tuesday, may 1 8—lincoln prairie
There was a message from Thomas Newsome when Marti went upstairs after roll call. “Those windows were bricked up and that false ceiling put in on May twenty-ninth to the thirty-first, nineteen-forty-four,” she told Vik.
“I’ll make a note of that,” he said. “Put it right in with all of these other miscellaneous notes.”
She called the hospital. “Delilah has come out of the anesthesia, but she’s still sleeping. She’s holding her own. The nurse will talk to Cornelius’s doctor when he comes in and let us know when we can see him.”
Slim and Cowboy had come and gone. Vik brought her a cup of coffee. “What’s the word on Ben?”
“Surgery tomorrow,” Marti said. Tears sprang to her eyes as she said it. She wiped at them.
“I’ll let the sergeant know we won’t be in. If anything comes up he can reach me at the hospital and I’ll handle it. What time are they admitting him?”
“Six a.m.”
“How are the kids?”
“Not good.”
“Waiting’s the hard part. Knowing is easier.”
That sounded similar to what the patriarch had told her, but Vik would know that better than anyone. She said the Jesus prayer again. Such a simple prayer, but the patriarch was right, it calmed her.
“Marti,” Vik said, “you check your in-box yet?”
“No.”
“Check out the ballistic report on the gun!”
She found it. “Well I’ll be damned,” she said. It was the gun used to fire the bullet that killed the body in the closet.
“We should talk to Newsome,” Vik said. “But I don’t think he knows anything.”
“If we just had a little more information . . .”
“1 know. 1 know.”
“So what do you want to do?” Marti was feeling so lethargic she didn’t feel like doing anything.
“Let’s wait, talk to Cornelius. Those two know a lot more than they’ve been able to tell us. And Delilah can’t tell us anything right now.”
Marti checked her e-mail. Lieutenant Nicholson hadn’t sent her anything since she told her off last week. She wondered if she should worry about that and decided she had enough on her mind already. To hell with the lieutenant. Vik was still sending reports for both of them.
It was a little before noon when Vik got a call from the hospital. The doctor said they could speak with Cornelius. When they got there, they went up to Intensive Care to ask about Delilah first.
Sara came over to them. “She’s not talking yet, but she does open her eyes sometimes.”
Marti gave her a hug. “How are you doing?”
“I’m okay as long as she is. Akiro went to get us some lunch. I’m not leaving until I know for sure that she’s going to make it and she’s awake enough to see me and know who I am. The doctors are not making any promises, but the nurses say she’s improving. Lupe is in with her now. She stayed here with us last night.”
Marti waited until Lupe came out. She looked exhausted, but she was smiling. “She looked at me,” she told Sara. “I’m sure she knew who I was.”
Marti knew she should caution Lupe against getting so emotionally involved, but she did that herself. Instead she hugged her, gave Sara a hug, and went to the elevator.
Cornelius Jefferson was sitting up in bed when they got there. He had an IV drip with a smaller bag of medication attached, and was hooked up to a monitor. He looked so tired Marti felt bad about having to bother him.
She showed him the picture of Tamar and her husband.
“They was married?” Cornelius asked. “You’re sure?”
“Do you recognize him?
“That’s Edmund Newsome.”
“The youngest son?” Marti asked. “The one who went missing?”
“Yes. I thought she must have married Asher.”
“Back up,” Marti said. “First, how would Tamar know Edmund Newsome?”
“He’d come by to pick up Asher sometimes, or drop him off after work. They talked. I can’t say they knew each other that well. But that is Edmund Newsome in the picture.”
“And who’s Asher?”
Cornelius was silent for a moment. “He was just a boarder at my house. But my wife, and me, we didn’t have any kids. We kind of got close.” He closed his eyes.
Marti sat down beside the bed. Vik took the chair by the window and sat there scowling with his chin in his hand. His expression said, “Here we go again. More useless information.”
“Take your time, Mr. Jefferson,” she told him. “We’ve got all day. Don’t tire yourself out.”
“Asher was twenty-eight,” he said. “Tamar wasn’t but sixteen. Lila got married and pregnant at fifteen. Her husband was ten, twelve years older than she was. We both thought Asher and Tamar made a good match. We encouraged them. I think Lila just wanted Tamar to be safe, protected. Tamar was kind of willful. Me, I just didn’t want Asher to leave. He was as close to having a son as I ever got.”
