I called Anne Barberi at eight-thirty sharp the next morning.
‘No, I can’t remember where Benno went that evening,’ she said. ‘He attended so many dinners.’
‘Who has your husband’s appointments calendar?’
‘His secretary, I would imagine.’
‘Can you arrange for me to look at his appointment books for last year and the year before?’
‘What have you learned, Mr Elstrom?’
‘I’m casting a wide net, trying to gather as much information as I can.’
‘What do you suspect?’
‘I’ll tell you when what I suspect becomes what I believe. For now, tell me, was your husband taking much medication?’
‘Of course; several prescriptions. You’re wondering why they were ineffective, that last night?’
I was wondering if they’d been too effective, for a killer, but I couldn’t dare say that yet. ‘Sort of,’ I said instead. ‘Can you arrange for me to talk to his primary physician?’
‘As part of that mysterious wide-net business?’
‘Yes.’
‘Benno’s doctor is a close friend. I’ll have him call you.’
And he did, fifteen minutes later. ‘What’s this about, Elstrom?’
‘Was Benno Barberi taking any medication that, in larger than prescribed doses, could have killed him?’
The doctor paused, as he must have often, in this modern era of high-buck medical malpractice suits. And then he evaded. ‘Aspirin, taken in large doses, can kill you.’
‘Could Barberi have overdosed?’
‘The cause of his death was obvious to the EMTs: massive heart attack.’
‘He wasn’t autopsied?’
‘No need.’
‘If there were sufficient grounds, can he be autopsied now?’
‘Elstrom, you’re inferring something untoward? The EMTs would have noticed anything suspicious about Benno’s death, as would the emergency room personnel who pronounced him dead.’
‘Maybe they didn’t probe because his heart condition was well documented.’
‘My God, man; you’re insinuating he was deliberately overdosed?’
‘For now, it’s something to rule out.’
‘Who would benefit from his death? I don’t believe Benno had any enemies.’
There was no answering that yet, just as there seemed to be no reason to overdose Jim Whitman, a dying man.
‘I need your support to exhume Benno Barberi,’ I said.
‘Summon divine intervention instead. Benno was cremated and his ashes were scattered off his boat in Lake Michigan.’
Benno Barberi’s former secretary called twenty minutes after the doctor slammed down his phone. She was as crisp and as efficient as she’d been the first time we’d spoken. She told me I could come anytime. I left immediately.
She was waiting in the lobby. She was an austere but attractive brunette in her late thirties. If she’d been briefed by Barberi’s two sharply barbered assistants about my first visit, she didn’t show it. Certainly she did not glance down to see if any varnish or mustard remained on my blazer sleeve.
We went to the same small conference room where I’d met Jason and Brad. Two red leather appointment books sat on the small table.
‘I recorded all of Mr Barberi’s appointments,’ she said. ‘What are you looking for?’
‘Symmetry,’ I said.
‘I’m afraid I don’t understand,’ she said, ‘but that’s not necessary. Where shall we start?’
‘The day and evening of his fatal heart attack.’
She opened one of the books and started turning pages. ‘That would be October eleventh,’ she said, stopping at the page. She turned the book around so I could see.
The page was crammed with entries, beginning at seven-thirty in the morning and ending with a notation at five-thirty that read: ‘Emerson.’ Nothing was posted for the evening.
‘What’s Emerson?’ I asked.
‘Emerson is a fitness trainer. Three times a week, Mr Barberi took light exercise, as prescribed by his physician.’
I pulled out my note pad. ‘Where’s the health club?’ I asked.
She smiled. ‘In the basement here. Mr Emerson is on staff for our senior executives.’
‘Of course,’ I said, like I had the lifestyle that would have presumed that. I pointed to the bottom of the calendar page. ‘There’s nothing written for the evening, yet his wife told me he’d gone out to dinner.’
‘I wondered about that.’ She looked down at the book. ‘He didn’t tell me of a dinner engagement, and that was a rarity. His evenings were as busy as his days, and he expected me to keep track of his after-hours obligations as well.’
I started turning the pages backwards. She was right; every one of his evenings, Monday through Saturday, had a notation penned in her handwriting. I didn’t find a blank, working-day evening until I’d gone back to August 9.
