I made a quick call to Mrs. Raymond telling her that Geoffrey Long was dead, and another one to Rachel telling her I was alive. Then the police started asking me questions.
I told them everything I knew, which wasn’t much. Lawrence Raymond’s murder, the email from Geoffrey Long, the old man, the creature standing right behind him—and the dagger next to Long’s body. With dried blood on it. “You might want to check that for Lawrence Raymond’s DNA,” I told the patrolman. Just to be helpful.
He nodded. “Yeah, we’ll get right on that.”
Back in my car, I sat for a moment taking slow, deep breaths to calm myself down. Then I called Rachel again.
“You jerk—are you all right?” She’s used to me almost getting myself killed, but she never likes it.
“I’m fine, mostly. It was one of those things we saw in Raymond’s email this morning. With an old guy who looked like Nosferatu. They killed a guy, and then they disappeared. Literally. Just gone.”
“Magical portal? Transporter beam?”
“I don’t know.” I looked out my window at the front door. “Hey, can you come up here and look around? Do you have time?” Her psychic powers—
“Time?” Her laugh was scary. “I’ve got class in an hour, and my web page redesign still looks like crap, but I’ll add driving up to Skokie to look at a murder house to my to-do list right now.” She sounded irritated.
“Okay, never mind. Go back to work.”
“Be careful.” She hung up.
Next I called the Raymonds again. Adrienne answered. “So Is Geoff really—dead?”
I’d seen the body bag carried into the ambulance. “I’m afraid so. I’m sorry. I know this is already a tough day for you.”
“Yeah. I mean, I liked him okay, I just never . . . anyway, do you have any news? Any other news?”
“I think I’m going to have to talk to Galen Harvey. If this is really related to those gargoyle heads, he may know something about the weird old man I saw.”
“Right. Hang on a minute. . . . Okay, he lives in Skokie too. I’d better come up there with you, he’ll talk to me. I mean, he knows me.”
“Fine, as long as you’re up to it. How’s your mother holding up?”
“She took a nap. Now she’s talking to relatives. And her lawyer. Her real lawyer.” She sighed. “I need to get out of here. I’ll meet you in an hour, okay?”
I got some lunch, even though I wasn’t very hungry, and met Adrienne outside Harvey’s house an hour and 10 minutes later. “Sorry I’m late,” she said, slamming the door on her Accord. “Traffic.”
The house had two stories and stone columns around the porch in front. Adrienne rang the doorbell.
The door opened a moment later, and a teenage girl looked out at us. “Oh. Hi. Are you—oh, hi, Ms. Raymond. I’m sorry about your father. We heard it on the news.” She looked me over but didn’t acknowledge me. “Do you want my dad?
“Thanks, Ella. Yeah, is he home?”
She nodded. “Come on in.”
She led us into a large living room with a big TV, a leather sofa, a bunch of chairs, and two bookcases with antiques on the shelves behind glass. “Just a second. Dad!” Ella left.
“Galen’s daughter,” Adrienne said. “College. Kind of a brat.”
A moment later Galen Havey appeared. Tall, heavyset, he had a thick beard and round glasses. “Adrienne.” He looked sad. “I was so sorry to hear about Lawrence. And shocked. Horrified, really—”
“Thanks, Galen.” They shook hands. “This is Tom Jurgen. He’s helping us with dad’s death.”
“You’re a lawyer?” He looked me over, judging my shirt and windbreaker.
“Private detective.” I offered my card.
He lifted an eyebrow. “Is this about—well, what’s going on?” He was being cautious. Not giving us an opening.
“The gargoyle head from Lawrence Raymond’s house,” I said. “Do you still have it?”
He groaned. “Adrienne, we’ve been over this—”
“I don’t care about the legal issues,” I interrupted. “I’m just asking if it’s here in your house.”
He frowned. “No. It’s safe, but it’s not here.”
“Are you sure? Have you checked? Can you check now?”
“It’s in a secure location. I don’t have to—” He paused. “What is this all about?”
“Has anyone contacted you about it recently? Asked about it? Offered to buy it?”
I was poking in the dark, but I hit something. Harvey blinked, and glanced at Adrienne. Then he said, “Two days ago. I got a phone call—a man asking about Ringo.”
“Ringo?”
