Lies of Men Page 5

  I entered the grand lobby filled with dark wood paneling, mounds of fresh flowers, and upholstered wing chairs. It read rich, old, and conservative. The monthly HOAs could likely buy someone a nice used starter car. I announced myself to the uniformed doorman and, after a few moments, was sent up.

  The elevator opened into a private paneled vestibule, flanked by double doors on each end. As I looked around for an apartment number, the doors to my right swung open, and a small gray Yorkie ran out and howled at me.

  “Squeaky, get back in here.” Nathan Sikora stood in the doorway, a look of disapproval on his face. “She’s harmless,” he said, motioning me in and shaking his head. “But she makes a hell of a lot of noise. She was my father’s dog and hasn’t settled into her new life. Not sure I have, either, to be honest. I bring her over here when I come, thinking it will calm her down. But the poor thing just howls no matter where she is.”

  “Pets mourn too. It takes time and love.” I shook his hand, then followed him into the apartment. Sunlight streamed in, and Lake Michigan gleamed cobalt blue through the row of tall windows that lined the living room. My decorating eye scanned the room in admiration. Tall coffered ceilings. A massive carved fireplace mantle. Inlaid wood floors. And from what I could guess, a floor plan that meandered nicely. I wasn’t in the market, nor was I in the price range, but that didn’t stop my remodeling lust from kicking in.

  Sikora was pale with wiry hair and a body that hadn’t seen the gym in probably a decade. Exhaustion had settled around his eyes. Was it the business of death or the business of justice that was weighing on him? Boxes were stacked willy-nilly around the room. Some sealed, many empty, awaiting their next treasure.

  I felt the weight of the task. The decisions that needed to be made. Donate, sell, keep because it’s too precious to discard. The reminder of the work I had yet to do with the last of Erik’s things pressed on me as I looked around. I knew it was time for my own avoidance to end. It was the final tie to the memory of a life we’d shared. But that life was long gone, and my memories had turned out to be faulty.

  “There is a system here, even if it’s not readily apparent. I never thought of myself as a minimalist, but going through this experience makes me want to go home and throw out everything. Save someone from the task when I’m gone.”

  “Are you sure this is a good time to talk?” I asked, feeling a bit like a vulture waiting to prey on the man’s vulnerability.

  “Yeah, a break will do me good.” He nodded, trying to smile. “Not to mention how it’ll help me work off some of this anger. That son of a bitch Wright deserves to be exposed. And I’m more than happy for the world to know what he’s done. Let me move a couple boxes and we can sit.”

  Sikora picked up the dog and set her on his lap as he sat in the floral chintz club chair. The pup wagged her tail enthusiastically, then rested her head on Sikora’s knee.

  “From the testimony, I understand that your father worked with Gavin Wright for the last eight years of his life,” I said. “During that time did you ever have any suspicions or concerns about Mr. Wright’s handling of your father’s estate plan?”

  “Not a clue.” Sikora shook his head. “Dad loved the guy. Trusted him completely. When his memory started to get a little fuzzy, I was just grateful that it was one less thing I had to worry about. For the last year or so, we had a home health aide come in, one of those services you employ, but you know how that goes. You can never quite tell if old age and senility are popping up or if the aide who shows up that day is one of the better ones. Not that I’m bashing the service we used. They were great as far as I could tell, but when you’re not there, it’s hard to separate truth from fiction.”

  “Are you saying your father made accusations?”

  “A little paranoia seems to be a common aspect to aging. Dad would tell me things, like a book had been stolen, when in fact he had removed it from the shelf and forgotten where he’d put it. I never took it seriously. Just an old man becoming forgetful. I didn’t realize anything was amiss in his finances until after he died, but then you heard that in court. Dad had worked with Wright for years. It never crossed my mind that he was a lying scumbag.”

  “And you first learned of the problem when Wright’s administrative assistant brought it to your attention?” The image of her hunched figure in the courtroom came to mind, and I wondered about her moral struggles.

