Murder Ink Page 4

  Some people thought Lake Michigan was more like a freshwater sea. It was shaped like a finger, was very deep and could be treacherous. Today the water seemed calm and reflected the deep blue of the sky. There were only ripples on the surface and soft waves coming onto the 57th Street Beach.

  My destination was Promontory Point, or the Point as everyone called it. It was a man-made peninsula and was a major hang out spot in the summer. It was park-like with grass and benches and the perimeter was lined with several layers of blocks of limestone going down to the water. The views were amazing. On one side, the curve of the lake was visible, outlined by industrial buildings in Indiana. The other side looked toward the downtown skyline all the way to Navy Pier. As soon as I noticed the building on the tip, my thoughts went to Rachel. I pictured her hair blowing in the wind as she looked lovingly at Luke and repeated the vows I’d helped her write.

  For a moment I thought back on my meeting the previous day. The whole thing confused me. Camille Parker seemed more angry than sad. Luke had just been quiet. It was impossible to read his emotions. He’d stayed out of the whole vow-writing episode. Thinking back, it was obvious that it must have been Rachel’s idea and he seemed to have gone along with it without much concern. Maybe he was like Ben and kept everything locked inside.

  The wind changed, coming down from the north, and instantly there was an icy edge to it. The sharp breeze cut right through my jacket. I turned to head back, picking up the pace in the hope that it would build up some body heat.

  All that worry about being cold seemed to work some kind of magic and as I hustled on my way home something popped in my head from my few minutes I’d had with Sally. I suddenly knew how to write the letter.

  As soon as I got home, I dropped my jacket, went right to my computer and started typing. An hour later I emailed Evan a draft of a letter. I’d barely hit send when my cell phone rang.

  No surprise it was Evan. ‘So what do you think?’ I asked. Then before he had a chance to answer I explained the plan to use a letter to score a first date.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he muttered, and then he read the letter out loud to me.

  Dear Sally,

  I know that you are out of my league. You’re beautiful, talented, smart – I could go on and on, but it would just make more of a point of how out of my league you are. That was supposed to be a joke, but you might have noticed I’m not that good at being funny.

  I really like being in your company. Just seeing you brightens my day. But so far all of our interchanges have been connected to work. Do you suppose we could spend some time together that was just social? Like maybe this Sunday afternoon at Lincoln Park Zoo with a coffee stop afterwards?

  There was a moment of silence on his end. ‘I don’t know about saying she’s out of my league. I mean, I get that she is, but should we really remind her? I’m not sure about the zoo thing either. Maybe she’ll think I’m cheap.’

  I let him finish before I started to talk. ‘You weren’t at the table when she told me how much she liked romantic comedies. And it occurred to me that you’re a sort of Hugh Grant type. He plays characters whose endearing charm is that they’re self-deprecating and a little bumbling. The zoo on Sunday afternoon comes across as romantic, but also not too much too soon.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know anything about Hugh Grant. I’m more of a Mission: Impossible, Star Wars type.’

  ‘It would help if you watched some of his movies. Particularly, Notting Hill.’ I explained the plot – shy bookstore owner meets a movie star. There was some debate on how he could access the movie and he asked if I owned it. I offered to lend it to him, but he suggested in the interest of time that he watch it at my place.

  ‘Then I’ll be able to OK the letter,’ he said. I agreed and he said he would come by in the evening.

  With that taken care of, I turned my attention to Rachel’s piece. The bag of photo albums was sitting next to my computer where I’d left them. I suddenly had a thought of how to do the booklet. Rather than some narrative with dates and details of when she was born, where she went to school etc., I would collect anecdotes and illustrate them with photographs. It would capture the essence of who she was. I thought it was a great plan, but it was pointless to go ahead with it without getting an OK on it. I debated whether to call Mrs Parker or Luke. In the end, I called them both.

  ‘Yes, I suppose that would be acceptable – as long as it’s tasteful and it reflects well on the family reputation,’ Mrs Parker said. There was something rushed in her voice and she cut me off when I mentioned wanting a story about Rachel from her.

