Men are dying in Chicago. Not ordinary men, but rich men, powerful men, men who control the city. They are being murdered, quietly, skilfully. Dek Elstrom’s ex-father-in-law, a major player in everything Chicago, is likely to be one of them. Amanda, Dek’s ex-wife, wants him to investigate.
Dek doesn’t want this case – but Amanda persists, and Dek finally agrees, because that’s what he always does with Amanda. He learns quickly that Amanda’s father is lying. The man knows plenty and is talking about none of it.
Is he about to become a victim? Or is he a killer?
Men are dying in Chicago. Not ordinary men, but rich men, powerful men, men who control the city. They are being murdered, quietly, skilfully. Dek Elstrom’s ex-father-in-law, a major player in everything Chicago, is likely to be one of them. Amanda, Dek’s ex-wife, wants him to investigate.
Dek doesn’t want this case – but Amanda persists, and Dek finally agrees, because that’s what he always does with Amanda. He learns quickly that Amanda’s father is lying. The man knows plenty and is talking about none of it.
Is he about to become a victim? Or is he a killer?
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Overview
Men are dying in Chicago. Not ordinary men, but rich men, powerful men, men who control the city. They are being murdered, quietly, skilfully. Dek Elstrom’s ex-father-in-law, a major player in everything Chicago, is likely to be one of them. Amanda, Dek’s ex-wife, wants him to investigate.
Dek doesn’t want this case – but Amanda persists, and Dek finally agrees, because that’s what he always does with Amanda. He learns quickly that Amanda’s father is lying. The man knows plenty and is talking about none of it.
Is he about to become a victim? Or is he a killer?
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780727872951 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Severn House |
| Publication date: | 12/30/2015 |
| Series: | A Dek Elstrom PI mystery , #5 |
| Edition description: | Large Print |
| Pages: | 384 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.10(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Confessors' Club
By Jack Fredrickson
Severn House Publishers Limited
Copyright © 2015 Jack FredricksonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7278-8488-6
CHAPTER 1
Amanda called me two days before what would have been our fifth wedding anniversary.
'Happy almost anniver—' I said, before I slammed my mouth shut on words that bubbled up from nowhere. I hoped.
My remembering had caught her off guard, too. 'Dek, how sweet of you,' she said, after an awkward beat. Then, 'I'd like to have dinner.'
We hadn't spoken in months. 'Surely not to celebrate?' I asked.
'Our divorce?' She managed a little laugh. 'Of course not.'
'I'm good all next week, after Monday.'
'Business has come back so well you're not available until then?' I hesitated for an awkward moment of my own. 'I'm headed out of town.'
'Not business, then,' she said.
'A mini-vacation.'
'Today?' She knew I'd never taken a vacation in my life.
'Not for a couple of days.'
She paused, then said, 'How about tonight? It's important.'
I paused too, but only for a second. 'I'll pick you up. You're still on Chicago's tony Lake Shore Drive?'
'Did you get shock absorbers yet?'
'They diminish the aged Jeep experience.'
'I'll meet you at Petterino's,' she said. 'Afterwards, we'll go to the theater. My subscription tickets are for tonight.'
It was going to be like old times, for whatever reason.
'A play afterward?' I managed. 'Surely you remember that's over my head.'
'See you at Petterino's at six.' Her voice softened. 'And Dek?'
'Ma'am?'
'Little is over your head.'
Little was over Jenny's head as well, though her calling ten minutes after I'd clicked off with Amanda could only have been coincidence.
'I can't wait to show you Fisherman's Wharf,' she said.
It was going to be our first time together since she had taken the San Francisco television job eight months earlier. They'd been long months, those eight, and we were set to celebrate the wonder of making our new relationship work at such a long distance.
'Picturesque, is it?'
'Just your cup of Twinkies,' she said.
'Real and authentic, old-time San Francisco?'
'You can get a picture of Elvis on black velvet to hang above your table saw.'
'Black velvet would also nicely complement the white plastic of the lawn chairs,' I said, of the turret's first-floor conversational grouping. 'I'm also in need of a really wide refrigerator magnet, maybe of the Golden Gate Bridge.' The avocado-colored refrig-erator I'd found in an alley was rusting from the inside out, and I was looking to slow the loss of semi-cold air.
