Back home I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to contact Angela’s friends through her Facebook and other social media profiles. I sent emails and direct messages and waited for someone to contact me, but nothing happened right away. I noticed that Wendy the bartender wasn’t on any of Angela’s friends lists, and made a note to ask them, if any ever emailed me back.
Rachel came home as I was putting together vegetarian burritos. We’d always alternated cooking night, but with her new job keeping her at the office three or four nights a week lately, the schedule had become more of a subject for negotiation. Of course, my job frequently kept me out on the mean streets past dinnertime, so we’d always had to be flexible. Since getting back from the honeymoon, though, I felt like I was doing more cooking. I wasn’t about to complain, but I was starting to plan bigger dinners so I could load them into the freezer.
“Hi, honey, I’m home.” Rachel looked tired as she pulled a beer from the refrigerator. She looked at my dinner preparations. “Are we having a party? Or are you just really, really hungry?”
I was on the middle of the seventh of 12 burritos. “Just making enough for a few days. So neither of us gets cranky when there’s nothing to eat.”
“I’m never cranky. Jerk.” She punched my arm. “How’s the detective biz?”
“I saw a chandelier fall on a guy and kill him. Can you top that?”
Her eyebrows rose. “You okay?”
“Fine. It ruined his afternoon, though.” I told Rachel about the case as she sipped her beer.
Her hazelnut eyes lit up. “That museum sounds cool.”
“I might have to check it out again.” I got a beer for myself.
“Because—was it supernatural? The chandelier?” Rachel’s at least slightly psychic. She’s always helped me on cases that veer into supernatural territory, although lately her availability was more limited because of her new job
“I don’t know. There’s no indication yet, but the whole thing was—unusually bad timing for the guy.”
“Some people are just unlucky.” She left her beer on the table. “I’m going to change.”
We ate dinner, watched a few episodes of Ripley, and went to bed. We weren’t exactly in the honeymoon phase after living together for years, but we were still celebrating surviving the wedding ceremony without any bloodshed.
The next morning I started getting responses to my messages and emails. Not surprisingly, no one knew where Angela was, or even that she’d been planning a trip to New York. One or two people recognized Chapman as a distant friend she’d mentioned once or twice. Everyone hoped she was all right.
As I tried to think of my next move, I decided to check out the Candle Museum on the internet. It had dozens of photos, of course, plus a virtual tour of one of the collections, videos on candle making, and a virtual gift shop. Marilyn’s picture was there as the museum’s director. Her last name was LaVigne.
I checked out the board of directors’ page. The museum’s founder and president of the board was a woman named Susan Lavigne. She looked like Marilyn’s mother, or maybe an aunt. She was the lone female on the board, with five other men. Kantner had been there 20 years.
He had owned a chain of restaurants in and around Chicago, but he’d assembled a vast collection of antiquities and artifacts, including candle holders from ancient Greece and Egypt, along with pottery and paintings from around the world.
The other board members had similar credentials and collections. The newest member was a man named Glen Noland, who’d joined two years ago. Noland was a professor of cultural anthropology at the University of Chicago, author of published articles on everything from Japanese tea ceremonies to ancient Central American architecture in a large number of academic journals. He had gray hair, balding at the top, and small, wire-rimmed glasses.
I could knock on some doors in Angela’s neighborhood, or go back to the Candle Museum and ask question, but otherwise I didn’t have any clear direction. Sometimes it’s like that. I’d have to call my client soon, but I didn’t want to seem like I was admitting defeat too quickly.
My phone buzzed. Unknown number. I might be a telemarketer inquiring about my car’s extended warranty, but in my business it pays to answer every call. “Tom Jurgen speaking.”
“Mr. Jurgen? My name is Robert—Bob—Chen. I’m uh, Angela Greenfield’s boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend. The super at her building told me you were at her apartment yesterday, and her apartment was trashed?”
“That’s right, I was there.” I remembered giving Carl my card. “I’m trying to locate Angela. Do you know where she is?”
“No. That’s what I was doing yesterday. I haven’t heard from her. What’s going on?”