  ‘I can’t deal with that now. I have a luncheon to get to.’ The phone clicked off before I could even ask for a better time to call. Her behavior continued to confuse me. I decided that either she was so devastated that she was trying to shove away everything connected with her daughter’s death. Or she was angry at Rachel for what she did and upset she had to deal with the whole situation.

  I was relieved that Luke was friendlier on the phone. I would have liked to ask him a whole lot of questions about Rachel, but it didn’t seem like the right time, so I simply told him my plan for the memorial book. ‘I like that idea,’ he said, as soon as I’d finished explaining. I could hear noise in the background and wondered where I’d gotten him. With cell phones you never knew.

  ‘I’m glad you agree,’ I said. ‘I haven’t caught you at a bad time, have I?’ I was hoping he would tell me where he was. It almost sounded like he was at a party. ‘It would be great if you could give me a story to include. Some special moment you had with Rachel.’

  ‘I’ll have to think about it,’ he said. There was a slight impatience to his voice, and I thought I heard a woman in the background calling him honey and complaining about being forgotten.

  ‘I thought I’d start with talking to some of her co-workers,’ I said, continuing undaunted.

  ‘Good idea,’ he said curtly. ‘I’m kind of busy right now.’

  ‘If you could just tell me where she taught.’ I spoke quickly before he could end the call.

  ‘Oakenwald Elementary,’ he said, and then with a click he was gone. I sat looking at my phone for a moment wondering what was really going on with him.

  SIX

  Now that I had the go-ahead, I contacted the principal of the school where Rachel had taught. I knew from the time I’d spent with her that she’d loved her teaching job. I wanted to see her old room and meet with some of her colleagues. Mrs Jones suggested I come at lunchtime which meant that I had to hurry. I considered taking an Uber, but economy won out and I took the bus.

  It let me off several blocks from the school on a sad-looking commercial street. I passed empty stores with boarded-up fronts and the few storefronts that were open had grating across the windows. It seemed as if the street cleaners had missed the area as there were food wrappers and drink cups littering the gutter.

  The high rises here were red-brick public housing instead of the glass towers where Rachel had lived.

  The day had turned gloomy which only made the brown-brick school look more desolate. I passed a schoolyard filled with kids letting off steam during their lunch break as I looked for the entrance. The interior was utilitarian with lockers lining the beige walls. I found the principal’s office and introduced myself to the school secretary.

  Mrs Jones came out to meet me. She seemed harried and I felt bad interrupting her lunch.

  ‘Thank you for doing this,’ I said, following the lanky woman as she led me down the hallway.

  ‘No problem. I’m used to interruptions during lunch. We’re all still in shock about Rachel,’ she said, opening the door to one of the classrooms. ‘We’ve had to bring in a replacement, but the room is still mostly as she left it.’

  I walked around looking at the rows of student desks and the teacher’s desk at the front. I could see why they’d left it as Rachel had arranged it. She had turned the impersonal schoolroom into an
inviting space. It even smelled nicer than the hall with the faint scent of cinnamon.

  Orange and yellow translucent colored paper cut into the shape of autumn leaves decorated the windows. The bulletin board had more autumn leaves along with cutouts of pumpkins and Indian corn and featured students’ artwork and Halloween stories they’d written. There was a library corner with a computer and a bookcase of books.

  ‘And she left this,’ Mrs Jones said, opening a supply cabinet. It was stocked with school supplies and extensive food items. One of the shelves had a stack of computer tablets.

  ‘Not only that, but she was always getting companies to donate stuff to the school. I’m hoping they keep it up in her memory.’ The principal stopped. ‘You know she could have taught anywhere, but insisted she liked working here the best. We sure miss her and not just from all the wonderful things she brought in. She was a gifted teacher. She made learning exciting for her class. It was amazing. All the kids showed up every day. And there were hardly any discipline problems.’ She stopped talking and swallowed back her emotion before she continued. ‘She loved the kids and they all knew it.’