Harvey looked embarrassed. “A bunch of us—we called them John, Paul, George, and Ringo. It was easier than their real names. From the church they came from. They were larry’s names, actually.” He looked at Adrienne. “I thought it was silly, but—”
“What about the man who called you?” I asked Harvey.
“He had an accent, German, maybe, or Russian. He said something like, ‘Paltar is mine.’ I asked him what he was talking about, and he just said, ‘He’s mine’ again. That’s Ringo’s real name. I thought—” He looked at Adrienne. “I mean, I know you’d never do that, Adrienne, but I thought it was someone playing a joke.”
She grimaced. “Not very funny.”
“No name?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No. He hung up.”
“Do you know Geoffrey Long?”
“Geoff? Yes, we’re, well, acquainted. It’s a fairly small community of collectors.”
“Did he know where Ringo is?”
“No. He asked me about it a few days ago, but I assumed he was asking for Larry, and I never told him. Wait a minute—” He stared at me. “Did something happen to Geoffrey?”
I swallowed. “He’s dead.”
Harvey took a step back, confusion mixing with anger. “Like Larry? Did someone murder him too? Are they—is it some kind of serial killer?”
“Not exactly. Lawrence Raymond was stabbed. Geoffrey Long was—attacked. By some sort of creature.”
“Huh? An animal?”
I wasn’t sure what he was ready to believe, but I took out my phone, pulled up the email, and showed him the gargoyle images.
Harvey stared at the screen, then looked at me, glanced at Adrienne, and finally peered at my phone again. “What the hell?”
“Long sent these images to Lawrence Raymond this morning. Geoffrey Long was murdered a little over an hour ago. I saw them. It was pretty gruesome.”
He gulped. “My God.”
“There was a man with him. Old, bald, skinny. Foreign accent. Any idea who that might be?”
Harvey shook his head. “No idea.”
“Okay.” I couldn’t think of any more questions just then. “Thanks for your time. Just—make sure Ringo is safe. I don’t know for sure what those heads have to do with this, but those things look pretty terrifying.” I looked at Adrienne. “Let’s go?”
She nodded. “Thanks, Galen.”
“Yeah. Again, sorry about your father.”
Outside, we leaned against my car, watching Harvey’s house. “What now?” Adrienne asked.
“I think I’ll stick around, just to see if he goes anywhere to check on Ringo.” It’s an old tactic, but sometimes it works. ”What’s the legal issue around it, by the way?”
“He claims he and Dad went in together on the purchase, so he’s entitled to two of the gargoyles. Dad paid him, but he says it was less than they agreed on. The paperwork is—” She sighed. “Murky. Dad didn’t want to go to court—they were friends before all this—so we were trying to work out an agreement. Galen would never tell us where his head is.” She shook her head with a smile. “I never heard they were named after the Beatles.”
“At least they have good taste.” I opened my door. “Drive safe.”
I drove down the block and parked just around the corner, in sight of Harvey’s house but not right in front of it. I called Rachel, got her voicemail, and left a quick message. Then I waited.
Two hours later I gave up. Harvey wasn’t going anywhere, although I saw his daughter head up the street on a bike. Time to go home and do research.
Back home I opened a Coke and sat down at my computer. First I checked the early coverage of Geoffrey Long’s death. There wasn’t much, and fortunately nobody mentioned my name. The authorities were calling it a wild animal attack—possibly coyotes, which sometimes wander into the suburbs.
Lawrence Raymond’s murder was getting more attention, because murders of white rich men always attract more eyeballs. Police were reviewing security videos from the building and the neighborhood—Hyde Park has a pretty hefty security presence, with its own police force, thanks to the U of C—and were confident of making an arrest soon.
Mrs. Raymond appeared on camera. “I’m obviously devastated,” she said, her face stony with shock. “Larry was—he was a world-class scholar, a devoted father, a wonderful husband, and I’ll miss him so much . . .”
They cut away to a reporter regurgitating the facts again.
I thought for a few minutes, jotted down some questions, and then called Galen Harvey. He picked up right away. “Yes? Oh, Jurgen. What is it?”
“I forgot to ask—the caller asked you for Paltar? That’s the real name of the head?”
“Yes. They’re from a church in Germany, 14th century. The church is gone now. The others were, uh, let me check—” I waited a moment. “Okay. Aistolf, that was John, Baldhere was Paul, Gautwin was George, and Paltar was Ringo. It was sort of random, I mean, ‘Baldhere’ is sort of like ‘Paul,’ but—”
“What church?”
