We talked in the car as I drove Niki home in the night.
“I asked Dad.” She’d gone up to talk to Valdez again before we’d left. “Or—whatever that was. He doesn’t know anything about the fork. He says my uncle took a lot of Grandma V’s stuff. That’s Ricky—Enrique, everyone called him Ricky. So he might have it.”
“Same last name?”
“Valdez, yeah.” She was silent. “I think he owned a restaurant.” More silence. “Do you think—you said you know a lot about this stuff. Is he going to be all right?”
I stifled a groan. This wasn’t a question I really wanted to answer. “Honestly? Bringing people back from the dead—it doesn’t always turn out very well.”
“But sometimes?” Her voice was small, like a little girl.
I didn’t answer.
We were silent the rest of the way to Matteson. When I dropped her off, she told me she’d call me in the morning. Then, outside, she turned and leaned down over my window. “Thank you. I’m—I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay,” I told her. “Talk to you tomorrow.”
Back home, Rachel was already in bed. I checked my email in the office we share, then went to the kitchen to make a sandwich and open a beer.
Rachel came in as I was drinking a second beer. “Hi. You okay?”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you.”
“I always hear the locks when you do them.” She sat down. “How’d it go?”
I sighed. “On the plus side, I have a new and apparently very wealthy client.” Alexander had thrust a stack of cash into my hands at the door. I dropped it on the table between us. “On the other hand, she’s a witch who dabbles in bringing back the dead.”
Rachel looked at the cash first. “At least she’s not a drug dealer.”
“Yeah.” I told her the story.
“So you’re really going to do it?” Rachel frowned. “Not sure I like that.”
“They were both very persuasive, in their own ways.” I sighed. “Maybe I won’t be able to find the fork.”
“Nah, you’re a good detective.” She shook her head. “Too good, sometimes. If it gets you killed—” She stopped and looked away. “Damn it. I used to be able to joke about that. Marriage changes a girl.”
“One would hope so.” I finished my beer. “You in the office tomorrow?”
“Yeah.” Rachel is a therapist, and works in an office with three other therapists three days a week. “I think I’ll call Carrie in the morning and see if she’s ever heard of this—what was her name again?”
“Estrella Corday.” I stood up and took my beer bottles to the recycling. “Thanks.” I picked up the money. “Let me put this in the office.”
She kissed me. “You’re going to be careful.”
“You know me—ow!” She’d punched me. “Sorry. Yes, I will be careful. The only one allowed to kill me is you.”
“That’s better.” She kissed me again. “Let’s go to bed.”
Rachel left early the next morning. I’d slept restlessly, between dreams of Estrella, with the body of a spider, beckoning to me from dark corners, and Rachel glaring at me from across the kitchen table with two long, jagged daggers in her hands. I was on my third coffee, working on the question of Enrique Valdez, when Niki called.
“I called one of my cousins,” she told me immediately. “She says Ricky died in 2020. COVID. She doesn’t know anything about the fork, except I couldn’t really ask her right out, you know?”
“Right.” I’d already found records of Ricky’s death. “He owned a restaurant on the west side of Chicago, but he retired in 2018 and bought a house in Des Plaines. Survived by his second wife and two adult children and one stepchild, under 18.”
“Wow, that was fast.” She sounded impressed, making me feel a little better. “What now?”
“I’ll have to contact them and ask. It will sound—strange, especially considering I can’t really explain why I’m looking for it.”
“Will you have to, uh, give my name?” That made her nervous.
“I’ll try not to. There’s no client confidentiality for private detectives. I mean, technically you’re not my client, but I figure I’m dealing with you as much as Estrella. Hopefully there won’t be any conflicts.”
She sighed. “I just can’t believe any of this. What happens if he—I mean, how will I explain it to people? Maybe it’s better if—I don’t know.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to influence her, at least not unless she asked me. Part of me hoped she’d change her mind and let me tell Estrella to go to hell. But I was worried about Estrella’s reaction, too. This was like working for a mob boss, only Tony Soprano can’t threaten you with the literal torments of hell.
“Never mind,” Niki finally said. “Let me know if you find it.”
“I will.” We hung up.
I got more coffee and started making calls and sending emails. People nowadays don’t usually answer calls from numbers they don’t recognize, so I knew I’d have to wait. After an hour I was finished, and I started looking for more traces of Ricky Valdez on the internet, in case he’d ever posted a picture of his prized collection of forks on Instagram or something. You never know.
Then, half an hour later, my phone buzzed. “Tom Jurgen speaking.”
“Mr. Jurgen? This is Tiffany Robbins. I’m Ricky Valdez’s daughter. You sent me an email?”
