I pressed the buzzer for Angela Greenwood six times with no luck. So I pressed the buzzer for the building super.
“Yeah?” The voice was raspy through the intercom.
“I’m looking for Angela Greenwood. She’s not answering her bell. Her family is concerned about her, she’s not answering any calls or texts. Can we check to see if she’s okay?”
A grunt. “Hang on.”
Two minutes later a Black man opened the door and looked me over suspiciously. “Who are you?” The name “Carl” was stitched on his blue shirt.
A bus went by on the street behind me. “My name’s Tom Jurgen.” I handed him a business card. “I’m a private detective. Ms. Greenwood’s uncle was expecting her to visit him and she never showed up. She doesn’t respond to any calls or text messages. Could we just see if she’s all right in her apartment?”
Carl stared at the card. “I shouldn’t do this. But she’s a nice girl. Woman. Lady. Come on.” He let me inside.
We rode an elevator to the second floor. “I can’t let you in.”
“Right.” I nodded. “Just seeing if she’s all right.”
“Right.” The elevator doors opened.
Carl knocked on the door. Knocked again. A third time. I didn’t rush him. Finally he reached into a pocket for a huge ring of keys. After rotating it for a moment, he picked one out and unlocked the door. “Stay out here,” he reminded me.
“Got it.”
I stayed at the doorway, but I could see around his arm.
The apartment had been trashed. A sofa had been flipped over. Books were scattered across the floor. The TV’s screen was cracked.
“Jesus Christ.” Carl raised his voice. “Ms. Greenwood? Hello?”
No answer.
“You wait here.” Carl marched into the apartment. Once he’d disappeared into the kitchen, I stepped inside. I didn’t touch anything. Just looked around, bending over, stretching my neck up, searching for any clue to who had been here.
Carl came out of the bedroom. “I told you to stay outside!”
I retreated quickly. “Sorry. I’ll leave. You calling the police?”
“Maybe you should stay here.” He pulled a phone from another pocket.
“You’ve got my card. Have them call me.” Some of them would know my name. They wouldn’t be happy about it.
“Wait!” But Carl wasn’t about to chase me down and tackle me to the ground. I took the stairs and was out on the street while he was probably still talking to the 911 operator.
All right, I’d told Carl at least one lie.
My client wasn’t Angela Greenwood’s uncle. A man named Justin Chapman had called me that morning from New York City. He’d been close friends with Angela’s father, Alexander Greenwood. Angela was supposed to come for a visit in New York, but she never showed up, and she wasn’t answering any of his calls or emails.
Honestly, the story ran up a few red flags. Why hire a private detective instead of asking a friend or family member to check on Angela? Why did he sound more irritated than worried about her? Why was he flying a young woman out to New York anyway? As a private detective for years, and a reporter for years before that, I’ve learned not to take anything people tell me purely at face value.
Still, the job sounded pretty straightforward. I warned Chapman that even if I found Angela, all I could do was ask her to contact him. He seemed okay with that. And he agreed to the financial details readily enough, and his retainer came through promptly.
The money would come in handy. Rachel and I had just gotten back from our honeymoon, after years of dating and living together, and while the transition was so far smooth, we were both adjusting to the new reality of married life. Rachel was working more outside the office we share at home, with her new job as a therapist in an office with several other mental health practitioners. I felt antsy without her around, so I was trying to keep busy.
Chapman had given me Angela’s address, so I’d started there. I called him from my car to tell him about the state of the apartment. He sounded concerned. “You’ll do everything you can, won’t you? I hate to think that something terrible has happened to her.”
“I will try. I can’t make any promises. This could turn out all right, but I have no way of knowing right now.”
He wasn’t satisfied, but he accepted it. For the moment.
Now I was on my way to visit the one friend of Angela’s Chapman knew about: Wendy Newell, a bartender at The River, a few blocks over from Angela’s apartment in Logan Square.
Another red flag: Wendy wasn’t anywhere on Angela’s social media. Why not, if they were friends? It had to mean that my client wanted me to talk to her. For some reason. Maybe I’d find out.
At one thirty in the afternoon the bar had few customers. Two men sat at a table in the corner, watching the baseball game and drinking beers. A woman in her 50s sat at one end of the bar with a glass of wine in front of her, playing a game on her phone with one hand and twisting a strand of gray hair with the other. The bartender was young and blond, in jeans and an apron with The River’s logo in front. “What can I get you?”
