Blacklist

by Sara Paretsky

  More commands from the rich and powerful. I didn’t snarl at her, because I wanted to find out some things myself, like whether Renee had been on the scene Friday night, and what kinds of questions the sheriff was asking. Above all, I wanted time alone with Edwards Bayard.

  Out in the hall, I leaned against the wall next to the door, but the murmurs within didn’t reach to me. The guard stared at me. I hoped he was memorizing my face as someone with unquestioned access to Catherine’s room.

  I strolled to the window at the end of the corridor. As I’d expected, the private wing commanded a view of the lake, but directly below the window an apartment building was being deconstructed so the hospital could add yet another building to its gargantuan operation. They were taking the building apart slowly, instead of blowing it to bits-I suppose a blast would shock the cardiac pavilion. Where the outer wall had come down, I could see dangling pipe and a bed that someone had left behind.

  After ten minutes or so, Renee Bayard came out of the room with her son. With a pointed look at me, she told the guard no one was to be allowed into the room except the private nurse, the two doctors whose names the guard had and herself and Edwards. No volunteers carrying flowers, no private investigators and absolutely no officers of the law. If any o? the above tried to force their way past, the guard was to beep Renee at once: Was that clear?

  When he agreed that that was clear, she beckoned to me to join them and sailed down the hall. Edwards and I were about the same height, a good four inches taller than Renee, but we almost had to jog to keep up with her.

  In the elevator going down Renee kept the conversation casual: the doctor felt strongly that they should discontinue the morphine pump by the end of the day today; she hoped Edwards agreed? Catherine would be in the hospital a few more days; they should bring her laptop over so she could chat with her friends; they needed to decide when they could let her friends visit.

  At the bottom, Renee led us out the front, into a waiting car. She told the driver to take us home. “The Banks Street house, Yoshi. Miss Catherine is very weak, but she is conscious and alert; we’re pleased with the progress she’s making.”

  I felt a reluctant sympathy for Edwards, who hadn’t been able to edge in anything since saying, “Yes, I didn’t want her on the morphine a second day, anyway.” It would have been hard to grow up with such a strong personality rolling over you. Perhaps that’s why he’d sought refuge in the rightwing causes anathema to his parents.

  CHAPTER 37

  A Boy’s Best Friend

  At the Banks Street apartment, Renee stopped to tell Elsbetta she wanted coffee in her study, then swept down the hall without looking to see if her son and I were following. Edwards stalked after his mother, not wanting to talk to me-sulking because Renee had reduced him to eight-year-old status. I stared curiously into the rooms we passed, especially at a long sitting room with a baby grand, and walls hung with paintings. The hall was lined with curio cases. Edwards tapped his foot ostentatiously when I stopped to inspect a Greek-looking pot. I asked how old it was, but he only told me to come along and took me into a room overlooking the back garden.

  This seemed to be Renee’s private space in the apartment, where she had both office equipment and home comforts-books, family photos, worn rugs and chairs suitable for lounging. There was also an alcove with chairs less suitable for lounging, and it was there that she directed her son and me to sit.

  “Edwards and I want to know how you came to be involved with Catherine. No more stories, please, about an interview with the school paper.” Renee Bayard had the impersonal force of a hurricane-you couldn’t take offense-you either held your ground or got flattened.

  I smiled. “That was Catherine’s story. Although I was feeling pretty

  frustrated with her at the time, I admired her resourcefulness in thinking it up on the spot.”

  “That doesn’t answer the question-what is your name? It didn’t seem important to remember it before.”

  “V 1. Warshawski.” I handed her one of my cards.

  “Yes, I see. Now. Why were you here on-Wednesday afternoon, wasn’t it? How did you come to follow Catherine home? And why did you then go to New Solway on Thursday to bother my staff?”

  “Ma’am, I have a great deal of respect for your husband, and am acquiring a fair amount for you as I watch you in action-but you mustn’t jump over facts to get to the conclusion you want.”