'I've got four days off, time enough to take care of all your needs.' She laughed, hanging up, leaving me with the promise of unspoken naughtiness.
And grateful that I hadn't had the chance to tell her I was having dinner with my ex-wife that evening.
CHAPTER 2I've always suspected that a malevolent chicken farmer designed the Goodman Theater complex in downtown Chicago. It's set up like a poultry processing plant. Petterino's is on the corner, a high-glitz restaurant of hooded table candles and deeply cushioned chairs. Good food, big prices. Petterino's is for the plumping and the plucking.
The theater connects through an interior doorway so that patrons, overfed and softly sweating, can be shepherded straight to their seats without being aroused by fresh outside air. Amanda always insisted that the Goodman offers mainstream productions, but to me the plays were confusing. And that, I used to say, is the point. Dulled by overeating at Petterino's, staggering straight into the dim plush of the theater, folks are further numbed by droning actors saying things that make no sense. The audience slips from stupor into sleep; it's the poultry man's intent. The Goodman is for the lulling.
Two hours later, the audience is jolted awake by the smattering of applause at the final curtain. Groggy, now disoriented by the sudden noise and lights, they're herded across the street to the garage, where they're made to wait in lines to pay a credit card machine that mumbles nonsensical instructions in an adenoidal, digitized voice, then funneled into other lines for a chance to push their way into one of the two overcrowded elevators. By the time they reach their cars, they're dripping sweat, their eyes bright with the need for escape. But the final chaos is yet to come. The automobile exit lanes all merge into one, and the flow quickly becomes choked, an impacted drain, backed up all the way to the roof. Trapped, frantic at the stoppage, the drivers whimper and slap at their horns, but the sudden, overwhelming noise only enrages them further. Control vanishes; it's every chicken for himself. They gun their engines, aim recklessly at imagined hair-width gaps in the line. Fenders crumple, voices scream. It is at this moment that they welcome death. The garage is for the slaughter.
And somewhere, unseen, the poultry farmer laughs.
To me, it is not amazing that people pay great sums to do this. What shocks is that they subscribe to do it several times a year.
Petterino's was crowded with pre-show diners. Amanda, now one of Chicago's wealthiest socialites, had been provided a quiet table in the corner. As she'd said on the phone, she wanted to talk.
I hadn't seen her since I'd dropped her into the welcoming arms of her father, his small army of heavily armed security men and, pacing in front of them all like a silvered peacock, her impeccably attired, suitably affluent new beau.
She looked magnificent as always, in dark slacks, a cream blouse and the garnet pendant I'd given her for her birthday.
I, in my blue blazer and the least wrinkled of my khaki pants, looked like a used office furniture salesman.
We ordered drinks and proceeded carefully. 'How's business?' she asked.
A scandal, stemming from a false accusation, had trashed my business and our marriage. The business was resurrecting, though slowly.
'Two more old insurance company clients are using me again to verify accident information. It's not much, but it's a foot on the road to hope.'
'And the turret?' she asked. We were stilted, awkwardly catching up, but there was something else in her voice. Hesitation. She was stalling, not yet ready to tell me why she'd called.
'I've finished hanging the kitchen cabinets and am awaiting only the funds for new appliances. Now I'm up on the third floor.'
'The master bedroom,' she said. It had never been ours. We'd lived in her multi-million-dollar home in Crystal Waters, a gated community, before my career, our marriage, and then her neighborhood had blown up.
The bed, though, had been ours. She hadn't wanted it, but I'd not been willing to give up. I'd hauled it from her house before it had been reduced to rubble.
'I've built a closet,' I said, with as much pride as another man might say of a new Ferrari.
She sent a bemused glance toward the wrinkles in my blue button-down shirt.
'I don't as yet have hangers,' I said.
She smiled. 'Of course.'
'Any day now, some hotshot commodities trader is going to drive by, see my five-story limestone cylinder, and buy it for millions. The turret is my other foot on the road to hope.'
Her smile tightened. I'd slipped, seemingly into pettiness. Richard Rudolph, her silver-haired new beau, was a wealthy commodities trader, and precisely the sort of hotshot I was trying to snare.
