An Image of Death (13 page)

“No.”

“Ellie, David’s gone to Europe. He caught a flight yesterday.” My stomach twisted. “He flew over to Frankfurt.” She sounded uncomfortable. “Then he’s going to Antwerp. But I was sure he’d—”

I clutched the cell. “Gloria, do you have his itinerary?”

“Ellie, I’m sorry. I don’t. He wasn’t sure where he’d be when. But I’ll certainly let him know you called.”

C
HAPTER
F
OURTEEN

There are two types of people in the world: those who eat when they’re upset, and those who don’t. I’m one of the former, and Susan Siler, my closest friend, is one of the latter. Fortunately, she was feeling pretty chipper the next morning, which made for a fortuitous confluence of circumstances. We met at Walker Brothers on Waukegan Road where I packed away half of the richest, sweetest, most calorie-dense apple pancake east of the Mississippi.

“You know what the worst part is?” I stirred my coffee. A wood-paneled eatery with surprisingly soft lighting, the place radiated a patina of elegance, unusual for a pancake house.

“Other than his leaving the country without telling you?”

A tall, slim redhead, Susan seems to lead a flawless life. She’s married to a stockbroker who’s also active in village politics, and she has two kids, neither of whom are juvenile delinquents. She works part-time in an art gallery, and has such an innate sense of style she could wear a hospital gown and look chic. The most embarrassing thing I know about her—aside from the fact that she accidentally broke her daughter’s collarbone—was that she threw up her spaghetti dinner on a church altar when she was twelve. Thirty-some years later, she still doesn’t eat tomato sauce. Now, she finished her sliver of pancake, pushed her plate away, and delicately wiped a napkin across her mouth.

“The worst part was his secretary,” I said. “She didn’t know David didn’t tell me. The poor woman was embarrassed as hell.”

Susan eyed me, then sipped her coffee. “You realize that David still has a lot of work to do, since he found out who he was.”

“You mean who his father was.”

She nodded. “It wasn’t that long ago.”

“I know, but—”

“The calendar doesn’t specify deadlines for dealing with grief or anger or acceptance. And family issues cut right to the core.”

“I thought I was helping cushion it for him. Helping him get through all the…the confusion.”

“He’s got to do it himself. You know that.”

“But what if…after he gets through it.…” I fumbled, suddenly finding it hard to breathe. “What if he decides—”

“What if he decides he doesn’t want you to be a part of his life, whatever that life turns out to be?”

A waitress scurried by, balancing a tray of eggs, waffles, and pancakes. I nodded, not trusting my voice.

Susan chose her words carefully. “It’s true you were the catalyst for his discovery. Without you, he would never have known who he was. He could have some residual feelings.”

“Are you talking about ‘blame the messenger’ thing?”

“It’s possible.”

“Susan, I couldn’t bear to lose him. He’s welded to my soul. The connection’s so powerful, there are times I can sense when he’s thinking about me.” I looked out the window. A heavy, gray cloud cover stripped the color out of everything. “If that connection were severed, I would live in a perpetual winter.”

“He’s got to work it out for himself,” Susan repeated softly.

I went quiet then. “At least it’s not another woman.”

Susan didn’t answer.

“Well, that’s something, isn’t it?” When she still didn’t answer, I said, “Hey, good friend. This is the place where you’re supposed to say don’t worry about it, Ellie. It will work out. Love conquers all.”

“I hope it works out, Ellie. You know I do.”

The waitress came over and asked if I was through. I looked longingly at the rest of the pancake and sighed. “I’m done.”

“You want a doggie bag?”

When I hesitated, Susan arched an eyebrow.

“I—I guess not.”

The waitress took our plates and promised to come back with the check. I leaned my elbows on the table. “Susan, something happened the other night that made me wonder if there were other things involved. Besides family issues.”

“What other things?”

“I don’t know. It wasn’t anything he said. More like what he didn’t say. As if he was going to tell me something, then changed his mind. It occurred to me that there might be some unresolved things from his foster care days.”

“Such as?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe some kind of abuse. Physical, sexual, mental—I don’t know.”

