Hunting for Hemingway Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE DD MCGIL LITERATI MYSTERY SERIES

  Hunting for Hemingway

  "Smart and witty ... a great read."

  -Barbara D'Amato, multiple Agatha and Anthony

  Award-winning author

  "A fast-paced literary mystery filled with twists, turns, blind-alleysand murder."

  -Robert Goldsborough, author of the Snap Malek Mysteries

  "DD's dry wit and internal monologue go far ... Another fast read with quirky characters and due reverence for the Second City."

  -Kirkus Reviews

  A Cadger's Curse

  "A promising debut ...Well-drawn characters and a suspenseful plot will leave readers looking forward to the next installment."

  -Publishers Weekly

  "Madsen's debut introduces enough mystery, enjoyable characters and literary tidbits to attract a wide audience for her planned series."

  -Kirkus Reviews

  "This debut series will appeal to readers who prefer their mysteries soft-boiled and seasoned with a dash of literary sleuthing."

  -Library Journal

  "A new series that starts out with a bang. Fans of Chicago, Robert Burns, Scotland, wall-to-wall action, wonderfully flawed heroines and sly humor will find something to like in this book."

  -CozyLibrary.com

  "Madsen has created an engaging heroine ... Literature lovers will look forward to future chapters in DD's life."

  -Mystery Scene Magazine

  Hunting

  for

  Hemingway

  OTHER BOOKS BY DIANE GILBERT MADSEN

  A Cadger's Curse

  FORTHCOMING FROM DIANE GILBERT MADSEN

  The Conan Doyle Notes

  DIANE GILBERT MADSEN

  Hunting

  for

  Hemingway

  A DD McGil

  Literati Mystery

  MIDNIGHT INK

  WOODBURY, MINNESOTA

  Hunting for Hemingway: A DD McGil Literati Mystery © 2010 by Diane Gilbert Madsen. All rights reserved. No part of this e-book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Midnight Ink, except in the form of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. As the purchaser of this e-book, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. The text may not be otherwise reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, or recorded on any other storage device in any form or by any means. Any unauthorized usage of the text without express written permission of the publisher is a violation of the author's copyright and is illegal and punishable by law. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First e-book edition © September 2010 E-book ISBN: 978-0-7387-2714-1 Book design and format by Donna Burch Cover design by Lisa Novak Cover illustration © Roland Sarkany/Marlena Agency, Inc. Editing by Connie Hill Photo on back cover: 1923 passport photo of Ernest Hemingway © Hemingway Collection/John F. Kennedy Library

  Midnight Ink is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd. Midnight Ink does not participate in, endorse, or have any authority or responsibility concerning private business arrangements between our authors and the public. Any Internet references contained in this work are current at publication time, but the publisher cannot guarantee that a specific reference will continue or be maintained. Please refer to the publisher's website for links to current author websites.

  Midnight Ink Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd. 2143 Wooddale Drive Woodbury, MN 55125 www.midnightink.com Manufactured in the United States of America

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to my dad,

  Albert N. Gilbert,

  and best friend

  Andrew Raymond Klosowski (Ray)

  Both gone too soon

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  All my thanks to Christopher Andrew Schneider for crafting the Hemingway short story fragments. His writing talents are truly remarkable.

  I will always appreciate talking "all things Hemingway" with my Oak Park neighbor, Morris Buske-a true gentleman and scholar who was a delight to have known.

  There's only one Thomas J. Joyce of Joyce and Company Rare Books in Chicago, and I can't thank him enough for his expert advice on manuscripts and bibliophilia and for his friendship.

  Many thanks also to Leslie Hindman of Leslie Hindman Auctioneers in Chicago for her kindness and invaluable insights into the complex world of auction houses.

  Sincere appreciation to Gordon Drawer for again being the vigilant wing-man on Chicago verisimilitude. His suggestions and humor are always right on.

  Thanks to Grace Morgan, agent and friend; and to Bill Krause and the rest of the team at Midnight Ink for all their talent.