He stopped talking again, closed his eyes, and rested for a few minutes.
“Soon as Lila got them to set a wedding date everything went wrong. October tenth, they was supposed to get married. All of a sudden Asher got this job offer in Michigan. He left in February, came back toward the end of May. Then he left again. That’s the last we ever saw of him. First time he left, he wrote Tamar just about every day. This time there was nothin’. Two months later Tamar was gone, too. Never did see her again either. She left her mother a note. Lila never did tell me what she said.”
He popped an ice chip into his mouth and closed his eyes. Marti had a lot of questions, but he sounded so tired she was afraid to ask them.
She got up. “Mr. Jefferson, we still need to talk with you. What if we leave now and come back in a couple of hours?” Eyes closed, he nodded. He was snoring softly when they left.
“Have you eaten today?” Vik asked.
Marti hadn’t.
“It’s lunchtime. I’m hungry. Let’s let the old man rest for a few hours. Did you note what he said about this Asher? We have to nail down the year, but the guy left the end of May. That building was bricked up the end of May. And he was twenty-eight, same as our skeletal remains.”
Marti nodded. She had caught the age, but hadn’t paid attention to the dates.
She ordered her usual at the Barrister, shepherd’s pie, but she just picked at it. Her stomach was churning. Vik watched her, but said nothing until they were back in the car.
“Best to keep busy,” he told her.
“The old man’s probably still sleeping,” she said. “He needs to rest. Let’s take a quick drive to the lake.”
She sat and looked at the water, blue near the shore, gray in the distance. “The sun’s out,” she said. She hadn’t noticed until now. The lake always soothed her. She had spent hours watching it after Johnny died. But Ben, he was going to be all right. He was. She watched the seagulls as they ran along the sand, sailed in wide circles above the water. When her stomach calmed down, she said the Jesus prayer again, then turned on the ignition.
Mr. Jefferson was awake when they returned. He seemed glad to see them again.
“Are you going to be here long?” Marti asked.
“For a couple more days at least. Going to be late getting the tomatoes in this year. Nurse says I can see Lila, maybe tomorrow or the next day. You seen her?”
Marti nodded.
“How’s she doin’?”
“Much better.”
“I know they ain’t tellin’ me everything. What happened to her?”
“Nothin’ much,” Marti lied. “She needed a little surgery. They’re watching her real close because of her age, same as you.”
He nodded.
“I need to ask you a few more questions about Asher.”
“I sure wish that was him in that picture. Hard not knowing what happened to him.” His voice sounded stronger than it had this morning.
Marti took the chair by the bed again. Vik returned to his seat by the window. He had his notebook out this time.
“What year was it the last time you saw him?”
“Nineteen-forty-four. Just before D-Day.”
“Do you know how tall he was? What he weighed?”
“He was about five feet nine inches. Not sure what he weighed. One sixty, one seventy. Hard to say, lot of muscle. He did odd jobs for Mr. Newsome at the construction sites, carrying stuff around, loading stuff. Hard work other folks didn’t want to do. Got paid half what white folks did, but money’s money.”
“Was he mixed?” Marti asked.
“Said his daddy was a white man. Didn’t come from here, came from up in Wisconsin. Came to Lincoln Prairie looking for work. Lot of coloreds living in the Bog back then. He asked around for a room to rent; folks sent him to me.” Cornelius smiled. “Good Christian man he was. Knew the Bible well as I did and my daddy was a preacher.” He stopped smiling. “At least that’s what I thought until yesterday.”
He was silent, sipped some water. “That Jenny. We was expecting Laura, his cousin. Least that’s what she told us. Seems she wasn’t. Asher already had a child by her while he was courtin’ Tamar.”
“Jenny?” Marti asked.
He nodded and was silent again.
“What about the jewelry?”
“Oh, that.” It came out like a sigh. He closed his eyes.
“If you’re too tired . . .”
“No. It’s got to be said.” But it was several minutes before he spoke again. Marti and Vik just waited.
“The jewelry,” he said finally. “Only way Tamar could have got it was from him. He gave me a pocket watch just before he left. Laura and Asher come and got it. They said she was his cousin. We didn’t know nothing about them having no child.”
“Do you know how he got the jewelry?”