  Edwards’s eyebrows shot up; he apparently wasn’t used to seeing people stand up to his mother. Renee studied me. “And what fact do you think I’m `jumping over’?”

  “You assume, or want to believe, that I followed Catherine home last week.”

  Elsbetta entered with a trolley holding another ornate china service. When she’d served us and left, Renee continued as if there had been no interruption.

  “I know Catherine didn’t get your name from Darraugh Graham. How did you meet her?”

  I told her about finding Marcus Whitby, about my investigation into his death, and why I wanted to talk to Catherine in the first place-it seemed pointless to cover up Catherine’s presence at Larchmont on Sunday night. I even told Renee about being in the pond on Friday, but not that I’d heard her and Catherine talking. And I stuck to my story about finding the kitchen door open at Larchmont Hall: I didn’t want competing versions of my activities floating around.

  “I was startled when the sheriff’s police suddenly arrived,” I said. “And I did wonder if it was you who’d alerted them to the notion that there really was someone in the house.”

  Renee’s hand didn’t pause as she lifted her eggshell cup to her lips. She drank and set it down. “And what made you wonder that?”

  “You knew Catherine was wandering around Larchmont in the dark;

  she wouldn’t tell you why. She’s an ardent spirit, but she’s very youngperhaps you thought she might not recognize as dangerous someone she’d agreed to help. Perhaps you thought she had some outlaw holed up, someone she’d romanticized into a Robin Hood. I don’t know how you would have imagined this person, but you knew she valued her oath to protect him more even than the very strong bond between you and her. You wanted him found and moved off the Larchmont property.”

  “So you did know she was wandering around there,” Edwards said to his mother. “And you did nothing to stop her!”

  “I only learned on Friday.” For once, Renee was on the defensive. “I called Rick Salvi to tell him someone was hiding in the house; o? course I didn’t tell him it was someone Catherine was meeting.”

  “Even so,” Edwards burst out, “you should have-“

  “I thought I had Catherine well under my eye,” Renee said. “I looked in on her at midnight, right before I phoned Rick, and she was-she seemed to be -sleeping. I thought I’d have the problem solved before she woke up in the morning. Instead, she apparently waited for me to check on her, then went out her window onto the veranda roof and slid down a column to the ground. When I heard shots coming from the woods, I went back to her room-and found her gone. I don’t think anyone ever covered that ground to Larchmont faster than I did that night. Which was fortunate, since when I got there they were staring down at Catherine as if she were a movie they were watching. They hadn’t even sent for an ambulance.”

  Edwards’s eyes flashed. “I’m sure your organizational skills saved her life. It’s a pity you didn’t apply them to keeping her from risking it.”

  “She’s your daughter, Eds, she’ll do what she wants to do no matter how much I try to engineer a different outcome.” Renee spoke with the kind of saintly resignation that makes the hearer long to belt the speaker.

  Edwards took a breath and turned to me. “How deep is her involvement with the kid, with Sadawi?”

  “I’ve only met your daughter a few times, but I think she was in love with the romance of the situation, not with the young man himself. What did your buddies in Washington learn about him? Is he a serious security threat?”

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sp; “We don’t know anything about him, per se, but he’s connected to a

  suspect group. The mosque that he frequents puts out some pretty fiery rhetoric, and he’s been renting a room from one of their members, a guy who’s sent money to the Brothers in Harmony Foundation.”

  “I take it these Brothers aren’t in harmony with American interests?” I pursued.

  “Oh, they’re murky, like all these groups. We know they’ve sent an X-ray machine to the Chechen rebels; they’ve bought food for Egyptian families, but we believe other funds get funneled through honey sales into AlQaeda hands.”

  The Spadona Foundation has a direct pipeline to the current administration. As I’d hoped, taking for granted that Edwards had spoken to the attorney general got him to answer without realizing he was being pumped. The fact that anger with his mother had knocked him off balance helped.

  “An X-ray machine hardly sounds very dangerous, Eds,” Renee remarked. “You’re surely not imagining it can be used to make nuclear weapons.”

