“You’re right,” I said. “I’ve been imposing. Maybe I should take this to the New Solway cops.”
She sighed. “Okay, I’ll bite. What is it?”
“I was visiting Geraldine Graham this afternoon. She lives in the same complex as Olin Taverner-the guy who died on Monday or Tuesday. As I was leaving her place, I discovered that someone had broken into Taverner’s apartment.”
“That someone wasn’t you, was it, Ms. Warshawski?”
“No, ma’am. That someone was a man who knocked me to the ground when I went in to investigate. White, maybe forty, lots of hair-I didn’t get much of a look.”
“Okay,” she sighed again. “We’ll send someone over.”
“And, Deputy-Marc Whitby visited Olin Taverner last Thursday night. I don’t know if Whitby came back here on Sunday before he diedbut it seems worth exploring. And Taverner had an anonymous visitor on Monday, someone who washed out Taverner’s whisky glass. Just thought you’d like to know.”
CHAPTER 21
Jigsaw Puzzle
It wasn’t until I was back in my own home that I remembered the wheel tracks going into the culvert. I was bone tired, too tired to think about it further, let alone try to decide whether I should do something about the tracks. I soaked in the tub for half an hour and ate a bowl of canned chicken soup. It wasn’t anything like as good as Mrs. Aguilar’s, but it was what I had.
I was drifting off to an early sleep when Deputy Protheroe called me back. I tried to rise to her level of energy as she explained what she’d done. The guard at the entrance to Anodyne Park couldn’t possibly identify my intruder: too many people came in all day, either making deliveries or visiting families, for him to recognize anyone from my vague description.
She added, almost casually, “You didn’t bust the lock on that desk, did you, during your look-around?”
“Deputy, if I’d gone into that desk, you wouldn’t know about it. You got a crime scene team doing prints and so on?”
“The Anodyne management doesn’t like a big police presence-it lowers morale and leads to lawsuits.” She gave a dry laugh. “But just to keep you from calling six times an hour, I did take the glass into our lab.”
“And you’ll let me know what they tell you? Just to keep me from calling you six times an hour?”
“You never know: I might even do that.”
When she’d hung up, I went back to bed, but I’d woken up too much and couldn’t relax. It was still early, only nine. I phoned Amy Blount to see if she’d had any luck either at T-Square, or from Mare’s other neighbors. Unfortunately, the nursing mother was the only person who’d been up in the middle of the night, or at least the only one who’d seen any sign of activity at Mare’s house.
“When I asked who used to visit him, the kids thought I was some jealous girlfriend trying to stake him out-they could remember seeing me come out of Mare’s house, but not anyone else. They began creating a scenario where I had murdered him. It made me laugh, and then it made me cry-I can’t believe how lonely he must have felt, and I can’t believe he’s dead.”
“Yeah. Investigation sometimes feels like a game, until you remember a person died who was important to their friends and family… What about Mare’s editor-Simon Hendricks?”
“Umh. Cold fish. He had to talk to us, because Harriet was there. We started the way you suggested, with Mare’s assistant Aretha, but she didn’t think there was anything specific to the tension between him and Hendricks beyond professional insecurity. Marc had a contract for a book about Kylie Ballantine-we found that in his desk drawer at the office. Aretha said Hendricks was furious about that because he-Hendricks-had been trying for five years to sell a book about Martin Luther King’s summer in Chicago.”
“So why did Marc tell him about his own book contract?” “Had to-terms of employment.”
“Do you think Hendricks was bitter or jealous enough to kill Marc over it?”
She thought it over. “I’m no expert on why people kill each other. But-well, why would Hendricks lure Marc all the way out to that pond?” “There is that,” I admitted. “What about Mare’s cellmate, Jason Tompkin? Did you get him to say anything about the company relations with Bayard?”