“If there are, it would explain why he’s so anxious to trace his roots.” She dipped her head. “You know. To disown what happened. Convince himself it was an aberration. Not something ‘real family’ would do to each other.”

“Do you think the video I’m doing on foster kids might be acting as a prod? You know, motivating him to step up his search?”

“I thought the letter from Germany triggered it.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I guess. I’m just trying to find reasons.” I folded my hands. “I wish there was something I could do.”

“And you have to do
something
, don’t you?” She tapped a finger against her chin. “I suppose you could talk to someone who has some insight into foster kids.”

“A shrink?”

“I would think there are similar patterns of behavior among people who have unresolved issues about their parentage.”

“You sound like Genna.” Genna Creger, a friend of ours, is a social worker.

“She may know someone.”

“I’ll take it under advisement.”

The waitress brought us our check. Susan shifted. “So, what else has been going on?”

I told her about the tape that was dropped off at my house.

“How awful!” She gave me a sympathetic frown. “What did you do with it?”

I told her how I’d given it to Davis, how we’d looked at the tape at Dolan’s.

“But you still don’t know who the woman was?”

I shook my head.

“Or where it took place?”

“No. And I’m a little nervous about it.”

“Why?”

“Because. You know. I don’t want Rachel to be in any kind of jeopardy.”

“Why do you think she might be?”

“The tape wasn’t what you’d call family entertainment. And whoever dropped it off knows where we live.”

She rolled her eyes. “What is it with all these X-rated scandals on videotape?”

“What are you talking about?”

“It just seems there’s a lot of it floating around these days.”

“Huh?”

“It’s not as grim as what you’ve been dealing with, but it is kind of—well, telling.”

“What is?”

“The Wooddale tape.”

“The what?”

She leaned forward. “Wooddale. The neighborhood in Glenview. No?” When I shrugged, she added, “You haven’t heard?”

“I never hear anything—except from you.”

Susan explained that last summer a middle-aged couple left their Wooddale home for an extended vacation. While they were gone, a group of teenagers broke into their house and trashed the place. When the couple returned, they quickly discovered who was responsible and filed a suit claiming invasion of privacy. Once the lawsuit was filed, however, a videotape mysteriously surfaced and was circulated around the North Shore. The tape showed the wife, dolled up in a cheerleader outfit, performing certain acts on her husband.

“No!” I squealed. “You lie!”

Two people in the next booth turned around.

“God’s honest truth. Apparently the kids who broke into their house found it, stole it, and made dozens of copies.” She settled into her seat. “The couple dropped the suit a few days later.”

“You’re kidding. They dropped the suit?”

She nodded.

“They shouldn’t have done that!”

“The kids? That goes without saying—”

“No. The couple. Why did they drop the suit?”

“Clearly, they were mortified. Humiliated. They even put their house up for sale.”

“But they would have won! It’s the worst kind of voyeurism. What judge would rule against them?” I scooped up the check. “Did you know the average American is captured on videotape at least six times a day? At the mall, the bank, the ATM.… No one respects privacy anymore. And yet it’s supposed to be a constitutional right, even if it’s a woman dying alone, or a couple cavorting in their own house. Someone’s got to take a stand.”

Susan’s face got that distant look it often does when I rant.

“We’ve finally succeeded in living vicariously. Trading reality for illusion. Sex. Murder. Violence. Watch it on TV. Rent it at the video store. Copy it for your friends.”

“If you feel that strongly, maybe you should find another way to make a living.”

I grunted, paid the check, and headed out to my car, pondering the relationship between videotape, privacy, and cheerleading outfits.

C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN

A brooding sky blanketed the forest preserve as I jogged across Voltz Road that afternoon. I told myself I was atoning for this morning’s pancake, but I knew I was trying to outrun my anxiety. David
always
tells me when he’ll be traveling, even when he isn’t going overseas. The fact that he hadn’t this time made me a little queasy.

Back home I showered, thoughts of him still overwhelming me. I remembered taking a shower one day last fall. I’d been lathering up facing the spray and didn’t hear David step in. His arm had circled my waist from behind. I turned around and drew soapy circles on his chest. He pulled me close, and we made love, the water cascading around us, slippery white bubbles gliding off our skin.

