Deadly Force

“Eat fast. We need to go talk to Sandy Bird’s neighbors. If we’re lucky, we’ll get to the people who work at the drugstore by early afternoon.”

A half hour later, they were walking down Sandy and Fletcher Bird’s street. It was edged with trees, just blocks away from the train line that ran through downtown Arlington Heights. The houses were two-stories, there was an abundance of swing sets and the neighbors were naturally curious.

They had known Sandy and liked her. At the third house, the one directly across the street, Sam and Cruz heard something interesting from the thirty-something woman who answered the door with a toddler on her hip.

“Sandy and I used to go to the gambling boat. It was a quick twenty-minute drive. And the buffet was delicious.”

Sam almost laughed. Of course. The slot machines had nothing to do with it.

“How often did you go?” Cruz asked.

“Once a month, maybe. We’d get a sitter for the kids. It was fun.”

And probably pretty harmless unless she was losing big. “What’s the most you ever saw her lose?”

The woman shrugged. “Maybe a hundred dollars.”

A hundred bucks a month? Didn’t seem like much of a gambling problem. But Sam recalled what Claire had told him. She wanted to know how much money we had.

“Do you think she ever went by herself or with another neighbor?”

“I don’t think so. She was pretty busy with her kids. Fletcher worked a lot of hours and was gone a lot.”

They thanked her for the information and left. Three houses later, the consensus was that Sandy Bird was a good mom, a willing volunteer and a poor golfer. None of that helped them understand why she’d stormed her way into a stranger’s apartment and started shooting up the place. They did not go to see Fletcher Bird. His car was in the driveway, but they kept their distance out of respect. There’d be time to talk with him later.

They headed back downtown, toward the South Loop. Because it was Sunday, and the office buildings were mostly empty, they had no trouble finding a place to park right in front of the drugstore.

They flashed pictures of Nadine and Claire. All three of the clerks, all women in their forties or fifties, shook their heads. Pretty girl, said one woman, pointing to Claire’s picture.

Flat-out beautiful, really, Sam thought. Voluptuous. Not stick-skinny like so many women aspired to be. A man wouldn’t lose her in the sheets.

He stopped walking so suddenly that Cruz almost ran into the back of him.

“What?” Cruz asked.

“Nothing.” He waved a hand. “Let’s go.”

What the hell was he doing thinking about Claire Fontaine wrapped up in nothing but a silk sheet?

ON MONDAY MORNING, before Claire had a chance to stuff her purse in her desk drawer, Victor’s secretary was knocking on their cubicles, letting the creative staff know that Victor wanted to see them—post haste.

The buzz immediately started. Finalists for the Chicago Advertising Association’s Design of the Year contest were supposed to be announced today. Victor was the contact for all the entries. Was it possible that one of them had been nominated as a finalist?

“What’s this about?” she heard Pete Mission ask.

Juanita, who, just the week before, had roared past sixty without blinking an eye, sighed. “Who knows? For having a degree in communications, he doesn’t share much. All I know is that he’s been pacing around his office like a little kid waiting for Christmas.”

Claire and the others took the elevator from the seventh floor to the ninth floor, where all the executives had corner offices. One by one, they filed into the conference room and took their respective chairs. There were no name plates or assigned seats, but still, everybody had a spot. And if somebody tried to shake things up by taking a different chair, no one was very happy. Several had brought work with them. Others were just content to let their brains relax. They were prepared to wait. Victor hadn’t started a staff meeting on time since the beginning of staff meetings. There had been lots of jokes that he couldn’t actually tell time.

They almost fell over when Victor arrived within minutes. His cheeks were pink and his small eyes were bright. He was smiling. It was the first time Claire had ever seen him happy.

He didn’t waste any time. “We were notified this morning that two of our entries are finalists in this year’s contest.”

Two. Wow. The competition was incredible. If an agency had one finalist, they were generally ecstatic. Even the more nonchalant staff members were sitting up straight in their chairs.

“I’m delighted to share that both Pete Mission and Claire Fontaine will be competing for this year’s grand prize.”

Oh, my God. She’d only been at Alexander and Pope two weeks when the memo went around, encouraging everyone on the creative staff to get their entry completed and submitted. She’d reviewed the guidelines and worked like a crazy person to develop something.

Hannah stood up and pumped her arm in the air. “Two. Amazing. Congratulations, Pete and Claire.”

Everyone clapped and cheered. At least Claire thought it was clapping and cheering. Maybe it was just her heart clanging in her chest. She made eye contact with Pete. Even he looked stunned.

Victor held up his index finger, attempting to bring order to the room. “Their designs will compete against the other four finalists. The committee will announce the winners exactly one week from today at the awards dinner. This is big, people, really big.”

As they filed out of the room, there were more private congratulations. Claire looked for Pete to offer her congratulations to him, but he was gone.

“Where’s Pete?” she asked Hannah.

The woman shrugged. “Probably out arranging for a tux and a limo. He’s entered for ten years straight and this is the first time he’s been a finalist.”

