“I think so. We won’t know until your mother tries to claim your brother’s body tomorrow.”
Amy Blount looked at me with respect: I had a feeling she hadn’t
expected me to come through for her. “We should let you get to bed. Did you get sick from trying to rescue Marc?”
“It’s just a cold,” I said gruffly. “Who can I talk to tomorrow who might know what Mr. Whitby was working on, or what might have taken him out to New Solway? Did he have a girlfriend, or any close men friends here?”
Harriet rubbed the crease between her eyes. “If he was dating anyone in a serious way, it was still too recent for him to have told me or Mother. His editor is a man named Simon Hendricks; he would know what Marc was working on-if he was writing for T-square. Marc did freelance stuff, too, you know. As for his friends, I can’t think right now. I know his college friends, but not his Chicago ones.”
“I’ll start with the magazine in the morning,” I said. “And maybe I can ask your mother about his friends?”
She gave another fleeting smile. “Better not-Mother would be terribly upset to find out I’d hired you.”
I stifled a groan: this meant the second client in a week where I had to tread lightly between mother and child. “What about your brother’s house? Can you get in there, do you think? We might find some notes or something. I looked in his pockets, hoping for some ID, and he didn’t have any keys on him. It hadn’t occurred to me until I was talking to the deputy just now, but there weren’t any house keys or car keys, unless maybe those fell out of his pockets into the pond.”
Harriet turned in bewilderment to Amy. “Then-but his car-I didn’t think about that.”
“What did he drive?” I pulled a notebook out of the heap on the table. “A Saturn SLl? We’ll see if he left it at his house.”
Amy volunteered to find a lawyer or someone else who might have a spare key to Marcus Whitby’s house. I didn’t say I could get past the lock myself if need be: I’d save that parlor trick for when I had to use it. Mentioning the search I’d made of his pockets made me remember the matchbook and pencil I’d found. I’d tossed them in a bowl by the front entrance when I took Catherine’s teddy bear out of my pockets. I went back for them and showed them to Harriet and Amy.
Water had gummed the matchbook into a solid mass that wouldn’t open. The cover had originally been some shade of green. Water had turned it blackish, and whatever the logo had been, it now looked like a child’s amorphous picture of a star. The cover didn’t have an address or phone number. I might be able to get a forensics lab to open it to see whether Whitby had written something on the inside. The pencil was an ordinary number 2 with no names stamped on it.
Harriet turned the matchbook over in her hands. Neither she nor Amy had any idea where it was from, but Harriet wanted to keep it, as the last thing her brother had touched. I looked closely at both the matchbook and the pencil again. They weren’t going to tell me anything. I handed them over to Harriet Whitby.
When I’d ushered them out, I was utterly beat. I steamed myself for a few minutes in a hot pot of my mother’s invention-herbal tea, lemon, ginger-and crawled into bed, where I fell at once down a hole of sleep. The phone dragged me out of it at one in the morning.
“Is this V I. Warshawski?” the night operator from my answering service demanded. “We’ve gotten a phone call from a Mrs. MacKenzie Graham. She says it’s an emergency and insisted that we wake you.”
“Mrs. MacKenzie Graham?” I echoed, bewildered: I knew Darraugh’s son, MacKenzie, and didn’t think he’d gotten married. Then I remembered through the fog of sleep that MacKenzie had also been Darraugh’s father’s name. I switched on a light and fumbled around on the mghtstand for a pen.
When I had Geraldine Graham’s number, I was tempted to make her wait until morning. But-I’d found a dead man in her childhood pond Sunday night. Maybe someone was making a habit of tossing bodies there and she was watching them do it again. I dialed the number.
“I want you out here at once, young woman.” She sounded as though she thought I was the night chambermaid.
“Why?”
“Because it’s your job to discover who is breaking into Larchmont. You didn’t find them last night, but they are here right now”
“What are you seeing?” I croaked hoarsely.
“What is that, young woman? Don’t grumble at me.”
I tried to clear my throat. “What are you seeing? People? Phantom lights? Cars?”
