Windy City Blues

“How do you know?”

I explained that I had watched Cinda from my living room. “And I didn’t run into Mr. Michaels out on the point. I only met one person.”

He pounced on that. How could I be sure it wasn’t Jonathan? Finally agreeing to get a description of his clothes to see if he owned a navy ski mask or a khaki jacket, McGo

“Maybe. But you’re spi

He was most unhappy to let me represent Michael, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. He left us alone in a small interrogation room.

“I’m taking it on faith that you didn’t kill Cinda,” I said briskly. “But for the record, did you?”

He shook his head. “No way. Even if I had stopped loving her, which I hadn’t, I don’t solve my problems that Way.” He ran a hand through his long hair. “I can’t believe this. I can’t even really believe Cinda is dead. It’s all happened too fast. And now they’re arresting me.” His hands were beautiful, with long, strong fingers. Strong enough to strangle someone, certainly.

“What were you fighting about this morning?”

“Fighting?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, Jonathan; I’m the only help you’ve got. Your neighbors heard you-that’s why the police arrested you.”

He smiled a little foolishly. “It all seems so stupid now. I keep thinking, if I hadn’t gotten her mad, she wouldn’t have gone out there. She’d be alive now.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. What were you fighting about?”

He hesitated. “Those damned Santa Claus pictures she took. I never wanted her to do it, anyway. She’s too good-she was too good a photographer to be wasting her time on that kind of stuff Then she got mad and started accusing me of being Lawrence Welk, and who was I to talk. It all started because someone phoned her at one this morning. I’d just gotten back from a gig-” he gri

“She had the negatives? Not Burton ’s?”

“Yeah. Stupid idiot. She was developing the film herself. Apparently this guy called Burton ’s first. Anyway, to make a long story short, she agreed to meet him today and give him the negatives, and I was furious. First of all, why should she go out on Christmas to satisfy some moron’s whim? And why was she taking those dumb-assed pictures anyway?”

Suddenly his face cracked and he started sobbing. “She was so beautiful and I loved her so much. Why did I have to fight with her?”

I patted his shoulder and held his hand until the tears stopped. “You know, if that was her caller she was going to meet, that’s probably the person who killed her.”

“I thought of that. And that’s what I told the police. But they say it’s the kind of thing I’d be bound to make up under the circumstances.”

I pushed him through another half hour of questions. What had she said about her caller? Had he given his name? She didn’t know his name. Then how had she known which negatives were his? She didn’t-just the day and the time he’d been there, so she was taking over the negatives for that morning. That’s all he knew; she’d been too angry to tell him what she was taking with her. Yes, she had taken negatives with her.

He gave me detailed instructions on how to look after Po. Just dry dog food. No table scraps. As many walks as I felt like giving her-she was an outdoor dog and loved snow and water. She was very well trained; they never walked her with a leash. Before I left, I talked to McGo

I took a taxi back to the north side. The streets were clear and we moved quickly. Every mile or so we passed a car abandoned on the roadside, making the Arctic landscape appear more desolate than ever.

Once at Jonathan’s apartment it took a major effort of will to get back outside with the dog. Po went with me eagerly enough, but kept turning around, looking at me searchingly as though hoping I might be transformed into Cinda.

Back in the apartment, I had no strength left to go home. I found the bedroom, let my clothes drop where they would on the floor and tumbled into bed.

Holy I

I’d been too tired the night before even to locate the bathroom. Now I found it, part of a large darkroom. Cinda apparently had knocked down a wall co

I put my clothes back on and took Po around the block. The weather had moderated considerably; a bank thermometer on the corner stood at 9 degrees. Po wanted to run to the lake, but I didn’t feel up to going that far this morning, and called her back with difficulty. After lunch, if I could get my car started, we might see whether any clues lay hidden in the snow.

I called Lotty from Cinda’s apartment, explaining where I was and why. She told me I was an idiot to have gotten out of bed the night before, but if I wasn’t dead of exposure by now I would probably survive until someone shot me. Somehow that didn’t cheer me up.

While I helped myself to coffee and toast in Cinda’s kitchen I started calling various attorneys to see if I could find someone to represent Jonathan. Tim Oldham, who’d gone to law school with me, handled a good-sized criminal practice. He wasn’t too enthusiastic about taking a client without much money, but I put on some not very subtle pressure about a lady I’d seen him with on the Gold Coast a few weeks ago who bore little resemblance to his wife. He promised me Jonathan would be home by supper time, called me some unflattering names and hung up.

Besides the kitchen, bedroom, and darkroom, the apartment had one other room, mostly filled by a grand piano. Stacks of music stood on the floor-Jonathan either couldn’t afford shelves or didn’t think he needed them. The walls were hung with poster-sized photographs of Jonathan playing, taken by Cinda. They were very good.

I went back into the darkroom and poked around at the pictures. Cinda had put all her Santa Claus photographs in neatly marked envelopes. She’d carefully written the name of each child next to the number of the exposure on that role of film. I switched on a light table and started looking at them. She’d taken pictures every day for three weeks, which amounted to thousands of shots. It looked like a needle-in-the-haystack type task. But most of the pictures were of children. The only others were ones Cinda had taken for her own amusement, pa

After lunch I took Po down to my car. She had no hesitation about going with me and leaped eagerly into the backseat. “You have too trusting a nature,” I told her. She gri