Madeline Mann (17 page)

“That's not very comforting,” I said, surprised.

“You're looking for a murderer,” she said. “I hope I find him first, but if you do…just make sure you have a backup plan.”

“Yeah. Okay,” I said. “Oh, and I have the tape for you. Remember, the one I called about?”

Perez nodded, and I jogged to my car to retrieve the cassette. She stayed where she was. “Like I said,” I said, running back to her with my evidence, “my brother taped over anything useful, but at least it establishes that Logan wanted me as sort of a protection plan. Kind of a sophomoric one.”

“Right,” she said, looking at the tape.

“And you can hear Logan's voice,” I added. I wasn't sure why I'd said that, but it earned an interesting expression from Perez. She lifted her head and looked surprised, as if she heard distant music. Then the cop look came back.

She told me that she'd be in town a few more days and that she'd be at the funeral on Thursday. In the meantime, she said, I should hold on to her card, which had her cell phone number on it.

I waved as she drove away. I got into my own car and opened up the doughnuts. I remembered Perez's warning. If one's days are numbered, one should appreciate life's little joys.

I'd
wanted to go to Saugatuck to scope out Quinn Paley's cabin and to grab a sample of the pretty leaf I'd seen growing there. But now Perez had suggested that it was under control, that he was being watched. Maybe the police had their own little sting operation. I certainly didn't want to mess up a drug bust. Had they been there the night Jack and I were there? Had they taken our license plate number? Had I looked like a customer, creeping up to the door in the darkness? Oh God.

I sat in the car, munching a doughnut and trying to decide what to do. A Corvette drove by. I sat up, tossed my doughnut into the box, and started my engine. It had been a black Corvette in Quinn Paley's driveway, new and shiny like the one that had just slid past on Longcommon Road. I pulled out of the parking lot. It couldn't be the same car; it was most likely just a coincidence. Yet the vibes I'd felt were so strong I had to pursue them.

I caught up with the car at a red light near Main Street. It wasn't Paley behind the wheel; the driver was too short. I followed it another few blocks, until I found myself back in front of city hall.
Weird
, I thought. Then the driver emerged, proving to be none other than Fawn Paley, dressed in jeans, a SpongeBob sweatshirt, and cross-trainers. She parked in the last legal spot in front of the building, then hopped out and climbed the stairs.

If I'd been a daring detective, I would have double-parked and followed her. As it was, I went around back and found a spot in the parking lot. I dashed into the building and went from floor to floor, scanning. I didn't find her.

I saw my mother on the stairs. “Mom,” I whispered, “did you see a girl, a teenage girl with jeans and a SpongeBob sweatshirt, come in here? Thin, pretty? Maybe talking to—” I stopped. To whom might she have been talking? I had no idea.

My mother sighed. “Madeline, you are here too often. I thought you were going to pursue other things? And no, I didn't see this girl. Let me get back to work. Mayor Paul is not in a good mood.” She gave me a significant look that meant,
And
it's your fault
, and walked on, tapping away up the stairs on her sensible black heels.

After a continued search, I went back to the front door to see if Fawn's car was still there. It was. I sighed. The best thing, I supposed, was to wait until she came out again, then follow her until I could determine what she was up to.

I returned to the lot in the back; to my surprise, Fawn was there, leaning uncertainly on a blue Taurus. “Hi, Fawn,” I said. “I don't know if you remember me—”

“Madeline,” she said. “And I saw you following me.”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry. I was just surprised to see you in Webley. And I'm surprised to see you here.”

She shrugged. “There were some things I needed to do. I like to come here sometimes. We visited Logan here once or twice, and I like the town. I'm thinking of going to St. Fred's. I sent them an application.”

“Well, that's great. I went there too,” I said brightly. “Majored in English.”

Fawn had nothing to say about this. She was looking past me at the back entrance to city hall and biting at nails that didn't have much more to give.

“So what brings you to this building?” I asked casually.

She shrugged again, removing her savaged nails from her mouth. “I know some people here. From knowing Logan. I was just saying hi.”

“You didn't have school today?”

She gave me a look that effectively ended that line of questioning.

“So how long will you be in town?”

“Don't know.” I was guessing she wasn't going to major in communications at St. Fred's.

