Husbands And Lap Dogs Breathe Their Last (2 page)

“Yes, I do.”

“That drops the pool to 4,301. At this point, things become trickier. In order to get down to anything like a manageable number of dates, I need to come up with other criteria that are quantifiable and will predict compatibility. Otherwise, to adequately sample my 4,300 guys, I’d have to go on something like 525 dates.”

“So, what did you select?”

“Just one question: What do you really want in life?”

“Why did you pick that?”

“Because my last partner didn’t know, and I think that’s what ultimately did us in.”

“That’s not always easy to know,” Cummings said. “What you think is fulfilling can disappear, and then you’re left feeling like you’re starting all over from the beginning.”

“Is that what happened to you?” Odin asked.

“More or less. My partner was killed a few years ago. Murdered.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that,” Odin replied.

“Thank you. And what about you?”

“Do you mean, why am I single? My ex left me for an interior designer we met on vacation in Madrid.”

“So, what percentage of men know what they want?” Cummings asked.

“Anecdotally, based on my first hundred dates, I’d estimate twenty-five percent.”

“That few?”

“I’m afraid so. Anyway, that brings my sample down to 1,075. With a confidence of ninety-five percent plus or minus four percent, I still have to go out with around 385 men to sample the socks in the drawer.”

“How many socks have you sampled so far?”

“275.”

Within a few minutes Cummings became datum 276. Within a few days it seemed clear to both of them that Cummings was the study end point, even though he’d appeared earlier than projected. They began dating long distance. Eighteen months later Cummings had moved to the Windy City. That was several months ago.

“How’s work, Odin?” Luther said, tactfully changing the subject as he always did when Rockland’s assessment of Cummings’s compulsiveness came up. “Did I not read that Multiverse Air had a substantial first quarter loss?”

“Yes, you did, though I don’t see how that makes it different from virtually every other corporation on earth,” Odin responded. Times were indeed tough. “They’re threatening layoffs. I think we’re safe in IT, though.”

“I believe everybody I know is worried about their jobs,” Luther said, “except Rockland, of course, as he’s retired.”

Rockland smiled.

“Are you worried about your job, Luther?” Cummings asked Luther.

“The music department is threatening cutbacks. Still, I have a backup plan. I believe I have mentioned my brother-in-law, Billy Goat Bates, who owns a Christian car wash in Tuscaloosa, Alabama? He has purchased a Hammond organ secondhand from a Pentecostal church that went into decline after the entire congregation died from snakebites. He would like me to play hymns for his customers while their vehicles are washed in the blood of the lamb, so to speak.”

Everyone laughed.

“And you, Cummings?” Luther asked with a wry smile. “I understand congratulations are in order.”

“For what? Consulting is tough right now. I hardly have any work.”

“I don’t mean that,” Luther responded, taking a neatly folded newspaper clipping from his coat pocket. It was an article from the previous day’s
Chicago Tribune
.

“‘Another notable amateur Chicago sleuth is Cummings Flynn Wanamaker,’“ Luther read, “‘who helped the Joliet police solve a rash of murders there.’“

“I don’t know how they found out about that,” Cummings said modestly.

“Your business is struggling because you’re in the wrong business,” Rockland stated. “You should stop wasting your time working for charitable foundations and become a licensed detective.”

“I’ve been getting calls, a few yesterday and three or four since this morning,” Cummings said.

“Calls from whom?” Luther asked.

“People who read the article and looked up my number. They’re looking for help solving mysteries.”

“Well, there you are,” Rockland said emphatically, “and if you get any juicy cases, give me a jingle. I’m busy with my musicology research but can certainly give a toxicology consult for the odd poisoning.”

“Thanks, Rockland. I’m still grateful to you and Luther for your help on the Joliet case. Maybe I should give becoming an investigator more thought,” said Cummings. “I’ll look into it.”

“You do that,” Rockland replied.

“I think we should get a move on,” interrupted Odin, “or we’ll be late for our reservation.”

After dinner, as they were walking back to the car, Luther pulled Cummings aside.

“Do you have plans tomorrow?”