  He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Mother, don’t let your hostility to the attorney general and his methods blind you to the reality of how dangerous our enemies are.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “His methods make it hard to remember who is more dangerous: the people who are attacking our liberties overseas, or those who are suppressing them at home.”

  “The most dangerous people at home are the ones refusing to cooperate with the government’s efforts to root out terror, either out of real loyalty to AlQaeda, or ignorance, or through misguided ideas about the legal rights of America’s sworn enemies.” Edwards set his coffee cup down so hard that the delicate handle snapped off.

  “Just because you express your anger more violently than I do doesn’t mean you’re right-it doesn’t even mean you’re angrier than I am,” his mother said. “Don’t you see that Catherine was shot because people like Rick Salvi believe they’ve been given a green light to use any means at their disposal if they think they have a terrorist in view? It was your daughter they had in view. And they acted literally on the old saw, `Shoot first, ask questions later.”’

  Edwards’s eyes were angry slits in his face. “They knew they had a terrorist who’d fled the house; they didn’t know my daughter was there. It was a shocking mistake, but if you’d been looking after her properly, it wouldn’t have happened.”

  He turned to me. “As for you, if you were in Larchmont Hall Friday night, you fled the scene. You could have had Sadawi with you.” “Tucked under my arm like Anne Boleyn’s head,” I agreed.

  When he exclaimed “What the-” I said, “You know, that old Bert Lee song-’The sentries shout is Army going to win/They think that it’s Red Grange instead of poor old Anne Boleyn! What did you tell the police when they asked about Mr. Bayard’s books?”

  “Mr. Bayard’s books?” Edwards repeated uncertainly, looking from me to his mother.

  “Your father’s childhood books. Maybe the police don’t ask people like you the same questions they ask people like me. They wanted to know why his book about the boy attacked by the giant clam was in the attic next to an Arab-English dictionary. I told them I thought Mr. Calvin Bayard was coming over in the middle of the night to translate the story into Arabic. At the time, I didn’t know there was an Arab-speaking kid in the house.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth I regretted them: it was a ghastly mockery of a man with Alzheimer’s, to joke that he was studying a foreign language.

  Renee frowned at me, her heavy brows almost meeting across her nose. “I think we all know why the books were there. And I can see that you are agile at dancing away from questions you don’t want to answer. Did you see Benjamin Sadawi? Or talk to him? Or help him escape?”

  “No, ma’am.” The lie got easier every time I told it. “And I am most eager to talk to him.”

  “Why is that?” she asked.

  “Because he had a chair set up in the attic where he stood looking out into the back garden. He was lonely; he probably stood up there watching, hoping Catherine would appear. So I think he saw what happened the night that Marcus Whitby died in that pond.”

  Edwards smacked his chair arm impatiently. “The FBI are confident that Sadawi killed Whitby.”

  “I told you in the hospital that their theory overlooks a number of important facts. Some of which you know better than L”

  Edwards fell silent at that nasty reminder of his housebreaking.

  “If you don’t believe in the police version of this journalist’s death, do you have any information yourself about why he went to Larchmont Hall?” Renee asked me.

  “I know he visited Olin Taverner, I guess ten days ago. I know Taverner showed him some secret papers which he claimed would make the Hollywood Ten look like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. But I don’t know what was in the papers, and, now that Mr. Taverner is dead, we may never know-since someone broke in and stole them.”

  “And neither the magazine nor his family had any inkling of what took Whitney to New Solway?” Renee persisted.

  “Whitby,” I corrected her. “I’m assuming it had to do with the dancer Kylie Ballantine-Whitby was interested in her.”

  “Oh, yes, the dancer,” Edwards said, a spiteful undertone to his voice. “One of Father’s special projects, wasn’t she, Mother?”

  “As you say, Eds,” Renee spoke quietly, but her brows contracted again. “It was good that he was in a financial position to help her out.”