“Don’t want to know, probably do. Asher got these packages from Warren Junior. The packages came to my house, he took them in to work, gave them to the old man. A couple of packages came after Warren Junior got himself killed. ’Fore he left, Asher was sportin’ these cuff links, big green stones, flashy just like the ring and the earrings Tamar’s daughter was wearing.” The old man sighed and closed his eyes. “I didn’t want to know. You know how it is when you don’t want something to be true? You make like it ain’t. But I knew. I did know. Even then. Wasn’t that much of a surprise when Asher’s daughter showed up yesterday. I just didn’t want to know, is all.”
“Just one more question, Mr. Jefferson: Why did Jennifer Hunt Cooper come here yesterday?”
“Because I called her. She kept in touch with Sadie. Old Sadie lives right down the street from us. ’Course when she come we thought she was Laura. Didn’t know then there was a child between Laura and Asher. Lila wanted to know what Tamar knew about how Asher got the jewelry, if Tamar was involved. She didn’t want Tamar’s daughter or granddaughter to be tainted by nothin’ Tamar did.”
“And this Jenny knew that?”
“I tol’ her on the phone. Used Sadie’s phone, ask her.”
He was quiet then. Marti looked at Vik. He nodded. They knew all they needed to know for now.
“Mr. Jefferson, is there anything we can do for you?” she asked. “Anything we can bring you?”
“Don’t need nothin’. But the company is good. I’m just tired is all. Has Lila seen her granddaughter yet?”
“Sara’s been here since yesterday. Spent the night.”
“Sara,” he said, and smiled.
“What about Thomas Newsome?” Marti asked on the way to the precinct.
“We know enough to put things together. We’ve got enough to close the case on the skeletal remains. There are no surviving eyewitnesses. There’s time to decide what to tell who.”
“And we can call the assistant state’s attorney,” Marti said. “I don’t think we’ll be needing a plea agreement. Cornelius and Delilah know too much. Cooper knew when she came here that she was going to have to kill them. I do wonder why she went after Savannah though. Maybe she thought she knew something, too. Maybe she thought Jones would hand everything over. She had no way of knowing about the gambling.”
“Maybe she just decided that since her father stole that jewelry, it belonged to her, so she took it anyway she could.”
“Maybe she did,” Marti agreed.
Marti heard from Josef that afternoon.
“We want to thank you for helping us recover that jewelry.”
“Your boss had that situation well in hand before we got there,” Marti told him.
“Yes, but it was a relief to him to have someone to give that gun to. I did want to tell you what I found out about the jewelry before we returned to Bucharest.”
Marti was curious.
“According to a knowledgeable source in Romania, Otto Von Weiss was commissioned to make this jewelry by people who did not expect to see their homeland again. That’s why he used the gems that he did. I am not sure that we will ever be able to identify whom they belonged to, but they are of historic significance.”
Marti thought about Tamar’s zirconia. Josef didn’t know about that. She would explain this to Sara, let her decide what to do.
“Thank you for telling me. It was puzzling. Oh, and please thank your boss for me.”
“For what?”
“He’ll know. My husband will have surgery tomorrow.”
“It is good that you told me. We will keep him in our prayers.”
“Thank you.” She was beginning to appreciate what Vik had once told her about how difficult it was to be there for Mildred, to watch and wait.
The call from the bank about her credit card came in just as Marti was getting ready to go home.
“Am I speaking with Marti MacAlister?”
“Yes, you are. Detective Marti MacAlister.”
“Well, that’s interesting. I’ve got someone on another line who claims to be you. She says she lost her credit card, knows the credit card number and your Social Security number but can’t remember the PIN number. She wants me to issue another card, but send it to a post office box in Chicago.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“No, ma’am. I’m not. She thinks I’m on another line trying to get my supervisor to authorize sending it to a post office box.”
“Good. I am going to put you through to the Identity Theft Division of the state’s attorney’s office. Here’s the direct line in case we get disconnected.”
“I’ll be damned,” she said when she hung up.
“What was that all about?” Vik asked.
“I was a mark,” she admitted, incredulous. “At the library. They left everything in my purse and copied down the information.”
Vik came close to smiling. “That was about the only lucky break we got on this one,” he admitted.
“What do you mean?”
“It got you focused on that jewelry, and the jewelry was the key to it all.”
Marti remembered Josef’s call. She had forgotten to tell Vik what he said.
“Guess what—” she began.