  He nodded, continuing to pet the dog now sleeping on his lap. “Of course, I was in touch with Wright’s office as soon as Dad passed. As you know, my father had established a trust that held his assets. I’m the executor, so I called to set up a meeting with Wright to discuss the terms of the trust and how all that worked. He was out of the office for a couple days, so in advance of our meeting, I went in to drop off a copy of the death certificate for their records. That’s when Jocelyn dropped the bad news.”

  “To be clear, you’re talking about Jocelyn Lawrence, Wright’s administrative assistant.”

  He nodded.

  “And is that when she gave you copies of the bank transfers?”

  “She didn’t entirely know what she had. It was just bits and pieces that said something wasn’t right. But there was enough data for us both to see some kind of scheme was probably underway. She had copies of invoices on my father’s account for the year leading up to his death, and each invoice included a line item for miscellaneous fees.”

  “Was there something odd about that? Did she know what that covered?” Although Lawrence had testified that she hadn’t been aware of what her boss had been up to, I found myself questioning the timing.

  “It wasn’t odd at all. There are always charges that get lumped together for postage and printing. Some of the research materials on funds go into that line item as well as a host of other things related to managing the assets. My father had a substantial portfolio, so the number was never large enough to cause him to question it. It was just part of doing business. However, when the invoices were laid out sequentially, we could see that that line item was increasing over time and always by a round number. Five hundred dollars, a thousand dollars, two thousand. Never enough that it was immediately obvious, but if you were to graph it, the upward trajectory would be clear.”

  “Something that confused me at the trial was why you believed the situation wasn’t kosher. Your father’s estate sounds complex. Was there something other than the dollar amounts increasing that gave you pause?”

  “Yes, but I’m not able to discuss it.”

  I stopped writing my notes and looked at him. Had he withheld information from the legal team?

  “You can relax. The prosecuting attorney knows everything. There is just a piece that, although related, isn’t directly tied to Wright’s crime. Let’s leave it at that. After I brought my suspicions, and the documents Jocelyn retrieved, to the attention of the authorities, they were able to subpoena Wright’s financial records, even the deep, dark hidden ones, and the rest, as they say, is history. Well, history playing out, and if all goes as it should, Wright himself will be history.”

  What was Sikora holding back? Or protecting? And was Lawrence connected?

  “Wright testified that these charges were a result of the complexity of your father’s accounts,” I said. “But you immediately brought the authorities into the situation. Why didn’t you question Wright first?”

  “That jackass wasn’t going to tell me the truth. The only reason to confront him would be to watch what he did after.”

  9

  The sharp February wind swept the side of my face, throwing my hair over my eyes as I got out of my car. It was just after 7:00 p.m., and I was running a little late for my meeting with Elyse Wright. As always, parking in this neighborhood was a total bitch, and I’d been circling for twenty minutes waiting for a spot to open, finally wedging my Audi into a space that was more snowbank than pavement. Cai made fun of me for holding Uber in contempt; tonight she may have won the argument.

  I
scanned the street, looking around at the vintage brownstones in this quiet stretch of the Lincoln Park neighborhood. Soft lights lit the front stoops or glowed delicately behind curtains drawn for privacy on this lovely treelined street. I tapped open my phone to double-check the house number, looked around again to get my bearings, then walked six doors north on Cleveland Avenue.

  The neighborhood was classic Chicago elegance. Single-family brick brownstones lined the street with small multifamily dwellings dotted in, but the overall mood was of history, wealth, elegance, and education. It was one of the most desirable neighborhoods in the city. Lincoln Park itself stretched along the lakefront a few blocks to the east, running for seven miles and covering over 1,200 acres. It housed a zoo, a conservatory, two museums, and every manner of recreational activity. In other words, it was almost the heart of the city. Two of the city’s top private schools were nearby, attracting professional families and pushing the price point of these homes well past the million-dollar mark.