  As always, ever to my husband, Tom Madsen.

  All things truly wicked start from innocence.

  -ERNEST HEMINGWAY

  PROLOGUE

  DECEMBER 2,1922 LAUSANNE, Switzerland: The Chateau Ouchy: The American was twenty-three, tall and muscular, a veteran of the First World War. He'd recently arrived from Paris to cover the Greek-Turk Peace Conference for the Toronto Star newspaper. He was newly married and cabled Feather Cat, his private name for his wife, to come join him in Lausanne.

  DECEMBER 2, 1922 PARIS, France: 74 rue de Cardinal Lemoine: The wife was also an American from the Midwest. They lived off her dwindling inheritance in a tiny loft apartment in Paris while her husband worked at becoming a writer. Feather Cat had a bad cold and had not accompanied her husband, whom she affectionately called Poo. Responding to his pleas, she packed and made arrangements to take the train to Switzerland. She loaded all her husband's writings into a separate small valise so that he could work on them, and maybe sell something.

  DECEMBER 2, 1922 PARIS: Gare de Lyon Train Station: The train, typical of the time, had compartments to provide passengers with privacy. Feather Cat handed her baggage to the porter, keeping the small valise. She went straight to her compartment. Before departure, she left to check on her luggage and purchase a newspaper. The valise was gone when she returned.

  DECEMBER 3, 1922 LAUSANNE: The train station: The husband met Feather Cat when the train arrived. She wept uncontrollably, unable to tell him what was wrong. Poo comforted her, saying that no matter what had happened, nothing could be that bad. She told him of the missing valise and his work.

  DECEMBER 3,1922 LAUSANNE: The train station: Disbelieving, the husband immediately boarded the next express train for the twelvehour journey back to Paris. Poo left Feather Cat in Switzerland.

  DECEMBER 4, 1922 PARIS: 74 RUE DE CARDINAL LEMOINE : The husband inquired at the Gare de Lyon train station. He searched the entire loft. He found only one story, "Up in Michigan," in the back of a drawer. Three years of writing, including the carbon copies, were gone. He was especially angry about the carbon copies.

  ONE

  DAY 1: SUNDAY

  Love is like a war-Easy to begin-Hard to end.

  -SCOTTISH PROVERB

  MY NAME is DD McGil, and please don't ask what the DD stands for. I'm female, blonde, a Scot, and in the insurance investigations business-all of which, I frequently remind people, doesn't necessarily make me a bad person. I make my living in and around the Windy City-quite a nice place, politics aside. Chicago strives to be an elegant city, but somehow it never gets too far from its name which, taken from the Ojibwa Indians, means "skunk."

  Chicago, known as "the Second City" until L.A. went on steroids, is 579 feet above sea level. There was a time when my feet were firmly plan
ted on terra Chicago-but not lately. I'd like to start at the beginning, but there wasn't really a beginning-only an ending. It all happened eight months ago-eight long months ago when I was in the midst of a great relationship with a terrific guy named Scotty Stuart. Eight long months ago when I didn't believe in curses. Then my doorbell rang, and I got the news. Since that day I've been fighting desperately to keep my head above water.

  The problem was that things had been going too well, and I'd forgotten one of my Auntie Elizabeth's favorite maxims. She warned me at least a hundred times that we Scots must always pay attention to the cogs in the universe and keep watch over our shoulder-most especially when things are going well. I didn't. And that's when the universe ran me over.

  It was a Tuesday, a frosty Chicago evening with the wind howling and the stars so bright and clear any sailor could have easily navigated his way to my third-floor walk-up apartment in Wrig- leyville. I remember I wasn't at all upset when Scotty failed to appear for our tete a tete dinner. He was involved with the International Monetary Fund, doing all kinds of top-secret things with worldwide currency, and was often called away unexpectedly, especially in the wake of the current global economic crisis. So I shrugged it off, sipped my pinot grigio and petted my cat, believing I was safe and secure, 579 feet above sea level. As I watched the clouds obscure the moon, I never saw the big wave headed right for me. I thought I knew everything there was to know about Scotty Stuart, but I didn't know what I really needed to know.

