The Confessors' Club Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Recent Titles by Jack Fredrickson

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  The Gold Rolex Day-Date…

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Recent Titles by Jack Fredrickson

  The Dev Elstrom Mysteries

  A SAFE PLACE FOR DYING

  HONESTLY DEAREST, YOU’RE DEAD

  HUNTING SWEETIE ROSE

  THE DEAD CALLER FROM CHICAGO

  THE CONFESSORS’ CLUB *

  Other Titles

  SILENCE THE DEAD*

  * available from Severn House

  THE CONFESSORS’ CLUB

  Jack Fredrickson

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This first world edition published 2015

  in Great Britain and the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

  Trade paperback edition first published 2015 in Great

  Britain and the USA by SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  eBook edition first published in 2015 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2015 by Jack Fredrickson.

  The right of Jack Fredrickson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Fredrickson, Jack author.

  The confessors’ club. – (A Dek Elstrom mystery)

  1. Elstrom, Dek (Fictitious character)–Fiction.

  2. Private investigators–Illinois–Chicago–Fiction.

  3. Serial murder investigation–Fiction. 4. Detective and

  mystery stories.

  I. Title II. Series

  813.6-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8488-6 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-594-0 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-645-8 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk,

  Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  For Jack R. Fredrickson

  My guide, my dad

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The whole gang – Patrick Riley, Missy Lyda, Eric Frisch, Mary Anne Bigane and Joe Bigane – slogged through the early drafts of this one, criticizing, counseling, supporting. As always, I’m grateful.

  Thanks, too, to the ever-patient Sara Porter of Severn House for managing this book, and me, with grace and aplomb.

  First, and last, thank you, Susan. Again. For it all.

  The gold Rolex Day-Date on his wrist had cost eleven thousand dollars. It was still keeping perfect time, but that would be expected. It was water resistant to a depth far greater than the shallows at the marsh end of the small lake. And it had been engineered to run on the faintest of movements: the gentle lapping of the water through the rushes was more than enough to engage the self-winding mechanism. It was a gentleman’s wristwatch, designed for a man who need make only subtle gestures – a wealthy man, a man of nuance.

  He had dressed well. His gray gabardine trousers were of the finest wool, light for the warming spring. His white shirt was cut to precise specification, sent over from Jermyn Street in London. His shoes were English as well, lace-up brogues polished by a houseman to a high gloss.

  His attire had not fared as well as the wristwatch. The press had gone from the trousers and soft, milky flesh protruded where the water reeds had abraded the wool. The shirt was now a putrid green, mucked by the moss at the shore. And the shoes had puckered and blistered, since even the finest of leathers, no matter how well oiled, are not meant to withstand even partial submersion.

  His face, of course, had suffered the worst of it. The part of the forehead closest to the bullet hole had gone, nibbled away in tiny bites by the sunny fish and microscopic urchins that worked the shore of the small lake.

  His eyes, though, still commanded. They remained as clear and direct as they’d been in life, demanding that notice be taken, witness be made, to the truth of the horror they had seen.

  ONE

  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 litt
le 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.

  TWO

  I’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 eig
ht 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.