“Heineken.” I took out my phone and pulled up a picture of Angela that Chapman had sent me. “Are you Wendy?”
She paused while popping open the green bottle. “Yeah.”
I put a card on the bar. “My name’s Tom Jurgen. I’m a private investigator. Do you know Angela Greenwood?”
Wendy poured the beer into a mug. “Yeah. We’re friends. Not BFFs, but I know her.” She set the mug down in front of me.
“She was supposed to get on a plane and visit a friend of her father’s in New York.” I sipped the beer. Cold. “But she never showed up, never got on the plane apparently. I’m working for him—Justin Chapman. Do you have any idea where Angela is?”
She took my phone and looked at the image. “I don’t really know. I haven’t seen her for a week or so.”
Again I wondered why Chapman had sent me here. “How do you know each other?”
“We took some classes together. At Columbia.” A local college. “I guess she lives near here? She started coming in with friends about a year ago, and we recognized each other. We don’t really hang out much, but she comes here every couple of weeks, sometimes with friends, sometimes just alone.”
“What kind of classes?”
She shrugged. “English. Got a degree, I don’t know about Angie. And here I am, slinging drinks. I should have gone to marketing school, like my mother said.”
“My mom wanted me to be an accountant, like my dad.” I looked at the phone. “Where does Angela work? Do you know?” Chapman hadn’t told me.
“At the Candle Museum. It’s over on Park.” She pointed. “I guess that’s how she found me here, it’s a good spot to come after work.”
”The Candle Museum?” Chicago has lots of museums, some big, some small. I’d never heard of this one.
“Yeah, it’s all about the history of candle making and lighting. Big chandeliers from France and stone candle holders from the Stone Age and everything in between. It’s pretty neat.” She smiled.
“I’ll have to check it out. What does she do there?”
“Gift shop. But I think she’s working on a master’s. Art history. Yeah, that’s what she was taking at Columbia, art history. I remember now.”
I paid for my beer and thanked her. Then I left a nice tip, and half the beer because it was early for me and I had to drive. Wendy thanked me with a smile. “Come back soon!”
I looked up the Candle Museum on my phone. Walking distance. I’d left my car near Angela’s apartment. Hopefully the police would be gone by the time I went back to it. In the meantime I followed my phone a few blocks and found the place quickly.
CHICAGO CANDLE MUSEUM was in big black letters over the front window, which displayed an assortment of candles in lamps, lanterns, candelabras, and one small crystal chandelier hanging over the whole display. The door beside the big window had a sign that said OPEN! WELCOME! with drawings of candles around the words.
A bell rang as I pushed the door open, and a neon candle lit up in front of me. An older woman sitting at a table looked up and smiled at me. “Welcome to the museum! Our next candle making demonstration is in 20 minutes. You can sign up for classes over there—” She pointed to a man behind a counter polishing brass. “We ask a five-dollar donation.”
I put five dollars into the box in front of her, and showed her the picture of Angela. “I’m told she works in the gift shop here?”
She leaned forward. “I think I recognize her. I just volunteer here one day a week. You can ask.” She gestured in a different direction, and I saw GIFT SHOP above an open door to the left.
I thanked her and made my way past her desk and into the museum.
A large round room held a half-dozen display cases in a circle beneath a massive chandelier. Dangling 12 feet up from a broad wooden beam across the ceiling, the chandelier held at least 100 candles from circular wrought iron frame. It was big and black and heavy, swinging just a little from the breeze that had come in from the door, like a pendulum in a grandfather clock. The candles weren’t lit, but the effect was still impressive. I imagined a medieval servant on a swaying ladder lighting them one by one every morning in some lord’s castle.
Candles glowed from sconces in the ivory white walls. Others burned on the glass tops of the display cases, but the big room was mostly illuminated by recessed lighting over pictures hanging on the walls—not candles, but paintings or reproductions with scenes from the Renaissance, Victorian London, and early 20thcentury farm life.
