The Best of Sisters in Crime (33 page)

An errand at the
County building took me longer than I’d expected; it was close to one-thirty by
the time I got back to the Pulteney. My caller’s problem apparently was urgent:
she was waiting outside my office door, tapping one high heel impatiently on
the floor as I trudged down the hall in my running shoes.

“Ms. Warshawski!
I thought you were standing me up.”

“No such luck,”
I grunted, opening my office door for her.

In the dimly lit
hall she’d just been a slender silhouette. Under the office lights the set of
the shoulders and signature buttons told me her suit had come from the hands of
someone at Chanel. Its blue enhanced the cobalt of her eyes. Soft makeup hid
her natural skin tones—I couldn’t tell if that dark red hair was natural, or
merely expertly painted.

She scanned the
spare furnishings and picked the cleaner of my two visitor chairs. “My time is
valuable, Ms. Warshawski. If I’d known you were going to keep me waiting
without a place to sit I would have finished some phone calls before walking
over here.”

I’d dressed in
jeans and a work shirt for a day at the Recorder of Deeds office. Feeling dirty
and outclassed made me grumpy. “You hung up without giving me your name or
number, so there wasn’t much I could do to let you know you’d have to stand
around in your pointy little shoes. My time’s valuable, too! Why don’t you tell
me where the fire is so I can start putting it out.”

She flushed.
When I turn red I look blotchy, but in her it only enhanced her makeup. “It’s
my sister.” The whiff of Southern increased. “Corinne. She’s run off to Ja—my
ex-husband, and I need someone to tell her to come back.”

I made a
disgusted face. “I can’t believe I raced back from the County Building to
listen to this. It’s not 1890, you know. She may be making a mistake but
presumably she can sort it out for herself.”

Her flush
darkened. “I’m not being very clear. I’m sorry. I’m not used to having to ask
for things. My sister—Corinne—she’s only fourteen. She’s my ward. I’m sixteen
years older than she is. Our parents died three years ago and she’s been living
with me since then. It’s not easy, not easy for either of us. Moving from
Mobile to here was just the beginning. When she got here she wanted to run
around, do all the things you can’t do in Mobile.”

She waved a hand
to indicate what kinds of things those might be. “She thinks I’m a tough bitch
and that I was too hard on my ex-husband. She’s known him since she was three
and he was a big hero. She couldn’t see he’d changed. Or not changed, just not
had the chance to be heroic anymore in public. So when she took off two days
ago I assumed she went there. He’s not answering his phone or the doorbell. I
don’t know if they’ve left town or he’s just playing possum or what. I need
someone who knows how to get people to open their doors and knows how to talk
to people. At least if I could see Corinne I might—I don’t know.”

She broke off
with a helpless gesture that didn’t match her sophisticated looks. Nothing like
responsibility for a minor to deflate even the most urbane.

I grimaced more
ferociously. “Why don’t we start with your name, and your husband’s name and
address, and then move on to her friends.”

“Her friends?”
The deep blue eyes widened. “I’d just as soon this didn’t get around. People
talk, and even though it’s not 1890, it could be hard on her when she gets back
to school.”

I suppressed a
howl. “You can’t come around demanding my expertise and then tell me what or
what not to do. What if she’s not with your husband? What if I can’t get in
touch with you when I’ve found that out and she’s in terrible trouble and her
life depends on my turning up some new leads? If you can’t bring yourself to
divulge a few names—starting with your own—you’d better go find yourself a more
pliant detective. I can recommend a couple who have waiting rooms.”

She set her lips
tightly: whatever she did she was in command—people didn’t talk to her that way
and get away with it. For a few seconds it looked as though I might be free to
get back to the Recorder of Deeds that afternoon, but then she shook her head and
forced a smile to her lips.

“I was told not
to mind your abrasiveness because you were the best. I’m Brigitte LeBlanc. My
sister’s name is Corinne, also LeBlanc. And my ex-husband is Charles Pierce.”

