"Why did you get upset? If you aren't guilty, you don't have a problem, do you?"
He grabbed for the inhaler again, and I left the office.
* * *
When I got to my car, I phoned McCoo. It had been satisfying to goad Pottle, but it hadn't taken me any closer to finding out who the killer was.
"Hi," I said, with forced cheer. "Anything new?"
"Cat, you really should talk with the officer in charge instead of me."
"Not Sergeant Hightower. I don't like him."
"Lieutenant Hightower."
"Yeah. And that's another thing. The man is barely competent. He goes by the rules, but he doesn't, as you guys put it, 'bring anything to the table.' How'd he manage to get promoted?"
Silence. I just waited. Finally, McCoo said, "He's connected, Cat."
"Like what? I know he's not the mayor's nephew."
"He's what you might call minorly connected, as opposed to majorly connected. And that's all I'm going to say about it."
"People have been doing that a lot lately. Telling me half a story and then saying I don't need to know the rest."
"Can you wonder?"
"McCoo, is there anything new?"
"We found the gun."
"Really? That's great! Where?"
"In Buckingham Fountain."
"No kidding? That's a stumper. Why wasn't it seen before this?"
"It was in the middle basin, not really visible from the ground. You know there are three levels to Buckingham Fountain, in decreasing size as they go up. A maintenance worker found it when he was cleaning out the basins. Stuff gets into the drains, like leaves and dead birds and bugs."
"Anybody see who threw it there?"
"We're asking. But a lot of stuff gets thrown into the fountain. Coins. Hot dogs. Car keys. I've always wondered how people get home without their car keys. The lower basin gets more stuff than the upper two. Drunks. Strollers. Jackets. Pants. I wonder how they get home without their pants, too."
"Is the gun traceable?"
"Oh, it's got a pedigree. It was stolen in a home invasion three years ago. Our shooter probably just bought it on the so-to-speak open market."
20
THE LOLLIPOP GUILD
So the gun was another dead end.
When you get really fed up, you should go to Hermione's Heaven, the best restaurant in Chicago, to be fed up by Hermione.
Her dinners are symphonies. Her lunches are lifesavers. Most of the time, you can't get a table, although more than once she's been kind enough to feed me in the broom closet she uses for an office. It's easier for her, though, if I come in between meals when she can give me a real chair and a normal table. This means early, early dinner, or mid-afternoon dessert. It was mid-afternoon now, and I needed consolation.
Hermione is a queen-size woman and she takes no guff about it. Her view is that her life is her life. Today she greeted me at the door wearing a neon-purple caftan embroidered with silver dragons and a turban a couple of shades bluer than purple. Wow!
"What you need," she said, "is chocolate."
"I'm your slave."
She seated me in the window, an honor not remotely possible at dinnertime, exited grandly and three minutes later came back with a big cream puff filled with chocolate custard and topped with chocolate-rum syrup and cocoa whipped cream.
"Ah, decadence," I said. "Feeds the human spirit."
"As a matter of fact, chocolate is good for you."
"Oh, come on."
"A recent study has shown that a large percentage of women and a significant percentage of men are chromium-deficient. Chocolate is one of nature's creations that is rich in chromium. You may be self-selecting chocolate to replenish your chromium supply."
"Smart of me. But, Hermione, there's a lot of sugar in chocolate desserts."
"Aha! The
British Medical Journal
reported a study of nearly eight thousand people that showed the ones who ate candy lived longer than people who didn't. Even if they ate candy several times a week."
"But what about the fat?"
"Much as I'm tired of hearing about cholesterol, it turns out that even though the fat in chocolate is saturated, it doesn't raise your cholesterol level."
"That's hard to believe."
"Sorry. What can I tell you? The news isn't always bad. On top of that, there are antioxidants in chocolate. I have been thinking about making up a placard with all these facts, a little card, maybe creamy white letters on a glossy chocolate brown background, one for each table. But then I thought, Maybe it's the forbidden quality of chocolate that makes people love it. What do you think?"
"I think it's pretty damn good either way."
"All right. Don't help me. I'll decide for myself. Cat, why are you so pale and wan?"
"It's too complicated to explain right now. Boiled down, I got my brother into a horrible jam and have to get him out."
"Eat more chocolate."
"That's a help. Hermione, lately I've been wondering a lot about commercialization."
"You're thinking of going commercial, maybe?"
"I wish. If I could do commercial, I'd do it. No, I was thinking about the commercialization of pleasant, unassuming things. Like children's books. Does it make them less, mm, less a delight? Does it spoil them in some way? If somebody tries to make a buck off a fun thing, does that make the project in some way less sincere?"
"Commercialization of pleasant things! What do you call this?"
"This restaurant?"
"Exactly. I make double chocolate cake. Coq au vin. Snails in puff pastry. Onion soup roofed with the best Swiss cheese baked on top of chewy French bread. These items are
very pleasant
. But I don't give them away. I love to cook but I don't cook for love; I cook for money. And if somebody wants to commission me to teach my recipes to a thousand chefs for a thousand franchises and pay me a million dollars, hey! Let them do it."
* * *
Mazzanovich, the contractor, was at the construction site. A man of little politesse, he said, "You again!"