“He runs his mouth so much it’s hard to know whether to trust anything he says. For what it’s worth, the company policy is not to discuss work in progress with anyone outside Llewellyn Publishing. However, he says that
Hendricks really stresses it in relation to Bayard Publishing. J.T. says that comes down from Llewellyn, that there’s some kind of bad blood between Calvin Bayard and Augustus Llewellyn, nobody knows what, but he, J.T., thinks it’s because Llewellyn took money from Bayard to start up T-Square, and Bayard acted patronizing-like Llewellyn was proof of what a goodhearted liberal Bayard was. But here’s something really weird: according to J.T, Hendricks and Marc had a big blowup last week because Marc tried seeing Llewellyn in person.”
I was astounded: you don’t survive corporate life by trying to see the company owner behind your boss’s back. “What was that about?”
“No one knows. Maybe Marc wanted to persuade Mr. Llewellyn to relax the company’s policy on talking to Bayard because Bayard was part of the Kylie Ballantine story”
“So if Marc had wanted to talk to Bayard, he’d definitely have done it quietly,” I said. “I found out today that Marc went out to New Solway at least twice, and the first time wasn’t to see Bayard, but Olin Taverner.”
I told her the odd things I’d learned about Olin Taverner’s death, and the man who’d broken into Taverner’s apartment. “I’d give a month’s pay with chocolate sauce to know what was in Taverner’s papers. Marc didn’t say anything to Aretha Cummings, did he?”
“Not that she reported to us,” Amy said. “And you know, that was a big story, an old man opening a locked drawer, showing off his secret papers. If Marc had mentioned it, I think she would have said, even if he swore her to secrecy, although I can call her again in the morning to double-check.”
“Right.” I made a note. “We need the notes Marc took at Taverner’s last Thursday night. Or we need the connection between Taverner and Kylie Ballantine-although I’m assuming it’s something to do with the blacklist. Maybe she was hauled before HUAC, even though it isn’t mentioned in any of her papers down at the Harsh Collection.”
“I can go to the university library tomorrow,” Amy offered. “All those hearings are on microfiche. I did try with Hendricks to see if he might have any of Marc’s notes-I could sort of see him going to Marc’s desk and helping himself when the news came in Marc had died-in case there was something he could either use, or needed to cover up. He definitely was jealous of Marc’s success. So was Jason Tompkin. Tompkin thinks Marc
flew solo too much because he wanted glory. His theory is Marc got hold of something dangerous, but all he saw was the prize he’d get for scooping the world, so he didn’t tell anyone. I-don’t like that idea. Someone like this J.T. would make Marc retreat into his shell, but not out of-of jealousy or ambition. More out of-he didn’t like a lot of noise.”
“It’s hard when you have to investigate affairs of people you’re close to,” I sympathized. “I went through that when my cousin Boom-Boom diedit’s almost like being the fly on the wall when people are talking about you, isn’t it?”
I looked over the notes I’d been making. “Marc visited Taverner a week ago, on Thursday. When did he try to see Llewellyn? Or at least, when did he and Hendricks have their big dustup,” I asked. “Before or after Marc met Taverner?”
“I don’t know.” Paper rustled as she went through her own notes. “You think Taverner told him something about Llewellyn? But what?”
“I don’t think anything,” I said impatiently. “I don’t know enough to think.”
“The fight was recent,” she said slowly. “It could have been last Friday. I can call J.T. tomorrow and ask him.”
“Do: it could be important,” I said.
&n
bsp; Before hanging up, we organized the next day’s work. I told Amy that the archivist thought Marc might have found some original documents in Kylie Ballantine’s old home.
“I’d like to make one last desperate effort to find those papers, or any papers of his. It just isn’t natural, the way everything has vanished.”
We agreed to meet at Marc’s house in the morning. While I broke into his Saturn to see if any documents were there, Amy would start a finetooth-comb search of the house itself, in case we’d missed anything yesterday. Then Amy would go down to the university library while I tried to talk to Renee Bayard. After all, Renee had met Calvin doing volunteer clerical work for people who had been called before Congress; she might know if there had been a connection between Taverner and Ballantine.
