Rachel came out of her office when I got home, hugged me, then punched my arm. “You idiot.”
“Yeah.” I patted her shoulder. “Does this get me out of making dinner at least?”
“The freezer is yours.” She kissed my cheek. “If you can eat. My appetite went to hell the minute you called me.”
I’d been talking to the police for three hours. Kurt had gotten away, and I couldn’t help them at all, but they kept asking questions until we all got bored with each other. A paramedic checked me out and said I was good to go. Driving home took me more than an hour because I kept looking over my shoulder, expecting Kurt to be hiding in my backseat.
Now I opened a cabinet and found the whiskey bottle we’d bought when we closed on our condo three months ago. We hadn’t opened it yet, so I unwrapped the cap and poured myself a stiff one. “You?”
Rachel shook her head and took a beer from the refrigerator. “You okay?”
“Maybe.” We went into the living room.
We’d bought the condo three months ago. Sharing an office in a two-bedroom apartment wasn’t working anymore, with Rachel doing more of her counseling work from home while I talked on the phone to clients and sources, so we pooled our resources for a down payment on a three-bedroom condo. Now we each had our own office, more space, and bigger payments, but business was good for both of us, assuming neither one of us got murdered. Which was more of a possibility for me than her.
Rachel sat next to me with her beer. She’s got red hair with a little gray now, and hazelnut eyes, but her psychic powers hadn’t faded with time. Now she ran a finger through my own graying hair. “You want to talk?”
“Will you charge me?”
She punched my arm. “It’s going to cost you one way or another.”
I sat back and closed my eyes. “It was—you know. Vampires and killer plants and ghosts and Lovecraftian monsters, but a psycho with a gun is worse than all of them. You’re lucky I didn’t need to change my underwear the minute I walked in the door.” I took a sip of whiskey. “I know, I do this to myself. But not this. This came from outside.”
“But there were demons. That’s what they said.”
“I didn’t think they were real demons. Just garden-variety schizophrenia. But—” I rubbed my head, remembering the itch when I was with Kurt.
“What?”
“I don’t know.” I looked at Rachel. “You getting anything from me?”
She put a hand on my head and closed her eyes. “I'm not sure. There’s so much rattling around inside there after all these years I can’t tell what’s new and what’s just repressed trauma from those giant killer chickens that one time. Wait a minute—” She punched my arm again. “Are you horny?”
“Always when I'm next to you.” I smiled. “Don’t worry. I need dinner more than anything. Almost being killed brings out all kinds of primal appetites.” I finished my whiskey. “I’ll search the freezer.”
Rachel pushed me down. “I’ve got it. You just want another drink.”
“Gee, you really are psychic.” I sat back and let her take my glass.
“You are going to quit the case, aren’t you?” She came back with my glass and the whiskey bottle.
“First thing tomorrow,” I promised.
She handed me the bottle. “Don’t get too drunk.” She leaned down to kiss me, then headed back to the kitchen to look for dinner.
The next morning I called my client to tell her I was off the case.
Jane Benedict took it well. “I guess I can’t blame you,” she said with a sigh. “I only thought—I’m just so scared for Stacey. But I suppose you don’t have a choice.”
I felt like crap. P.I.s are supposed to be brave, and tough, and heroic. But it was less than 12 hours since Kurt had pointed his gun in my face, and I my stomach still hadn’t fully unclenched. “I'm sorry,” I said for the third time. “I can recommend some other private detectives who might be able to help you—”
“Maybe,” she cut in. “I have to think about it. Just—send me your bill, I guess?”
I apologized again, and we hung up. I was working on her invoice when my phone buzzed again. The number looked familiar, so I answered it.
“Mr. Jurgen? This is, uh, Meredith Freeman. Are you still looking for Stacey? Did you find her?”
This was one of Stacey’s friends I’d talked to yesterday. Before my encounter with Kurt. I hesitated, and before I could say, “Not really,” she went on: “I just thought of someone who might know where she is. I don’t have her number, but she works at Planet Fitness on Halsted. Her name’s Jess, Jess Kinder.”
I swallowed. “Okay. Is this a friend of Stacey?”
“They used to be roommates. It took me a while to remember her name. I used to go there to work out sometimes.”
She was trying to be helpful. I’d feel guilty telling her I was off the case. So I thanked her, and sat there in front of my computer for 15 minutes. And then I called Jane Benedict.
“I have one more lead I can check out,” I told her. “I’ll do that, and then I'm done. It shouldn’t take too long, and then I’ll report back. Is that all right?”
She took a long time to answer. “Well, if you want to. After yesterday I understand you’d want to stay away. But—yes, if you can do that, I’d appreciate it.”
“Okay.” She thanked me again, and we hung up.
Rachel was working from the counseling center today. That meant I wouldn’t have to watch her glare at me, which helped make my next call easier. A little.
She wasn’t happy. “If you get killed I am going to marry the first man I meet. I’m going to take his last name. I'm going to have his babies. I'm going to—” She stopped to take a breath. “Jerk. Just don’t get killed. Okay?”
“I won’t.” I told her.
“Take Donald.” Her voice was an icy order. “Use him if you have to. Got that?”
“Got it.”
“Just make sure you come home tonight.”
“I will.” I hoped I could keep my promise.
