Sara Paretsky - A Woman’s Eye

I fumbled with the outer locks on the apartment building with my mind fixed on a hot bath, lots of whiskey, and a toasted cheese sandwich. When the ground-floor door opened and Mr. Contreras popped out to meet me, I ground my teeth. He’s a retired machinist with more energy than Navratilova. I didn’t have the stamina to deal with him tonight.

I mumbled a greeting and headed for the stairs.

“There you are, doll” The relief in his voice was marked. I stopped wearily. Some crisis with the dog. Something involving lugging a sixty-pound retriever to the vet through snow-packed streets.

“I thought I ought to let her in, you know. I told her there was no saying when you’d be home, sometimes you’re gone all night on a case”-a delicate reference to my love life-“but she was all set she had to wait and she’d’a been sitting on the stairs all this time. She won’t say what the problem is, but you’d probably better talk to her. You wanna come in here or should I send her up in a few minutes?”

Not the dog, then, “Uh, who is it?”

“Aren’t I trying to tell you? That beautiful girl You know, the doc’s niece.”

“Penelope?” I echoed foolishly.

She came out into the hall just then, ducking under the old man’s gesticulating arms. “Vic! Thank God you’re back. I’ve got to talk to you. Before the police do anything stupid.”

She was huddled in an ankle-length silver fur. Ordinarily elegant, with exquisite makeup and jewelry and the most modern of hairstyles, she didn’t much resemble her aunt. But shock had stripped the sophistication from her, making her dark eyes the focus of her face; she looked so much like Lotty that I went to her instinctively.

“Come on up with me and tell me what’s wrong.” I put an arm around her.

Mr. Contreras closed his door in disappointment as we disappeared up the stairs. Penelope waited until we were inside my place before saying anything else. I slung my jacket and down vest on the hooks in the hallway and went into the living room to undo my heavy walking shoes.

Penelope kept her fur wrapped around her. Her high-heeled kid boots were not meant for streetwear: they were rimmed with salt stains. She shivered slightly despite the coat.

“Have-have you heard anything?”

I shook my head, rubbing my right foot, stiff from driving all day.

“It’s Paul. He’s dead.”

“But-he’s not that old. And I thought he was very healthy.” Because of his sedentary job, Servino always ran the two miles from his Loop office to his apartment in the evening.

Penelope gave a little gulp of hysterical laughter. “Oh, he was very fit. But not healthy enough to overcome a blow to the head.”

“Could you tell the story from the beginning instead of letting it out in little dramatic bursts?”

As I’d hoped, my rudeness got her angry enough to overcome her incipient hysteria. After flashing me a Lotty-like look of royal disdain, she told me what she knew.

Paul’s office was in a building where a number of analysts had their practices. A sign posted on his door this morning baldly announced that he had canceled all his day’s appointments because of a personal emergency. When a janitor went in at three to change a light bulb, he’d found the doctor dead on the floor of his consulting room.

Colleagues agreed they’d seen Servino arrive around a quarter of eight, as he usually did. They’d seen the notice and assumed he’d left when everyone else was tied up with appointments. No one thought any more about it.

Penelope had learned of her lover’s death from the police, who picked her up as she was leaving a realtor’s office where she’d been discussing shop leases. Two of the doctors with offices near Servino’s had mentioned seeing a dark-haired woman in a long fur coat near his consulting room.

Penelope’s dark eyes were drenched with tears. “It’s not enough that Paul is dead, that I learn of it such an unspeakable way. They think I killed him-because I have dark hair and wear a fur coat. They don’t know what killed him-some dreary blunt instrument-it sounds stupid and banal, like an old Agatha Christie. They’ve pawed through my luggage looking for it.”

They’d questioned her for three hours while they searched and finally, reluctantly, let her go, with a warning not to leave Chicago. She’d called Lotty at the clinic and then come over to find me.

I went into the dining room for some whiskey. She shook her head at the bottle. I poured myself an extra slug to make up for missing my bath. “And?”

“And I want you to find who killed him. The police aren’t looking very hard because they think it’s me.”

“Do they have a reason for this?”

She blushed unexpectedly. “They think he was refusing to marry me.”

“Not much motive in these times, one would have thought And you with a successful career to boot. Was he refusing?”

“No. It was the other way around, actually. I felt-felt unsettled about what I wanted to do-come to Chicago to stay, you know. I have-friends in Montreal, too, you know. And I’ve always thought marriage meant monogamy.”

“I see.” My focus on the affair between Penelope and Paul shifted slightly. “You didn’t kill him, did you-perhaps for some other reason?”

She forced a smile. “Because he didn’t agree with Lotty about responsibility? No. And for no other reason. Are you going to ask Lotty if she killed him?”

“Lotty would have mangled him Sunday night with whatever was lying on the dining room table-she wouldn’t wait to sneak into his office with a club.” I eyed her thoughtfully. “Just out of vulgar curiosity, what were you doing around eight this morning?”

Her black eyes scorched me. “I came to you because I thought you would be sympathetic. Not to get the same damned questions I had all afternoon from the police!”

“And what were you doing at eight this morning?”

She swept across the room to the door, then thought better of it and affected to study a Nell Blaine poster on the nearby wall. With her back to me she said curtly, “I was having a second cup of coffee. And no, there are no witnesses. As you know, by that time of day Lotty is long gone. Perhaps someone saw me leave the building at eight thirty-I asked the detectives to question the neighbors, but they didn’t seem much interested in doing so.”

“Don’t sell them short. If you’re not under arrest, they’re still asking questions.”

“But you could ask questions to clear me. They’re just trying to implicate me.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to ease the dull ache behind my eyes. “You do realize the likeliest person to have killed him is an angry patient, don’t you? Despite your fears the police have probably been questioning them all day.”

Nothing I said could convince her that she wasn’t in imminent danger of a speedy trial before a kangaroo court, with execution probable by the next morning. She stayed until past midnight, alternating pleas to hide her with commands to join the police in hunting down Paul’s killer. She wouldn’t call Lotty to tell her she was with me because she was afraid Lotty’s home phone had been tapped.

“Look, Penelope,” I finally said, exasperated. “I can’t hide you. If the police really suspect you, you were tailed here. Even if I could figure out a way to smuggle you out and conceal you someplace, I wouldn’t do it-I’d lose my license on obstruction charges and I’d deserve to.”

I tried explaining how hard it was to get a court order for a wiretap and finally gave up. I was about ready to start screaming with frustration when Lotty herself called, devastated by Servino’s death and worried about Penelope. The police had been by with a search warrant and had taken away an array of household objects, including her umbrella. Such an intrusion would normally have made her spitting mad, but she was too upset to give it her full emotional attention. I turned the phone over to Penelope. Whatever Lotty said to her stained her cheeks red, but did make her agree to let me drive her home.