Denial: A Lew Fonesca Mystery (Lew Fonesca Novels) by Stuart M. Kaminsky

and the smell reminded me of Mac’s Tavern a block from our house in Chicago. My father used to send me there with a glass jar for Mac to fill with draft beer on Saturday nights. There was no music at Mac’s, just the silent black-and-white image on the ten-inch screen of the old DuMont television that sat on a shelf and the loud voices of the Irish and Italian neighborhood working men who came to complain, brag and declare the superiority of one nation over another, one baseball team over another. I was informed by my father that no Republicans were allowed in Mac’s.
    In contrast to those memories, the expensive acoustical system of the Crisp Dollar Bill was playing Bernadette Peters singing “It’s Raining in My Heart.” Billy the bartender/owner’s taste was eclectic. So were his politics.
    There were six people I could see in the booths and at the bar. Might have been others in the shadows. There was nothing really shady about the Crisp Dollar Bill. As far as I knew, no one had ever been shot there; though, back when the Chicago White Sox had spring training in the long-gone box behind the Crisp Dollar Bill, there had been lots of after-the-game fights over games in March that really didn’t matter when June came.
    Billy came over with a Beck’s.
    “Food?”
    “No.”
    “Two Sousa marches coming up next,” he said, moving back toward the bar.
    I was in a corner booth in the back on the right facing the door. I nursed my beer knowing that as soon as Bernadette Peters’s last plaintive notes ended, the music would blare. It did. “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”
    “Oh shit,” someone at the bar said.
    “Departure is always an option,” said Billy amiably.
    I was halfway through the Beck’s, considering what to do next, when the door opened and Ames came in. He knew which booth I was in. He sat across from me.
    “I think our Miss Dorothy is onto something,” he said.

5
    “FOUR PEOPLE aren’t at Seaside Assisted Living who were there two nights ago,” Ames said.
    “Someone in the office told you that?” I asked.
    “No,” he said. “Went to see Dorothy. We took a walk around, talked to people. Came up with a list. Word is no one died the night our Dorothy says she saw the murder.”
    A new song came on. A tenor was warbling something called “I’m Going Shopping with You.” Ames turned his head toward the speaker over the bar.
    “That’s Dick Powell.”
    “Right. Give the man a free beer,” said Billy from behind the bar.
    “What happened to the people who left?” I asked, bringing Ames back to the present.
    “Word is one was transferred to a nursing home,” he said. “Another two left on their own. Other went to live with her daughter-in-law.”
    Billy came over with a beer for Ames and said, “On
the house. Got another Powell coming up, ‘Speaking of the Weather.’ Know it?”
    Ames nodded. He knew it.
    “You checked with the nurses?” I prompted as Billy walked back to the bar.
    “That’s your job,” he said.
    He was right. Ames nursed his beer through Dick Powell before we left.
    It took about ten minutes to get to the Seaside and five minutes to be sent into the office of the director, Amos Trent, a serious, heavyset man with a well-trimmed mustache and a suit almost as tan as his face. He said that neither he, nor the nurses, nor any member of the Seaside staff could give information about residents except to relatives. His eyes moved for an instant toward the four-drawer steel filing cabinet in the corner of his office.
    “You understand,” he said. “Privacy. There are people who prey on older people, offer them everything from jobs stuffing envelopes to life insurance for a dollar a month. We have to be concerned about insurance, liability. One of our heaviest insurance premiums covers privacy of records. I’m sorry.”
    He got up, put out his hand to Ames and me to let me know the meeting was over. His handshake was firm. So was his decision.
    “Okay, then