SUNDAY, MAY 9—LINCOLN PRAIRIE
When Marti woke up Sunday morning, the sun wasn’t shining, but the rain had stopped and the sky looked as if it might be clearing. The Anstandt Expressway would be open to traffic today. The film crew packed up and left late last night. The Des Plaines River had crested two feet below predicted levels. Were it not for Savannah Jones’s body, still in the morgue, and Ben’s PSA test results still pending, and a skeleton they might never be able to identify, things would be returning to normal.
Loud voices followed by laughter reminded her that the boy scouts were still here, but their parents would be picking them up by noon. To Marti’s surprise she realized she would miss them. Not that she wanted to be greeted by the sound of fifteen boys every morning, but this made her think of the time when her home would be quiet, her children in college or married, her weekdays and weekends undisturbed until grandchildren came along.
When Ben came in to see if she was awake, she said, “What will we do when the house is quiet most of the time?”
“Make our own music,” he replied and leaned down to kiss her.
The house was quiet when the sergeant called. Tyler’s mother wanted to speak to her. She said it was important. Marti took down the number and returned her call.
“C. J. was here this weekend,” she said. “There’s something Tyler needs to tell you.”
Marti met Vik in front of Tyler’s house. This time, when they went into the sunroom, there was no hot cocoa. Tyler didn’t look at them. His parents, although not obviously angry, were clearly displeased.
“Here it is,” Tyler said. He opened his hand. An earring just like the one Savannah Jones was wearing in her photographs was in his palm.
Marti looked at it but didn’t touch it. Even in color, a photograph could not have captured the intricate design of the gold setting for the yellow stone. She took a closer look, saw the tiny rosettes among the golden swirls.
“C. J. gave it to him for safekeeping and he took it,” Tyler’s mother said. “Tyler was supposed to hide it for him.” She looked down at the boy. “I don’t know how many times I’ve told you that real friends do not encourage you to do things that are wrong.”
Vik sat down beside Tyler. “Where did C. J. get this, son?” He spoke in a quiet, soothing voice that Marti seldom heard.
Tyler choked back a sob. “From the woman in the water.”
“Did you know about this on Wednesday?”
“No. I only saw him yelling and trying to swim.”
“Did he tell you how he got it?”
“Not exactly, just that he saw it first, caught on a piece of net. Then when he took it he saw her hair and her head.”
“And when did he give it to you?”
“Yesterday, while we were at the movie.”
“They were just here for the day,” Tyler’s mother explained. She still sounded upset.
“And when did you tell your parents you had this?” Vik asked.
“Not till this morning.”
“And why not?” Tyler’s mother demanded.
His father patted her on the shoulder. “He’s just a boy, Marge. He’s done the right thing. It’s better that he thought about it and made a right decision than kept it to himself because he was afraid of how we would react.” Tyler’s mother sagged against her >husband. Marti didn’t need an explanation. The influence other children had on your child was always a concern.
“You do the best you can,” Marti told her. “It sounds to me like you’re both doing the right thing.” That seemed to make Tyler’s mother feel better. She was warming milk for cocoa when Vik and Marti left.
They drove to C. J.’s address in Lake Forest. It was on the west side of Route 43.
“New money,” Vik commented.
“Lottery money,” Marti reminded him.
All of the houses were similar, multilevel gray brick with attached three-car garages. The streets were named for trees. C. J. lived on Boxwood. The pink Harley-Davidson was parked in the circular driveway alongside an identical cobalt blue motorcycle.
Vik paused to look at them. “I wonder how many suckers spent the rent money to help pay for this.”
Cecil Slocum Senior admitted them to the foyer and left them standing there while he went to get Junior. Neither the marble floor nor the multitiered chandelier impressed Marti. She could hear children arguing, then a sharp slap followed by crying.
When Mr. Slocum returned, C. J. was with him. The boy with the crew cut and the ponytail gave them a belligerent stare. Marti almost expected him to stick out his tongue but he did not.
“Did you give something to Tyler yesterday for safekeeping?” Vik asked.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“What is this?” his father asked. “Harassment? C. J. told you everything he knew about what happened.”
Vik took the earring out of his pocket.
“I never saw it before,” the boy said before Vik could speak.
“Look, son,” Vik said, “we’re not here to get you into any trouble. It’s just important that we know where this came from.”
“You can’t arrest me, can you?”
“We won’t arrest you,” Vik promised. “There’s something we call a chain of evidence. That means as something goes from one >person to another, we know who each of those people are. It’s very important to our investigation. That’s why we need your help.”
The boy looked at his father. Cecil Senior gave the slightest nod.
“There was some kind of net. That was caught in it. I saw that before I saw her. I reached for it, that’s when I saw her hand and her face.” The boy squeezed his eyes shut as if he was trying to block out the memory.
“Thank you,” Vik said. “That’s all we needed to know. And you’ve been a really big help.”
The boy seemed to be standing taller when they left, almost as if he was proud.
“Heads, she went into the river with the jewelry on,” Vik said as they returned to Lincoln Prairie. “Tails, someone took it but couldn’t get this earring off.”
“Brooches can’t unpin themselves and rings don’t just slip off your finger. This is a clip-on earring. And there’s no way she would have put everything but one earring in her purse.”
“There were no signs of a struggle. She must have given everything to whoever it was, or tried to.”
“This earring is exquisite,” Marti said. “And according to Sara, the three pieces were a matched set, but I don’t think whoever killed Savannah went through all that trouble to set her up just to take some costume jewelry. They could have mugged her at that motel, broke into her room, strong-armed her maybe, taken what they wanted.”
“Maybe whoever did it just didn’t want any witnesses,” Vik concluded. “Maybe he wondered if she would float with her head bashed in. Ask the average killer why he killed somebody and you get an answer that doesn’t make any sense to sane people. Why should there be anything logical about this?”
Back in the office, Marti wondered what would happen if there was a little indirect publicity. She called Ed Gilbreth and asked if he might be able to get one of the still shots of Savannah in to >morrow’s News-Times. A profile shot would include the earring without calling attention to it.
“She’s yesterday’s news,” Ed told her. “If she had a recurring, nonspeaking, walk-on role in a television series, or did just one commercial, it would be different. But nobody is going to recognize her. Nobody is going to care much that she’s dead. Maybe when you know who killed her and why, but you’re not there yet, are you?”
Marti decided against mentioning the family jewels. “Something in the newspaper might flush them out.”
“She’s not a local. Something on that national television show that helps catch killers might work.”
While they were on the phone, Ed asked her to agree on a time this evening when he could do a phone interview. Ben’s chief and Frank Winan had okayed it. Marti teased Gilbreth about not wasting any time and consulted with Ben, who agreed to get it over with tonight. The thought of the impact an interview could have on Lieutenant Nicholson was too strong to resist, but, if she waited, Nicholson might find a way to sabotage it.
Next, Marti put in a call to John Doggett, curator of the local museum. He suggested visiting a couple of jewelers in Chicago who could tell her not just the value, but also the history of the earring. And no, he had not found any photographs of the building where the skeletal remains had been found. Nor had he had much time to look for them. He had received additional memorabilia relevant to the Geneva Theater and was busy arranging a more significant display in an upstairs hallway.