She scooted her
chair up to the desk so she could scribble his address on a sheet of paper torn
from a memo pad in her bag. She scrawled busily for several minutes, then
handed me a list that included Corinne’s three closest school friends, along
with Pierce’s address.

“I’m late for a
meeting. I’ll call you tonight to see if you’ve made any progress.” She got up.

“Not so fast,” I
said. “I get a retainer. You have to sign a contract. And I need a number where
I can reach you.”

“I really am
late.”

“And I’m really
too busy to hunt for your sister. If you have a sister. You can’t be that
worried if your meeting is more important than she is.”

Her scowl would
have terrified me if I’d been alone with her in an alley after dark. “I do have
a sister. And I spent two days trying to get into my ex-husband’s place, and then
in tracking down people who could recommend a private detective to me. I can’t
do anything else to help her except go earn the money to pay your fee.”

I pulled a
contract from my desk drawer and stuck it in the manual Olivetti that had
belonged to my mother—a typewriter so old that I had to order special ribbons
for it from Italy. A word processor would be cheaper and more impressive but
the wrist action keeps my forearms strong. I got Ms. LeBlanc to give me her
address, to sign on the dotted line for $400 a day plus expenses, to write in
the name of a guaranteeing financial institution and to hand over a check for
two hundred.

When she’d left
I wrestled with my office windows, hoping to let some air in to blow her pricey
perfume away. Carbon flakes from the el would be better than the lingering
scent, but the windows, painted over several hundred times, wouldn’t budge. I
turned on a desktop fan and frowned sourly at her bold black signature.

What was her
ex-husband’s real name? She’d bitten off “Ja—” Could be James or Jake, but it
sure wasn’t Charles. Did she really have a sister? Was this just a ploy to get
back at a guy late on his alimony? Although Pierce’s address on North Winthrop
didn’t sound like the place for a man who could afford alimony. Maybe everything
went to keep her in Chanel suits while he lived on Skid Row.

She wasn’t in
the phone book, so I couldn’t check her own address on Belden. The operator
told me the number was unlisted. I called a friend at the Fort Dearborn Trust,
the bank Brigitte had drawn her check on, and was assured that there was plenty
more where that came from. My friend told me Brigitte had parlayed the proceeds
of a high-priced modeling career into a successful media consulting firm.

“And if you ever
read the fashion pages you’d know these things. Get your nose out of the sports
section from time to time, Vic—it’ll help with your career.”

“Thanks, Eva.” I
hung up with a snap. At least my client wouldn’t turn out to be named something
else, always a good beginning to a tawdry case.

I looked in the
little mirror perched over my filing cabinet. A dust smudge on my right cheek
instead of peach blush was the only distinction between me and Ms. LeBlanc.
Since I was dressed appropriately for North Winthrop, I shut up my office and
went to retrieve my car.

Back to table of
contents

Charles Pierce
lived in a dismal ten-flat built flush onto the Uptown sidewalk. Ragged sheets
made haphazard curtains in those windows that weren’t boarded over. Empty bottles
lined the entryway, but the smell of stale Ripple couldn’t begin to mask the
stench of fresh urine. If Corinne LeBlanc had run away to this place, life with
Brigitte must be unmitigated hell.

My client’s
ex-husband lived in 3E. I knew that because she’d told me. Those few mailboxes
whose doors still shut wisely didn’t trumpet their owners’ identities. The
filthy brass nameplate next to the doorbells was empty and the doorbells didn’t
work. Pushing open the rickety door to the hall, I wondered again about my
client’s truthfulness: she told me Ja— hadn’t answered his phone or his bell.

A rheumy-eyed
woman was sprawled across the bottom of the stairs, sucking at a half-pint. She
stared at me malevolently when I asked her to move, but she didn’t actively try
to trip me when I stepped over her. It was only my foot catching in the folds
of her overcoat.