  “I’ve always been happy we could support her,” his mother said with more energy. “Like so many black artists of the thirties and forties, she suffered terribly. And she was a gifted researcher as well as an artist.”

  “Yes, by the fifties the press was in good shape financially. Father could give her a legitimate advance on a book instead of a handout. And now Whitby wanted to write a book about her.”

  “He did?” I said. “How did you know that?”

  He looked uncomfortable for a moment, then said, “I thought that was what you said. I must have jumped to a conclusion.”

  Renee changed the subject. “You said you had dredged the pond where this unfortunate Mr. Whitney died. Did you find anything that was helpful?” “Whitby,” I corrected again. “Odds and ends. A lot of broken china-I wondered if Geraldine Graham threw a piece in whenever she was upset with her mother. And I found an old wooden mask, the kind of piece Kylie Ballantine collected when she was in Gabon. Oddly enough, the mask had vanished when I went back to collect my findings.”

  Renee looked absently at her empty cup. “Perhaps the sheriff’s men seized it as evidence, or maybe it got kicked into the pond when they were racing around. Why didn’t you take it with you to begin with?”

  I smiled. “I was freezing. I caught cold Sunday night getting Mr. Whitby’s body out of that wretched water and I didn’t want to get sick all over again. I went to a motel to change into something warm and dry and then got sidetracked with all the excitement over young Benjamin Sadawi. When I finally remembered to return to the pond, that mask was gone.”

  “Was that one of the ones Dad bought from Kylie Ballantine?” Edwards asked.

  “More than likely,” his mother said. “It was part of how he helped Kylie. He insisted that everyone in New Solway have one. It was the year we were married; I remember the party where he brought the masks out of his study and persuaded even the Fellittis and Olin to buy one.”

  “So was that when Ms. Graham acquired hers?” I asked.

  Renee paused. “Probably. It was over forty years ago and I still couldn’t tell most of those people apart. I remember Calvin’s glee at forcing Olin to buy one. Of course I knew Olin, because I had done volunteer work for Calvin’s defense in Washington-that was how we met.”

  Her mouth twisted in a sad smile. “Eager young women like me coming down to Washington on the train, typing speeches and press releases for the people under investigation. Congress could draw on an open-ended budget, but Calvin-“

>   “Only had his private fortune to pay his bills,” Edwards interrupted. “Or was it a fortune at that time? Or was it private? Perhaps he had qualms about that, so he used his charm on eager college girls like you, Mother.”

  Renee Bayard gave her son a bone-shattering look but didn’t respond. This was the second time Edwards had implied that his father’s fortune was shaky, perhaps illusory, and the second time that his mother had cut his comments short, but neither of them spoke. I didn’t know how to push the matter further, so I returned to the mask in the pond.

  “Even if Ms. Graham only bought African art to please Mr. Bayard, I can’t picture her throwing it into the pond to be rid of it. Would her mother have done that?”

  Renee swallowed a smile. “Laura Drummond didn’t like African art, and she was never shy with her opinions: she thought she spoke for Jehovah on everything from marriage to, well, masks. But I can’t imagine her throwing anything, even African art, into her pond: she valued decorum more than anything else. Perhaps Geraldine did it to show Calvin how much she disapproved of his bringing his child bride home to New Solway.”

  I remembered Geraldine Graham’s comment, that she had felt sorry for Renee Bayard, until she saw how well Renee could take care of herself. As if echoing that thought, Edwards pushed himself to his feet. “I’m sure whatever happened, she was no match for you, Mother. I’m going back to the hospital. That guard doesn’t seem reliable to me. I don’t know where you found him, but I’m going to get Spadona to set us up with a better service tomorrow. I want to be in the room in case he lets in cops from some jurisdiction. You and Calvin may have persuaded Trina to reject my values, but she’s still my daughter, not yours. And I still love her.” “Darling, we disagree about far too many things, but we agree about cherishing Catherine. I’ll come along later, but you should have time alone with her, and I want a last word with Ms.-I’m sorry, I’m usually better with names.”