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"Hold your horses. If all Becker's doing is carrying a torch, there's nothing to that, he'll get over it. You make a big fuss and your father—"
"Would kill him, yes."
"You understand that's a literal thing, right?"
"I know my father. He's why I wanted to handle this myself. I was afraid he'd blow his top with Jerome."
"He'd do the same with Becker—who could be i
"We still have to make him talk."
"That can be arranged. Any other unrequited loves?"
"Umm—don't think so."
Someone thumped hard on the door. Mrs. Huffman opened it a crack, then backed off to allow in another middle-aged woman. She had on diamonds. Not many, but the fires sparking from them looked obscenely expensive. I made a guess that she was the groom's mother. She'd also been crying, and wasn't done with it yet.
"Gerty?" said Mrs. Huffman, abruptly unbending. "What's wrong?"
"We found it on the table with the wedding gifts!" Gerty waved a scrap of brown paper in one shaking fist. "Sheila—it's terrible!"
Mrs. Huffman read it, her face clouding over. "Louie will kill him for this!"
"For what?" Dorothy grabbed the paper. "Oh, my God. Momma, you can't let Daddy know."
"Too late, he already does," wailed Gerty.
The maid of honor crowded in and had her turn to read and react. She dropped the scrap, scampered from the room, and about two seconds later screams of fury and dismay from the bridesmaids erupted in the hall. Another minute and whatever it was would make the Tribune's bulldog edition.
Gerty was sheet white. "Sheila, you've got to stop Louie from doing anything. This has to be some kind of mistake. This isn't like Jerome—I raised him better than that."
I picked up the paper and read:
Dear Dot,
I can't be your husband. A
Jerome K. Schubert
There were things about the note that bothered me, but what jumped out the strongest was the scent of human blood on the paper.
THOUGH I DON'T BREATHE REGULARLY I TEND TO notice bloodsmell. It comes with my condition, no escape. That telltale whiff stopped me cold. Maybe Jerome had cut himself shaving… and maybe I'd take up sunbathing on Michigan Avenue.
Two edges of the crumpled sheet were uneven, torn from something larger. The writer could have lifted this from any waste-basket between here and the lake. No one puts a good-bye note in pencil on parcel wrap, though. Someone had been in a hurry and probably improvising.
I turned the sheet over. The back was marred with ordinary grime which served along with the dark paper to obscure the rusty traces of blood. It was not more than an hour old.
Dorothy looked like she'd taken a gut punch and jerked when I touched her arm. "Over here," I muttered, tugging.
There was no booze handy this time, so I made her sit and dropped on one knee before her, taking one of her cold hands. It was a parody of a proposal tableau, but no one was smiling.
"Dorothy." I said it sharply. "Come on, snap out of it. The note's fake."
She shook her head and blinked. "What? How do you know?"
"You're going to tell me." I nodded at the monogrammed suitcases. "That's what you were taking to the train station?"
"Some of it. The trunks are already aboard."
"Right. Well, if Jerome had run off on his own don't you think he'd stop here on his way out to grab a packed bag?"
"Maybe—unless he went back to his parents' house."
"Let's figure he didn't. Look at the note. Is this his handwriting?"
"It's uneven… but yes."
I chose to take that as good news and had to hope he was still alive. "Next, what's he call you?"
"Darling… sweetheart… Dorry-kins…"
"Name? Dot or Dorothy?"
"Dorothy. Only my family calls me—Oh, no. You can't mean—"
"Not done yet. How about Becker and Cooley? They call you Dot, right?"
Her brown eyes started to kindle, and she made that dangerous back of the throat sound. "If they've laid a finger on my Jerome—"
"Atta girl. Now read it again. What's wrong with it?"
She did so. " 'A
"Looks it." She started to rise; I pulled her down. "But you've got to play like you believe it. Someone could be watching your reaction."
"But I have to—"
"That's my job. You know the layout of this church? The whole shebang?"
"Most of it."
"Make me a general sketch. I want to poke around and not have to ask directions."
"You think he's still here?"
"If only one person was in on it—maybe. Otherwise I'm just eliminating possibilities."
"But the ushers searched everywhere."
"Then they missed something." Like being able to pick up bloodsmell in the air. "Do the sketch and make like you believe the note. Ask for your father to come back here. If he's with you then he won't be hunting for Jerome."
DOROTHY SLIPPED ME HER ROUGH MAP JUST AS Louie Huffman arrived. He looked like a bear with a headache, but didn't let that roll along to his daughter. I'd suggested she let her parents know the note was a fake, and that they not share the information with anyone. The three of them went off in a corner, heads together, expressions grim. If it turned out that Jerome had disappeared himself after all, then it was his own hard luck if the Huffmans ever caught up with him.
Missing from the picture were Cooley and Becker. A different set of armed goons in imperfectly fitting tuxedos stood guard at a respectful distance. I asked after the missing lieutenants. Cooley was down the hall; no one knew where Becker was.
I was just guessing about a possibly lovesick Becker being the perpetrator. That would make things simpler, but any of the mob muscle working for Huffman could be behind it. This shenanigan might not be about removing a rival for Dorothy, but a diversion. For all I knew Siggy Schubert could have been slipped a ransom note on the side. He was damned rich.
No point questioning him just yet. I had to let this play out as expected and keep my eyes open.
Since Jerome had vanished from the reception hall, I went there first.
A couple questions got me the location of where he'd last been with the bride: at a table shaking hands and helping serve out wedding cake. The table was in front of double doors leading to a kitchen where a number of ladies were washing up and in deep discussion about current events. There was a collective pause when I walked in. I smiled and gave a "don't mind me" wave, checking for other doors. One led to the outside, another to a different hall. Either worked well for a fast exit.
It wouldn't take much for someone to sidle next to Jerome, jam a gun muzzle into his ribs, and tell him to come along quietly. Done right and it would seem as though he'd truly vanished. Take him into the kitchen, then where—outside to a car trunk or stash him in a quiet spot in the church to write a note to the bride?
"Excuse me—were any of you ladies here when the groom went missing?"
That netted me half a dozen replies at once. I finally got that they'd been away to see the cake-cutting and get a closer look at the wedding dress. Only one had remained in the kitchen, and she'd not noticed anybody ducking outside.
I thanked them and tried the hall. Dorothy's map got vague at this point. St. Mike's was pretty huge.
The lights were out, indicating the area was closed for the night, but there was enough glow from the windows to allow me to navigate. More doors lined the wall opposite, and I tried a few. Classrooms and meeting rooms. I made fast work of them, listening for heartbeats, sniffing for blood.