  After two frantic days without any word from Scotty, the cops finally agreed to list him as a missing person. Then for the next four months, I investigated. I should say tried to investigate. There were no leads, no clues as to what had happened to him or where he'd gone. His car was gone. His cell phone and credit cards hadn't been used, and no one had heard from him. He hadn't bought an airline ticket, a train, or a bus ticket. I harassed the cops at the police station every day. I harassed Scotty's friend in the Treasury, Harry Marley, whom I'd met working on the HI Data counterfeiting case, and I constantly touched base with Jerry Frehling, Scotty's boss. For all my hotshot investigating, all I uncovered was a big zero. No one had seen him-nobody knew his whereabouts. Even my Aunt Elizabeth, who often has premonitions, was no help. All she could say was, "'Tis a blank, DD. Try as I might, only darkness swirls. I ken nothing."

  Her pronouncement and the fact that there wasn't one single clue made me even more frightened and more obsessed. I had to find out what happened. I dropped all my other jobs, made it my only case, and kept investigating, using every angle I could devise.

  Then late one night, my doorbell rang. I was curled up with my cat on the sofa, and a sudden chill shook me. Scotty! I rushed to the peephole, hoping, wishing, praying. No luck. It was someone I'd never seen before-a big guy with broad shoulders and a good haircut wearing glasses with steel frames. He didn't look like a cop, but you never know. Sighing, I opened the door on the chain-wide enough for me to see him but not wide enough to let my Ragdoll cat, Cavalier, run into the corridor. How was I to know that even that little opening was enough to let the wave crash in on me.

  "DD McGil?"

  "Who wants to know?"

  He flashed a Secret Service identity badge at me, but held his thumb over his name. My knees buckled. I grabbed the doorknob for support.

  "Stop searching for Scotty Stuart," he whispered in a low voice.

  "What?"

  "Listen to me. I'm only going to say this once. He's in witness protection, and you're not doing him or yourself any good."

  "But ..."

  "No buts. You're causing problems you can't even imagine," he hissed. "For God's sake stop looking for him if you want him to stay alive."

  He was alive! But could I believe him?

  "Where..."

  Before I could say another word, he'd already turned and hurried along the hallway and down the stairs and was out the door before I reached the landing.

  Now it's four months later. I did give up the investigation. I had to. There were no more leads, no more clues, and I couldn'twouldn't-take the chance that I might put Scotty in more danger. I went through the worried stage, the anger stage, the horror stage and the grief stage. I'm past all that. I've even outgrown the "We'll always have Paris" stage. Now I'm in the anti-social stage. I generally spend evenings at home with Cavalier. We share TV dinners and watch the tube like an old married couple.

  My father had a favorite saying, "Let your wants hurt you," and that's exactly what I was doing. I had walked down the same path after my fiance Frank's death a few years ago. I was in a rut, and that was part of the trouble. I suppose that's why Tom Joyce, my erstwhile friend who runs the well-known Joyce and Company bookstore in Chicago, handed me a ticket to a Hemingway docudrama performance at Northwestern University.

  "Something came up, and I can't use it," he said, pressing the ticket into my hand. "You go."

  "I...'

  "Go for my sake if nothing else," he pleaded. "You're getting positively moribund."

  "Adjective, from the Latin, meaning in a dying state."

  "Not exactly dying, DD, but I do think stale. You're in the same state you were after Frank died. You've lost your vitality. I know you've started working again, doing a few jobs for your attorney friends, but you hibernate in your apartment every night with your cat. And believe me, I like Cavalier, but you're stuck in time"

  "It's not like that." "

  I know you cared for Scotty. I liked-I like him too. But if Scotty is in witness protection like that Secret Service chap said, then you must realize you'll never see him again." "

  I won't accept that."

