‘So, what’s new?’ I asked smartly, sitting on the edge of the made-up bed.
‘I’m being held incommunicado, a prisoner,’ she said, not quite managing a smile. ‘Mama grabbed my cell phone and I haven’t seen it since I was brought here.’
She pointed to the man who’d led me down the hall. ‘That’s my cousin Bernie,’ she said. ‘His brother Stanley is the one who drove you here. Their other brother is Frank; he rode beside you in the back, ready to snap your neck if you began acting suspiciously. And the nurse with the gun here is Eloise, Stan’s wife’s sister.’ She looked past me, toward the door. ‘And of course, you remember Jimbo, my old cameraman from Channel Eight?’
I turned around. Yet another bearded fellow, this one wearing a red Chicago Blues Fest T-shirt, had followed me in and was leaning on one crutch against the door jamb. I smiled; this man I remembered. He’d come with Jenny to Rivertown to report the arrest of Elvis Derbil, the town’s zoning czar, for switching out stale-dated labels on a truckload of salad dressing.
I turned back around. ‘Who did this?’ I asked her.
‘Two dark shapes, in balaclavas and camo jackets, in the woods across the street from Timothy Wade’s house.’
‘Wade’s guards?’
‘I don’t know, because I don’t know why we were attacked. We were trespassing on someone else’s property, not Wade’s. I didn’t hear Jimbo going down before they came for me.’
‘I got knocked down, felt my leg being twisted,’ Jimbo said behind me. ‘No break, just torn ligaments. They were done with me in a second.’
‘Professionals? They could have killed you but didn’t?’ I asked Jenny.
‘It’s always risky to kill a reporter. They wanted me sidelined and scared, not dead.’
‘You chased information down to Laguna Beach, up to Oregon and out to Tucson before coming here. What exactly led you here, to the woods across from Wade’s estate?’
‘You said Wade is the fourth musketeer, and the only one who is accessible.’
‘I meant, what caused you to drop everything in California and come back to Chicago?’
‘I wanted to see my mother.’
‘Liar.’
‘Well … I thought as long as I was back visiting Mama I’d have a preliminary look around, in advance of all the information you promised to give to me.’
‘And that’s why you didn’t let me know you were coming.’
‘You were on my call list. First, I phoned for Wade at his campaign headquarters but got dusted off, of course. Then I emailed Theresa Wade at that campaign office but never heard back from her either.’
‘What did you write to Theresa?’
‘That I was looking into her brother’s association with three men who came to bad ends out west.’
‘That was certainly subtle.’
‘I was hoping to jar her enough to reply. When she didn’t, I came up with the brilliant idea of finding others who might talk to me about Timothy Wade. I contacted Jimbo and we set up cameras across from Wade’s place. I assumed Wade had day help, people coming in to cook or to clean. If we could capture their license plate numbers, I could trace them and ask about Wade. Brilliant, huh?’
‘Are the cameras still there?’
‘Retrieving them was what got us into trouble. Jimbo had already taken down the one from the north side and put it in his car. He was taking down the center camera when we got jumped, so that camera got seized. The third, at the south edge, is still in the woods, though by now its battery will have run down.’
She pointed to a laptop computer on a dresser. ‘We’re about halfway through watching the footage from the first camera. So far, nobody came and nobody went.’
‘No day help at all?’
‘One grocery delivery left at the gate, which a guard took up to the front door, but nothing else for the two days we recorded.’
I looked at Jimbo. ‘You were able to drive yourselves away from there?’
He pointed at Jenny.
‘This is my story to tell, not my story to be,’ she said. ‘If I’d called cops or EMTs I’d have become the story, and that would tip the competition. I got us a mile away and pulled in at a gas station. I needed a safe place to recuperate and regroup. I called Frank. Frank called Stan. They brought us here, to Eloise.’
‘You could have called me,’ I said. ‘Matter of fact, that could have been your opportunity to alert me you were in Chicago.’
‘Yeah, and you would have said I got clobbered because I didn’t listen to you, and that I should stay away from the story, that it wasn’t ready yet, that you didn’t know what was going on, and I shouldn’t risk—’
‘Stop!’ I said, holding up my hand. ‘I understand.’
She smiled.
‘I don’t understand why you were a threat, even with cameras,’ I said. ‘Wade seemed almost too cooperative with me.’
She tried to lean forward but dropped back in pain. ‘You talked with him?’ she asked in a whisper.
‘He invited me to the house. I met with him. He was affable and accommodating. He became my best, sincerest buddy in just a few moments.’