It, too, had been the second Tuesday of the month.
I turned the book to show her. ‘Nothing here, either.’
‘I guess he forgot to tell me his plans then, as well.’
I continued backwards through the book quickly, growing more certain. And all were there. Or rather, they were not: The evenings of the second Tuesdays in June, April and February had been left blank. I picked up the calendar for the preceding year. It was the same. Benno Barberi had listed no evening appointments for any second Tuesday in February, April, June, August, October or December for two years.
Second Tuesdays, even-numbered months. I closed the second calendar and stood up.
‘Did you find what you were looking for?’
‘I don’t—’
‘I know: you don’t know.’ Her smile was tight and telling. She knew I’d spotted something.
I could only smile back. She walked me downstairs to the fitness center in the basement. Rudy Emerson, dressed in gray sweats, could have been forty or sixty, and looked like he’d never gotten outside a Twinkie in his life.
He remembered his last session with Benno Barberi. ‘Of course I knew about his heart. Like always, there was no unusual exertion that day. I started him with easy stretching exercises, we moved to the light weights, and finished with more stretching. Thirty minutes, easy does it. He left here feeling good, looking good.’
‘Looking good?’ I asked.
‘Same suit, but a fresh shirt and a different tie.’
‘He sounded good, too? No disorientation, no signs of physical distress?’
‘Whatever he ate that night might have killed him, but I guar-antee it wasn’t the exercise he got here.’
‘He didn’t happen to mention where he was headed?’
Rudy Emerson shook his head. ‘Not for a heart attack, that’s for sure.’
Barberi’s secretary left me in the lobby. Walking out, I had the thought to turn around and look back. Like the last time I’d left Barberi Holdings, I caught sight of a young man in a dark suit watching me. It could have been Brad; it could have been Jason; it could have been someone else, similarly barbered. Whoever he was, he must have caught sight of me looking back, because he quickly moved from sight.
The Rivertown chip pressed down a little on my shoulder, suggesting a little show. I took a leisurely stroll down the rows of the cars parked in the lot.
There were six of the junior-grade black BMWs, each identical to the one that had tailed me at least twice.
A tailing car need not be driven by a killer, I told myself.
Nor did it need be driven by an innocent, either.
I spent a showy moment in front of each car’s license plate, writing its number in the little spiral notebook I always carry. Then, back in the Jeep, I checked my cell phone before I started the car, wanting whoever might still be watching to think I was running the plate numbers I’d just written down. And maybe later I’d get a cop friend to do just that. For now, I had other things to think about.
Amanda had left fresh, furious messages, demanding to know why I had not returned any of her calls. Leo offered to buy lunch. And the Bohemian had asked me to call right away. I thumbed his number.
There was no booming ‘Vlodek’ to begin the conversation, but there was a chuckle, of sorts. ‘Arthur Lamm is still missing,’ he said.
‘You don’t sound worried.’
‘Perhaps because his absence has become even more explainable. The IRS began investigating him last fall.’
‘For what?’
‘Unreported income from insurance irregularities.’
‘Insurance? I thought the guy was in real estate.’
‘Arthur might have the longest tentacles of those in the heavy cream. He acts as a broker, selling large office buildings. Then he negotiates to become its property manager. To top it all off, he gets the property owner to buy the building’s insurance from his agency.’
‘An IRS investigation wouldn’t make a guy like Lamm run into the woods,’ I said.
‘Of course, unless his battery of high-priced attorneys told him to get lost until they could work something out with the Feds.’
‘Or unless he committed big-time fraud?’ I asked. ‘Such things can attract long prison sentences. In which case, he wouldn’t run off into the woods of Wisconsin. He’d flee the country, go someplace where he can’t be extradited.’
‘Look, we already know his rowboat and fishing gear are all gone, and that his cottage is on a string of lakes,’ the Bohemian said. ‘I suppose we could see something clandestine in that. I guess it’s possible he could have headed north to Canada, and from there gone overseas.’
‘Or he’s staged things, leaving a false trail to buy time to leave the country another way.’
‘This might be of interest to some of his associates,’ the Bohemian said. ‘Those in the heavy cream often cross-invest in each other’s companies.’
‘You want me to look more deeply into it?’
‘I want you to be ready.’