“And the person who cared for the farmland didn’t live on it as a tenant?” I asked.
“The grandson said there was a house out there until sometime in the 1960s, but it wasn’t really occupied-most of the time, Baer used it as a place to drink with his friends.”
“What happened in the 1960s?”
“He said that after his grandmother died-about fifteen years ago-his grandfather didn’t feel the need to escape to the house so often, and tore the old place down.”
“So when was it sold to the current owners?”
“Two years ago. According to the grandson, Baer’s will was vaguely worded, and there was a huge fight within the family-like I said, mostly over the beach property. But eventually, the heirs settled things, and the offer by the developer was generous enough to get everyone to agree to it.”
“Did you question him about the bodies in the car?” O’Connor asked.
“No-didn’t want to step on anything the two of you might be doing later.”
“Good work,” he said. “You learned a lot about that property in a short amount of time-thanks.”
Lydia left us, glowing from his praise. I asked O’Connor if he had learned anything from his phone call.
“Not yet,” he said. He relented a little, though, and said, “I called someone who works in the coroner’s office.”
“Oh, so that’s a cross, like a graveyard cross, and not a ‘t’ on that card? I guess that system makes it harder on the newsroom snoops.”
He looked surprised-genuinely, this time-then laughed and told me to stay the hell away from his Rolodexes.
I glanced at my watch and called home, and once again begged Mary’s help. She told me not to worry, that my father had slept most of the day and would probably be up and wanting to talk to me when I got home. “So it’s you who’ll have the long day,” she said. “Not me.”
O’Connor and I went to work on the story itself. We divided it along the lines of old and new-he would write the background material on the Ducane murders, and I would cover events at the construction site today. I called Woolsey’s office every half hour. The receptionist wouldn’t put the first few calls through, and told me to give up and call back at the time Dr. Woolsey specified. I didn’t give up, and two and a half hours after I had left his office, Woolsey gave a preliminary confirmation of the identities of the bodies as those of Kathleen and Todd Ducane, and their infant son, Maxwell.
I was still on that call when H.G. told O’Connor that he was wanted in Wrigley’s office.
When he came back, about twenty minutes later, he said that Mr. Wrigley had known Katy Ducane, too, and was a friend of Lillian Linworth. “This may seem strange to you, but…even though we’ve believed for years that Katy and Todd were dead, this is hard on everyone who knew them.”
“That doesn’t seem strange to me at all.”
He was silent.
“Katy was only twenty-one, right?”
“Yes. Younger than you are now,” he said wonderingly.
I did the math. “Weird, isn’t it? She’d be some middle-aged lady now, if she had lived.”
He smiled in an odd way, but said, “Yes.”
“She seems to have been someone who made an impression on people.”
“Spoiled rotten. Headstrong. Alive as anyone I’ve ever known. Jack and Helen adored her. Her husband-well, none of us were fond of Todd, but perhaps he would have matured into a better man. We’ll never know.”
“You wish you were with Lillian and Helen instead of here?”
He thought for a moment, then said, “No, Kelly, I’m where I need to be. This is what I do. And in all honesty, I’d be nothing but miserable anywhere else.”
I understood that, although I had far less time in as a reporter. The thought of his abilities and years of experience made me feel all the greener. A couple of hours later, with some trepidation, I handed him what I had written so far, and took a look at his own pages.
31
S HE SURPRISED HIM.
He had worried that writing together would be a trying, exasperating experience, one that would require twice as much effort to produce a story, and that he would need to constantly beware of offending her.
But when she came back from the coroner’s office, full of observations and questions about the Yeagers, he began to admire the way her mind worked, that she hadn’t taken Woolsey at face value. Hell, she hadn’t taken him at face value.
Perhaps because they were focused on the story, or perhaps because she was better at this than he had expected, it had gone smoothly. Even when she told him-brassy little bitch that she was-that he had missed something in his first draft.
“What?” he had asked.
“Katy. I don’t see her in here-not the way you described her to me. Not that girl in the portrait at Lillian’s house.”
He silently damned her for being right and went back to work.
He found himself pushing himself a little harder than he had been lately, concentrating on his own work in a way he had not done in the last few months, wanting to set an example-and aware of her scrutiny. A little unnerving, this new responsibility, but stimulating as well.
She made a few mistakes, but didn’t bridle at his suggested changes. If anything, she seemed eager to learn from him.
They wrote quickly-once he went back to work on it, the story didn’t need coaxing along-and finished in time to keep John Walters from losing a bet with H.G. that they’d make deadline.
She had looked so pleased when she handed it off to the copy desk, he smiled thinking of it.
The blend of their styles hadn’t been as jarring as he had worried it would be, either. In the most basic ways, hers was not so different from his own. He made a remark about this, and she said it wasn’t surprising. “Your writing has been a part of my life since I was seven or eight.”
That had taken him aback for a moment. The daily grind of putting out the paper made a man think about days from deadline to deadline, and not in terms of years.
She was younger than his son. He had been writing for the paper for several years by the time Kenny was born.
He wondered if her father worried about her, working in this business, seeing the hard side of the world, encountering lowlifes every day. He looked around him and frowned. Lowlifes in the newsroom as well. He resolved to have a word with the Wildman.
“Tomorrow, will you show me what’s in that box?” she asked.
“Sure. Tonight if you’d like.”
“Tempting, but I need to get home to my dad.”
They walked out to the parking lot together, not saying anything. He reached his car first and stood next to it, watching her walk to the little Karmann Ghia, seeing her fumble through her purse for her keys.
From the corner of his eye, he caught a movement near the fence of the Wrigley Building parking lot. The light in the lot was dim, and beyond it he could see little more than shadows, but he couldn’t shake a feeling that someone was there. He watched for another sign of movement, listened for a footstep.
He heard Kelly say, “Good night, O’Connor. Thanks again.”
He turned to her and saw, for the briefest moment, the image of a very different young woman, a sister lost to him one long-ago evening. On her way home from work to a waiting father.
“Let me see you home safe,” he said to her. “I’ll follow you in my car, all right?”
She smiled. “I’ll be all right.”
“It’s late. Humor an old man. It will make me feel better.”
He was convinced that she wanted to refuse, but after a moment of studying him, she shrugged and said, “If you can afford the gas and you and that old Nash can keep up with me, fine.” She laughed and said, “You probably hear that old ‘Beep Beep’ song as often as I hear ‘Goodnight, Irene.’”