Kelson sat in his car in front of the bungalow and dialed Genevieve Bower’s number.
It rang four times and bounced to voicemail.
‘What the hell?’ Kelson said to the recorder. ‘What’s with JollyOllie and G&G? You don’t – you don’t drag me into something like this without telling me. People like Chip Voudreaux and Sylvia Crane don’t care about you and your shoes and your screwball boyfriend and your – Jesus Christ, just call me.’ He hung up, stared at his phone, then called her again and managed to stay calm. ‘All right,’ he told the recorder. ‘Part two. I get it now. You told G&G about Marty. That’s how they got in touch with him and how he gave them Neto and how Neto got blown up in the library. And Marty mentioned me to you. That’s how you called me and I got busted at Big Pie Pizza and all the rest. So that fits. But how does Jeremy Oliver come into it? I guess what I’m asking is, what’s on the thumb drive?’
He hung up again, then looked through his call history until he found Bruce McCall’s number. He dialed it.
McCall answered, and Kelson said, ‘I talked with you before about Jeremy Oliver and the garage he rented from you.’
‘How could I forget?’ McCall said.
‘Why didn’t you tell me your wife’s the daughter of the owner of G&G Private Equity?’
McCall sounded impatient. ‘What does Sylvia have to do with it?’
Kelson barked a laugh. ‘Wait, your wife is Sylvia Crane?’
‘Of course.’
‘God help you, you like them mean.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Me too. The meaner, the better. Sexy, right? My ex-wife—’
‘I’m going to hang up now,’ McCall said.
But the synapses in Kelson’s broken brain were firing free. ‘Does her dad look like a weird old blue-eyed ostrich – with a beak of a nose?’
McCall hung up.
Kelson breathed in deep, breathed out long, and dialed again.
‘How does the family know Genevieve Bower?’ he said when McCall picked up.
‘Who?’
‘Dammit, you don’t see a woman like her and forget her. You just don’t.’
McCall hung up again.
‘Dammit,’ Kelson said.
He called Rodman, catching him in his car, and told him about the connection between Jeremy Oliver and the investment firm.
‘Yeah,’ Rodman said, ‘makes sense.’
‘It does?’
‘Sure. Marty keeps screwed-up company. He’s a great friend, but hanging with him’s like climbing into a bag of spiders. His heart’s in the right place, though.’
‘Next time, remind me not to hang with him.’
‘Your heart’s in the right place too,’ Rodman said. ‘What’re you up to now?’
‘Trying to pull spiders out of my hair. Soon as I can, I’ll talk to Genevieve Bower – make her tell me what’s on the thumb drive and what this is all about. Meantime, I’ll track down Oliver’s friend Zoe Simmons.’
‘Careful,’ Rodman said. ‘If G&G’s involved in what happened to Oliver, they’re showing their teeth.’
‘What are you up to?’ Kelson asked.
‘Heading to U of C,’ he said. ‘Janet called. She thinks Neto’s going down for the count.’
‘It all crashes,’ Kelson said.
‘Some days are like that.’
‘Some lives,’ Kelson said.
Next, Kelson dialed directory assistance and got the phone number to Rick Oliver’s greystone on Roscoe. He called and the boyfriend said Rick had gone out. So Kelson talked to the boyfriend for a while. He told him about Genevieve Bower hiring him, about finding Jeremy Oliver dead in the attic apartment, about Genevieve Bower showing up in his office with a black eye and bruises – and about how locating Zoe Simmons might help stop the pain. He told him about Neto taking the G&G job and getting blown up and probably dying at the hospital – and about how locating Zoe Simmons might ease that pain too, since she was connected to JollyOllie and therefore Genevieve Bower, and so on. He told him about Sue Ellen and the kittens spending too much time alone since he was busy with these tangled cases – and about how locating Zoe Simmons might also allow him to spend more time with them.
The boyfriend could have hung up. He could have told Kelson to shut his mouth. Instead, he asked, ‘Do most people think you’re a dumbshit?’
‘Some do,’ Kelson said. ‘Not many.’
‘Zoe lives in the house next door to ours,’ the boyfriend said. ‘She was watching out the window the whole time you talked to Richard.’
‘I didn’t see her,’ Kelson said.