“Yes! Thanks for calling me back.” I’d already thought through my approach, but I spent a moment getting my head straight. “As I said, I’m a private detective. I’m trying to locate an item your father may have had—”
“What for?” She was suspicious. Understandably.
“My client doesn’t want to be identified. But it’s not anything of value. A fork. Just a single fork, not part of a set. Do you happen to know where it is?”
“Huh.” She thought that over. “Just a fork? What does it look like?”
“Just—a fork, I guess. I don’t have a picture. Silver, maybe tarnished a little.”
“I could look. But this sounds weird, not telling me who wants it. Can you pay me if I find it?”
I hadn’t discussed that with Estrella, but I had the cash Alexander had handed me last night. As long as Tiffany Robbins didn’t ask for an exorbitant amount, I could afford to part with some of it. If I had to. “Within reason.”
“Well—let me see, okay? I’ll let you know.” She hung up.
I tried to concentrate on other cases—employee background checks, workers comp claims, some skip tracing—but I kept looking at my phone. When it buzzed, it wasn’t Tiffany. It was Rachel’s friend Carrie.
For a long time Carrie didn’t like me. She’s warmed up a bit, especially since Rachel and I got engaged. Now that we’re married, she pretends like we’ve always been the bestest of friends, and I try not to let it bother me. She’s Rachel’s best friend, and she’s helped me out dozens of times, despite being suspicious of me and my intentions in the beginning.
Today she was friendly. Excited even, but maybe because she got to scare me. “Estrella Corday? Bad news. Really bad news, Tom. Make sure your life insurance is up to date.”
I sighed. “What can you tell me about her?”
“She’s over 150 years old. She may have been born during the Chicago Fire in 1871, according to some legends. She learned witchcraft in Austria, stayed there for 50 years terrorizing small towns, then came back here when the Nazis started moving in. After killing a few of them.”
“So there’s something about her to like,” I said.
“Back home she did spells for Frank Nitti and the Outfit, so there’s that. And there’s some people who disappeared because they challenged her once she started getting too powerful. Then, I don’t know, something happened, and no one’s seen her in, like, 30 years or so.”
“What happened?”
“Nobody knows. Or wants to say. She’s done some work from wherever she is—her traces are all over a couple of strange deaths and animal sacrifices—but she’s apparently keeping low, staying out of sight.”
“Or trapped.” I told her about our encounter.
“Wow.” Carrie sounded nervous. “Anything that could keep Estrella chained to one place of 30 years would have to be really strong. Are you sure you want to deal with her?”
“No.” I struggled to find the words to explain. “I promised someone I’d help restore her father’s soul.”
“My God, Tom, you know that’s not possible, don’t you? Even for someone like Estrella Corday?”
“I mostly wanted to get out of the house alive. Now I’m stuck. If I don’t deliver, or at least make a good-faith effort, what is she going to do to me?”
It was a rhetorical question, but Carrie answered ominously, “I haven’t heard a lot about any of her enemies. Not because she never had any, either. Because they’re either hiding, or, you know. Dead.”
“Thanks for that.” I looked at my coffee cup. Was it too early to start drinking whiskey?
After Carrie told me to say hi to Rachel and hung up, I got more coffee and tried to think. I’ve worked for some disreputable people and taken some cases I should have skipped, but that was earlier in my career. Nowadays I try not to take on any cases that won’t let me sleep at night. But I’d gotten backed into a corner, and I didn’t see any way out. Now what?
As I was trying to think, my phone buzzed again. Tiffany Robbins. “Fifty dollars,” she told me.
Uhh— “All right. Where are you? I can pick it up whenever you want.”
She lived in Park Ridge, but she didn’t want me to come to her house. We agreed to meet outside in a grocery store parking lot near her home at 1 p.m. I’d bring cash.
I couldn’t call Estrella, and I didn’t really want to, so I called Niki Matos. “I think I’ve found the fork.”
“Oh. That was fast.” But she didn’t sound impressed by my amazing detective work.
“I’m picking it up this afternoon. After that, we can take it out to the house—”
“I’m not sure I want to do that,” she said suddenly.
I stopped. “That’s your decision, obviously.”
“It’s just—I was thinking about what you said, and—I don’t know if I want to do that to him.” Her voice went quiet. “I miss him, but—maybe it’s better just to let him go?”
I waited a few moments, in case she needed to go on. Finally I said, “I think that might be best, actually. Like I said, necromancy—resurrecting the dead—is very dangerous magic. Anything could go wrong.”
“Yeah.” She sighed. “Okay. You do what you have to do. Tell her—just tell her I changed my mind.”
“I’ll do that.”
“Thank you.” She hung up.
That made me feel somewhat better. Zombies are always bad news in my experience, and I’ve had more experience with them than I’d like.
But I still had to decide whether to hand the fork over to Estrella.
No comments:
Post a Comment