'You are well, you and Mr Rudolph?' I asked of the hotshot, trying for casual. It had been some time since my friend Leo Brumsky had reported seeing their picture in the papers, always at some appropriately charitable event. I'd supposed that at some point, Leo had decided I didn't need to stay current on such news.
'He's in Russia – new opportunities,' she said, perhaps a little too quickly. Then, 'Jennifer Gale, the newswoman?' Her gaze was direct, her eyes unblinking.
We were catching up more pointedly now. 'How could you know ...?'
'Your photo ran in the papers too, Dek. Some journalism awards dinner. She's as lovely in print as she is on television.'
Jennifer Gale had been a features reporter for Channel 8 in Chicago until she'd been offered newsier television opportunities in San Francisco. With me, though, she was Jenny Galecki, a sweet, solidly Polish girl struggling to mix celebrity and ambition with feelings for me. For eight months, we'd managed to stay involved, telephonically. And now I was about to head to San Francisco.
'She is lovely, yes,' I said.
For a moment, we let silence shelter us. We'd moved on, some.
I veered away, asked about her work. She'd given up teaching at the Art Institute to establish philanthropies in her father's name. Wendell Phelps, head of Chicago's largest electric utility, had come to regret being an indifferent parent, and had offered Amanda the chance to do really good things with really big money. It was an offer she did not refuse.
'He's moving me into operations. I'm day-to-day electricity now, Dek. I liaise with every city and town on our grid, building relationships.
Philanthropy hasn't been on the agenda for several months.'
'He's prepping you for great responsibilities.'
'All of a sudden, he's in a rush.'
'He's the major shareholder. It's prudent to bring his only child into the family business. Lots of investment to protect.'
Our waitress came with drinks – a Manhattan for her; a first-ever, low-carb beer for me. As in old times, we ordered the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink salads that had long been one of the prides of Petterino's.
She stirred her drink for a long minute, and I took a pull from the bottle of de-carbed beer. It tasted like it had been run through something alive, perhaps hooved, to get the carbohydrates out.
She removed the cocktail stick, its cherry still impaled, and set it on the napkin. 'I've told my father to hire you,' she said.
'Whoa,' I said, understanding why she'd played too long with her drink. I set down the bottle of carb-less beer residue. 'Me, work for your father?'
Wendell Phelps was no admirer of mine. We'd never talked face-to-face, but we'd argued plenty on the phone after his daughter had been abducted. His arrogance, along with my stupidity, had almost gotten her killed.
'Actually we've discussed it several times. No, that's wrong. I've brought it up several times.'
'What, exactly?'
'He's hired bodyguards.'
'A deranged shareholder or some nut pissed about his electric bill?'
'He won't say.'
'The business pages say he's taking heat because of all the service outages. The governor and the mayor are pushing him for equipment upgrades, but the big shareholders don't want him to spend the money. It's a real tussle.'
I reached for the low-carb but quickly stopped my hand; drinking more might stick the taste to my tongue permanently. 'I also heard his stock price dropped. People have lost money. Maybe some cranky shareholder got wiped out.'
'He said it was nothing like that.'
'What then?'
She shook her head. 'He won't say, other than he hired an investigator to take care of it. The man found out nothing, apparently. My father looks old, Dek; old and afraid and weak.'
'Could that have something to do with his new wife?' Long a widower, Wendell's recent marriage lingered only briefly on the society pages before descending into the gossip blogs. The most charitable of them said the bride was charmingly eccentric.
'You're wondering whether she's driven him into becoming delusional? I don't think so. His fear is real.'
'Cops?'
'He hasn't gone to them.'
'What is it with rich people, so afraid of going to the police?' A bomb-wielding extortionist had assaulted the mega-rich homeowners in Crystal Waters, yet none of her neighbors wanted to call the cops. At least not until people started getting blown up.
'He said he'd talk to you.'
'Because if he didn't, you'd hire me yourself, and then he'd lose control of what I learned?'
She smiled a little. 'Of course.'
'No doubt he pointed out I'm a lightweight as far as investigators go, that I research records for lawyers, chase down accident information for insurance companies. I don't do life or death.'
'You did, for me.'