“I’m seeing the lights in the attic. Didn’t I tell you that? If you come right now, you’ll find whoever it is red-handed.”
“You need to call the cops, Ms. Graham. I live more than forty miles from you.”
She brushed the distance aside: the cops had proved how useless they were; she hoped I wasn’t going to be similarly ineffectual.
“If someone is using Larchmont as a dump for dead bodies, you need to get the local cops there at once. Me arriving ninety minutes from now would serve very little purpose. If you’d like me to call them for you, I can.”
She took my offer as a face-saving out. “And what is your direct number, young woman? I’m tired of relaying messages to you through your help. They’re not cooperative.”
“They’re your best chance of reaching me, Ms. Graham. Good night.” I didn’t want to call Stephanie Protheroe again: one favor a night is all I expect from anyone. I finally remembered the young lawyer on emergency duty for the rich and famous. I found his card with a pager number and beeped him. When he called me back ten minutes later, he was as groggy with sleep as I was, but he agreed to get someone from the New Solway police to drive over to Larchmont.
“Will you let me know what they find?” I asked. “I’m working for the Graham family, you know.”
“It’s a strange life, isn’t it,” he said, “responding to the demands of the very wealthy. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a lawyer joke that covered that aspect of our work.”
While I waited, I made myself another pot of herbal tea. My mother had brought me up to believe one drank coffee as a matter of course, but tea only in illness. I took it into the living room and drank two cups, idling away the early morning by watching Audrey Hepburn stare wistfully at Gregory Peck. All the time I looked at Hepburn’s doelike eyes, I kept wondering whether the New Solway police would catch Catherine Bayard breaking into Larchmont Hall.
After an hour, Larry Yosano called me back. “Ms. Warshawski? I went over with the New Solway police, and we didn’t see anyone. We made a circuit of the house and the outbuildings and didn’t notice any breakage; the security company confirms that no one has tripped an alarm out here.
We double-checked the pond: you’ll be glad to know there aren’t any new bodies there. Maybe Ms. Graham confused lights in the attic with the traffic going by on Coverdale Lane.”
I felt absurd, breathing a sigh of relief. I saw nothing but shoals ahead in talking to young Catherine Bayard, but I was still happy that if she was the person Geraldine Graham had seen at Larchmont Hall, she’d finished whatever she was doing before the cops arrived.
CHAPTER 9
Ice Cube Editor
When I woke again the sun was bright in the sky. I, on the other hand, was stiff and congested; when I tried my voice, I sounded more like Sam Ramey than Renee Fleming. I stumbled out of bed and into my clothes, but the late night with Harriet Whitby and Amy Blount-followed by Geraldine Graham’s demands-had knocked out any reserves I had. I was too hoarse even to make phone calls. Finally I gave in to the luxury of a day off. I played tapes of my mother’s old concerts, listened to Leontyne Price sing Mozart, and ate soup that Mr. Contreras brought in from the market.
On Wednesday, I was still snuffling, but finally had enough energy to get back to work. I’d slept too late to catch young Catherine Bayard at home. So I could find out whether to waylay her at home or at school, I called the Vina Fields Academy, pretending I was part of the Bayard mansion’s staff. The direct
or’s secretary answered.
“Did Catherine Bayard get to class on time this morning? We had to drop her at the train, and I don’t think she caught the early one,” I said in my basso profundo. “I promised her I would explain to the school if she was late.”
They put me through a few hoops-protection for their students, since a school full of wealthy kids is a target for kidnappers. The sketchy data about the Bayard household I’d garnered from Nexis was enough to
convince them to tell me she’d arrived late for algebra. I didn’t push my luck by asking what time Catherine’s school day ended: at least she was in Chicago, within relatively easy striking distance.
My day off left me fit enough to do a complete set of exercises, stretching my tight muscles, working up a modest sweat with my weights, and finishing by taking the dogs on a short jog around the neighborhood. (“You be sure you’re bundled up, cookie, you get a chill on top of that cold, it could turn real serious,” Mr. Contreras once again adjured me.)
