Grave Designs (9 page)

Chapter Ten

I was back in my office a little after five. Mary was just leaving for the day. She handed me a message from Maggie Sullivan.

I called Maggie, who was ecstatic, having just been awarded the burial rights to the zoo's hippopotamus. The funeral was set for one week from this Saturday.

“Why so long?” I asked.

“You think it's easy to bury a five-ton hippo? I gotta arrange for a crane and two backhoes. And then I have to find some carpenters who can build me a coffin the size of a Ford pickup. Gus can wait. Hell, it'll take two days to thaw him out. And I think they're going to do an autopsy on him. That'll take a few days too.”

We both realized the importance—to her, to Graham Marshall, and to Abbott & Windsor—of keeping the grave robbery out of the press. But I wanted to explain to her the potential conflict between her interest in protecting her property rights and the law firm's possible interest in voiding the trust fund.

“Listen, I want you to take the case. I know you'll be straight with me, Rachel. I could tell when I first met you. We're a couple of tough broads, you and me. Just find the coffin.”

“I'll try.”

“By the way, my brother-in-law was out here today. Carl's brother. He used to be a cop. Now he's a security guard over at one of the plants down here. He took a real careful look around. He said it was a professional job. No footprints, no tire tracks, no nothing. No clues.”

I told her I had a few leads I was running down. We agreed to talk again tomorrow.

I dictated a few letters into my machine, stuffed some court papers in my briefcase, and locked up. Benny Goldberg and I had agreed to meet for dinner at the Heartland Cafe in East Rogers Park. I reached the subway platform at State Street just as the northbound train rumbled into the station. I found a window seat, the hinged doors rattled shut, and the train lurched forward with a dull metallic groan. I settled back as the train screamed through the dark tunnel under the Loop and the Chicago River. The naked tunnel lights flickered by outside my window.

The el train rumbled into the Morse Station. I got off and walked to the north end of the platform and down the stairs to Lunt Avenue. Heartland Cafe is on the corner of Lunt, just across the narrow street that runs parallel to the el tracks. Benny wasn't there yet. I took the last open table in the outdoor courtyard.

Ten minutes later Benny pulled into a parking space in front of the restaurant and beeped the horn of his 1970 Chevy Nova as he climbed out. He was wearing sandals, blue jeans, and a red T-shirt with the white-lettered message, PLEASE HELP ME—I AM AN ENDOMORPH. His T-shirt was untucked in front, exposing a broad expanse of hairy flesh.

“You stop off at home?” I asked.

“You better believe it, Rachel.” Benny sat down across the table. “I was down in the bowels of the Chicago Public Library all afternoon, sweating my butt off. What a pit! No air-conditioning, no ventilation. By the time I left there, I think I had the cure for cancer growing in my armpits.” He looked around the restaurant and then picked up the menu. “A real chic place you got here, Rachel. Look at this menu. Nut-burgers? What the hell's that? They got any ham hocks here?”

“Try the chicken or the fish.”

He finally settled on the chicken with fresh dill. I picked lentil soup and mushroom quiche. After we placed our orders, Benny summarized his research efforts that afternoon.

“I think the dictionary definition must have been a misprint, Rachel. I couldn't find anything on Canaan, Massachusetts. Nothing. I even had one of the librarians check too. The place never existed.”

“This whole thing is crazy,” I said. “Nothing hangs together.”

“What do you have so far?”

“Just a lot of apparently unrelated junk. Graham Marshall buries something called Canaan in a pet cemetery. He puts up a tombstone with an odd epitaph. The tombstone has just one date: 1985. But Marshall buried it in May of ‘86. No one knows what's in the grave, including the owner of the cemetery.”

“That's Maggie Sullivan, that big babe?”

“Yep. And then Marshall sets up a trust fund for the care and maintenance of the grave. Sets it up in a secret codicil even though the firm did his will. Nothing happens until five weeks after he dies and one day after Abbott and Windsor retains me and I visit the grave. Then someone digs up the grave in the middle of the night and steals the coffin. Meanwhile, Marshall's secretary vaguely remembers working on a secret project involving Canaan for Marshall back in 1985. But she doesn't know what it was about, because he handled even the filing himself. She just knows she never heard him mention a pet. She ran a search through the firm's files for anything having to do with Canaan and turned up one page from a computer printout. The one I showed you today.” I paused while the waitress put down our food. “I visited Cindi Reynolds today. You were right. She was with Marshall when he died. She's actually very nice. Smart too.”