“Not really,” Cummings replied.

“I have been invited to a meeting of the Mathers Society.”

“What’s that?”

“I do not know exactly, but it has something to do with the occult. Of course, I would never invite Rockland or Odin. They are just too left-brained, but I thought you might like to accompany me.”

“You don’t think I’m left-brained?” Cummings asked, mildly offended.

“Not like they are. I think of you as more open-minded on dubious matters.”

“Perhaps. Still, why would we want to go to the meeting of an occult group?” Cummings responded.

“Because it is something entirely different. Also, I feel it is politic to make an appearance, as the invitation came from Anunciación Hollingberry.”

“Who is Anunciación Hollingberry?”

“One of the benefactresses of the music department and a delightful, if slightly unusual, lady I consider to be a personal friend.”

“Unusual? In what way?” Cummings asked, intrigued.

“Several ways,” Luther said teasingly, “but you will have to accompany me to experience her idiosyncrasies.”

“Okay,” Cummings said. “What time will you pick me up?”

Mid-morning the following day, Luther appeared at Cummings’s door wearing an Edwardian morning suit, complete with top hat and cane.

“Ready to go?” Luther asked Cummings.

“You didn’t say it was a costume party.”

“Did I not mention that Anunciación said that Steampunk dress was preferred?”

“What on earth is Steampunk?”

“As I understand it, it started as a genre of science fiction in which nineteenth-century technology, particularly steam power, was reimagined in a fantasy world of the future. I believe the movement has now gone far beyond literature. There are Steampunk conventions and Steampunk music and Steampunk crafts and heaven knows what. Late Victorian and Edwardian clothing with certain embellishments is
de rigueur
.”

“What does that have to do with the occult?”

“There is no direct connection that I am aware of, but it may be that the two elements are juxtaposed in time. I say that because the Mathers Society seems to model itself on the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, but that’s just a guess.”

“The Hermetic what?”

“A famous occult group active in Great Britain during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It had a number of distinguished members, including William Butler Yeats, Bram Stoker and Aleister Crowley. So you see, there’s a chronological overlap between the Golden Dawn and Steampunk.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Because I was a strange but exceptionally intelligent child in the deep South. Now then, what are you going to wear?”

“I have no idea. I don’t own anything that looks even vaguely like what you’re wearing.”

“What about that Dracula outfit you wore for Halloween?”

“All right. I suppose we can try that.” Cummings returned a few minutes later decked out as a vampire. “What do you think?”

“I would not bother with the fangs,” Luther suggested. “People might think you are not taking them seriously.”

Chicago is a francized American Indian word meaning “stinky onion,” a reference to a malodorous native plant. Stench is an echt metaphor for the history of Chicago.

Chicago might as well be a biblical city of plagues. Built on a bog, the early city was prone to insect-borne diseases, and the spring mud made parts of the town impassable. Later, there were sewer and water problems, followed by fire, riots, slaughterhouses, and graft. Fortunately, there was also vibrant commerce and robust architecture, or everyone would have fled the place.

Of Chicago’s various maladies, graft is the most enduring. In some years one needs two hands worth of fingers to count the major political scandals and several bodies of fingers and toes to account for the minor ones. An even deeper problem is patronage. This frequently results in pervasive incompetence, exacerbated by Midwestern practicality. Once someone has an ill-gotten job, they tend to stay until death. Often they stay much longer.

Still, Chicago has its compensations: a veneer of progressive politics, affability, affordability, a lack of pretension, and stellar arts and culture. In the few years since moving to Chicago to be with Odin, Cummings had decided the city suited him as well as most places and better than many might have.

Even though it was Sunday morning, Cummings and Luther encountered traffic. Livestock were once packed in pens near the city’s slaughterhouses, waiting to die; today, humans have a similar experience on Chicago roads.

As they sat in traffic Cummings proposed a number of routes but could not decide which made the most sense. He set his timer for five minutes and considered the various merits of each. When the buzzer sounded, and he could not decide on one, he let Luther make the call.

Eventually they arrived at their destination in the Bucktown neighborhood. Luther parked, and they walked a few blocks to an English-style pub called the Red and White.

