I got stiffly to my feet and walked on leaden legs back to the bedroom. As best I could I rubbed Vaseline onto the burn on my back, then got dressed again. I piled on layers of heavy clothes and still felt chilly. I turned on the radiator and squatted in front of it as it banged and hissed its way to heat.
When the phone rang I jumped; my heart pounded wildly. I stood over it fearfully, my hands shaking slightly. On the sixth ring I finally answered it. It was Lotty.
“Lotty!” I gasped.
She had called because of Agnes, but demanded at once to know what the trouble was. She insisted on coming over, brusquely brushing aside my feeble protests that the attacker might still be lurking outside.
“Not on a night like this. And not if you broke his jaw.”
She was at the door twenty minutes later. “So, Liebchen. You’ve been in the wars again.” I clung to her for a few minutes. She stroked my hair and murmured in German and I finally began to warm up. When she saw that I’d stopped shivering she had me take off my layers of swaddling. Her strong fingers moved very gently along my neck and upper spine, cleaning off the Vaseline and applying a proper dressing.
“So, my dear. Not very serious. The shock was the worst part. And you didn’t drink, did you? Good. Worst possible thing for shock. Hot milk and honey? Very good. Not like you to be so sensible.”
Talking all the while she went out to the kitchen with me, cleaned the milk from the floor and stove, and set about making soup. She put on lentils with carrots and onions and the rich smell filled the kitchen and began reviving me.
When the phone rang again, I was ready for it. I let it ring three times, then picked it up, my recorder switched on. It was my smooth-voiced friend. “How are your eyes, Miss Warshawski? Or Vic, I should say-I feel I know you well.”
“How is your friend?”
“Oh, Walter will survive. But we’re worried about you, Vic. You might not survive the next time, you know. Now be a good girl and stay away from Rosa and St. Albert ’s. You’ll feel so much better in the long run.” He hung up.
I played the tape back for Lotty. She looked at me soberly. “You don’t recognize the voice?”
I shook my head. “Someone knows I was at the priory yesterday, though. And that can only mean one thing: One of the Dominicans has to be involved.”
“Why, though?”
“I’m being warned off the priory,” I said impatiently. “Only they know I was there.” A terrible thought struck me and I began shivering again. “Only they, and Roger Ferrant.”
XII
L0TTY INSISTED ON spending the night. She left early in the morning for her clinic, begging me to be careful. But not to drop the investigation. “You’re a Jill-the-Giant-Killer,” she said, her black eyes worried. “You are always taking on things that are too big for you, and maybe one day you will take on one big thing too many. But that is your way. If you weren’t living so, you would have a long unhappy life. Your choice is for the satisfied life, and we will hope it, too, is a long one.”
Somehow these words did not cheer me up.
After Lotty left, I went down to the basement where each tenant has a padlocked area. With aching shoulders I pulled out boxes of old papers and knelt on the damp floor sorting through them. At last I found what I wanted-a ten-year-old address book.
Dr. and Mrs. Thomas Paciorek lived on Arbor Drive in Lake Forest. Fortunately their unlisted phone number hadn’t changed since 1974. I told the person who answered that I would speak to either Dr. or Mrs. Paciorek, but was relieved to get Agnes’s father. Although he’d always struck me as a cold, self-absorbed man, he’d never shared his wife’s personal animosity toward me. He believed his daughter’s problems stemmed from her own innate willfulness.
“This is V. I. Warshawski, Dr. Paciorek. I’m very sorry about Agnes. I’d like to come to her funeral. Can you tell me when it will be?”
“We’re not making a public occasion of it, Victoria. The publicity around her death has been bad enough without turning her funeral into a media event.” He paused. “My wife thinks you might know something about who killed her. Do you?”
“If I did, you can be sure I would tell the police, Dr. Paciorek. I’m afraid I don’t. I can understand why you don’t want a lot of people or newspapers around, but Agnes and I were good friends. It matters a lot to me to pay my last respects to her.”
He hemmed and hawed, but finally told me the funeral would be Saturday at Our Lady of the Rosary in Lake Forest. I thanked him with more politeness than I felt and called Phyllis Lording to let her know. We arranged to go together in case the Knights of Columbus were posted at the church door to keep out undesirables.
I didn’t like the way I was feeling. Noises in my apartment were making me jump, and at eleven, when the phone rang, I had to force myself to pick it up. It was Ferrant, in a subdued mood. He asked if I knew where Agnes’s funeral was being held, and if I thought her parents would mind his coming.
“Probably,” I said. “They don’t want me there and I was one of her oldest friends. But come anyway.” I told him the time and place and how to find it. When he asked if he could accompany me, I told him about Phyllis. “She probably isn’t up to meeting strangers at Agnes’s funeral.”
He invited me to dinner, but I turned that down, too. I didn’t really believe Roger would hire someone to throw acid at me. But still… I had eaten dinner with him the same day I’d made my first trip to the priory. It was the next day that Rosa decided to back out of the case. I wanted to ask him, but it sounded too much like Thomas Paciorek asking me on my honor as a Girl Scout if I’d helped kill his daughter.
I was scared, and I didn’t like it. It was making me distrust my friends. I didn’t know where to start looking for an acid thrower. I didn’t want to be alone, but didn’t know Roger well enough to be with him.
At noon, as I walked skittishly down Halsted to get a sandwich, an idea occurred to me that might solve both my immediate problems. I phoned Murray from the sandwich shop.
“I need to talk to you,” I said abruptly when he came to the phone. “I need your help.”
He must have sensed my mood, because he didn’t offer any of his usual wisecracks, agreeing to meet me at the Golden Glow at five.
At four-thirty I changed into a navy wool pantsuit, and stuck a toothbrush, the gun, and a change of underwear in my handbag. I checked all the locks, and left by the back stairs. A look around the building told me my fears were unwarranted; no one was lying in wait for me. I also checked the Omega carefully before getting in and starting it. Today at least I was not going to be blown to bits.
I got stuck in traffic on the Drive and was late to the Golden Glow. Murray was waiting for me with the early edition of the Herald-Star and a beer.
“Hello, V. I. What’s up?”
“Murray, who do you know who throws acid on people he doesn’t like?”
“No one. My friends don’t do that kind of thing.”
“Not a joke, Murray. Does it ring a bell?”
“Who do you know had acid thrown at them?”
“Me.” I turned around and showed him the back of my neck where Lotty had dressed the burn. “He was trying for my eyes but I was expecting it and turned away in time. The thrower’s name is probably Walter, but the man who got him to throw it-that’s who I want.”
I told him about the threats, and the fight, and described the voice of the man who had called. “ Murray, I’m scared. I don’t scare easily, but-Jesus Christ! The thought of some maniac out there trying to blind me! I’d rather take a bullet in the head.”
He nodded soberly. “You’re stepping on the feet of someone with bunions, V. I., but I don’t know whose. Acid.” He shook his head. “I’d be sort of tempted to say Rodolpho Fratelli, but the voice doesn’t sound right-he’s got that heavy, grating voice. You can’t miss it.”