‘Truthful?’
‘Seemingly. He said he thought Shea wanted to blackmail him, though he couldn’t imagine with what. He sent me to talk with the campaign’s security chief, a man named Jeffries, who told me Marilyn Paul intercepted Shea’s demand to speak to Wade. Marilyn confronted Shea, telling him she remembered him from the old Delman Bean campaign. Jeffries said everything ended when Shea got blown up. Case closed.’
‘Except judging by the confusion out in Laguna Beach, it wasn’t Shea who got blown up.’
‘It was Dainsto Runney, late of Reeder, as you’ve already guessed. You made quite an impression on the man by the ice house.’
‘A darling old man,’ she said. ‘You told Jeffries about Runney?’
‘I told him to call out to Laguna Beach, that there might be more to the blackmail story.’
‘How interested was Jeffries in Marilyn Paul’s killing?’
‘He doesn’t see any connection but he’s learned to look the other way. His job is to focus on the candidate. Still, Beech did tell me Jeffries called out there, though I think Beech shut him down and didn’t tell him anything.’
‘Since Shea’s still alive, he’s likely here in Chicago,’ she said, ‘continuing on with his blackmail plot?’
‘Maybe Halvorson’s here, too, but Jeffries insisted whatever blackmail attempt existed, it’s now over. No accomplice has come at them for blackmail.’
‘Unless the Wades aren’t being forthcoming with Jeffries.’ Then she said, ‘Speaking of other things, I also took blood scrapings in Halvorson’s Tucson house.’
‘They’re worthless. Red Halvorson’s sister-in-law said that other than her husband there were no other blood relatives. That means you have nothing to compare your scrapings to.’
‘Rats,’ she said, a half smile forming on her face.
‘Rats, indeed,’ I agreed.
‘I didn’t know there were no blood relatives when I flew to Tucson, obviously. I called the landlord and arranged to meet him at Halvorson’s house. He got there fast, thinking I was a buyer. He led me inside to look over the place. I remembered that you’d taken scrapings. I wanted some of my own. I’d come prepared with plastic bags and a small pen knife and headed straight for the kitchen. As soon as I knelt to take my samples, the owner started sputtering. I showed him my press pass and used my phone to bring up a video of me, on TV. I told him I was going to put him on the San Francisco news if he wasn’t cooperative, and that would get back to Tucson and jeopardize his ability to sell his house. He got talkative and told me interesting things about Gary Halvorson. Such as he’d never once set eyes on the man. Twenty years ago, Halvorson called, saying he’d driven past the place, seen the For Rent sign and wanted to take it, inside unseen. He said he’d send three months’ security deposit and two months’ rent upfront. The landlord asked what would happen if he didn’t like the place. The prospective tenant said he’d call back, but in any case the landlord was free to keep what was the equivalent of five months’ rent.’
‘This was about the same time Shea arrived in Laguna Beach and Runney showed up in Reeder?’ I asked.
‘Yes. And so it went with rent, for twenty years, without one word from the tenant, ever.’ Her smile had turned quizzical, perhaps taunting. ‘I told the landlord I’d heard he was secretive in removing garbage.’
‘Effective sleuthing on my part,’ I said.
She sighed. ‘Rats,’ she said again, watching my eyes.
‘Rats,’ I said, though suddenly I felt like I was looking clearly into a new, bright room. I understood.
‘You see, don’t you?’ she said anyway.
‘Halvorson never moved in,’ I said. ‘Only rats did, free to breed, because the house remained unoccupied for so many years.’
‘Generations and generations of them, the landlord admitted. Mice, too, but they weren’t survivors like the rats. That’s why the landlord didn’t leave the garbage bags around for anyone to poke through. He didn’t want a neighbor to tell a prospective buyer the house had been full of rats, rats he’d caught in traps that he must have set everywhere.’
‘And that’s why he scrubbed everything down with bleach. Rat waste.’
‘Enough to kill a sale, for sure,’ she said.
Eloise got up to stand between Jenny and me. ‘Visiting hours are over.’
‘You do see why I came to see the Wades in Chicago?’ Jenny asked me.
‘All those rats point to someone who had enough money to rent a house as a ruse for over twenty years,’ I said.
‘Oh, you’re so smart,’ she said.
‘Out,’ Eloise said, clearly not as impressed with my intellect.
I touched Jenny’s lovely cheek. ‘And also, someone with enough money to pay for new lives for Shea and Piser out west,’ I said.
‘And Halvorson somewhere else?’ Jenny asked.
Or nowhere else, I thought.