My phone buzzed with a second call. This one I had to answer. “I have another call coming in. Can we meet somewhere?”
We agreed on a diner in Logan Square, not far from Angela’s apartment, in an hour. I thanked him, hung up, and answered the second call. “Good morning, Detective Cruz. How may I serve you today?”
Detective Peter Cruz was a cop I’d met on a case involving a demon inhabiting two brothers at the same time. It had been an odd and disturbing case, and he’d never quite believed me when I tried to explain the details.
“You can tell me what you were doing at Angela Greenfield’s apartment yesterday.” Cruz did not sound pleased to renew our acquaintance.
“Just what I told the super there, Carl. I was hired by a friend of her father who was worried that she hadn’t made a plane to come visit him in New York. That’s it. The apartment seemed like a logical first step.”
“You told the super it was her uncle.” He seemed pleased with himself at catching me in a lie.
“I did say that. It seemed less complicated.”
“Who is it?”
I hesitated. Doctors and lawyers can keep things confidential—private detectives can’t. “Let me call my client first and give him a heads up.”
“No. I want the name now. What do you know about this guy?”
“I know his money’s good.” I sighed. “Okay, his name is Justin Chapman, and his number is, give me a minute—”
While I was talking, I typed out a quick email to Chapman telling him to expect a call. I hoped he wouldn’t be angry—if anything, he ought to be happy the people were looking for Angela too, they have more and better resources than a lone P.I. But you never know how a client will react. To anything.
“Here’s his number.” I read it out.
“And while you were finding it, you emailed him to warn him I’d be calling.”
“Wow, that’s good. Have you considered a career as a detective?”
“Ha ha. Is this one of your crazy paranormal delusion cases? Were you looking for ghosts or vampires in Greenwood’s apartment?”
“No and no. I didn’t expect that her apartment would be trashed, and I didn’t have any reason to think she was in any trouble when I went there. And I haven’t seen anything that suggests any supernatural phenomena.” Except maybe for the falling chandelier. But I didn’t want to mention that to him right now
“Okay. We don’t any an official missing persons report yet, but we’re treating this as suspicious. I’m going to call your client when I get off with you. Don’t call to tell him what to say.” Cruz hung up.
I put the phone down. I can be a smart aleck—some call it being an asshole—with the police, but I was a little nervous about Cruz. I wondered what Chapman would tell him. I have some allies on the CPB, but Cruz wasn’t one of them.
I waited a few minutes, then called Chapman. No answer. I sent him another email. No response. Was Cruz still grilling him? I waited until it was time to go meet Bob Chen.
Bob Chen was an Asian man in his mid-20s, wearing jeans and a sweater. The diner was quiet, clean, and served good coffee. He ordered a blueberry scone. It smelled distractingly delicious.
“We dated about six months.” Chen looked nervous. “Then we broke up. It was about six weeks ago. It was—nothing was wrong, we didn’t fight about stuff, we just realized it wasn’t going anywhere. We weren’t going to move in or get married or anything, we were just okay as friends and that was it. But I talk to her every week or so, sometimes we have drinks. Anyway, we were supposed to have brunch with friends on Sunday and she didn’t show up. That was odd. And she didn’t answer any of my texts. So yesterday I went over to her place, and there were cops there. I asked them what was going on, and Carl, the building guy, said you’d come looking for Angela and gave me your card. I’m kind of worried. Especially after the cops told me her apartment was trashed. What’s going on?””
“I don’t know.” I looked at his scone and wished I’d ordered something. “Did she ever mention a friend of her father named Justin Chapman?”
Chen shook his head. “Once or twice. Sometimes he sent her money.”
“He says Angela was supposed to fly out to visit him in New York, but she never showed up. No one I’ve talked to seems to have seen her in the last three or four days.”
He stared at his scone. “Is he telling the truth?”
“I hope so. What can you tell me about Angela? What’s she like?”