"I suppose you're more agreeable to your constituents. How do you know I don't live in your district?"
"What do you want?"
"Well, I wanted to warn you. The evidence that seemed to show Plumly had been stabbed
after
he left the three of you turns out to be wrong."
All of Mazzanovich's wrinkles came together in the middle of his face. The man had a frown that would sour a sugarplum.
"Whattaya mean by that?"
"Just that what gave the police the idea that only Barry could have killed Plumly turns out to be irrelevant." I hesitated to tell him I had misinterpreted what I saw.
"Well, listen, Marsala. You're not gonna get me for this. I didn't kill the guy."
"And I suppose the other two will testify that you didn't kill him?"
A very odd look came over the rubbery face. It's dangerous to assume you know what a person is thinking, but it seemed to me his response shifted from confidence to doubt, to increasingly serious worry.
Finally, he said, "Yeah. They would."
He walked away from me, out into the construction zone.
* * *
Still no one had tried to attack me. I hoped that meant I was right; there was no longer any need. Briefly, I had a terrible fear that my whole analysis had been wrong and Jeremy had been the target all along. But that simply didn't make sense. Jeremy knew nothing that I didn't know. And what he did know he had told the cops about. Also, it didn't accord with my observations of the gunshots. Either way, I did my best to watch my back when I went to the festival offices.
"Barry, you have to talk with me."
"No, I don't."
He was in his office in the Emerald City castle, which was a good thing because I could stand between him and the only exterior door.
"Barry, why don't I just put a bag over my head and you can pretend you're talking to somebody else."
He snorted and folded his arms.
"I'm trying to help you. And before you say I've already helped you more than enough or make some other lame remark, let's just take it as read."
He took a dart out of the desk drawer and threw it at a picture of the Wicked Witch on the plywood wall to my left.
"Whatever helps you," I said. The small children's roller coaster that went around the outside of the castle rumbled noisily to a stop. Barry got up and retrieved the dart.
"First question. Had Plumly been acting different in the last couple of days?"
In a flat but audible voice, Barry said, "Yes. He seemed upset."
"Upset? What kind of upset? Worried? Hyper? Angry? Fearful?" Barry was not especially a word person. He threw the dart at the witch again.
"Huffy," he said.
"Like impatient? Indignant?"
"Indignant. Huffy."
"What kinds of documents on the festival would he have access to?"
"Pretty much everything." He went and got the dart. "This is a temporary office. Hell, it's just a bunch of plywood sheets painted green with a small roller coaster rolling around its outside. We all have other offices. He had. I have. The Park District has. The city has."
"You're saying they all have duplicate documents?" Plumly had told me this as well.
"Sure. The reason we have a full set here is in case something comes up. Say an inspector comes in and says the funnel cakes stand doesn't have a permit. We have to be able to say, 'Oh yes, it has. Here it is.' We need to have all the forms, the insurance, the lawyer's address, emergency electricians, the companies who sent the products, the owners of the merry-go-round and roller coaster, and whatever. We can't go rushing over to some office building for a sheet of paper at ten o'clock at night. So everything was here and he had access to it."
He threw the dart. He was really quite good at hitting the witch in the nose.
I said, "You see what I'm getting at. Could he have come on to a permission form or a bid price for a service or anything like that which would tell him somebody paid somebody else off?"
He left the dart there for now. Sighing, he said, "Cat, I really think you're barking up the wrong tree on this. Let's suppose somebody took a payoff to give out the contract on Porta Pottis. I don't mean the actual brand Porta Potti, but just as an example."
"Right. Like we say Kleenex when we mean facial tissue. Do you remember Aunt Helen used to say facial tissue and nobody knew what she was talking about? Cousin Brenda thought she meant the muscles and fibers of the skin."
He threw the dart hard. He was not going to engage in family reminiscences with me.
He said, "You might be able to find a list of bids, or several sheets of bids, but it wouldn't tell you anything."
"Suppose the committee passed over the lowest bid?"
"Suppose they did. They could perfectly well say that they were choosing the company with the best track record. The most dependable company for the price. What more would you know?"
I thought about that while the roller-coaster cars cranked their way back to the top.
Barry said, "If there are payoffs, they're in cash or cash equivalent, and they for sure aren't recorded anywhere."
The roller coaster started down, making the office vibrate. Kids shrieked. Barry went and pulled the dart out of the witch's nose.
"Did the cops take the festival papers you have here, or could I look at them?"
"They took them. But we brought in a fresh set. And no, you can't look at them. Sorry."
"I'll whine and beg later. Let me change gears. Plumly told me that there were security cameras in the festival area. What do they show?"
"Look in here." He walked over to a doorway with no door in it. The space beyond was small, like the offices. It was the other half of the castle interior. In it were monitors showing different parts of the festival. A man in an OZ security shirt was scanning them alertly. But he was looking alive because he had heard us coming. I saw the edge of a paperback novel sticking out from under a multiline telephone box.
Barry pointed at the monitors. "These four show the four ticket booths, because that's where the most money is. These two show the two first-aid tents, in case of emergency. Plus these eight show the outside of all the different potty areas. That's because if you're going to have sexual assaults, the potties are the most likely place."
"That's all?"