“It was nice of Quinn to let you use the car,” I said.

She looked nervous. “He sort of doesn't know. I'll probably have it back in time.”

I nodded. “Well, I guess I'll see you around, Fawn.”

She called after me. “You shouldn't think my brother had anything to do with Logan. I mean Logan dying.”

I turned back to her. She looked pale, as usual, but perhaps a bit sick as well.

“Why do you think I suspect your brother?”

“You've got a real expressive face,” she said.

Damn my expressive face
, I thought disgustedly.

“You don't have to be mad,” Fawn said. “Your boyfriend looked suspicious too. But Quinn isn't the lowlife people think he is.”

Interesting. My antennae came up. “Who thinks he's a lowlife?”

“You do. My brother's a good person.”

“I'm sure he is,” I lied.

“I'll prove it to you,” she said. “I'll prove it to all of you.”

I
sat in my car and waited, the heater blasting and the radio on. Soon enough a car pulled out of the lot. Don Paul was at the wheel, and Fawn was in the passenger seat. “Hel—lo!” I said, sliding into traffic behind them.

I kept two cars between us, but it was easy enough to keep up with Don Paul's black Caddy. At the Metra tracks, the lights were flashing. Don Paul bolted through just as the gates were coming down.

“Damn!” I yelled, smacking the steering wheel.

It was an express train, gone in a flash, but by the time the gates had lifted and traffic began to slug forward, I had lost them.

fifteen

Fritz, as usual,
was touching everything in my apartment. Since his hands were covered with pizza grease, I was getting a little edgy.

“Fritz, can I get you a napkin?” I called, watching him paw the glass candleholders that Jack had bought me the previous summer. I held up a finger to indicate that I was only briefly interrupting Gerhard, who had been pontificating about the joys of the laptop, which I had resisted buying up to this very moment.

“No, that's okay, Madman.” Fritz set down the candleholder. I could see the fingerprint across the room, but I willed myself to be calm. There was always Windex. “Hey, Mom tells me you're stirring up the town, trying to find Logan's murderer.”

This effectively silenced Gerhard, who had just started another sentence that began with, “If you don't want to be a part of the twenty-first century—”

Jack, who had been studying the spines of my books in the corner and who had been remarkably quiet during our evening social, was obviously in listening mode.

I put aside the
Cat Fancy
magazine I'd been perusing, but I folded down the corner of the page with a picture of a Siamese kitten. “As usual,” I began caustically, “Mom is exaggerating. She's just angry because I embarrassed her precious Don Paul. His simian sidekick said some inappropriate things, and he blames me for it.”

“But Mom says you're doing all this undercover work, like some kind of spy. Aren't you in a little over your head, Madman?” Fritz asked with his typical lack of tact, smearing grease on a picture frame that surrounded the smiling countenance of Jack.

“Thanks for your support, Fritz. I've just forgiven you for your last sad failure as a brother, and you manage to come right in and bat another strike. Try silence for a while. Then I can pretend that you have an ounce of respect for me.”

I sulked as I cleared off the table. The three men had done justice to the two large pizzas. I put the two remaining pieces in a plastic bag and dumped the boxes into the garbage.

“Save the speech, drama queen,” Fritz said, unmoved. “I'm just asking what you're up to. I could even help, if you want. I'm into the whole spy scene. And I knew some stuff about Logan.” He gave me a mysterious glance.

“What did you know?” asked Gerhard suspiciously, giving voice to the question in the minds of us all.

“Well, I knew he had some secrets, man. He was a secretive guy. And I didn't always ask him, because I knew it wasn't stuff I'd want to know about. That's the thing about Logan. You liked him but you knew you shouldn't, you know what I mean?”

“He's right about that,” Gerhard agreed, looking at me. “I was there when they practiced at our apartment. Logan had real charisma, but he seemed to have a dark side.”

“Did he do drugs?” I asked.

Fritz shrugged. “He had some weed, but he didn't smoke it much. He said it relaxed him. It's a musician thing,” he said condescendingly.

“Do you know where he got it? Who his connection was?”

Fritz shrugged again. “It's not hard to get, Madman, if you want it.”

“Did he get it locally, or in Michigan?” I asked.