Chen closed his eyes. “She’s—great, but sort of scattered. She had three different jobs when we were dating, one after the other. She didn’t get fired, she just never stayed long. I don’t even know where she’s working now. She’d make plans and then forget them, and I got mad about that. But she did always say she was sorry.”
He picked up the scone. “She could be moody—happy one minute, deep down the next. I guess her mother died when she was young, and her father married a bitch—her word, not mine, I never met her—and then got divorced. He died a few years ago, and that made her sad a lot.” He took a bite.
“She’s working at the Candle Museum now. Have you been there?”
“Is she? That’s good, she always liked that place. I never went there with her, but she talked about it.”
“What about Wendy?”
He looked puzzled, chewing his scone. “Who’s that?”
“A friend of hers. Wendy. A bartender at The River. Blond hair, about your age?”
Chen shrugged. “I don’t know. I never met her.”
I thought about that for a moment. Then I asked, “Where would Angela go if she wanted to get away from everyone?”
He scratched his head. “Her sister lives in Wisconsin. Her name’s Adeline, but she’s married. I don’t know her married name. I think she’s in Madison.” Another shrug. “Like, ‘When you have to go there, they have to take you in’? That’s all I can think of.”
“Is flying to New York to see a friend of her father something she’d do? Or does that sound out of character?”
He frowned. “Maybe. Like I said, she’s kind of impulsive. For a free trip to New York, she might do it.”
I nodded. “Okay, Thanks for your time.”
He wrapped his scone up in a napkin and left. I finished my coffee, then ordered a scone to go. I checked the time, and then the internet for The River’s website. It opened in 30 minutes or so. I didn’t need a drink, but I wanted to talk to Wendy again.
I could see Wendy cleaning the bar as from outside for The River. While I was waiting outside for her to open up, I called my client again. No answer. Again. I left another voicemail.
Wendy unlocked the doors at 11:30. I was first in, followed quickly by a middle-aged who looked hungover as he planted himself at the bar and ordered a bloody mary.
Wendy saw me as she was fixing his drink. “You again. Beer?”
“Just a Coke.”
She brought me a can and a glass. “Two fifty.”
I took out a five-dollar bill. “You don’t really know Angela Greenwood, do you?”
Wendy looked at the money and sighed. “Is this going to be a pain in the ass for me?”
I shook my head and tried to smile reassuringly. “Look, I’m not a cop. There’s no law against lying to me. I’m just trying to find Angela. What’s going on?”
Wendy leaned against the bar, avoiding my eyes. “There was this guy on my Tinder a few days ago. He wasn’t looking for dates, he wanted someone in Chicago who could—he said play a prank for him. It was a strange kind of prank, but he offered me $200, and it didn’t sound so bad. Just tell a guy named Tom that Angela worked at the Candle Museum.”
I frowned, trying to think. “So your only job was to get me to go to the Candle Museum?”
Wendy nodded. “Yeah. He told me some stuff about this girl, Angie, so I could fake it, and I figured you’d be right off to check out the museum so you wouldn’t ask a lot of questions. Shit. I’m sorry.” She turned away and grabbed a bar towel.
“That’s okay.” I tend to forgive lies pretty easily once I’ve gotten the truth. “Who was the guy?”
She pulled her phone out of a back pocket. “Here. His name’s Jerry. He said. I’m pretty sure the picture isn’t him.”
The profile image showed a man with a gray beard, probably in his 50s. I realized I had no idea what Justin Chapman looked like. I looked through their text conversation. It went along with Wendy’s story. And it showed that she’d gotten the $100 that night, and then the rest of the money yesterday, after my visit to the bar.
“I know, I know, I was stupid.” She jammed the phone into her back pocket. “I’m just behind on my loans and it seemed easy and I didn’t see how it could be anything really bad. I’m sorry.”
I drank some of my Coke and stood up. “Don’t worry about it. If he contacts you again, just let me know, okay?” I dropped another business card on the bar. “Don’t tell him you told me. Just be vague.”
“Okay. Thanks. And—I’m sorry again.” She ran a hand through her hair. “I hope you find her. I hope she’s okay.”
I smiled. “Yeah. Me too.”
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