I found a shop on Diversey that could help me. I stopped there on my way to the South Side. They rented me a wet suit. I bought a headlamp, goggles and an underwater knife; at a hardware store near Marc’s home I bought a roll of twine. That should get me through the pond if I had to go in.
I got to Marc’s house after the morning rush to work and school had ended. A stay-at-home mom out with a baby buggy eyed me curiously, but no one else was on the street. When Amy arrived, we started a deeper search than we’d done before, going through the basement, looking under rugs and tapping wallboard in the unfinished rooms-all the labor of a truly thorough search.
Around noon, Luke’s locksmith arrived. He had a box of keys and alarm codes. When he had opened the Saturn, he gave me the coded key that worked the ignition and alarm-for a hundred dollars.
While Amy continued doggedly inside the house, I made a similarly thorough, and equally futile, search of the car. I was lying under the chassis with a flashlight, while a couple of area winos offered helpful suggestions, when Renee Bayard returned my call.
I slid out from beneath the car and got into the driver’s seat so I could talk to her privately. The Wabash Cannonball came over the ether at full speed.
“Ms. Warshawski, you were talking to my granddaughter on Wednesday without my permission. You were out in New Solway yesterday questioning my staff without talking to me first. And now, finally as an afterthought, you want to talk to me. You should have started with me.”
My hand grew wet on my little phone. “I thought Catherine told you why we were talking.”
“Give me some credit, Ms. Warshawski: I didn’t just climb down from a tree and start walking erect. I’ve spoken to Darraugh Graham. Besides assuring me Catherine never asked him for the name of a detective, he says he told you to end the inquiry that took you to New Solway to begin with.”
“He’s not my only client, Ms. Bayard. I’m investigating Marcus Whitby’s death. Mr. Whitby died in New Solway and-“
“And has no connection with my husband or granddaughter that I can discern.”
“And has a definite connection with Olin Taverner, who also died this week in odd circumstances.” Annoyance stiffened my attitude. “Mr. Whitby met with Taverner shortly before his death. Taverner showed him his secret files, which are now missing. I’m assuming their mutual interest was Kylie Ballantine; I was hoping you knew what Taverner’s involvement was with Ballantine.”
“And I’m supposed to be your research file? Because we published one of Ballantine’s books?”
“Because you met Mr. Bayard during the HUAC hearings and you might remember whether Kylie Ballantine was also a target of Olin Taverner’s.” She paused for a moment, as if deciding whether I deserved an answer, before saying, “There used to be something called the Committee for Social Thought and justice, a kind of left-wing think tank. Olin always wanted them to be a Communist front. Ballantine might have taken part in some of their meetings, I don’t know. If she did, Olin might have questioned her privately, but I wouldn’t know. What were the odd circumstances of Olin’s death?”
“They’re part of an ongoing police inquiry,” I said primly. “I’m not at liberty to say.”
“I’m amazed: you take so many other unauthorized liberties. One
which you may not have again is access either to my granddaughter or my home.”
She hung up without saying good-bye. I climbed out of the car, feeling shaky, the way one does after being run over by a high-speed train. I abandoned the car and the winos, who kept telling me they could get that engine going, no problem.
In the house, Amy and I finished our search, just going through the motions. We knew there wasn’t anything under the floorboards or in a secret compartment-Marc might not have left documents under J.T. or Simon Hendricks’s prying eyes at work, but he wouldn’t have felt the need to hide papers inside his own home.
“I really hoped I’d find some of Kylie Ballantine’s letters,” I said. “I think I mentioned last night-Marc left a message with the archivist at the Harsh Collection, maybe ten days before he died. Gideon Reed knew Marc was going through her old home; he thought maybe Marc wanted to let him know he’d actually found something there.”
“I could go over to her place,” Amy volunteered, “talk to the owner or tenants or whoever, see whether they know if Marc turned up anything.” Ballantine’s old home was just around the corner on King Drive. “Can’t hurt if you have the time. But there’s something else I was hoping you could do, as well.”