The original
building probably held two apartments per floor. At least, on the third floor
only two doors at either end looked as though they went back to the massive,
elegant construction of the building’s beginnings. The other seven were flimsy
newcomers that had been hastily installed when an apartment was subdivided.
Peering in the dark I found one labeled B and counted off three more to the
right to get to E. After knocking on the peeling veneer several times I noticed
a button imbedded in the grime on the jamb. When I pushed it I heard a buzz
resonate inside. No one came to the door. With my ear against the filthy panel
I could hear the faint hum of a television.

I held the
buzzer down for five minutes. It’s hard on the finger but harder on the ear. If
someone was really in there he should have come boiling to the door by now.

I could go away
and come back, but if Pierce was lying doggo to avoid Brigitte, that wouldn’t
buy me anything. She said she’d tried off and on for two days. The television
might be running as a decoy, or—I pushed more lurid ideas from my mind and took
out a collection of skeleton keys. The second worked easily in the
insubstantial lock. In two minutes I was inside the apartment, looking at an
illustration from
House Beautiful in Hell.

It was a single
room with a countertop kitchen on the left side. A tidy person could pull a
corrugated screen to shield the room from signs of cooking, but Pierce wasn’t
tidy. Ten or fifteen stacked pots, festooned with rotting food and roaches,
trembled precariously when I shut the door.

Dominating the
place was a Murphy bed with a grotesquely fat man sprawled in at an ominous
angle. He’d been watching TV when he died. He was wearing frayed, shiny pants
with the fly lying carelessly open and a lumberjack shirt that didn’t quite
cover his enormous belly.

His monstrous
size and the horrible angle at which his bald head was tilted made me gag. I
forced it down and walked through a pile of stale clothes to the bed. Lifting
an arm the size of a tree trunk, I felt for a pulse. Nothing moved in the heavy
arm, but the skin, while clammy, was firm. I couldn’t bring myself to touch any
more of him but stumbled around the perimeter to peer at him from several
angles. I didn’t see any obvious wounds. Let the medical examiner hunt out the
obscure ones.

By the time I
was back in the stairwell I was close to fainting. Only the thought of falling
into someone else’s urine or vomit kept me on my feet. On the way down I
tripped in earnest over the rheumy-eyed woman’s coat. Sprawled on the floor at
the bottom, I couldn’t keep from throwing up myself. It didn’t make me feel any
better.

I dug a water
bottle out of the detritus in my trunk and sponged myself off before calling
the police. They asked me to stay near the body. I thought the front seat of my
car on Winthrop would be close enough.

While I waited
for a meat wagon I wondered about my client. Could Brigitte have come here
after leaving me, killed him and taken off while I was phoning around checking
up on her? If she had, the rheumy-eyed woman in the stairwell would have seen
her. Would the bond forged by my tripping over her and vomiting in the hall be
enough to get her to talk to me?

I got out of the
car, but before I could get back to the entrance the police arrived. When we
pushed open the rickety door my friend had evaporated. I didn’t bother
mentioning her to the boys—and girl—in blue: her description wouldn’t stand out
in Uptown, and even if they could find her she wouldn’t be likely to say much.

We plodded up
the stairs in silence. There were four of them. The woman and the youngest of
the three men seemed in good shape. The two older men were running sadly to
flab. I didn’t think they’d be able to budge my client’s ex-husband’s right
leg, let alone his mammoth redwood torso.

“I got a feeling
about this,” the oldest officer muttered, more to himself than the rest of us. “I
got a feeling.”

When we got to
3E and he looked across at the mass on the bed he shook his head a couple of
times. “Yup. I kind of knew as soon as I heard the call.”

“Knew what, Tom?”
the woman demanded sharply.

“Jade Pierce,”
he said. “Knew he lived around here. Been a lot of complaints about him. Thought
it might be him when I heard we was due to visit a real big guy.”

The woman
stopped her brisk march to the bed. The rest of us looked at the behemoth in
shared sorrow. Jade. Not James or Jake but Jade. Once the most famous down
lineman the Bears had ever fielded. Now . . . I shuddered.