'I got you kidnapped.'
'Talk to him, Dek. Reassure me he's having some sort of small mental lapse. Tell me he's just feeling too many ordinary pressures.'
I smiled then, too, because ultimately that was what I always did with Amanda. Our salads came, and we smiled through them as well. Our awkwardness was disappearing.
After the play, she told me I'd slept through another magnificent performance. That was too close to old times, too.
CHAPTER 3Wendell Phelps's house, stone clad and slate roofed, loomed high, a dark fortress on the bluffs above Lake Michigan. To the south, the Chicago skyline was a blur in the gloom of the late March sky, as though it were a backdrop painted pale and inconsequential to make the magnificent mansion stand out even more. Down below, past the closely mowed lawn and the terrace of tightly trimmed yews, the lake lapped at the edge of the raked beach, gray and vaguely restless.
One of the doors in the five-car garage was open, exposing the tail end of what I knew was Wendell's old black Mercedes and, alongside it, the lighter-colored fender of something inexpensively American, likely belonging to a live-in housekeeper. I drove past the garage and stopped behind a dark brown Nissan pickup truck.
A young woman in her early twenties, wearing a brown sweatshirt that matched the truck, was picking shredded yellow flowers out of the concrete urns at the base of the front steps. Large money bought that; fresh flowers before spring. I got out of the Jeep and smiled at the girl, one tradesperson to another.
'Pigs,' she said, jamming the ruined blooms into a paper yard-waste bag.
'Ah, but they pay the bills,' I said, and walked up the stairs to the massive walnut door.
Amanda told me once that state senators, mayors and business leaders had been summoned to this house, but the only visitor who'd not been made to wait at the door like a pizza driver was the mop-headed former governor of Illinois, now doing prison time out west. Go figure, she'd said, laughing.
An unremarkable man answered the door. Not tall, not short; not dark haired, not blond; not young and certainly not old. Right down to the faint gray stripes in his bland blue suit, he was indistinct, an average man, a medium all around. The best ones are like that: mediums all around. They don't get noticed in a crowd. Only the slight bulge in his suit, under the left arm, gave him away. He was one of the bodyguards Amanda had mentioned, and he was packing.
I showed him my driver's license. 'Dek Elstrom to see Mr Phelps.'
'You're expected.' He pulled the door open all the way.
The foyer was dark, lit only by four small wall sconces. It was only after I'd followed him halfway across what seemed like a football field of black-and-white tile that I realized the walls were paneled in walnut as thick as the front door. That the head of Chicago's largest electric company was wasting none of the company product at home might have come from frugality. Or it could have come from fear.
The bodyguard knocked on a door, stepped aside, and motioned for me to enter. I went into a library as dim as the foyer. The curtains were drawn. The only light came from a yellow glass lamp on the desk in front of the curtains.
'Mr Elstrom,' Wendell Phelps said, rising from behind the lamp.
I'd seen his face in the business news and, of course, in the oil portrait I'd cut to make a Halloween mask in the last drunken days of my marriage. Those pictures were of a younger and more relaxed man. As he came closer, I saw lines deeper than any sixty-three-year-old should have. He wore golf clothes – yellow slacks to match the lamp, and a green knit shirt with a crocodile on it – as though he were about to go hit a bucket of balls in his foyer. The croc's mouth was open, which fit with what I knew of Wendell Phelps.
'Mr Phelps,' I said.
We sat on opposing sofas without shaking hands. A tan envelope lay on the low plank table between us. The only other thing on the table was a small framed photograph of a little girl holding a blue balloon. The picture might have been of Amanda, but it was too small to tell in such dim light.
'What has Amanda told you?' he asked.
'She said you hired bodyguards, one of which I saw for myself, and that you retained an investigator, who learned nothing.'
'We speak in confidence, you and I? You do not report back to Amanda?'
'So long as you're the client, and not her.'
He frowned at the reminder of his daughter's threat, and pushed the tan envelope an inch toward me. 'There have already been three murders.' His hand shook a little as he lifted it from the envelope.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Confessors' Club by Jack Fredrickson. Copyright © 2015 Jack Fredrickson. Excerpted by permission of Severn House Publishers Limited.
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