I described my frustrating conversation with Renee Bayard. “While you’re down at the University of Chicago library, see how much you can find out about the Committee on Social Thought and Justice. It’s a slender thread, but it’s the only one we’ve got right now. There are a couple of references to an unspecified committee in the Ballantine archives-it’s a good assumption it’s that one. And come to think of it, Taverner questioned Bayard about his involvement with the same committee… Let’s leave: we’re not going to find anything here.”
I’d worn jeans and a sweatshirt for my search, but had brought a business suit to put on for my meeting with the New Solway lawyers. I changed in Marc Whitby’s living room, picked up a homemade biscuit at a local diner to eat in the car and joined the early afternoon exodus from the city.
CHAPTER 23
The Family Retainer
Even though I reached the Eisenhower at two-thirty, traffic was already heavy; by the time I’d found a place to park, found the right building in the massive shopping-office complex and used a ladies’ room to brush biscuit crumbs from my blouse, I was fifteen minutes late for my meeting. Larry Yosano whisked me straight into the senior partner’s office.
Julius Arnoff was a short, bony man, perhaps in his late seventies, with deep-sunk eyes under hooded lids. He didn’t shake hands with me, just waved Yosano and me to a couple of straight-back chairs on the far side of his desk. “I understand from young Yosano here that you are a Chicago detective? A private detective, not with the Chicago police?”
“That’s correct.”
He produced a cold smile. “You are not the first Chicago detective to be curious about our clients’ affairs.”
“I expect not,” I said. “From what Ms. Geraldine Graham’s been telling me, your clients could have kept an entire bureau of detectives busy.” Larry Yosano sucked in his breath and looked from me to Arnoff in dismay, but the senior lawyer said, “If Mrs. Graham has been confiding in you, then Yosano here can hardly add anything to what you know” “She’s told me fragments, not anything like a whole, coherent story. She’s told me about her battles with her mother, and that her mother…
persuaded her to marry MacKenzie Graham. She’s told me that Olin Taverner was a homosexual. I know that Calvin Bayard suffers from Alzheimer’s and that Renee Bayard is at great pains to keep the world from knowing he’s ill. But a lot of the connecting details are missing.”
“And you hope we’ll tell you what we wouldn’t tell the detectives and reporters who sniffed around here fifty years ago?” His tone was supercilious.
“My concern isn’t with New Solway’s fifty-year-old riff on Peyton Place, but with a couple of contemporary murders. I’m investigating Marcus Whitby’s death: he’s the man who died-“
“I know all about the man who died at Larchmont. Even though the Grahams sold Larchmont Hall, we continue to be involved with the property. I know that Rick Salvi believes the man committed suicide, and that you are out to force us into a murder investigation.”
“When murder has been committed, an investigation is usually a good idea,” I said mildly.
“Not always, young woman, not always,” he snapped.
“I’ve been wondering about that myself.” I assumed a thoughtful expression. “I discovered evidence at Olin Taverner’s apartment yesterday that makes me suspect he may also have been murdered. And yet, I have to ask whether that needs to be investigated. Does it matter that someon
e hustled an old man off the planet a few months before his time? Do I waste my energy on the death of a man who himself ruined many people’s lives?”
“Olin Taverner began his legal training in Theodore Lebold’s office,” Arnoff said. “He went on to more important matters before I joined the firm, but we have always held him in esteem here.”
“So you think his murder deserves investigation. But that Marc Whitby’s doesn’t.”
“Don’t twist my words, young woman.” Arnoff turned his hooded gaze to Yosano. “What do we know about Mr. Taverner’s death, Larry?” Yosano sat up straight. “Only that Ms. Warshawski found something unusual in his apartment, sir. She was going to explain the situation to me in our meeting this afternoon.”
“And that situation is-?” Arnoff turned back to me.
I leaned back in my chair, legs crossed, trying to establish that I wasn’t a surbordinate. “Someone was in Taverner’s apartment the night he died. That person took pains to cover up his, or maybe her, presence, but nonetheless left telltale traces. I know firsthand that someone broke into the place yesterday-I interrupted him. Unfortunately, he knocked me over and got away. I know Marcus Whitby consulted Taverner last Thursdaya week ago yesterday. And I know Taverner let him see some documents that he kept in a locked drawer. Those documents have been stolen from the apartment. I’m hoping you know what was in them.”
