course lay.

  I lurked around a bend in the road near a side entrance, waited for a pair of golf carts to undo the electric gate, and drove in behind them. No one seemed to care.

  I followed a road that ringed the course on the inside. Thick shrubs lined the route, blocking the view of the mansions; I had to guess where to turn off for the Yarborough spread. When I came on a parking strip for templeton acres guests, I left the car and finished the final quarter mile on foot.

  A curved driveway led from the inner road to the mansion. I could see the house, with its gables and porticos and so on, through the bare trees, although in summer, it wouldn’t have been visible.

  The Templeton Acres website offered buyers a choice from one and a half to four acres for their dream palace. Dick and Teri had opted for two, my pretrip research had informed me.

  Even two acres is a lot of land; their landscaping included randomly spaced trees and shrubs, with ornamental beds nearer the house. I couldn’t imagine Dick and Teri doing their own yard work, not with that kind of acreage to plant and weed and prune. They probably didn’t clean their six-thousand-square-foot home, either. I wondered what a wealthy woman who didn’t work did with her time. Shopping, charitable committees, school aide, lobbyist, strenuous workouts with the club trainers, or maybe she’d taken up riding and foxhunting.

  When I rang the bell, it was answered by a slender woman in jeans and a T-shirt, who asked my business in heavily accented English.

  “Is Teri Yarborough home? I have urgent business with her.”

  The woman looked at me dubiously. “Business? No one is bringing business in house. We not letting in salesmen.”

  I tried to look genial and trustworthy, not beaten up and exhausted. “Not that kind of business. Urgent family matters. Let me write a note for her.”

  I was pulling a pen and a business card from my bag when Teri appeared. “Who is it, Claudia—oh! You!”

  I produced a wide smile. “Yes, it’s me
, Teri. It’s been way too long—we have a lot of catching up to do.”

  Teri was wearing a fuchsia tank over black leggings. Her breastbone and ribs were visible above the tank, showing that she indulged in the Silicon Valley starvation diet. Her red leather sandals had jewel-studded balls over the toe strap; the heels were inlaid with pearls. Even at home, in the middle of the day, she had put on makeup. Diamond drops glinted in her ears. I couldn’t imagine how many hours of spa treatments and workouts went into maintaining her taut body. Fighting muggers on the lakefront felt wholesome in comparison.

  “What do you want?” Teri was scowling heavily. I needed to get Glynis to call her, remind her that a frown like that would leave deep wrinkles between her eyes, requiring regular Botox injections.

  “We need to talk about Reno.”

  “Reno?” She pronounced it as though she’d never heard the word before.

  “Your niece,” I said, my voice very gentle. “My niece. Dick’s niece. She’s been missing more than a week—didn’t Dick tell you? It’s a terrifying situation. But now I’ve learned that Dick is doing legal work for the owner of the company Reno was working for. I’m sure, with your—”

  Teri suddenly realized that Claudia was listening, wide-eyed, to the conversation. She told me to come in, that we’d talk in the back.

  We walked in silence down a parquet hallway. Chinese rugs floated on it, like lily pads on a brown pond. Niches here and there along the wall displayed small pieces of the art that Dick and Teri collected. Bigger pieces loomed in the rooms we passed on our journey.

  Teri took me into a room whose function was hard to fathom. Leather armchairs seemed to belong to a gentleman’s club, a desk with an outsize computer suggested an office, but there was also a treadmill in the corner.

  “I thought you’d have a fully equipped gym somewhere in the house.” I pointed at the treadmill. “Or do you keep machinery in all the rooms in case you accidentally eat a piece of bread?”

  “It’s my treadmill desk,” Teri snapped. “What do you mean, coming out here with insinuations—”

  “I mean to find Reno. And to find who assaulted her sister this morning on Chicago’s lakefront. I know that Reno went to Dick when she first arrived in Chicago, hoping for help in finding a job. And I know that Glynis directed her to the Rest EZ company. And I’ve learned that Rest EZ is owned by a client of Dick’s firm, an entity or person named Trechette. It seems that Rest EZ’s management picks their most attractive women workers to help the rich owners undergo R and R in the Caribbean.”

  Teri was watching me as keenly as if we were in a tennis match and she needed to see the ball placement. I paused a beat, but she didn’t want to speak.

  “Unfortunately, when Reno was at the resort, she learned something that troubled her deeply,” I went on. “She went to Dick for his advice. And then she disappeared.”

  “I’m going to record this conversation.” Teri pulled her phone from the hip of her leggings. “Dick needs to hear it so that he can start legal action against you for libel.”

  “Slander,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Libel is written, slander is spoken.” I took out my own phone. “I’m going to record as well. This way we’ll each know if the other has edited the audio when we get to trial.”

  “You accused Dick of getting rid of his niece. You can’t make that kind of accusation, not without paying a price for it.”

  My left hand was throbbing where I’d been bitten. I squeezed the gauze. The flesh underneath felt squishy. I wondered if I needed rabies shots along with the Cipro Lotty had given me. Which reminded me that I needed to start the pills.

  “I didn’t accuse him of that, Teri: that’s your interpretation. But it makes me wonder why you think there might be a causal relationship. You do agree that she went to Dick for advice?”