“Do you have the paper?” Benny asked.

“What paper?”

“That computer printout.”

I pulled my copy out of my briefcase and smoothed it onto the table. “I've been studying it on and off all afternoon,” I said. “Something's familiar about it, but nothing's clicked yet.”

“Let's take them one at a time,” Benny said. “Three, dash, twenty, dash, CN, dash, seventeen, dash, three.” He studied the list. “Each line has the same pattern: two numbers, then two or three letters, then two more numbers. They aren't license plate numbers—at least not Illinois license plate numbers. Wait a minute, maybe they have something to do with the dog. Don't you need a license for your dog? Maybe these are the dog's license numbers?”

“I already thought of that. I had Mary check with City Hall. No luck. Dog licenses don't have that pattern of numbers and letters. And anyway, there are four rows of stuff on this page. He didn't bury four pets in that coffin.”

“What else have you thought of?” Benny asked between bites of his chicken. “You know, this stuff isn't bad.”

I ran through my list of possibilities: check numbers, charge numbers, bank account numbers, safety deposit box numbers. All the while I was looking down the list of entries on the computer printout:

3-20-CN-17-3
7-28-CHT-4-3
9-12-CP-23-6
11-30-CHT-4-2

Suddenly it clicked. “That's it!” I said. “I've got it.”

“You've got what?”

“Look at the second row. Read it.”

“Okay. Seven, dash, twenty-eight, dash, CHT, dash, four, dash, three. Yeah?”

“It's my birthday.”

“Mazel tov, Rachel. Happy birthday.”

“No, no. Look at it, you clown. Seven, dash, twenty-eight. July twenty-eighth. That's my birthday. And then CHT. Don't you see? It's the newspaper. The
Chicago Herald Tribune.
Get it? Something appeared in the
Chicago Herald-Tribune
on July twenty-eight. On July 28, 1985. And I think I know what that something is.”

“Wait a minute. Where do you get 1985?”

“A hunch,” I said. “Remember I told you about Cindi Reynolds's scrapbook? Each newspaper clipping had the date and the name of the newspaper. One of those dates stuck in my head because it was on my birthday. July twenty-eighth. That was the article about the Ms. United States Pageant. July 28, 1985. In the
Chicago Herald-Tribune.
It's gotta be 1985. Everything points to 1985. The tombstone, Helen Marston's memories, the newspaper article.”

“What about the last two numbers?” Benny asked. “Four, dash, three?”

“I don't know. We'll have to see the article.”

“I think you're on to something. Look at the rest of the entries,” Benny said. “Three, dash, twenty. March twentieth. What about CN?”

“Chicago News,”
I said.

“Maybe so. Then CP. Uh,
Chicago Post?”

“Might be.”

“Wow!” said Benny. “I think that's it, Rachel.”

“Finish your meal and let's get out of here. Loyola's library is still open. We can look up the articles.”

***

Benny threaded the microfilm into the reader, advanced the reel to the first frame, and focused the viewer. We were staring at the front page of the
Chicago Herald-Tribune
for Monday, July 22, 1985. Benny pushed the fast-forward button and advanced the film in jerks and blurs to July 28, 1985. Nothing on the first page. He advanced the film slowly, page by page.

“Hold it,” I said. “That's it.”

Page four of the first section of the
Herald-Tribune
was projected onto the screen. In the middle of the page was the same article I had seen in Cindi Reynolds's scrapbook:

NEW MS. UNITED STATES CROWNED;
MS. ILLINOIS THIRD RUNNER-UP

ATLANTA—As a nationwide audience looked on last night, Miss Betty Jo Johnson of Austin, Texas, was crowned Ms. United States at the Ninth Annual Ms. United States Pageant. Ms. Illinois, Cynthia Ann Reynolds (Peoria), was named third runner-up.