The building, which was squeezed between a car wash and a funeral parlor, was an old Chicago commercial building; it was small, about a century old, made of red brick, and now painted a currently stylish shade of brownish beige. The sidewalk outside the main door was decorated with an elaborate medallion of red and white roses. These referred to the War of the Roses, the fifteenth-century English dynastic feud between rival factions in the House of Plantagenet: Lancaster (symbolized by a heraldic red rose) and York (represented by a white rose).

The décor inside was more William Morris than Henry Tudor. The walls were covered in ornate floral wallpapers, and the furnishings were heavy, wooden and overstuffed. On one side of the room, a great oak bar and surrounding lounge area circled an extravagantly tiled fireplace. The dining area, a phalanx of oak tables and chairs, was on the other side.

“We are going to a private room upstairs,” Luther informed Cummings, indicating wide, dark oak stairs at the far end of the space.

Cummings looked up from the bottom of the stairs. The walls were a dark purple, and the interior lighting was dim.

Arriving at the top, they emerged into another seating area surrounding another Arts and Crafts fireplace. To the right, down a dimly lit purple passage, there was a door flanked by picture windows that revealed a large outdoor roof deck. To the left was a long bar. There were French doors at the far end, presently open, leading into the private dining room. From it, they heard a cacophony of indistinct conversations that grew louder as they approached.

The private dining room was large, carpeted in blood red wool, swirled with complex paisley patterns in tourmaline, canary, chocolate and black. The windows were covered in the heaviest red velvet, blocking even the possibility of light, while the walls were slathered with red damask wallpaper reminiscent of an 1890s New Orleans cathouse. Freestanding bronze censers at each corner of the room emitted languid clouds of Dragon’s Blood incense.

The center of the room was dominated by a massive walnut dining table with marquetry inlays of cavorting peasants, flanked by thirty-two chairs, fifteen on each side and one on each end. A walnut podium stood near one end of the table.

Most of the chairs were filled with ladies and gentlemen in Neo-Edwardian garb, their outfits not precisely historical due to the presence of odd accessories: aviator goggles; metal face masks; World War I gas masks; multi-lensed monocles; walking sticks topped with skulls, black ravens, pentacles, runes, and other oddities; grotesquely overplumed women’s millinery, and men’s black top hats embedded with gears and washers. Cummings assumed these were the Steampunk embellishments to which Luther had referred.

A bit overwhelmed by the Alice-in-Wonderland-meets-opium-den environment, Luther and Cummings moved cautiously toward two empty chairs at the podium end of the table.

Cummings noticed an odd mixture of scents. At first he thought it was just the billowing incense. After sniffing a few times, he suspected there was also something else, but he wasn’t sure what.

“Oh, look, there’s Anunciación,” Luther said, pointing to an imposing woman on the other side of the table. She smiled and came toward them.

Anunciación was a charismatic,
zaftig
older woman who made one think of Rodin’s statue of Balzac. She had henna-dyed hair and dark brown eyes accentuated with liberal applications of kohl. Her long and menacingly sharp fingernails were lacquered Chinese red. A friendly but cryptic smile suggested she had reached the age of wisdom but wasn’t sharing what she knew. She wore a long, white lace gown and white shoes, and her hair was swept up and embedded with flowers. Diaphanous fairy wings extended from her shoulders.

“Isn’t this the most marvelous frock?” she said in a hybrid accent, two-thirds Midwestern American and one-third tony English. She slowly turned and modeled the outfit for Luther. “It’s Titania’s costume from an 1898 London production of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
. I bought it at auction.”

“You are just dazzling!” Luther said appreciatively. Anunciación shrugged with artfully feigned modesty. “May I introduce my dear friend, Cummings Flynn Wanamaker? Cummings, this is Anunciación Hollingberry.”

“It’s nice to meet you. You have an interesting name,” Cummings commented.

“People often say that, but there is a sensible explanation, don’t you know,” Anunciación replied. “I am the result of a coupling in a cave during the Spanish Civil War of an English prima ballerina and a Republican soldier.”