When we got back, I did feel better. It’s sometimes hard to believe that motion does you more good than bed; I hoped my looser muscles would get me through the day.
Lotty Herschel called to remind me we were having dinner together tonight: we have a standing date once a month to make sure we don’t lose track of each other. “Yes, I can hear you’re under the weather, my dear, but I see more germs in an hour than you could possibly shed on me, so unless you’re too unwell to go out come and have some company to cheer you.”
Her dry, wry concern was a good tonic. I dressed quickly, in a greenand-black-striped trouser suit that I liked: it was professional but had a bit of style in the jacket waist.
Down at my office, I started my calls with one to Darraugh, so I could report on his mother’s early morning alarm. Darraugh was in New York, but his assistant said she would make sure he knew the sheriff’s deputies hadn’t found any signs of a breakin. She added that they’d already heard twice from Ms. Graham (“She wasn’t sure you understood the urgency of the assignment, but I assured her that Mr. Graham has full confidence in your abilities.”)
“I can’t get a handle on what Marcus Whitby was doing out there,” I told Caroline. “Jerry Hastings, the DuPage County ME, only did a superficial autopsy. It would be helpful if we could pin down the cause of death more exactly than drowning-if we could even make sure Marcus Whitby drowned in that water. Do you think Darraugh would be willing to call Dr. Hastings? Hastings won’t respond to a Chicago PI, but-you know how the world goes. Darraugh’s family has been prominent in DuPage for a long time.” “I’ll mention it to him when we next talk,” Caroline promised.
I next phoned Harriet Whitby at the Drake. I explained that besides
trying a strategy to buy time on the release of Marc’s body, I was also trying to get someone to push on the DuPage ME to do a more complete autopsy. “In case neither of these ideas pan out, you should get your mother to agree to a private autopsy”
“I guess I can try,” she said, without a lot of enthusiasm. “What else will you be doing?”
“I’m going over to Llewellyn Publishing, see if they’ll tell me what your brother was working on when he died. They’ve been stonewalling the press, but they might tell me since I’m working for you. I’m going to be in motion all day; take my cell phone number so you can call me if you need to-especially if Amy finds someone to let us into your brother’s house. How long will you be in town?”
“It all depends on Mother,” she said. “If I can persuade her to slow down… but she’d like to hold the funeral on Friday or Saturday.”
I offered to talk to her mother myself, but Harriet still didn’t think that would be a good idea. “It’s not as if there’s any evidence of, well, that there was anything wrong, except for him being out there to begin with. Unless you find something concrete, she’s not going to listen. She’s determined to believe it was a tragic accident.” She let out a harsh squawk of a laugh. “Maybe I’m just doing the opposite, pretending he didn’t die for no reason at all.”
“Let’s not worry about your motives right now,” I said gently. “The questions you’re asking deserve answers.”
Before going to Llewellyn Publishing, I wrapped up the work I needed to do on my three small jobs. I also looked up Marcus Whitby’s previous work. His stories for T-Square had centered on African-American writers and artists: Shirley Graham, Ann Perry, Lois Mailou Jones, the Federal Negro Theater Project of the thirties. He had detailed the rise, fall and current resurgence of Bronzeville-the South Side neighborhood where he’d bought a house-as a way of showcasing Richard Wright’s Chicago years. Whitby had occasionally written for Rolling Stone, and had done a recent piece on a young black writer whose first novel had made a big splash a year or so back. About ten years ago, Whitby wrote a biting essay on his arrest and imprisonment during an antiapartheid demonstration in Massachusetts. So that was how he’d picked up a sheet: he didn’t have any other arrests on his record that I could see.
Before I could get out the door, Murray Ryerson phoned, hoping I knew something about Whitby that hadn’t been in any of the official material.
“He had on an Oxxford suit,” I said helpfully. “I think the shoes were Johnston & Murphy, but I’m not a hundred percent sure.”
“So he was a conservative dresser. He wrote hip and dressed square. Anything else?”