“I don't know. He might have said something about a friend of his supplying him with it. For free, I think. So I guess he did have some kind of setup. As you know, I don't do drugs, so I didn't ask a million questions.”

It was true, my brother had never been a druggie, although I was sure he'd tried them a few times. It hadn't impressed him much. Fritz's energy level was such that depressants would merely hold him back, and stimulants were entirely unnecessary.

“Anyway, that's not the only mysterious thing about Logan,” Gerhard added.

“Like that girl, right, Gerhard?” Fritz said eagerly.

Gerhard nodded solemnly. Jack returned from his secluded corner and retrieved the only beer left in my refrigerator. He opened it with a snapping sound. I waited a few more seconds for my brothers to explain and then asked, with what anyone would call the patience of a saint, “What girl?”

Fritz shrugged yet again, as if it were I who had brought this up rather than he. “He brought his girl to practice a couple of times. Never said too much about it. We didn't ask him too much. And she didn't bring anything fun to the table, if you know what I mean.”

“No, I really don't. But if you're implying that Jamie doesn't have much of a personality, it's not true, because—”

Gerhard interrupted, gently. “Not his wife, Madeline. His girlfriend.”

I stared, open-mouthed, at my nodding brothers. I was no Puritan, but then again I was very much a Puritan. “Didn't you say anything to him when he showed up at practice with a woman while his wife watched his children at home?”

Gerhard shrugged uncomfortably. Fritz shook his head. “What were we going to say? Especially with her right there?”

Jack said, “This is getting complicated,” and looked into his beer, as if for guidance.

I took a sponge off my sink and, thinking over the new information, gave the table a vicious rub-down. Knowing what I knew about Logan, I guess I wasn't surprised that he would have an affair. To have it so openly, though, and to assume that he would receive approval from his friends—did that seem like Logan? I supposed it did. A lifetime of inappropriate behavior, unchecked, would probably encourage new lows.

“So who was this girl?” I asked, rinsing the sponge at the sink.

Fritz cleared his throat and fingered a glass paperweight on my coffee table; again, there were fingerprints. Fritz would never get away with murder, I thought. “You know that girl that works with Mom?”

“Pamela?” I asked. “You're saying this girl looked like Pamela?”

“I'm saying it was Pamela. And she's a total nutcase.”

“High-strung,” Gerhard corrected.

“It was not her, Fritz,” I insisted. “For one thing, Pamela is too ambitious to get involved in—”

Gerhard, who had just shoved a piece of pizza into his mouth, held up his pointer while he chewed to indicate that he had something to say. We all watched him as if the fate of the world hung on his next words. He finally swallowed and said, “It was her, Mad. I've seen her when I visit Mom. And she recognized us. She even remembered my name.”

“She remembered mine too,” said Fritz, not to be outdone.

“And you never mentioned this because…?”

“There was no way we wanted Mom to find out. She'd blow a fuse,” Fritz said.

“Telling me wouldn't guarantee that Mom would find out,” I said, exasperated.

All three men regarded me, smiling.

“Oh, for Pete's sake!” I yelled. “I can't believe this. You're saying that Pamela and Logan Lanford were having an affair. This is what you're telling me.”

“Does it surprise you?” asked Jack. He seemed to be enjoying himself, but quietly, careful not to be noticed.

I looked at them for a moment, trying to make sense of what I'd heard. “Excuse me,” I said. I went into my bedroom and took out my phone book. Pamela and I had gone on more than one shopping spree together. This was the sort of thing I should have been able to weasel out of her. I'd known nothing, absolutely nothing about it. I had always assumed Pamela was too busy to have a love life. But it made sense that the man she met would be a man who worked with her.

I called her. She answered on the third ring.

“Pamela,” I said. My blood was pounding in my ears.

“Oh, hi, Madeline. Listen, I have someone on the other line—”

“Were you having an affair with Logan Lanford?” I asked, ignoring her.

I was rewarded with a full minute of silence. “What do you mean?” she asked eventually.

“It's not like you were subtle, Pamela. My brothers saw you at band practice. You were there as Logan's guest. They seemed to think you two were an item. And if you weren't together, just what made you hang out with him at night, when good little mayor's assistants should be writing their press releases and dreaming dreams of winning election polls?”