The display cases around the room looked like someone had traveled through time collecting every candle and holder they could lay their hands on throughout the centuries, from the Stone Age to last Tuesday. Thin white candles in tapers, golden candles in stem holders, thick candles in mason jars, a lone candle mounted in a piece of rock that looked like a Neanderthal had used it to light up a cave, ornate jeweled candelabras, and simple candles in small tealight holders. If they’d all been lit, I’d have needed sunglasses. And the Fire Department would probably close the place down. I saw a sprinkler system waiting to rain hanging from the ceiling.
Hallways branched away from the central room. One was labeled “Classes.” Another had an arrow pointing to “Special Collections.” An arrow pointed to the restrooms.
A set of double doors was marked “ADMINISTRATION—No Admittance.” On the opposite side of the big room was a wide-open sliding glass door with GIFT SHOP in gold letters, which is what I was looking for.
The gift shop sold candles, obviously, along with candle holders, books, calendars, magazines, prints, postcards, even long matches for lighting those hard-to-reach wicks. Hanging candles swung gently from the ceiling, around the pipe for the sprinklers. Someone had taped a postcard to the smoke detector over the door.
Inside a young man in a T-shirt and a leather vest sat on a stool behind the counter, looking through a magazine from the spinner rack next to the calendars. “Hi! I’m Len. Let me know if you need any help.” He was skinny, with short hair already turned mostly white.
“Actually . . .” I showed him my phone with the picture of Angela. “Does she work here?”
“Angela! Yeah. But she didn’t come in yesterday. I don’t know what happened, she didn’t call or anything.” He looked at me. ”Why?”
I showed Len my card. “Her uncle hired me. Has she worked here long?”
“About three months? I think. I’ve been here since March—my father made me take this job part-time—and she started a little after me. But she’s really good, knows all about the museum and the candles and our stock.” He spread an arm out, taking in the small shop. “I’m surprised they don’t make her a manager.”
“Is it common for her to not show up?”
Len shook his head. “No. It’s really strange.”
“Do you know any of her friends? Wendy at the bar?”
“Bar?” He looked confused. “No. She has a boyfriend. Or had one, I guess. I think they broke up.”
I was about to ask more about that when shouting from the main room interrupted me.
An old man a suit from a 1940s movie was standing in the center of the room, between the display cases. He had a cane, and he was waving an angry arm in the air. His hair was thin and white on his scalp, and his face was red as he shouted, wobbling on skinny weak legs.
“Where is it? It’s gone! You promised it would be safe!” He pounded the cane on the tile. “I trusted it to you, and now it’s God knows where! What happened? It’s mine! It’s gone!”
Something flickered in the corner of my eye, a flash of light, but before I could look the administration doors flew open, and a woman in glasses and a long dress rushed out. “What’s going—Gavin? Gavin, what’s the matter? Stop shouting and come in here—”
The man whirled, unsteady, and pointed a finger toward one of the hallways. “Marilyn, we need to look at—”
Whatever he needed to look at, he never got the chance.
The big metal chandelier in the center of the ceiling crashed down on him. He screamed once, then collapsed beneath it as it crushed him under its wide rings. The candles broke or flew out of their holders like angry wasps deserting a fallen nest and rolled on the floor away from him.
Gavin, whoever he was, lay motionless on the tile, blood seeping from the back of his skull.
No one else screamed. Marilyn stared at the wreckage for a moment, then turned to shout into the office: “Call 911! Right now! It’s Gavin! The chandelier fell on him!”
Len was right next to me, gazing at Gavin’s body,. “How could that—it’s not possible.”
I looked up. The chandelier had seemed firmly mounted. Now the beam looked as if the bolts had been ripped away, leaving splintered wood behind. The chandelier had swung lightly in the breeze from the door on a thick chain, but that hadn’t broken. The base above it had somehow been yanked out of the beam, as if a giant hand had reached up to pull it free and let it fall.
“Who is he?” I asked Len.
“Gavin Kantner. He’s one of our biggest donors. I don’t—what? Excuse me.”
He ran toward the restrooms. Did he need to throw up? A man came up the hall, almost colliding with him. I didn’t get a good look at him as they talked for a few moments, but he was tall, wearing glasses and a wide hat. Then Len made a dash for the restroom, and the man disappeared down the hall.
I waited a few more minutes, but there was nothing for me to do, and asking more questions about Angela would be sort of inappropriate. Once the paramedics arrived, I left.
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