  "And that's exactly your problem. Look, if they had to whisk him away in the dark of night like they did, and he accepted it, knowing he was going to hurt you and Jerry and his business, it means something really big and bad is after him-right on his heels. And it means-whatever it is-it'll probably be after him for the rest of his life-and yours. The first step is to take this ticket and go to the play."

  "I feel trapped, like the Great Wall of China is surrounding me. I can't see over it, under it, around, or through it."

  "The Great Wall, you know, was constructed around 210 BC and is made of 3,873,000,000 individual bricks." He obviously wanted to change the subject.

  "Are you making that up?"

  "I never make up facts or figures. You know that. It's on the web, and they figured it out mathematically. Anyway, take the ticket."

  I knew he was right about me, and the "moribund" stung me into promising him I'd go.

  Nonetheless, I was having second thoughts. Lethargy is so easy. I kissed Cavalier good-bye, and his kitty meow sounded like he too was surprised I was actually leaving.

  "It's not a date'" I explained. "I'll be home early." I grabbed my purse and left before my mind changed again.

  The stage production was entertaining and surprisingly historically accurate. It featured a Hemingway look-alike re-enacting scenes from the author's life. The theme was "A New Book for Every New Affair." It was based on the theory that Hemingway wrote his best four books to each of his new wives in turn-The Sun Also Rises in 1926 for Hadley, the first wife; Farewell to Arms in 1929 to his second, Pauline Pfeiffer; For Whom the Bell Tolls for Martha Gellhorn in 1940; and The Old Man and the Sea in 1952 to Mary Welsh, his last wife. It was an interesting presentation, but I abruptly stopped paying attention when my old college flame, David Barnes, appeared on the stage. I had no premonition he'd be back from Paris directing the production. He seemed to be staring right into my eyes during the rest of the docu-drama.

  When the lights came back on, I sat contemplating the empty stage. My feet were being trampled on by the usual scramble of exiting patrons, but I was immobile, damning myself for breaking my own cardinal rule. Years ago, I'd vowed to keep out of the clutches of academia, and most especially from anything to do with Hemingway. I guess some people never learn.

  I wasn't sure if he'd seen me or not, but I d
idn't want to be within twenty feet of David Barnes, damn him. I melded into the crowd heading for the nearest exit and kept my head down. Suddenly, in a flash of brown hair and blue eyes, there he was, saying in that unmistakable David voice,

  "DD McGil. I thought that was you. Sometimes it's hard to see out from the stage through those lights."

  There was no escape. Tom Joyce and his rotten ticket. I knew I should have stayed home with the cat.

  I looked up at him. "Hello, David"

  "Where the hell have you been, DD? I've been trying to find you for months. Nobody at the university knew where you'd gone.

  "Guess I'm not the only one who's not so good at keeping in touch," I said, thinking about all the years he'd had to call or write.

  "I know, DD. I'm sorry."

  "Luckily I didn't hold my breath." I edged around him. We were nearly the only ones left in the rapidly emptying lobby. As I squeezed by, David put his hand on the back of my neck, under my hair.

  "Wait a minute, DD. I really need to talk to you.

  The intimate gesture stopped me. David hadn't changed much since I'd seen him last. He was still tall, handsome, trim, and boyish. And those piercing blue eyes hadn't changed either, except for a few small lines at the corners. He was more tan than I remembered, but that might have been from stage makeup.

  I closed my eyes. Long-suppressed memories of graduate school flashed through my consciousness. David had been an up-and-coming Hemingway scholar and my first grand passion. I remembered the hard work, the cold cast of light on campus during those Chicago winters, and the delirium of falling in love very fast and very hard. As it turned out, I'd fallen much harder than he, and he'd dumped me for a fellowship in Paris to study twentieth-century American expatriate writers. "I'll write you every day," he'd promised at the airport. But that was well over a dozen years ago, and we hadn't seen each other since. It was David Barnes who first taught me how complicated life could be. Then I'd met Frank. And then Scotty. I like men, but statistically speaking, my luck with them was shitty.