  But tonight that was barely evident in the cold, the snow, and the dark. Although I had agreed to the meeting, I expected it to be another waste of time. Elyse had an agenda, and somehow I was in the middle as we played a little game of tug-of-war to see who got what she wanted first. Or who got what she wanted without giving up everything. I had a suspicion most things were a delicate negotiation with Elyse. The image of her one day gracing the afternoon talk shows with a book tour, proudly sharing her life story of female triumph over another sad, self-centered man, wasn’t hard to envision. But I guess there were a few of us with that story. Perhaps her story would just be a little more salacious in the tell.

  The porch light was out at the top of the stoop when I reached the front of her building, but light radiated through the transom from somewhere inside. Like everything else on the block, it was a vintage home, likely built in the late 1800s, in an era of household help and horse-and-buggy transportation. Today all signs of that life were long gone. The external shell of these buildings hinted at history, but the interiors had long ago been modernized.

  I reached the top of the stairs, fumbling in the dark for a doorbell. The stained-glass side panels along the heavy wood door yielded inadequate light, so I turned on my flashlight app to get my bearings. Broken glass glittered at my feet. A small area of the sidelight appeared recently broken. I bent down to inspect, finding it strange and feeling my body react. I didn’t imagine Elyse Wright was the kind of person to leave something like that unattended to. My breath quickened as I found the buzzer, and I held it until I could hear the hollow ding inside. But I heard no footsteps. Pressing on the buzzer repeatedly, I peered through the hole in the sidelight, seeing even more glass on the floor inside.

  “Elyse!” I shouted and raised my fist to the door. It swung open freely with my touch. Phone in hand, I pushed the door back, listening for sounds, running my eyes over the shimmer on the floor in front of me, looking for other signs of disturbance, listening for sounds of someone inside. And ready to dial 911.

  “Elyse?” I called out. “It’s Andrea. Is everything okay? Are you here?” Silence. I ran my eyes over the room. Beyond the glass the room was orderly—nothing overturned, nothing appeared disturbed. “Elyse,” I called again. My heart thumped as I tried to imagine a reasonable explanation for the unlocked door and the broken glass, but nothing came. I stepped forward, avoiding the fragments on the floor as best I could. Entering a vestibule, then stepping into what would’ve been known as a front parlor, I saw a single lamp next to the fireplace softly lighting the room. I moved forward slowly, looking for some sign of what might have happened, listening for indications that someone was here.

  “Elyse?” I called out again. A thump came from somewhere beyond my sight, somewhere down the hallway on my left. I moved quickly toward the sound. My eyes rushing ahead, trying to make sense of what my instincts were telling me. As I moved out of the parlor, down the hall, more lights radiated in the back of the house. I flitted from caution to fear as I crept along, then saw a bloody handprint smudged on the wall to my right and a single stiletto lying on its side a few feet in front of me.

  Dialing 911, I raced forward frantically, once more yelling her name.

  The hall opened into a large kitchen, warm, friendly, and spotted with blood. I heard her before I saw her on the backside of the island. She lay sprawled, one high-heeled leg kicking repeatedly against the floor. Her face and neck and chest were covered with blood. She was nearly unrecognizable.

  I shouted the address into the phone, demanding an ambulance. Elyse was alive, but barely. As I gave the information to the emergency operator, I knelt down and grabbed Elyse’s hand. Holding it firmly, I told her help was coming, begged her to hold on. After switching the phone to speaker, I threw it on the floor and pulled a kitchen towel off the counter, trying in vain to staunch the blood gushing from her chest. Tears streamed down my face, and I held Elyse’s hand tight as I spoke to both her and the operator.

  My eyes were locked with Elyse’s. I could see the terror in hers, and likely she could see the horror in mine. We stayed that way for what seemed an eternity, me willing her to live, listening to the rattle of her breath, and knowing it was likely too late.

  I heard the ambulance roar to a stop outside the brownstone and yelled to the EMTs that we were in the back as they entered the building. When I turned to let Elyse know help had arrived, she was gone. Her eyes stared blankly at me.