Arnoff slowly shook his head. “Our clients don’t always confide in us. We are the executors, of course, of the Taverner estate.”
“Who are the heirs, since he didn’t leave a family?” I asked. “Several foundations whose work he valued.”
“Including the Spadona Foundation? I wonder how Renee Bayard will feel, seeing her son use money from his father’s old enemy to set a policy agenda she and Calvin oppose.”
Arnoff smiled primly. “If Calvin Bayard had kept better track of his own documents, Edwards Bayard might not be in such opposition to him today.” “Meaning?”
“Meaning all these great families have something they don’t want anyone else to know. I’m sorry I can’t help you with Olin’s papers. I doubt I ever saw those.”
I asked what Arnoff knew about Kylie Ballantine’s connection to Taverner.
He gave his thin, supercilious smile again. “The African dancer? I don’t think it was Olin who had a connection to her.”
“Calvin Bayard, then?” I asked.
“Calvin supported a number of artists. I believe Ballantine was his protegee for a time. Before he married Renee, of course.”
The brief pause he gave before the word “protegee” was supposed to let me know they had been lovers. Everything in this office-in New Solway-was done by innuendo. I wondered how long it would be before young Yosano picked up the same skin-crawling habit.
“Renee Bayard was telling me this morning that Taverner had a bee in his bonnet about the Committee for Social Thought and Justice. There’s a rumor that Calvin Bayard gave them money.” A rumor I myself was just
starting, but he might have been the patron mentioned in the Ballantine archive.
“Oh, Calvin was generous with many left-wing groups in the thirties and forties. There’s never been any doubt where his politics lay. But just because he published known Communists like Armand Pelletier, I don’t think anyone ever seriously believed Calvin was a Communist himself Not even Olin, when he was hounding him back in the fifties. I think they were simply two men who didn’t like each other. Calvin was the flamboyant young success, Olin had to climb his way slowly. And Olin was hampered by the homosexuality you alluded to. By the way, I understand Darraugh Graham hired you to find who his mother was seeing in the Larchmont attic. Did you ever discover who was there?”
I shook my head slowly. Somehow I’d forgotten the original inquiry that had taken me out to New Solway. “Catherine Bayard told me it was her grandfather, that he had a key to the old Graham house.”
Arnoff made a sound like an engine starting in cold weather; I realized after a startled moment he was laughing. “So young Catherine has all the Bayard spirit. One never knows how the next generation will behave with so much wealth available to it.”
“But when I asked Darraugh about it, he became furious.”
“I’m afraid I’m not in Graham’s confidence, young woman; he took his legal affairs elsewhere,” Arnoff said. “He was much attached to his father, however, and Mrs. Drummond’s attitude when MacKenzie Graham died did cause Darraugh to run away that summer. He was something like fourteen or fifteen. Eventually he returned to Exeter to finish his education but I don’t believe he ever returned to Larchmont.”
“Was there something especially difficult about MacKenzie Graham’s death?” I asked.
“All deaths are difficult. But MacKenzie had hanged himself, as I understand it.”
“But why?” Larry Yosano was startled into speaking.
“He was at that age,” Arnoff said. “In my experience, the unhappy of the Earth either learn to live with it by the time they’re fortyfive, or they decide they no longer can make the effort. It was particularly unfortunate that Darraugh found his father’s body. I believe his father didn’t know Exeter had sent him home. MacKenzie was very attached to his son. I doubt he would have killed himself, at least not then, had he known Darraugh was there.”
I tried to digest this. “By Ms. Graham’s account, it was an unhappy household. Why did she and Mr. Graham marry in the first place? And why did they never move into a place of their own?”