While we’d been talking I’d had another idea about that secret file of Taverner’s: young Larry Yosano, the lawyer doing odd jobs for Lebold, Arnofl: It was a little late for business calls, but he was on the emergency shift this week. I figured I’d get further faster by assuming Taverner had been another of Lebold, Arnoff’s New Solway clients, and started by saying that Taverner’s death must be generating a certain amount of work at the office.
He concurred, but added, “You know, Ms. Warshawski, nothing against you, but I do have a private life. It’s hard enough when all those New Solway clients think I’m the Japanese houseman they can call in the middle of the night. Can’t we have this conversation tomorrow in my office?”
I had to agree, although I didn’t really want to add another trip to the western suburbs to my crowded Friday schedule. We settled on three in the afternoon-Yosano had wanted to do it earlier, but I wanted to get things clear at Whitby’s house so that I knew whether I really had to clutch at straws by going into the Larchmont pond.
I was finally climbing back into bed when my phone rang. I was startled to hear Darraugh Graham’s voice, bitingly angry.
“Didn’t I make it clear that you were not to trouble my mother any further? You have thirty seconds to explain why you’ve so blatantly disregarded my orders.”
I stiffened. “Darraugh, you are not a marine colonel and I am not one of your recruits. I owed your mother the courtesy of a visit to explain what I’d done and why I wouldn’t be further involved in her problems. And I won’t apologize for seeing her.”
“It was unconscionable of you to upset her. That wasn’t a courtesy visit, it was an interrogation.”
“She called you to complain? Oh, no. Lisa called to complain. Your mother was upset by learning how ill Calvin Bayard was, not by anything I asked her. I think it’s permissible for a woman to weep over the decay of an old friend.”
“Talking to my mother can have nothing to do with your murder investigation. I warned you about that earlier. If you wish to continue in my employment, I am ordering you to stay away from my mother.”
“I’ll think about it, Darraugh. About my wishes, I mean. Good night.” I hung up before my anger rode me into an outright declaration o? quitting. His thousand-a-month retainer-one could pay too high a price for money sometimes.
CHAPTER 22
But Where Are the Pieces of the Jigsaw?
When I got to Lebold, Arnoff’s offices in Oak Brook Tower, Larry Yosano took me in to meet Julius Arnoff it was better that the senior partner know who was involving herself in the affairs of the firm’s most important clients. Better for Yosano, anyway.
By the time I arrived-late-at the meeting, I had already had a long day. I’d woken early, from feverish dreams: I’d been hunting for Morrell through the caves of Kandahar, when the caves turned into the culvert under the road in Anodyne Park. It was miles long, the soil rank with rotted fish and rat droppings. I was no longer hunting Morrell, but fleeing from the man who’d butted me in the stomach. I ran as fast as I could, but my feet in my Bruno Magh pumps were sinking into the fetid ground, and the man was driving a golf cart. When I finally turned in a desperate effort to confront him, Marc Whitby was at the wheel.
I woke panting and sweating. It was only five o’clock. I tried to go back to sleep, but I was in that gritty state where it was impossible to slide away from my conscious brain. Finally, when the late winter sky was starting to streak red, I got up and took the dogs for a run.
I wanted to go as far as I could as fast as I could. I wanted to get away from myself and my tired gray mind, but at the end of three miles, Mitch
and Peppy both balked: they planted themselves in the bike path and refused to move, despite both commands and bribes.
I finally turned around and took them home at a pace slow enough to please them, but one that left me prey to the uneasy images from my dreams. I couldn’t shake the images, nor the feeling that something beyond mere unpleasantness lay in them.
Back home, I showered and made breakfast-eggs, in the hopes that protein would overcome my gray mood and give me the energy to organize my day. Work felt beyond me this morning, but I didn’t have the income or the upbringing to indulge only myself.
Behind my bleak thoughts, I could see my mother at the kitchen table, mending socks. It was three in the morning; my dad hadn’t returned from his shift and the West Side was an inferno of riots and looting. I had heard her, or felt her anxiety, I don’t know which, and crept down from my bed under the attic dormer. She held me close for a time, then made me a cup of cambric tea, and showed me how to darn a heel.