‘I know. Do you miss a lot?’
‘Some,’ Kelson said.
A half hour later, when Kelson knocked on Zoe Simmons’s door, a skinny woman with black hair answered. Kelson looked at her shoes. Pink with carpet patches stuck on the sides. ‘Jimmy Choos,’ he said.
She laughed. She had a crooked smile, as if something had happened to her jaw.
‘You’re pretty anyway,’ he said.
The crooked smile did something mischievous. ‘Not you. What happened?’ She gestured at the scar above his eye.
‘A kid shot me.’
‘Ouch.’
‘Yep. Are you Zoe Simmons?’
She did a weird half curtsy. ‘Speaking.’ She turned and walked into the house, leaving the door open. He followed her into a living room furnished with cheap chairs, a cheap table, and a futon couch of the kind college kids have – and thirty-year-olds still trying to earn enough to replace their college furniture. She sat on the futon and swung her fake Jimmy Choos over the side.
He said, ‘I’m—’
‘The guy pestering Rick a while ago. I know – I saw you.’
‘Rick’s boyfriend told me you live here, when I called.’
‘Because I told him to tell you when he said you asked about Jeremy and Genevieve. I’ve been friends with Rick all my life. We lived three houses away when I was growing up, and look at us now – next-door neighbors again.’ She had the affected, showy voice of a bad actor. ‘But Jeremy is only friends with Jeremy. Do I like him? No. But do I want him dead? No. Am I sorry if he really is dead – and by the way, you’re the only one who’s said so? Sure. Do I want him alive the same way I want everyone else alive, because death sucks? Yeah. But will I cry a lot if he’s gone? Not much. Jeremy’s always been a jerk. I never talked to him except he wanted something from me.’
Kelson clapped once because he thought she was performing for him. ‘Did he ever mention a business called G&G?’
‘If it didn’t have the word “gimme” attached to it, he didn’t say it.’
‘When did you last talk?’
‘That’s why I told Rick’s boyfriend to tell you where to find me. Eight days ago, Jeremy came by and I thought right away he wanted something. But he gave me these.’ She pointed the toes of the fake Jimmy Choos at Kelson. ‘Jeremy never gave me anything before – and then, magic slippers, right?’
‘What did he want from you?’
‘Nothing – or almost nothing, which freaked me out, like he was going to tell me he was pregnant with my baby. He just wanted me to hold on to a thumb drive.’
Kelson blinked. ‘Give it to me.’
‘What?’
‘Sorry. Is it red? Can I see it? It’s Genevieve Bower’s. She hired me to get it back.’
‘That’s the thing. He changed his mind. I asked what was on it, and he got squirrelly and said he’d keep it. He didn’t even ask for the shoes back. That was a new Jeremy. Next thing I knew, he disappeared, and now you say he’s dead.’
‘He didn’t let you see what was on it?’
‘He didn’t even let me touch it.’
Kelson pushed for information about where Oliver might have hidden the thumb drive, and when she said she didn’t know, he gave her a card and asked her to call if she thought of anything. Then she invited him to a performance of Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard at the Rat and Thimble Theater in the Back of the Yards neighborhood. She was playing Anya. All of the actors were wearing black leather, and Anya’s love interest Peter Trofimov would ride on to stage on a Harley-Davidson.
Kelson walked out to his car. He leaned against the hood and dialed Genevieve Bower.
Again the call went to voicemail.
‘Part three,’ he said to the recorder. ‘I’m waiting for your call. I want to know about you and G&G. No lies. Part four. I talked to Rick Oliver and Zoe Simmons about the thumb drive. Unless you can give me something, I’m looking at a wall.’
He got into the car and started the engine, but before he could pull from the curb, his phone rang.
He snatched it to his ear. ‘About time. Tell me about G&G.’
But Rodman spoke to him – gentle, calm, sad. ‘Neto’s gone, man.’
‘Shit,’ Kelson said, and cut the engine.
‘Yeah, shoulder deep.’
‘Marty needs to know.’
‘I should do it,’ Rodman said, ‘but I’ve got to stay here awhile. Janet’s in pieces.’
‘I don’t want to picture that,’ Kelson said. ‘I’ll tell him.’
‘You sure you’re up to it?’
‘I know I’m not.’