  I asked if it was OK if I took some photos with my phone and explained what I was going to use them for. ‘Take all the pictures you want,’ she said. ‘It sounds like you’re going to create a wonderful tribute to her.’

  When I’d gotten enough shots, she took me down the hall to the teachers’ lounge. She hadn’t asked any questions about how Rachel died, and I wondered what she knew about it. It was not comfortable to bring it up, so I let it be.

  The teachers’ lounge had a few comfortable chairs and an old wood library table in the middle. There was a kitchenette set up with a refrigerator, a microwave and a coffee pot that was just filling with a fresh brew.

  ‘This is Veronica Blackstone and she’d like to talk to you about Rachel,’ Mrs Jones said, before introducing the three women in the room as Kanesha Wilson, Jean Lee and Mercedes Phillips.

  ‘Sit, sit,’ Kanesha said. ‘How about some coffee?’ She was on her feet pouring me a cup before I’d even settled. ‘So what exactly do you want from us? Are you some undercover detective? What’s that business about they don’t know how she fell off that balcony?’

  ‘I’m not a detective, undercover or otherwise,’ I said, chuckling at the thought. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know any more of the details of what happened to her than you do.’ Then I explained who I was and why I was there.

  ‘My goodness, people actually hire you to write love letters. People actually send love letters,’ Kanesha said with a laugh. She shook her head at the thought. ‘But that’s a righteous thing her family is doing. Better than some couple of paragraphs to tie up someone’s whole life.’

  ‘I was hoping you might have some stories about her that I could include.’

  I drank some of the coffee and watched as the three women looked at each other. ‘I’ve got a good one,’ Kanesha said. ‘The first day she came here, she showed up in some fancy clothes with a designer purse I assumed was a knock-off – completely out of place around here.’ The curvy woman gestured with her finger. ‘I figured it would be one day for her and she’d be gone. I thought she had princess written all over her forehead.’ The woman rocked her head to display how wrong she’d been. ‘But she came back the next day and kept showing up. After about a week, I pulled her aside and told her to ditch the purse. I was shocked when I found out it was real. I mean, who spends that kind of cash on a bag. I told her to ditch the fancy duds, too. I thought she might be offended, but nah. The very next day she showed up dressed for combat like the rest of us and replaced the fancy purse with a cloth tote.’ Kanesha stopped talking and I saw her shoulders drop as her eyes began to well up. ‘It’s just not right that she’s gone. She did so much for the kids in her class. Hell, for all of us.’ She pointed at the coffee pot. ‘Where do you think that came from?’

  ‘She invited us all to her wedding,’ Mercedes said. ‘What an affair. My chance to see how the one half of one percent lives.’

  ‘I was there, too,’ I said. I was going to leave out why I’d been there, but there was no point hiding what I’d done for Rachel and so I told them about helping with the vows.

  ‘If you ask me that husband of hers is kind of skunky,’ Kanesha interjected. ‘You should have heard Rachel go on about how lucky she was to get a guy like him. How she felt like she hit the jackpot when he put a ring on her finger. Her family is rich with a capital R. But she just kept going on about how she wanted to please him.’

  I noticed that Jean was shaking her head. She seemed the most reserved of the three women. ‘It’s not my place to say it, but I think her husband was the one who put it in her head that she needed to lose weight.’

  ‘Rachel went cuckoo. We curvy women are meant to be this way.’ Kanesha did a flourish to show off her own soft shape. ‘She must have been starving herself and then taking all those dance classes. I think that was what made everything go downhill.’

  ‘What do you mean downhill?’ I asked.

  ‘She was just different when she came back in the fall. She got real nervous-looking and she seemed worried about her memory,’ Mercedes said.

  I asked her if she had any specific details. ‘I can’t remember exactly. There was something with her husband about texts she didn’t remember sending,’ Mercedes said with a shrug.

