Max Collins - Chicago Lightning

Gently as I could, I said, “I might have a couple questions for him, at that, Mrs. Stemmer. Would you and Sally wait here, just a moment? Don’t go anywhere, please…”

I went inside and found Mullaney and Cullen in the living room, contemplating the tape outline. Things were obviously winding down; the crime scene boys were packing up their gear, and most of the detectives were already gone.

“Button button,” I said to them. “Who’s got the button?”

Cullen glared at me, but Mullaney only smiled. “The brown button, you mean? Cullen, didn’t you collect that?”

The captain reached a hand into his suitcoat and came back with the brown button and held out the blood-caked item in his palm.

“You want this, Heller?”

“Yeah,” I said, marveling at the evidence-collecting protocol of the Chicago Police Department, “just for a minute….”

I returned to Mrs. Stemmer, under the tree, an arm around her niece.

“Couple questions about your husband,” I said.

“Why don’t you just talk to him?” she asked, clearly exasperated.

“I will. I’m sorry. Please be patient. Does your husband have a coat that matches those pants he’s wearing?”

“Well…yes. Maybe. Why?”

“Isn’t wearing it today, though.”

“It’s warm. Why would he wear it…?”

“Could this button have come off that jacket?”

She looked at it. “I don’t know1;

Quietly, I said, “When did you say your husband started his new job?”

“Last week.”

“But he didn’t have to go to work today?”

“No…no. He had some things to do.”

“Does he normally get Fridays off?”

“I don’t know. He just started, I told you.”

“So it’s unlikely he’d be given a day off….”

“Why don’t you ask him ?”

“Mrs. Stemmer, forgive me, but…does your husband have a gambling problem?”

She drew in breath, but said nothing. And spoke volumes.

I ambled over to the tall, broad-shouldered man leaning against the Ford.

“Mr. Stemmer? My name’s Heller.”

He stood straight now, folded his arms, looked at me suspiciously through sleepy eyes. He’d been out of earshot when I spoke to his wife, but could tell I’d been asking her unpleasant questions.

“Why were you bothering my wife? Are you one of these detectives?”

“Yeah. Private detective.”

He batted the air with a big paw. “You’re nobody! I don’t have to talk to you.”

“Private detective,” I picked up, “who followed Rich Miller to the track most of this week.”

“…What for?”

“For Rose’s husband-he thought she and Miller were playing around.”

He snorted a laugh. “Only thing Richie Miller plays is the nags.”

“And you’d know, right, Ray? See, I saw you and your buddy Richie hanging out together at Washington Park. You were betting pretty solid, yourself. Not big dough, but you were game, all right.”

“So what?”

“Well, for one thing, your wife thinks you started a new job last week.”

The sleepy eyes woke up a little. “And I guess in your business, uh…Heller, is it? In your business, you never ran across an instance of a guy lying to his wife before, huh?”

“You like the nags, too, don’t you, Stemmer? Only you don’t like to get nagged-and I bet Rose Vinicky nagged the hell out of you to pay back that three hundred. Did she hold back from your paycheck, too?”

He shook his head, smiled, but it was sickly. “Rose was a sweetheart.”

“I don’t think so. I think she was a hardass who maybe even shorted a guy when he had his hard-earned money coming. Her husband loved her, but anybody working for her? She gladly give them merry hell. She was that kind of nagrry hell. p›

A sneer formed on his face, like a blister. “I don’t have to talk to you. Take a walk.”

He shoved me.

I didn’t shove back, but I stood my ground; somebody gasped behind me-maybe Doris Stemmer, or the girl.

“You knew about that money, didn’t you, Stemmer? The money Rose was going to use to treat your wife to a Hollywood trip. And you could use eleven-hundred bucks, couldn’t you, pal? Hell, who couldn’t!”

He shoved me again. “You don’t take a goddamn hint , do you, Heller?”

“Here’s a hint for you: when a bookie like Goldie gets paid off, right before the legbreakers leave the gate? That means somebody finally had a winner.”

His face turned white.

“Sure, she let her brother-in-law in the front door,” I said. “She may have had you pegged for the kind of welsher who stiffs his own sister-in-law for a loan, but she probably thought she was at least safe with you, alone in her own house. That should’ve been a sure bet, right? Only it wasn’t. What did you use? A sash weight? A crowbar?”

This time he shoved me with both hands, and he was trying to crawl in on the rider’s side of the Ford, to get behind the wheel, when I dragged him out by the leg. On his ass on the grass, he tried to kick me with the other leg, and I kicked him in the balls, and it ended as it had begun, with a scream.

All kinds of people, some of them cops, came running, swarming around us with questions and accusations. But I ignored them, hauling Stemmer to his feet, and jerking an arm around his back, holding the big guy in place, and Cullen believed me when I said, “Brother-in-law did it,” taking over for me, and I quickly filled Mullaney in.

They found four hundred and fifteen bucks in cash in Stemmer’s wallet-what he had left after paying off the bookie.

“That’s a lot of money,” Mullaney said. “Where’d you get it?”

“I won it on a horse,” Stemmer said.

Only it came out sounding like a question.

After he failed six lie detector tests, Raymond Stemmer confessed in full. Turned out hardnosed businesswoman Rose had quietly fired Stemmer when she found out he’d been stealing furniture from their warehouse. Rich Miller had told Rose that Ray was going to the track with him, time to time, so she figured her brother-in-law was selling the furniture on the side to play the horses. She had given him an ultimatum: pay back the three hundred dollars, and what the furniture was worth, and Rose would not tell her sister about his misdeeds.

Stemmer had stopped by the house around nine thirty and told Rose he’d brought her the money. Instead, in the living room, as she reached for her already burning cigarette, he had paid her back by striking her in the back of the head with a wrench.

Amazingly, she hadn’t gone down. She’d staggered, knocked the ashtray to the floor, only to look over her shoulder at him and say, “You have the nerve to hit me ?”

And he found the nerve to hit her again, and another ten times, where she lay on the floor.

He removed the woman’s diamond wedding ring, and went upstairs and emptied the wallet. All of this he admitted in a thirty-page statement. The diamond was found in a toolbox in his basement, the wrench in the Chicago River (after three hours of diving). His guilty plea got him a life sentence.

About a week after I’d found Rose Vinicky’s body, her husband called me at my office. He was sending a check for my services-the five days I’d followed Miller-and wanted to thank me for exposing his brother-in-law as the killer. He told me he was taking his daughter to California on the trip her mother had promised; the sister-in-law was too embarrassed and distraught to accept Vinicky’s invitation to come along.

“What I don’t understand,” the pitiful voice over the phone said, “is why Rose was so distant to me, those last weeks. Why she’d acted in a way that made me think-”

“Mr. Vinicky, your wife knew her sister’s husband was a lying louse, a degenerate gambler, stealing from the both of you. That was what was on her mind.”