“Had you known Mrs. Matthew Drummond, you would have understood the answer to both questions. Mr. and Mrs. MacKenzie Graham both caused their parents considerable anxiety when young, as Mr. Lebold explained the matter to me. Both Mrs. Drummond and Mr. Blair GrahamMr. MacKenzie’s father, that is-thought marriage would settle the two young people down. Of course, when I came into the firm, Mrs. Drummond was sixty-five, but she was still a formidable power. In fact, she refused at the outset to work with-” Arnoff broke off.
“She wouldn’t work with a Jewish lawyer?” I suggested.
“She had old-fashioned prejudices,” he said primly. “When Theodore Lebold made me a partner, a few took their business elsewhere, just as some did when we brought Yosano here into the firm, but most of New Solway saw then, as they do now, that Lebold, Arnoff still has their interests very much at heart.”
CHAPTER 24
Scuba Diver
Twilight softened the pond’s surface, blurring the tangled nest of weeds so that only the lily pads showed. Even the dead carp looked as if it might be merely floating near the surface waiting for a fly to land.
When I left Arnoff’s office, I’d thought about returning to Chicago and leaving the pond until the morning, but that would have meant yet another drive out to the western suburbs. After all, it was going to be dark under all those weeds whether I went in at six in the morning or six at night.
All I had left in my thin arsenal was the dogged desire to find what Taverner had told Marc Whitby. Arnoff had dropped hints that I should be able to sort out. He clearly was proud of knowing the secrets swirling around New Solway. Like indiscretions that Calvin Bayard should never have committed to paper. Or at least made sure were far from his son’s prying eyes.
I negotiated the turn onto the East-West Tollway, and joined the milelong backup at the tollbooths. Arnoff had said no one, not even Taverner, ever seriously believed Calvin Bayard was a Communist. So what else had he done that had shocked his son into becoming ultraconservative? And done on paper?
I inched forward. That was what was so frustrating about this parade of prima donnas. All of their lives were intertwined, by history, by marriage, by shared lies. They were like a group playing three-card monte, and laughing as I kept diving for the court card. I was beginning to doubt a South Side street fighter could be a match for such smooth hustlers.
I oozed off the tollway at Warrenville Road. I could find my way from the tollway to Larchmont Hall on autopilot by now. At Larchmo
nt, I pulled my Mustang around behind the barn, where it was hidden from both the road and the woods connecting to the Bayard estate. If someone-say, young Catherine, or even Ruth Lantner-were visiting Larchmont Hall, they wouldn’t be able to see the car.
Before leaving Oak Brook, I’d stopped in the shopping center to change out of my business clothes and put on a swimsuit, sweatshirt and jeans. These last I took off now and left in the car. I squirmed my way into the wet suit. The rubber was hard to maneuver. I was sweating from exertion by the time I finished, but feeling clammy at the same time from the cold rubber against my skin.
I put on the diver’s headlamp I’d bought this morning. Tucking the twine and small knife under my arm with fins and goggles, I padded around the barn, through the overgrown gardens to the pond.
I’d never done underwater work, but I’d learned to swim in Lake Michigan. In fact, my cousin Boom-Boom and I used to drive our mothers mad with worry by going into the foul waters of Lake Calumet, since that was closer to our homes. Funny how the stuff that’s exciting when you’re a kid with a scolding mother in the background seems horrifying when you’re an adult on your own. If Boom-Boom were here, it would be an adventure. If Boom-Boom were still alive, I wouldn’t feel so alone. Self-pitying tears spurted out. I dashed them away angrily. You’re a woman saved by action, I mocked myself get the damned fins on and get going.
The water was as nasty as I’d imagined. I made a face, then pulled the goggles over my eyes, stuck the breathing tube between my teeth, and did a handstand, trying to ignore the shock of cold water against my head. Almost at once, I became tangled in the nest of roots. Picking and kicking my way through them got my blood flowing enough to keep the cold at bay, although it also stirred up dirt from the bottom, making it harder to see anything-the headlamp couldn’t penetrate more than a few feet of this murk. As I’d expected, it didn’t matter that I’d gotten to the job late-daylight wouldn’t have made it through the knotted vegetation on the surface.
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