I thought a long minute. Pros, cons. “The DuPage medical examiner seems to have given the body a lick and a promise. Some people are wondering if they would have been as cursory if Whitby had been white.” “What people?” Murray was on it like a flea on a dog.
“Unnamed sources,” I said primly. “A client I won’t reveal. Anyone been able to find out what he was working on at T-Square?”
“They’ve got a lockdown at Llewellyn. The editor, Simon Hendricks, he’s the guy with a face like a tomahawk if you were watching last night’s news, if you try to ask him anything he chops you off at the knees for violating editorial integrity.”
I hoped that didn’t apply to an ambassador from the dead man’s family, but it definitely meant going in person with a note instead of facing the runaround of voice mail. I checked my e-mail one last time, even though I knew Morrell had said he’d be out of touch for a week. And of course the new messages in my in box were either spam or business related.
An old lover of Morrell’s, an English journalist, was also in Afghanistan. Morrell traveling with Susan Horseley-I tried to put that thought out of my mind. What did Penelope really do those twenty years that Ulysses was sleeping with Calypso and fighting the Cyclops? Only a man would imagine she spent it all weaving and unweaving. She probably took lovers, went on long trips herself, was sorry when the hero came home.
I locked up and headed south to the trendy stretch of land developers like to call River North. Llewellyn’s building was an eight-story cube, built when the streets west of the Magnificent Mile were a no-man’s-land between the Cabrini Green housing project and the Gold Coast. Land was cheap then, and it was also spitting distance from both the river and the expressways-valuable for a publisher needing to bring in tons of paper every week.
Nowadays, the old warehouses hold chichi art galleries, while high-rise condos filling the vacant lots dwarf Llewellyn’s cube. The boom has also made parking a supreme hassle. I finally found a meter several blocks west of the building.
Llewellyn’s lobby was as spare as the exterior. All it held was a waiting area with beige-upholstered chairs, and a high horseshoe counter where a receptionist sat. No art, no glitz, only a photograph of Llewellyn himself hanging in the waiting area relieved the monotony. A uniformed guard lounged between the receptionist and modest elevator bank, although the receptionist was built on a massive enough scale to stop an intruder without help from the guard. She frowned majestically when I identified myself and said I was hoping to see Mr. Simon Hendricks.
“And do you have an appointment?” “No, but-“
“He’
s not taking any unsolicited interviews.”
“I have a note for him. Can you send that up, please?”
She took the envelope from me and opened it-even though it was sealed and addressed to Hendricks. I’d kept it simple:
Dear Mr. Hendricks,
I am the private investigator who found Marcus Whitby’s body at Larchmont Hall on Sunday night; I got him out of the water and tried to give him CPR. His sister, Ms. Harriet Whitby, has hired me to investigate his death. I’d like to know if Mr. Whitby was working on something that
took him to New Solway on Sunday.
V 1. Warshawski
When the receptionist had read it-taking her time, as if hoping to goad me into some display of impatience that would allow her to throw me out-she made a call on the house phone, speaking too softly for me to overhear. She mutely nodded me to a seat in the lobby. I sat on the scratchy beige upholstery, hoping my message was persuasive enough to open doors closed to Murray’s aggressive style.
After a wait long enough to let me read most of the January issue of T-square, which was on a small table with current copies of the other magazines in the Llewellyn Group, a woman got off the elevator and came over to me. She was about six feet tall, as lean as a whippet, wearing skintight turquoise leather and high-heeled boots that added another three inches to her height. The shiny turquoise made my striped suit look dowdy and conventional.
The woman didn’t sit down, so I got up. It isn’t often I feel like a shrimp, but my eyes just about connected with her breastbone. She ignored the hand I held out as I smiled and introduced myself.
“I’m Mr. Hendricks’s assistant. What is it you’re hoping to get out of a meeting with him?”
I let my hand drop, and spoke with a phony sincerity more grating than outright hostility. “I’m so sorry your receptionist didn’t let you read my note. I’m a private investigator; Marcus Whitby’s sister has hired me to find out how and why he died. It would be helpful to learn what he was working on these days that took him out to New Solway.”
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