“Nothing has been taken from her room from what I can tell,” Mrs. Gerrigan said. “Clothes, jewelry, luggage, personal items—it’s all in perfect order. And more importantly, Tabitha is still at the house.”
“Who’s Tabitha?”
“Her three-year-old shih tzu. Tinsley would never leave without that dog. Worships every inch of ground she walks on.”
I was already trying to assemble everything she had told me so far. Lots of holes needed to be filled in, but my curiosity had been piqued. “I assume you’ve spoken to this friend who she went to see a couple of nights ago,” I said.
“Of course we did,” Mrs. Gerrigan said, as if the question had offended her. Her next words got stuck in her throat. Her neck twitched a bit. “Hunter has no idea where she is. She said that Tinsley never made it to her house that night.”
After Violet Gerrigan pulled herself together and we discussed my fee and operational procedures, she wrote a very generous retainer for my services, then left as distinctly aristocratic as she had arrived. I stood at the window behind my desk, which looked out onto Michigan Avenue. A thin Asian man in a black uniform and matching cap dutifully stood outside a silver Rolls-Royce Phantom, whose shiny front grill looked like it was heavy enough to need a crane to pry it loose. I saw him make a sudden move, and in seconds he had the door open and had ushered Mrs. Gerrigan into the back seat. I stood there and watched as the car slowly pulled up Michigan Avenue, looking like a gleaming yacht among rowboats. As I lost the taillights in the snaking traffic, there was one question I couldn’t get out of my mind. Why had Violet Gerrigan come without her husband?
I picked up my cell phone and called in a favor from a friend in CPD’s Bureau of Investigative Services. Want to find a twentysomething these days? Start with their phone and their digital footprint.
2
THE MORGAN FAMILY ESTATE sat auspiciously in the 4900 block of Greenwood Avenue in the historic mansion district of Kenwood, an exclusive enclave within the Hyde Park neighborhood. This landmark community just minutes south of downtown boasted one of the greatest densities of millionaires in the city. The tree-lined streets had been featured in every significant architectural magazine, the coverage always anchored by the rambling Adler mansion, built at the turn of the twentieth century for Max Adler, vice president of retail giant Sears and Roebuck and founder of the city’s Adler Planetarium. Each gated mansion, vividly unique in design, quietly battled its equally imposing neighbors. Tall maple trees formed a canopy over the wide street as small armies of olive-skinned landscapers diligently tended to the manicured lawns.
I had been to this neighborhood once before purely out of curiosity. A year after making detective I had been told the story of the famous Leopold and Loeb murder, once billed as the crime of the century. In 1924 two wealthy teenage graduate students from the University of Chicago who were also residents of Kenwood kidnapped and murdered fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks, son of a wealthy industrialist, on his way home from school. It was considered the country’s first thrill kill—the murderers, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, had confessed they’d set out to commit the perfect murder purely for the thrill of it. Clarence Darrow, the most acclaimed criminal defense lawyer at the time, “won” the case by convincing the judge to sentence them to life in prison plus ninety-nine years instead of the death penalty sought by the prosecution.
While the Leopold and Loeb houses had been demolished, the Franks house still stood. It was badly deteriorated, but the expansive yellow-brick mansion conjured images of what it must’ve been like when the entire nation followed with morbid fascination the story of the wealthy homosexual lovers, their pubescent victim, and the “trial of the century.” The Franks house was on the perimeter of Kenwood, but today I was driving farther into the affluent enclave.
Since my visit many years ago, not much had changed except that a former US senator had ridden the wave to become the first African American president. Despite his international fame, he still owned a well-appointed Georgian brick affair just a block away from the Franks mansion. Heading south on Greenwood, the heavy concrete Jersey barriers stood like fortified sentries with two loud SECRET SERVICE signs flanking the entrance to his block. The federal agents who had once kept watch around the clock had been replaced with a single private security car that was no longer covered by taxpayers.
The Morgan mansion was an enormous redbrick conglomerate that sat far back from the road, imperiously keeping watch over its sweeping lawn. Like the others on the street, the tall wrought iron gate was solidly locked. I rang the intercom.
“Ashe Cayne,” I said. “I’m here to see Hunter Morgan.”
“May I ask what this is about?” the voice returned. It belonged to an older woman with heapings of the South in her voice.
“It’s about Tinsley Gerrigan,” I said.
There was a short pause; then a buzzer sounded and the lock slapped back. I pushed through the gate and tried to look unimpressed as I strode up the long bluestone walkway. Two rows of meticulously trimmed hedges lined the pathway leading to the massive limestone front steps. I spotted three cameras on the house positioned at different angles and one peering from the trunk of an enormous oak in the middle of the yard. I also noticed a couple of motion detectors hidden in two of the potted plants closer to the front porch. Just off to the right I could see the makings of a tennis court in the backyard and lawn furniture that looked more expensive than the best pieces I had in my dining room. Several sculptures had been installed throughout the yard.
I had done a quick internet search on the Morgan family, and most of what I’d found had to do with the family’s attendance at society functions or mentions in the Tribune or Crain’s about their philanthropic work. Mrs. Morgan was the daughter of a DuPont cousin and through a complicated labyrinth of trusts, deaths, and divorces had inherited a piece of the DuPont fortune. She sat on a long list of charitable boards and wrote enormous checks to get the Morgan name carved into the cold limestone of hospital wings and eco-friendly parks.
I’d tried looking up both Tinsley and Hunter on social media. I couldn’t find either of them on Facebook, but both were on Twitter and Instagram. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see anything except for their avatar pictures. Both accounts were set to private.
As I hit the first step of the expansive porch, one of the gigantic oak double doors opened. An emaciated black woman in a well-ironed uniform and hairnet stood with a cautious smile on her face. She looked as old as the house.
“Do come in,” she said, in that gracious southern accent. “Mrs. Morgan has asked that you join her in the east parlor.”
I followed the old but limber woman through a maze of ornate rooms, one bigger than the next, each of them full of gilded framed artwork and custom-made furniture that looked as if it hadn’t been sat on since the house was first decorated. Every room held several vases of fresh flowers, and most of the potted plants towered over my six-foot-three-inch frame. We journeyed down one last hallway toward the rear of the house, then entered a room that was bigger than my entire apartment. The red lacquered walls had inlaid gold leaf designs that delicately sparkled under the sun rushing in from the open bay windows in the northern part of the room. Old white men with uncompromising expressions looked down sternly from gold baroque frames as if to remind those who stared back that this house had been built from the dividends of serious business. I had been in many a snazzy home before, but the opulence here was nothing short of breathtaking.