“You think his death had something to do with Eddie’s murder?”
“It’s the only connection I can see at the moment. It’s all too closely related to be just coincidence.”
Dina pulled onto the brick drive that led to Jacoby’s home. The crime scene team was still there, but the media vans were gone and the neighbors had all retreated back into their own big houses. She pulled up to the Pathfinder, still parked where he’d left it earlier that morning.
“Cork, I’m not on the Jacoby payroll anymore. Eddie, Ben, they’re not my worry now. But you are.” She reached into the glove box, pulled out a business card, and gave it to him. “If you need me for anything, call.”
“Listen,” he said. “That was a lousy thing I pulled in Aurora. I’m sorry.”
“Done in a good cause,” she replied, then smiled wistfully. “ Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, it might have been.’”
She leaned over, kissed his cheek, watched him get out, then growled away in her Ferrari, a car that cleaning up the messes made by people like the Jacobys had paid for.
By the time he arrived at the clinic, Jo’s examination was over and she’d gone home with Rose.
At the duplex, he found the women gathered around the kitchen table—where else?—drinking tea. The long night of despair had left them with puffy, dark-circled eyes and faces still pinched with worry. Jo was safe, but Cork suspected that for Jenny and Annie the ordeal was not over. It was clear they knew what she’d been through, were probably even now imagining it, living it in their own minds, feeling the filth of it on their own bodies. What had happened to their mother had been the kind of thing that happened to other women, other families, in other places, but here it was at their table, the monster of all fears, and Cork understood that for a while it would shadow their world.
He kissed Jo and held her.
“They kept me a long time,” he said. “I would have been there.”
“It was fine. Rose was with me.”
“Thank you.” He spoke over Jo’s shoulder to his sister-in-law. “Where’s Stevie?”
Rose said, “Mal took him to the park. He doesn’t really know what’s happened.”
“Good. Hi, guys.” He kissed both his daughters as he circled the table toward an empty chair.
They smiled bleakly.
“Would you like some tea?” Rose offered.
“Sure, what the hell. Wouldn’t happen to have a cookie to go with it?”
“Chocolate chip.”
“Rose, you are an angel.”
He looked at the two most dour faces at the table and he spoke especially to them. “You know, in the last week I’ve been shot at, threatened with a bomb, attacked with a knife. Your mother’s gone through her own terrible hell. But here we are together around this table, and I can’t remember a time when I’ve felt so lucky. Rose,” he called, “cookies all around. And don’t stint on the chocolate chips.”
Smiles like small bright caterpillars crawled across his daughters’ lips.
Later, in the privacy of the room Jo had shared with Stevie, Cork held her for a long time.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered into her hair.
She spoke, her breath soft against his cheek. “The truth is, I don’t remember anything. I only have vague impressions, like a bad dream. I suppose that’s lucky.”
“It may hit you later.”
“Probably.”
“I have to see Faith Gray when I get back to Aurora. Maybe you should, too.”
“All right.”
“I wish I could have kept it from happening.”
She drew back just enough to look into his eyes. “How could you? It was such a predatory act, who could have predicted it?”
“It’s not the first time Phillip’s done something like this, Jo. I’m going to do everything I can to make certain he doesn’t prey on anybody else.”
“Do they have any idea about Ben? Who killed him?”
“Not yet. I get the feeling they’d like to pin it on me.”
“They can’t possibly suspect you.”
“If I were them, I’d consider me a pretty good suspect. Jo, Dina told me some things I think you ought to know.”
They sat on the bed in the room she had shared with Stevie, and he told her everything he knew.
“All this,” she said, “because Eddie Jacoby thought he could make a gift of me.”
“It’s a possibility.”
“All this death.”
He touched her cheek, felt her heat, her life flowing into his fingers. “We’re not dead, you and me.”
“But Ben is. Why him?”
“I don’t know.”
“I want to leave here, Cork. I want to go home.”
“The Winnetka police would like us to stay awhile. They’ll have more questions when they’re finished with the crime scene and start looking at the evidence.”
“I’ve told them everything I know.”
“So have I, several times. They’ll ask again. Before we talk to them we should have a lawyer. And there’s something else, Jo.”
He told her about Phillip Jacoby’s assertion that she had consented to the things he’d done.
“That little son of a bitch,” she gasped.
“So for a while, we sit tight and see what develops and make sure that we’re prepared to face the worst.”
She felt the tears welling, her throat closing. “Shit doesn’t just happen, does it, Cork. It happens and happens and happens.”
“Here,” he said. He kissed her hands, lifted them, and waved them gently over their heads.
“What was that?” she asked.
“A shit shield.”
She was laughing quietly when the knock came at the door.
“Cork?” Rose called. “There’s a call for you.”
Jo followed him to the kitchen, where he took the phone and said, “Yes?” He listened, looked concerned. “I’ll be right there.” He hung up.
“What is it?” Jo asked.
“That was Lou Jacoby. He wants to see me.”
49
CORK PARKED ON the drive that circled in front of Lou Jacoby’s Lake Forest estate home.