I had the Glock in the trunk of my Prius as I parked down the block from Planet Fitness on Halsted. I have a concealed carry permit for it, but I figured I wouldn’t need it inside a gym. Of course I didn’t think yesterday that I’d need it, but today was a new day, right?
Inside the front door a man in a black T-shirt with the logo of the place stood at the check-in desk. He smiled, probably sizing up my need for a membership and a workout, and asked what he could do for me today.
“I'm looking for Jess Kinder? There’s no trouble, I'm just asking after a friend.”
He seemed puzzled, but he tapped his computer. “I just paged her. Just a second.”
It took two minutes, but a young blond woman in tights and a pink tank top over a sleeveless T-shirt walked out from the gym area. The guy behind the desk nodded to me, then crossed his arms, keeping his eyes on me in case I turned out to be a stalker.
Jess Kinder looked confused. “Can I help you?”
“I got your name from Meredith Freeman,” I told her, trying to look as harmless as possible. “I'm a private detective. Tom Jurgen.” I showed her my card. “Meredith thought you might have any idea of where Stacey Benedict is.”
“Oh.” Jess stared at my card and then looked at me, maybe trying to fit me into her idea of what a P.I. should look like. “Okay. Come on.”
She led me past rows of treadmills, stationary bicycles and stairmasters to a corner of the gym with a few tables and chairs and a small juice bar. No one was behind the counter.
We sat down. “We shared an apartment for a year,” Jess said. “We’re not really close friends, but we have friends in common so I saw her sometimes after she moved out. At parties and stuff. I met her—that boyfriend once or twice.” She grimaced. “Even without—all that, I could tell something was off with him. Anyway . . .” She ran her fingers through her hair. “This is probably what Meredith is thinking of. I remember her aunt came to visit this one time, one afternoon. With this older guy. He wasn’t her uncle. You could tell they weren’t related. Just, like, a family friend of her aunt, you know?”
“Do you know their names?”
Her eyes scrunched up. “Aunt . . . Patricia. Patricia Coles, yeah. I remember Stacey introducing us. The guy?” Jess looked up at the ceiling. “I don’t know. Like, Charles? Or Joseph? Something kind of older, old-fashioned, right? But he was nice. Quiet. I didn’t hear him talk much. I was in the kitchen and then I was in my room watching TV. They were out in the living room all afternoon. Anyway—” She shook her head. “Sorry. I just remember, when they left, Aunt Patricia said something like, If you ever need a place to go, you can come up to Grayslake. I remember that. This was a little before she got her own place. I don’t know if she meant hiding out or just getting out of the city, but when I heard about Kurt, and I was talking to Meredith and she mentioned you . . .” She shrugged. “Does that help?”
“Maybe.” Grayslake is north of Chicago, about 60 miles away. Stacey owned a car. It wasn’t a bad lead, which meant I had to follow up on it. Damn it.
We spent few minutes talking about possible spellings of Coles, and then I thanked her for her help. Then I went out to my car and spent five minutes working up my nerve to call Rachel again.
She was silent for a moment after I told her about Grayslake. Then she sighed. “You know, I always tried not to be the girlfriend in the movies who’s always trying to talk her boyfriend into not being a P.I. or a spy or a soldier of fortune, because those chicks are usually so annoying. But you’re making it hard.”
“I could have been an accountant like my father. But then we never would have met.”
“And my life would be infinitely more boring.”
“You’re too hot for that.”
“Yeah, there’s that.” She groaned softly. “Sometimes I just miss riding along with you. Even into the jaws of the valley of the shadow of death, or whatever.”
“I miss that too. Couldn’t you do counseling while I drive?”
Rachel snorted. “I’ll ask my supervisor. Okay. Go. Don’t get killed. I mean it—shoot whoever you have to, just be home for dinner.”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
“Just don’t miss the bad guy.”
I felt a little better as we hung up. Then I called my client.
“Patricia . . .” she murmured. “She’s my husband’s sister. He died eight, ten years ago, and I haven’t talked to her in years. I didn’t know Stacey was in touch with her at all. She’s—well, she takes her religion pretty seriously. But I never had a problem with her.”
“Do you know her address?”
She spent a few minutes looking it up. “Unless she moved. I don’t think I got a Christmas card from her the last few years.”
“Do you know anything about the other man?”
“No. Patricia never got married. I don’t think—I don’t want to say anything, but she never seemed interested in that. I don’t know.”
“All right. I’ll be in touch.”
Probably Kurt wouldn’t be waiting for me in Grayslake. Probably. Had his girlfriend ever talked about her Aunt Patricia? Probably not. I kept telling myself that, over and over.
But I couldn’t shake the feeling of Kurt Reedling staring at me out of my mind. Not just his gun—okay, mostly his gun—but his eyes. Distant and detached, as if he was seeing things I could never see, hearing things beyond my ears.
He wasn’t one of them, he said about the dead man on the floor. That was a mistake. What did that mean?
I rubbed my scalp. I remembered the itch I’d felt, sitting on the floor, wondering if he was going to kill me. Not exactly an itch, though, but something else. More like a mosquito or a bug, trying to bite me. Or trying to burrow inside my head . . .
For a moment I wished Rachel had been there, to get a reading on Kurt, to see what was inside his head. I pushed the thought away immediately. I was glad she was far away.
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