Ten minutes later, Hannah was still hanging over the cubical wall that Claire shared with her. She was speculating on what Claire should wear to the awards dinner. Claire’s telephone rang and she reached for it, grateful for the interruption. Hannah smiled at her, before her face disappeared from view.

“Claire Fontaine.”

“Hi, it’s Sam Vernelli.”

Like she wouldn’t have recognized his voice. She cupped her hand around her phone, attempting to create some privacy. Hannah out of sight didn’t necessarily mean Hannah out of hearing. “Detective?” she said, her voice low.

“How’s it going?” Sam asked.

“I just…” She stopped. She couldn’t tell him about the contest, about how absolutely psyched she was about being a finalist. That was something you told a friend, a confidant. He was neither.

“You just what?” he prompted.

“Nothing. What can I do for you?” she asked, her tone purposefully brisk, businesslike.

“I wanted you to know that we’re releasing the scene. You can get your apartment cleaned up.”

She pictured the splattered wall and swallowed hard, suddenly glad that she’d skipped breakfast. “I’ll call the painter now. Maybe I can have him meet me there tonight.” She really didn’t want to return to her apartment, but unless she planned on living indefinitely in a hotel, she needed to do it. She needed to put the ghosts behind her.

All night, she’d tossed and turned, wondering about the woman, reliving every word she’d said. At about two, she’d given up all pretense of sleeping, booted up her laptop and forced herself to work on upcoming proposals.

The work was bad and would need to be redone, but it beat dreaming about dead women and blood-spattered walls any day. She kept thinking about the woman’s family. “Did you talk with Mr. Bird?”

“Briefly and only on the phone. He’s busy planning a funeral. I gather that he’s pretty worried about how his boys are going to handle this—they’re just ten.”

Three years younger than she’d been when she’d faced death for the first time. She’d lost her sister before she’d ever really known her.

When Tessa had left Nebraska at eighteen to go to college in Chicago, Claire had been in fifth grade. She’d been more interested in computer games and birthday parties than in establishing a relationship with her sister.

She barely remembered the funeral. It had been a crazy couple of days. People in and out, calls to and from the police in Chicago, trips back and forth to the airport to pick up relatives. Death was a noisy affair.

Then, when all the people had left, the house had gotten quiet, very quiet. She’d been too young to understand it then. It was only later that she realized that everyone had been drowning in grief. Tessa’s death had stripped the sunshine out of their lives, leaving behind a cold, unforgiving torrent of rain.

And as hard as she’d tried, as good as she’d been, she’d never been able to make her parents smile in quite the same way again.

“Is there anything else, Detective?” she asked, her throat feeling tight.

“We’ll continue to investigate—probably talk to a few neighbors and check out the drugstore where Fletcher Bird works. I’ll call you if I have any more questions.”

“That’s…fine. Goodbye, Detective.” She hung up before he had the chance to respond.

Hannah’s head peeped over the cubicle wall. She didn’t even look embarrassed. “So? Does the detective have a name?”

She’d told Hannah about the shooting in her apartment. There hadn’t been much choice. Hannah’s cousin lived on the first floor of the building. It was through Hannah that Claire and Nadine had found out about the available third-floor apartment.

“Vernelli. Sam Vernelli.”

“Married?”

Hannah was thirty-eight and spent most of her evenings filling out profile sheets for online dating services. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Straight?”

Sam Vernelli radiated testosterone. “Pretty sure he is.”

“Does he in any way resemble a troll?”

Claire smiled at her friend. “He’s…very handsome.” It was the truth and it begged the question of why he had never married. Was it possible that he was still in love with Tessa, that he’d never gotten over his first true love?

Or gotten over the guilt of harming her?

She was going to drive herself crazy. She deliberately looked at her watch. “Wow. Where is the day going? I better get busy.” She grabbed the top file off the pile on her desk, opened it and pretended to read. When she heard the squeak of Hannah’s chair, she started to breathe again. After another ten minutes, she quietly pulled her cell phone from her purse and left the office area. She took the elevator down to the lobby, exited the building and walked just far enough that she wasn’t bothered by the smoke from the office workers who were huddled around the front door grabbing their morning nicotine fix.

She dialed Nadine’s cell.

“Hey, Claire,” Nadine answered.

“How’s Omaha?”

“You know, nothing much changes in Omaha. What’s going on there?”

“The police said that we can return to the apartment. I’ll call the painter today.”

“Thank goodness. So, do the police have any more thoughts on what might have happened?”

“Apparently not. When I did speak to Detective Vernelli this morning, he said that they were continuing to investigate.”

There was a pause on the line. “What’s to investigate?” Nadine finally asked. “She must have just been crazy.”

“We could attest to that, right? I guess they intend to talk to the husband. I guess that’s all probably routine.”

“Yeah, sure. I thought you were going to ask for another detective to be assigned.”

After the shooting, in between questions from the police, Claire had given Nadine the Cliff Notes version of her visit to Sam Vernelli’s house the night before.

“I’m calling Detective Vernelli’s boss next.”

He’d come to her rescue—she was grateful for that. And he’d been decent about giving back her check. But none of that mattered. She detested Sam Vernelli.

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