“I thank the good Lord for the role He has chosen for me,” said the tearful Miss Johnson during the post-crowning press conference. “I hope to spread God's word during my reign as Ms. United States.”

Illinois's Miss Reynolds told the
Herald-Tribune
that she had hoped to bring the crown back to Illinois. “But I'm so happy for Betty Jo,” she said. “She'll be a wonderful Ms. United States.”

The newly crowned Ms. United States is the second Ms. Texas to receive that honor in the nine-year history of the beauty pageant. During the talent portion of the pageant she impressed the judges by singing “The Impossible Dream” while twirling two fire-tipped batons.

“If there's a clue in that,” I finally said, “I sure missed it.”

“She thanks God.” Benny shook his head. “As if God gave two shits who won that pageant.”

“Let's figure this out. Read me the entry for this article.”

“Okay.” Benny unfolded the computer printout. “Let's see…seven, dash, twenty-eight. That's July 28, 1985, I guess. CHT.
Chicago Herald-Tribune.
Four, dash, three. Hmmm.”

We both studied the article again.

“I've got it!” he said. “It's obvious. Page four, column three.”

“You're right. Third column. Fourth page, third column. That's the code. The date, the newspaper, the page, and the column.”

“Yep.”

“What else is on the list?” I asked, picking up the printout.

“Here's another CHT,” Benny said, pointing. “Eleven, dash, thirty. November thirtieth. Page four, second column.”

“I'll get it.” I walked over to the filing cabinet and found the roll of microfilm for the week of November 24.

“Another beauty pageant?” Benny asked as I threaded the film.

“Who knows. Maybe he's got a thing for beauty queens. You should see Cindi Reynolds,” I said.

“Nice, huh?”

“A knockout. Gorgeous.” I wound the film forward to November 30 and stopped at page four.

“My God,” Benny mumbled.

The headline read TWO KILLED IN PLANE CRASH. The article was short:

ROSEMONT (AP)—Two Carbondale business partners perished yesterday when their single-engine airplane crashed in a soybean field in northwest Illinois. Killed were William Carswell of 2120 Maple Lane and Peter Framingham of 15 Greybridge Avenue.

A spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board said an investigator from the board's field office in Chicago had been dispatched to look into the crash. Preliminary findings indicate engine failure, according to investigators at the scene.

The victims of the crash were en route from Chicago's Midway Airport to a Rockford trade shown when the accident occurred.

“What do you make of it?” Benny asked.

“I don't know.” I copied down the names and addresses of the victims. “Maybe Cindi Reynolds knows them. Let's find the rest of these articles.”

Benny was studying the computer printout.
“Chicago News,
March twentieth.
Chicago Post,
September twelfth.”

He walked over to the file drawers, poked around for a while, and came back with two rolls of microfilm. I threaded the first roll of film and advanced it to the seventeenth page of the March twentieth edition of the
Chicago News.
The headline at the top of the third column read: TYPO CAUSES EMBARRASSMENT. Beneath that headline appeared a five-paragraph story:

CHICAGO (UPI)—The publishers of
For the People,
the autobiography of crusading Congressman Ralph Barnett (D.-Ill.), were red-faced today when they discovered an embarrassing pair of typographical errors in the opening sentence of the just-published autobiography.

As originally written, the autobiography began with the words: “At the age of fourteen, I happily dove, headfirst, into the public arena of Sharon.” (Congressman Barnett was born in Sharon, Illinois.) As published, however, the word
public
was printed without the letter
l
and the word
arena
was printed without the letter
n—
i.e.,
pubic area.

The publisher, Athena Publications, Inc., of Oak Park, declined comment. Congressman Barnett could not be reached for his reaction.

Sources at the publishing house said that the initial printing of 10,000 copies of the autobiography is already in the bookstores and that the company will be forced to undertake an expensive recall of those books.

“You can be sure heads will roll at Athena,” said one source, who asked that his identity not be disclosed.

“A beauty pageant, a plane crash, and a typographical error,” Benny mumbled as he rewound the microfilm and then threaded the next one:

PARK FOREST COUPLE
DISCOVERS $$ IN USED CABINET