“I swear to God,” he said, killing the engine, “the North Shore has more castles than the Rhine.”
He’d tried to convince Jo not to come, but she’d insisted, telling him that now that they were together, she’d be damned if she’d let anything separate them.
Evers, Jacoby’s houseman, answered the bell. He looked tired but still maintained the rigid formality his position required.
“The O’Connors,” Cork said. “Mr. Jacoby is expecting us.”
Evers led them down a long hallway to the rear of the house, where a small, lovely woman with black hair and a Latin look awaited them. She seemed familiar, but Cork couldn’t recall where he’d seen her before.
“I’ll take it from here,” she said to Evers.
“Of course.” The houseman vanished back into the vast silence of the place.
“It is a pleasure to see you again,” she said to Jo. Then to Cork: “We have not met. I am Gabriella Jacoby, Eddie’s widow.”
She spoke a foreign accent he’d recently heard, and he realized where he’d seen her before. In the face of a pilot.
“Do you have a brother?”
“Yes.”
“Tony Salguero?”
“Do you know Antonio?”
“I’ve met him.”
“He is a good brother.” She smiled briefly, then lapsed into a somber tone. “I told Lou this was not a good idea, but he insisted. I warn you, he is out of his head with grief. He will probably say things that will sound crazy. You may leave now, and I will explain it to him.”
“If he wants to see me,” Cork said, “let him see me.”
She reached for the knob, hesitated as if she were going to speak again, perhaps argue the wisdom of proceeding, then she opened the door and stepped ahead of them i
nside.
The room was mostly dark and smelled of an old man and his cigars. The only illumination came through the slits of partially opened blinds over the long windows. In the far corner, bars of light like the rungs of a ladder fell across a stuffed chair and its occupant. Jo’s eyes climbed each rung until they encountered the red eyes of Lou Jacoby staring back. He wore a dressing gown that hung open over his chest, showing a white undershirt. His legs were bare, his feet slippered. His hair was a wild spray of white. He seemed smaller than the last time she’d seen him, as if Ben’s death had taken away something physical from his own form. He held a glass that contained ice and a hickory-colored liquid. A smoking cigar sat in a standing brass ashtray to his right.
“I knew you were trouble the moment I saw you with him.” The voice came from the darkness beneath his red eyes, from the mouth Jo still couldn’t quite make out.
“I’m sorry about your son,” she said.
For a moment, he didn’t reply. Then: “The sons should bury the father. That’s how it’s supposed to be.”
Gabriella crossed to him and stood at his side, her hand protectively on his shoulder. In the slatted light, her shadow fell over the old man and swallowed him.
“You wanted to see me,” Cork said.
“If I were a younger man, I’d stand up and beat you to death with my own hands.”
“I didn’t kill your son.”
“Lou has been told about the police investigation,” Gabriella said. “He knows about the gun they found. What they call a throw-down, I believe. They told him it is something policemen have been known to do to get away with murder.”
“Not this cop. Have you talked to Dina Willner?”
“She has been mysteriously silent to our inquiries,” Gabriella replied.
“It’s not enough you kill my son,” Jacoby spat out. “You slander my grandson, too, with your lies.”
“I understand your grief,” Cork said. “But don’t let it blind you to the truth.”
With difficulty, Jacoby rose from his chair. “I’m not a man of idle threats. An eye for an eye. You hear me?”
“Mercy,” Jo said, speaking softly into the dark of the room. “It falls like the gentle rain from heaven, Mr. Jacoby.”
“Not in this house, woman.” He said to Gabriella, “Get them out.”
Gabriella came forward and placed herself between the O’Connors and the old man. “It’s time for you to go.”
“We’ve done nothing to you,” Jo said.
“You’ve done everything short of killing me. Get out.”
Jo turned away, then Cork. Gabriella followed them out and led them toward the front door.
“I warned you,” she said.
“Have you even tried to help him understand?” Cork said.
“You saw him. When he’s ready to listen to reason, I will reason.”
As they neared the door, they saw Evers blocking the way, arguing with someone standing just outside.
“What is it?” Gabriella said.
Evers stepped aside, and Jo saw Rae Bly framed in the doorway.
“I was trying to explain that I have my instructions.”
“To keep me out?” Rae’s voice was a sharp blade of indignation. “I don’t believe it.”
“That’s all right. I will take care of it,” Gabriella said.
Evers stepped back, turned, and walked away, stiff as a zombie.
Gabriella addressed her sister-in-law. “It is true. He does not want to see you.”
“Does he even know I’m here?”
“I told him that you called. He won’t see you. If you try to talk to him now, you will only be hurt by him. When he is ready, I will let you know.”
“I’m his daughter, Gabby.”
“As am I now. And we must think of him. Later he will see you. It will be all right, I promise, pobrecito. Now, good day to you all.”
Cork and Jo stepped outside.
Rae stared at the door that had closed against her. She wilted and then she wept. “Ben, Ben. Oh, Benny.”
Jo put her arms around her. After a minute, Rae pulled herself together.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“That’s all right.”