  An EMT took me by the shoulders and pulled me up so he could get to Elyse. I leaned against the kitchen wall as the technicians worked, unable to look away, my body wracked with tremors of emotion, but there was nothing they could do for her.

  “Ma’am?” a deep voice said. I turned my head away from Elyse to see two police officers standing at the entrance of the kitchen.

  “Are you injured?” one of the men asked. I could only shake my head.

  “Is this blood yours? Are you hurt?” he asked again. I looked at my hands, stained with the blood of a dying woman, as if I’d never seen them before. I felt my mouth open but couldn’t find words within me to respond.

  “Do you know this woman?” The younger officer addressed me, his voice low. I let my hands fall to my sides. “Her name is Elyse Wright,” I squeaked out. “This is her home.”

  “Do you know what happened?”

  “She asked me to come over. We—we had a meeting,” I said, hearing my voice crack, not knowing where to begin or what to say about my reason for being here. My mind was too muddled. “When…when I got here, ah, the window was broken. I saw the window, the side window by the door, and so I came in. The door was ajar. I, ah, I called for her, and I saw the blood.”

  I sobbed at the horror of what was going on, struggling to collect my thoughts. All I could see in my mind was the look of panic in her eyes.

  “Take a breath. Collect yourself,” the officer said.

  The other chimed in. “So after you saw the door was open and the glass, what did you do? Is that when you called us? Is that when you called 911?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “Not right away. I wasn’t certain if something was wrong. I called out to see if anyone was here. Then I heard her. She signaled me by kicking the floor, so I…I followed the sound.”

  “So she was alive when you got here?”

  “Yes, but I knew it wasn’t good. I called 911 as soon as I saw her. I held her hand and tried to comfort her,” I choked out. “I couldn’t help. There was too much blood.” I felt myself shake and my throat close up. My God, what had happened? I couldn’t comprehend it. Nor could I let go of the fear I’d seen in her eyes.

  10

  I leaned against the back of the wing chair in the breakfast nook, eyes closed, hearing my heart thunder in my ears, smelling the acrid, metallic scent of blood. The officers, concerned about further contamination of the crime scene, had parked me here. I’d tried to focus my attention on the darkness of the rear garden outside the tall windows next to me, but the re
flection in the glass of the activities around me made that impossible. So I closed my eyes and tried to shut down my mind until someone needed something from me. The din of the technicians just feet away faded as my mind and my body tried to come to grips with what I had witnessed. As voices blended into a low hum, images and sounds bombarded me, regardless.

  Crime scene technicians filled the open kitchen as additional police officers busied themselves with speculation, reports, and initial projections, but I was only vaguely aware of their presence. Every ounce of my strength was allocated to either not curling into a ball or forcing my lungs to inflate. It was as if my body could no longer do these things on its own and I had to remind myself to breathe.

  The sharp rip of the body bag zipper jolted me back to the scene in front of me. Immediately my eyes were drawn to the black lump of plastic containing Elyse Wright’s body as they lifted her onto a gurney. I looked away as she was rolled out of the kitchen, trying unsuccessfully to shut out my terror and fear. My eyes landed on something safe, the marble-topped kitchen island. An open bottle of merlot rested there, one glass of wine half-drunk, and another sat empty. Had the glass been intended for me? Or was Elyse expecting someone else? I forced myself to take in my surroundings—partly out of distraction from the body bag, partly because I needed to remember what, if anything else, I had seen. The officers would be wanting more details from me shortly.

  The room was warm, cozy even, despite its expensive underpinnings. Custom cabinets painted a creamy white outfitted the large room, and a warm glow filtered in from under-cabinet lighting, accenting the glass canisters and tall ceilings. The breakfast nook where I sat contained a round oak table and upholstered chairs nestled into a bay window. It was a family space. If I kept my eyes above counter level and ignored the cast of thousands, the room seemed unremarkable. Tasteful, expensive, but homey and loved. If I looked below, it was a scene out of a slasher movie.