“We don’t give into our worries, cara,” she said. “That is for grand ladies, who can fancy themselves ill when their lover hasn’t written or the new dress is commonplace. We aren’t like that, self-indulgent. We do some job, like this, we do it well, we make the worries leave us alone.”
My father had come in around five, to find us both asleep at the kitchen table, our faces in his socks. A cop’s daughter, a reporter’s lover, that gave you plenty of practice in showing you weren’t a grand lady, or self-indulgent. I hadn’t darned a sock since I was fifteen, but I had plenty of other chores I could be doing.
I started with a phone call to Luke Edwards, the lugubrious mechanic who’s looked after my cars for years. Car locks are tricky; I didn’t want to tackle Whitby’s with my picklocks, where I might not only jam the lock, but get arrested if some cop saw me using a tool of questionable legality.
Whenever I talk to Luke, I have to endure a long lecture on everything I’ve done wrong to my current machine before he’ll work on it, but he’s kind of like the Car Talk brothers in what he knows about engines. When he heard I wanted to get into a locked Saturn, he made me sit through five minutes on the inadequate safety features of modern American cars,
but at the end he agreed to send his own locksmith to meet me on Giles Street.
Next on my list was Renee Bayard. Naturally, I only reached a secretary; naturally, Ms. Bayard was in an important meeting, but I left a carefully rehearsed message: I was a detective Ms. Bayard had met Wednesday night, the one who had discovered Marcus Whitby’s dead body. It was now clear that Whitby had met with Olin Taverner shortly before Taverner himself died, and I was assuming they had discussed Kylie Ballantine. I wanted to ask Ms. Bayard what she knew about Ballantine and Taverner. The secretary read the message back to me in a doubtful voice, but said she would pass it along.
After some internal debate, I also placed a call to Augustus Llewellyn’s office. Once again I only reached a secretary, a polished woman with executive office manners, not the rough hostility of their lobby receptionist. Once again I explained my mission for the Whitby family.
“Mr. Marc Whitby tried to see Mr. Llewellyn last week. When he made the appointment, did he say why?”
“We have procedures for staff writers, for all staff, who want to see Mr. Llewellyn. I explained that to Marc when he came up to the eighth floor and told him he had to send me a memo stating the reason for the meeting.” She put me on hold to answer another line.
“Did Marc send the memo?” I asked when she came back on the line. “He didn’t want to.” Her tone har
dened. “He said it was sensitive material that he didn’t want to put in writing. He also didn’t want to discuss it with his editor. I told him he couldn’t be the only judge of what was worth intruding on Mr. Llewellyn. He was one of our best writers, but I really can’t relax the rules for one person, just because he’s a star.”
“I understand,” I said quickly, “but I’m also puzzled. It doesn’t sound like him, to try to contravene company policy. I think he was troubled by something Olin Taverner told him, and that he might have wanted to consult Mr. Llewellyn about it.”
“And what was that?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “If I could find out, it might explain who killed him. Mr. Whitby learned something unusual last week, something involving the old HUAC investigations. I can’t find a living soul he talked to about it, so if that’s why he tried to see Mr. Llewellyn, I’d really like to know. Could you check with Mr. Llewellyn, to see whether Marc actually talked to him? He might have waited for you to go to lunch, or even phoned Mr. Llewellyn at home.”
She said stiffly that when she was away from her desk, her assistant sat in for her and logged in any callers. Still, she took my details before hanging up to answer another call.
I stared at the picture over my desk, as if I could see Marc Whitby in the blur of color. What had come up that made him risk his job at T-Square by going directly to the magazine’s owner? Of course, it could have been anything-but no notes or papers remained in his desk or home. So I had to believe it involved the same story that took him to Olin Taverner last week. If I couldn’t find any papers in his car, then I’d have to grasp at my last straw, and see whether he’d dropped something in the pond when he fell in. I called around to places that rented diving equipment just in case.
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