Now, I yanked off the water, dressed, and headed downstairs. Maybe I’d run over to Mac’s and pick up the window dubs. But as I headed out, Davis’ red Saturn pulled up to the house.

“You remember the driver you described the other day?” she said when I intercepted her. No greeting or preamble.

“The guy who was checking out my house?”

She nodded. She was wearing jeans, a turtleneck, and thick black boots.

“Yeah.”

“You think you’d recognize him if you saw him again?”

I thought about it. A bearish man whose face looked too big for his build. Worried expression. Brown coat and a fur-lined hat. I nodded.

“You busy for the next couple of hours?”

Twenty minutes later we pulled into an apartment complex in Mount Prospect. The farther away from the lake you go, the flatter everything gets, as if the architecture has been forced to mimic the land it sits on. The Loop has Sears Towers and its Mies van der Rohe skyscrapers, the near suburbs their Frank Lloyd Wright homes. But farther west, structures seem to squat close to the ground, and the roads are dotted with stubby boxes that look like they’ve been squashed by giant lids.

The development we turned into consisted of a large parking lot ringed by seven identical one-story buildings, differentiated only by white numbers on their facades. Walkways led up to each one. Davis pulled into a space in front of number five. I assumed we were going inside, but she made no move to climb out of the car.

“What are we doing?” I asked.

“We’re waiting.”

“For what?”

She pointed to the building on our left. “DM Maids is over there. I paid them a visit yesterday. Or should I say her.” She flashed me a look. “A woman named Halina Grigorev owns it. She’s originally from Russia. Been here twenty years.”

Another Russian.

“She pretty much stonewalled me about the driver. His name’s Milos Petrovsky. She said he blew out of town. Disappeared. The ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ type, she claimed.”

I wasn’t sure how to reply. Davis had never been this forthcoming. “You don’t buy it?”

“It’s bullshit. I’ve been keeping an eye on the place, and a guy fitting the description you gave us has been in and out twice. I need you to confirm it’s the same guy.”

“How long are we going to sit here?”

“Why? You have plans?”

“No.”

“Good.” She lapsed into silence, and we waited. Thick dark clouds overspread the sky, and pellets of sleet and snow spit down. The inside of the car windows steamed up. Every so often, Davis turned on the wipers and cranked up the heat. Then she would lean back and close her eyes, only to snap them open at the whine of a car engine. Meanwhile the asphalt beneath us disappeared under a coating of snow, and a muffled quiet descended.

An hour later, as dusk was falling, a white van pulled in and parked in front. The van door opened and closed with a thud. Davis came instantly alert. “Look alive, Ellie. Is that the guy?”

I wiped my sleeve across the inside of the windshield. The man who had climbed down from the van was short. He was wearing a brown coat and a large fur-lined hat. “That’s him.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

I waited for Davis to get out of the car and confront him, but she didn’t move. In fact, for the first time since I’d known her, she looked uncertain. While she deliberated, Petrovsky disappeared inside.

“You’re not going to question him?”

“I am. But not here.”

“Why not? He’s probably bringing in the day’s receipts. They’ll have to settle up. You have time.”

“ I—this isn’t the right…setting.”

“What do you mean?”

She blew out a breath. “Look, I don’t want to screw this up. The truth is I have no reason to approach him. He hasn’t done anything. He’s just finishing up work, for Christ’s sake. If I show up, and he’s got any brains at all, he won’t tell me a godamned thing, and I’ll have to let him go.” She shook her head. “Then I end up with nothing.”

“So what’s the plan?”

She didn’t answer at first. Then, “I’d like to—well, it’d be nice to get Mr. Petrovsky into a situation where he’d be more—cooperative.”

“What kind of situation?”

She didn’t say. A few minutes later, Petrovsky came out, pulling his hat low across his brow. But instead of going back to the van, he fished out some keys from his pocket and unlocked the door of a black Buick two cars away. Davis wiped the inside of the Saturn’s windshield and jotted down the plate number, then switched on the ignition.