“I didn’t get all the details, but enough to say I’m sorry for what happened to you, Jo. It’s shameful, but that’s the Jacobys. Did Lou see you?”
“Only long enough to threaten us,” Jo said.
“Don’t take him lightly.”
“This is Cork, my husband.”
“I figured.”
“Rae is Ben’s sister.”
“I was sure he’d see me. We’re all we have now, each other.”
“Apparently, he thinks he has Gabriella, too,” Cork said.
“Will you be all right?” Jo asked.
“No, but that’s not your concern. You have your own problems. And the Jacobys,” she said bitterly, “we take care of our own affairs.”
They left her, a small figure standing alone in the shadow of her father’s great house.
50
FROM ROSE AND Mal’s duplex, he called the number on the card Dina Willner had given him.
“I just came from Lou Jacoby’s,” he told her.
“And you’re still alive?”
“Not for long, from the way he’s talking.”
“Cork, Lou doesn’t just talk.”
“Gabriella Jacoby says you’ve been silent on what happened at Ben’s place.”
“Silent? I’ve been trying to reach Lou but Gabriella is screening everything. I can’t get through to him.”
Cork heard the frustration in her voice, a rare emotion in his experience. He realized how tired she must be, too.
“How’s Jo?” she asked.
“Doing remarkably well, considering.”
“Strong woman. How about you? Are you all right?”
“Jo’s safe. I can handle everything else.”
“I’ll get to Lou somehow, explain things, Cork. That’s a promise.”
He was exhausted, but he spent the afternoon at a park on the lake with his family, pushing Stevie on the swings, talking with his daughters about Northwestern and Notre Dame, watching Jo—who seemed, in spite of what she’d been through, calm as the water on the lake that day. Twenty years before, he had proposed to her on Lake Michigan, on a dinner cruise, an evening that had changed his life and taken it in the best of directions.
He sent Jenny and Annie off to play with their brother while he sat on a blanket with Jo.
“I’ve been thinking about Gabriella,” he said. “And her brother. And about an angel who spoke to Lizzie Fineday.”
“An angel?”
“In Lizzie’s confused recollection anyway. What was it that Gabriella called Rae this morning? Pobrecito? What does that mean?”
“If I recall my college Spanish, it means something like ‘poor little one.’”
“Lizzie said her angel called her ‘poor vaceeto.’ Could it be that the angel spoke Spanish and what she really said was pobrecito?”
“You think Gabriella was Lizzie’s angel?”
“When I called Edward Jacoby’s home the morning after he was murdered, his housekeeper told me that Mrs. Jacoby wasn’t there. She was on a boat. Tony Salguero told me he was sailing on Lake Michigan. Because I didn’t know there was a connection between them, I didn’t put it together at the time, but what do you want to bet they were on the same boat? How difficult would it be to anchor somewhere not far from an airfield, fly to Aurora, take care of some pretty gruesome business, and get back to the boat in time for Lou Jacoby’s call the morning after Eddie was murdered?”
“I don’t know. How would you prove something like that?”
“They had to leave a trail. Dock somewhere, file a flight plan, gas up, land and park a plane. If they tailed Eddie out to Mercy Falls, they had to have a vehicle of some kind. A rental, maybe? There’s got to be documentation for some of this somewhere. It should just be a question of
tracking it down.”
He stood up and called to the children. He hated to end the picnic, but there was work to be done.
First he called Ed Larson, who had already spoken with the Winnetka police and knew about what had happened to Jo.
“Christ, Cork. I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah.”
“I’d love to get that Jacoby kid alone somewhere.”
“Won’t happen, Ed.”
“How’s Jo doing?”
“Holding her own.”
“Look, I do have two pieces of good news.”
“I could use some about now,” Cork said.
“First, Simon Rutledge was finally able to talk to Carl Berger. Looks like we’ll be amending the complaint against Lydell Cramer to include conspiracy to commit murder. Berger says that Cramer used his sister and LaRusse to arrange to have Stone do the hit at the Tibodeau cabin. The motive was revenge, pure and simple.
“Now for the second piece of good news. We finally found Arlo Knuth. He’d gone on a bender and wound up in the drunk tank in Hibbing. I talked to him. He says that after Schilling ran him off, he parked behind the blockhouse on the lower level at Mercy Falls. Around midnight, he saw two vehicles head to the upper lot near the overlook. Right behind them came a third vehicle that parked in the lower lot. Two people got out and hiked up the stairs toward the overlook. They came back down half an hour later and left. Arlo says he left right after that. The place was getting too busy.”
“Was he able to give you a description?”
“No, but he did give us something very interesting. Whoever those two people were, they spoke Spanish.”
“Pobrecito, Ed.”
“What?”
Cork told him about Gabriella Jacoby and Antonio Salguero, and explained his thinking about Eddie’s murder.
“The Salgueros lost everything in Argentina. Marrying Eddie Jacoby gave Gabriella a handle on another fortune. With her husband dead, she probably stands to get her hands on a significant chunk of change. Insurance, at the very least. Maybe she even moves up a notch in the old man’s will.”