  ‘She had circles under her eyes all the time lately. I even told her about some herb tea that might help her sleep. I’d say there was something on her mind,’ Jean said. ‘Maybe it wasn’t the happily ever after she wanted. Like Kanesha said, Rachel was kind of a princess. Who knows what she expected?’

  ‘At least I think she liked the dance classes. She talked about them all the time,’ Mercedes said.

  ‘Like what did she say?’ I asked.

  The older woman shrugged and sighed. ‘Look, I have a husband who complains all the time and I’ve learned to tune out to survive. I’m afraid I wasn’t really listening. I just remember something about line dancing or maybe it was belly dancing.’

  ‘I don’t have a husband who lectures me. Mine’s the silent type,’ Jean said with a chuckle. ‘So I actually heard what she said to me about the classes. Mostly it was about a friend there.’ I asked Jean for a name, but she smiled guiltily. ‘Maybe I didn’t listen as well as I thought. I think it was a nickname. Something like Dee. I’m not sure.’

  Kanesha leaned closer. ‘Did she push herself off that balcony?’

  I debated what to say and Kanesha rushed ahead and took my silence as an affirmative answer.

  ‘I thought so,’ Kanesha said shaking her head with regret. ‘I wish now I’d said something. But you know how it is, you don’t want people to think you’re sticking your nose where it shouldn’t be. And every time anybody asked about Luke, she’d beam this smile and repeat how lucky she was.’

  A bell rang somewhere and the three women stood up, saying they had to get back to their classrooms.

  I gave them all my email address and they promised to think about it and would let me know if they came up with any more good stories. Just before we all walked out into the hall, Jean pulled me aside. ‘You might be able to use this. She sold that fancy purse at an auction house and used the money to buy supplies for the whole school.’

  Princess or not, it seemed Rachel had a heart of gold. I felt even more of a responsibility to find out what had happened to her.

  SEVEN

  I dropped off my notes about Rachel next to my computer. Then it was time to deal with the normal parts of living. I grabbed my pull cart and walked to the shopping center and loaded up on groceries. As I went back across the courtyard, I admired the display of pumpkins surrounding the graceful sycamore tree. All the stores in the center were independents except for Walgreens, though it almost didn’t count as a chain since the very first Walgreens had been located almost in the neighborhood. I chuckled at the two kids who were trying to drag their father into the toy
store. Even with the chill in the air, all the outdoor tables for the French bakery were full. I always checked out the window of the shoe store to see what they’d gotten in. It seemed like yesterday the display was all sandals and sneakers. Now it was boots and fuzzy slippers.

  It was impossible to get out of the shopping center without running into someone I knew. As I said, Hyde Park was almost like a small town within the city. People often greeted each other on the street with at least a smile, even if they were strangers. The someone I ran into was the president of our condo association out buying some wood for his fireplace. I was jealous that his worked. Mine still had the chimney blocked. One of these days when I had some extra cash, I’d get it opened. How cozy it would be to sit in front of the fireplace and read.

  I was still thinking about Rachel and what the teachers had said. I’d gotten at least a couple of good stories – Kanesha’s about Rachel’s first days at the school and Jean’s story about the fate of the fancy purse. And I’d gotten another lead. The dance classes. They sounded positive and I was hopeful about picking up a story and maybe some pictures – though I had to find the place first. None of the three teachers knew the name of the place or even had a hint of where it was located. Maybe Luke would have more information.

  The afternoon was fading into evening when I pulled the cart up the stairs to my place. I was thinking about writing up what I’d gotten at the school, but then I remembered that Evan was coming by to watch the Hugh Grant movie. I’d rushed out and left everything a mess and there was barely time to put away my purchases and do a little straightening.

  He rang the doorbell at exactly seven. He was dressed in a white shirt, bow tie and tweed sport jacket. This time the bow tie was straight. I noticed him looking around the apartment as he came in. All the furniture was geared toward comfort and there were books everywhere. The wood floor was covered with oriental-style rugs in warm shades of red. He commented on the blanket hanging over the couch.