A Midsummer Night's Scream

tree. It probably won’t get cherries for a couple of years. My grandmother had two of them when I was a kid. I’d visit her most summers. One time they produced so many cherries that she had to beg neighbors to come take most of them off her hands. The one requirement was that the cherries had to be bagged and weighed before the neighbors left. She actually gave away seventy-eight pounds of them. And kept ten pounds for her own pies.“
    “Eighty-eight pounds of cherries? I’ve never heard of such of thing.“
    “Neither had she. When she realized how many flowers the trees had, she hired two neighbor boys to net them so the birds wouldn’t eat the fruit. I’ve never had a better pie in my life than she made.“
    She went on, “It did get two flowers this spring, but no cherries. So, how is your investigation of Denny’s death coming along?“
    “So-so. Not much information has come back on Denny himself. And I still can’t manage to leave a message on his parents’ phone. I’ve asked a cop in their town to go see if they’re home. They’re not. And none of the neighbors know when they’re coming home.
    “Tazz has an excellent alibi,“ he went on. “She was providing costumes for a private party. It was a reunion of a bunch of former hippies. Those who could still fit in their old clothes and had kept some, wore their own,“ he said. “Tazz dressed the rest of them who had wisely thrown all the tie-dyed stuff away.“
    “Was she there all evening?“
    “Only after the rehearsal. She and her assistant dropped off the clothes some of them needed earlier in the afternoon, and went back after she was through at the theater to pick them up, examine them for food stains or sweat stains, and take them back to the warehouse well after midnight. Does she really make people who rent her clothes wear those underarm things?“
    “She does.“
    “What if it’s a sleeveless dress?“
    Jane said, “I didn’t think to ask. What about the others? John Bunting, for example? Was he alibied by his wife?“
    “No. He’d been out to a late dinner after the rehearsal with a bunch of his old Chicago pals. They were finally asked to leave at midnight when the place closed.“
    “Did you interview all of them?“
    “Yes, all but one of them, who is out of town. Are they ever a bunch of old coots. One has to carry his oxygen with him. Another is in a wheelchair and has a young man who accompanies him with his medicines. They’re all successful old men. They either started companies here in Chicago or inherited companies from their fathers.“
    He went on, “One is called Bootsie. His father made expensive leather shoes and kept the shoe forms in storage, carefully itemized, until the client died. He claimed he always offered them to the bereaved family as a gift after the funeral. He’s still in business. And he’s the healthiest of all of them. Now he has fifty employees and they still keep the shoe forms. I’ll bet each shoe brings in a fabulous profit. Handmade, hand-sewn, fitting perfectly and guaranteed to last at least fifteen years. Lots of his clients bring the shoes in after the fifteen years and want the exact duplicate.
    “Another, ‘The Pill,’ inherited a pharmacy his father started in 1890 in the heart of the Loop. He showed me pictures of the original shop, with all the big bottles filled with colored water. At least I assume it was colored. It was a black-and-white picture.“
    “And the rest?“ Jane asked, smiling.
    “One, of course, is a lawyer. He didn’t seem to have a nickname. He’s retired and turned it over to his son and grandsons, but goes in every day to check out what they’re doing. If I were a son or grandson of his, I’d have run away and become a cowboy or a plumber. He’s the one who is out of town.
    “The last one, called ‘Big Buck,’ is, you won’t be surprised to learn, a banker. He started out as a pawnbroker and went on to found one of the biggest banks in Chicago, with branches all over the United States and most of Europe. Even a few in Asia.“
    “They must all be billionaires,“ Jane said. “You’re right. I was sort of surprised that they even let Bunting hang out with them. He’s not a roaring success. And even if he’s been in many plays and movies, he probably isn’t anywhere near their financial league. But they all went to the same private grade and prep school at the same time, and men like that keep in touch, I guess. They’ve known