  Claudia came in with a silver tray.

  “I don’t want refreshments in here, Claudia,” Teri said.

  “Your niece has trouble, you wanting tea,” Claudia said.

  She poured something that looked like pale straw into Wedgwood cups and handed one to me. It tasted like pale straw, too. Teri put her cup down without tasting it and went to make sure the door was firmly closed.

  “She’s always listening in on private conversations.”

  “Appalling. You should have her deported.”

  “She has a green card,” Teri said. “And—anyway, it’s none of your business.”

  “Right. My business is with our nieces. Reno was worried by something at work, something disturbing enough that she wouldn’t confide in her sister. She went to her uncle, the man who’d helped her find the job in the first place, or at least the indispensable Glynis—”

  “You don’t know anything about Dick or his family. You think of those girls as the adorable kindergartners you met twenty-five years ago; you don’t know them as adults, but trust me, they’re manipulative and cunning.”

  “What manipulative, cunning acts have they committed?” I asked.

  “Talk to Glynis. I’ve said all I’m going to.” Teri’s lips twisted in a tight smile. “You’re not as smart as you think you are, Vic: if you were, you’d be living in this house, not me. And you wouldn’t be chasing ambulances to pay your mortgage.”

  I looked at my feet in their Brooks running shoes. The uppers had come away from the sole on the left heel. “I don’t run as fast as I used to; I’ve had to give up chasing ambulances in favor of their coming to me. And one came to me this morning: Harmony was attacked in the park by a couple of outsize musclemen. She was badly injured: it’s not clear how long it will take her to recover.”

  I held up my gauze-wrapped hand. “This is where one of them bit me when I fought them off.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” Teri said crudely. “Dick always says you have the personality of a pit bull.”

  “Pit bull marries weasel, I guess that doomed us from the start,” I mused, unwisely, since I’d been thinking of putting the bite on her for Harmony’s care.

  “Why did you come out here, Vic? To call Dick names? To try to make me feel sorry for a couple of con artists?”

  “Those are good questions, Teri. I don’t have a quick or easy answer. Nothing in my relationship with you or with Dick is harmonious, but I don’t wish him ill; I’d hate to think he deliberately signed up a client who could harm his own nieces. I hoped if I talked to you about it, you might persuade him to dig deeper into Trechette’s business. Trechette operates very secretively; he should find out what they’re hiding in all those offshore operations.”

  I was watching her face as I spoke; it was like looking at a cue ball: shiny, hard, not letting anything into the interior.

  “It’s possible if you came to Chicago with me and actually met Harmony, you’d feel—”

  “I’d feel exactly what I feel now, that you’re butting in where you don’t belong. If you’re not out of here in thirty seconds, I’m calling the estate security force to come for you.” She went to the door, brandishing her phone at me.

  I stepped past her into the hall but said, “Your agitation does make me think I’m right about Reno going to Dick with whatever it was she uncovered in St. Matthieu.”

  “She wasn’t in trouble.” Teri bared her teeth at me. “She was blackmailing Dick. She was exactly like her mother.”

  “Blackmailing him? Is he involved in something illegal that Reno found out about?”

  Teri gasped. “How dare you? You say you don’t wish Dick ill, but that’s all you ever do when you’re around him, try to create illness for him when everything was going just fine.”

  “Meaning no one but me ever questions what he’s doing.”

  “You leave now! Or I’m calling the estate security force.” She tapped her phone.

  “Going, going,” I said, but I stopped in the hall to look at some of the art pieces in their glass boxes. Mirrors were set behind the pieces so that you could see their backs withou
t touching them.

  About halfway down was a stone cow with massive horns and eight bulging udders. It reminded me of the little figurine of a woman with eight breasts I’d seen yesterday on Professor Van Vliet’s desk.

  “This is Sumerian, isn’t it?” I said.

  “Don’t touch it; it’s ancient and valuable.”

  “Yes, I know. I didn’t realize these Sumerian objects came onto the regular art market.”

  “Now you know.”

  I remained in front of the stone figure. “Did Lawrence Fausson get this for you?”

  “No one ‘gets’ our art for us; we go to galleries and auctions. If you think you can afford them, call Glynis—she keeps track of who is carrying pieces we might be interested in.”

  “And is Lawrence Fausson one of those people with pieces you’re interested in?”

  I kept looking at the cow, but I could see Teri in the mirror behind it. Fausson’s name didn’t make her jump with obvious guilt. She was angry, but that was her normal reaction to me.

  “You can’t afford statues like this, so I don’t know why you’re interested, but I’ll have Glynis send you a list of the galleries and dealers we work with. Now it’s past time for you to go.”

  Claudia appeared to hold open the door for me. I turned on the threshold to add, “One thing that puzzles me about our nieces: Harmony said Reno didn’t get in touch with me because they didn’t know my name—that is, they didn’t know I was ‘Warshawski,’ not ‘Yarborough.’ They didn’t know I was a detective who might help them out. Why did you tell Harmony and not Reno? It’s almost as though you are worried about the mess Dick got Reno into and were obliquely trying to get her help.”

  Teri stared at me without speaking. She even bit her lips, leaving a smear of red on her teeth.