“Cathedral of Our Lady of Grace. In Neuburg. Bavaria. Look, I made a phone call, and Ringo is fine, so stop worrying about that, all right? I’m sorry about Larry, and Geoff, and—well everything, but that’s all I’m going to say right now.” He was getting angry. Or maybe scared.
“That’s fine, Mr. Harvey. Thank you very much. This is a big help.” I hung up. With my scribbled notes in front of me, I started my internet sleuthing.
The cathedral in Germany had been built in 1337. A lightning strike destroyed its steeple in 1407, and a fire in 1553 burned half of it to the ground. The town rebuilt it, and the church thrived for centuries until World War Two, when bombs blew apart its northern and western walls. The town demolished it after Hitler died, but people salvaged bits of it, including the altar, some of the stained glass, a statue of the Virgin Mary, and four gargoyles from the roof above.
I had to dig deeper into history to find any information about the gargoyles. It turned out they’d been added as part of a drainage system after heavy rainfalls damaged the sanctuary in the 1390s. The sculptor was a woman, Sabina Mundt, the daughter of a stonemason named Gregor Mundt. The gargoyles were the only confirmed works she’d ever completed, presumably because Gregor had given them to her while he was busy with other commissions from the aristocracy.
Gregor died at 56—poisoned by his wife, who was accused of witchcraft and other sins. She was hanged. Sabina got married and left town after that, and dropped off the historical map as far as I could determine.
I sipped my Coke, trying to decide what to do next. It occurred to me that I wasn’t exactly sure what my jobs was, or if Mrs. Raymond really wanted me to do anything. I’d gotten caught up in researching the gargoyles, but all she’d asked me to do was check on Geoffrey Long.
Maybe I was done. I was curious, but that didn’t mean I needed to keep going without a clear order from my client. So I called the Raymond condo.
Adrienne answered. “Did anything happen with Galen?”
“No, he stayed put. I’ve been looking into the history of the gargoyles.” I told her what I’d learned. Then I said, “So, I’m not sure what you want me to do next. I’m fine with returning the money your father sent me if you want—”
“What about Geoff? Did he kill my father? Why’d he send those pictures?”
I’d told her about the dagger next to his body. “I think—yeah, although we’ll have to wait for the police to check the DNA on that knife. So it’s possible that he’s the one who came to the condo last night and—did it.”
“Why?” She took a breath, controlling her rising voice. “He wasn’t—I mean, I didn’t like him all that much, but I never thought he was someone who’d do—do something like that.”
“I can try finding out how he ties into this. Did you tell the police about the email?”
“Y-yes. Mom called them. I’m not sure what they thought.”
“Okay. Let me find out what I can about Long. Do you know any of his friends, associates, that I could call?”
“Uh, a few, I guess.” She gave me a few names and numbers. I wondered how many of them already knew about Long’s death. I hate having to drop bombs on people like that.
I went to work on Geoffrey Long, starting with the standard background check. He was 29, founder/president/CEO and apparently sole employee of Long Enterprises, which traded cryptocurrency and other imaginary types of money. His website claimed he had a dozen clients and had earned more than $8 million trading in crypto over the last two years.
He had a B.A. in Finance from the University of Illinois, M.A. in Art History from the U of C. Long was on every social media platform I could find, most of them devoted to his business, but his interest in art was prominent as well. He shared paintings, sculptures, photography, antiquities, and more, bragging about his ability to spot “quality” and bargain for the best price, and showing off his financial prowess and success. That included his car—a BMW—a parade of girlfriends, mostly blond, and vacations around the world.
I wasn’t jealous. No, not at all.
He had a DUI and a few minor drug offenses, mostly for marijuana. His company had been sued twice, and they’d settled out of court, sealing the records. I could get to them, but not entirely legally, so I left that for later, if I needed to.
The front door opened. Rachel was home. I stood and stretched, then went out to greet her. “How was class?”
“Boring.” She yawned. “You okay? Rough day?”
“I’ve had worse. As you know.”
She kissed me. “Doesn’t get you out of making dinner.”
It was my night for it. “Yeah. Baked Mac and cheese, or are you sick of it yet?”
“That’s fine.” She slumped on the couch, slipped her laptop from her bag, and picked up the TV remote. “Bring me a beer? And some Doritos? If I finish my paper, we can have sex tonight.”
“It’s a deal.” I headed to the kitchen.
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