“Terri. You can’t do that.” Jeannine’s voice floated in from the back.
Terri turned her whole attention to her mother. She put her hands on her hips and shouted down the hall, “You let Paul take the boat out. If he can take the boat out, how come I can’t go for a stupid little bike ride? I’m not going to sit here and talk to you and Grandma all day long.”
“Real charming,” I commented. “You read about that in Cosmopolitan or pick it up watching ‘Dallas’?”
She turned her angry face to me. “Who asked you to butt in? She’s back in there.” She jerked her arm down the hall and stomped out the front door.
An older woman with carefully dyed hair came out into the hallway. “Oh dear. Did Terri go out? Are you one of Jeannine’s friends? She’s sitting back in here. It’s awfully nice of you to stop by.” The skin around her mouth had gotten soft, but the pale eyes reminded me of her daughter. She was wearing a long-sleeved beige dress, tasteful but not in the same price range as her daughter’s clothes.
I followed her past the pale blue living room into the family room at the back where I had interviewed Jeannine the week before. “Jeannine dear, someone’s come to visit you.”
Jeannine was sitting in one of the wing chairs at the window overlooking Lake Michigan. Her face was carefully made up and it was hard to tell how she felt about her husband’s death.
Across the room, feet tucked up under her on an armchair, sat Paige Carrington. She put down her teacup with a crash on a glass coffee table at her left arm. It was the first thing I’d seen her do that wasn’t totally graceful.
“I thought I recognized your Audi out there,” I remarked.
“Vic!” Her voice came out in a shout. “I won’t have it. Are you following me everywhere?”
At the same time Jeannine said, “No, you must go away. I’m not answering any questions now. My-my husband died yesterday.”
Paige turned to her. “Has she been after you, too?”
“Yes. She was out here last week asking me a lot of questions about my life as a corporate wife. What was she talking to you about?”
“My private life.” Paige’s honey-colored eyes flicked over me warily.
“I didn’t follow you here, Paige: I came to see Mrs. Phillips. I might start staking out your place, though-I’m kind of curious about who’s paying those monthly assessmerits. Astor Place-that’s got to run you seven, eight hundred a month without the mortgage.”
Paige’s face turned white under her rust-toned makeup. Her eyes were dark with emotion. “You had better be joking, Vic. If you try bothering me any further, I’ll call the police.”
“I’m not bothering you at all. As I said, I came here to see Mrs. Phillips… I need to talk to you, Mrs. Phillips. Privately.”
“What about?” Jeannine was bewildered. “I answered all your questions last week. And I really don’t feel like talking to anyone right now.”
“That’s right, dear,” her mother said. She turned to me. “Why don’t you leave now? My daughter’s worn out. Her husband’s death came as quite a shock.”
“I can imagine,” I said politely. “I hope his life insurance was paid up.”
Jeannine gasped. Paige said, “What a singularly tasteless remark, even from you.”
I ignored her. “Mrs. Phillips, I’m afraid I talked to you last week under false pretenses. I’m not from a survey research firm. I’m a detective, and I was trying to find out if your husband might have attempted to murder me two weeks ago.”
Her tightly clenched jaw went momentarily slack with surprise.
“My investigations have shown me that your husband had substantial sources of income beyond his salary. I’d like to talk to you privately about it. Unless you want your mother and Ms. Carrington to hear.”
At that, her composure cracked. “He promised me no one would ever know.” Tears carved two furrows in the makeup on her cheeks. Her mother hurried over with a box of tissues and fussed over her, telling her somewhat confusedly to go ahead and have a good cry.
I was still standing. “I really think we’d better continue this conversation alone. Is there another room we can go to, Mrs. Phillips?”
“What are you talking about?” her mother said. “Clayton had a very good salary at Eudora Grain. Why, when they made him an officer five years ago, he and Jeannine bought this house.”
“That’s okay, Mother.” Jeannine patted the older woman’s hand. “I’d better talk to this woman.” She turned to Paige and said with sudden venom, “I suppose you know all about it.”
Paige gave her triangular smile. “I know a fair amount.” She shrugged her slim shoulders. “But who am I to cast stones, after all?” She picked up a sweater lying on the table beside her. “Better talk to Vic, Jeannine. If you don’t, she’ll only come in and burglarize the place so she can examine your bankbooks.” She drifted over to Jeannine’s chair and kissed the air by her cheek. “I’m going back to the city. I’ll see you at the funeral tomorrow afternoon-unless you want me to come up before then.”
“No, that’s all right, dear,” Jeannine’s mother said. “We’ll manage fine.” She bustled out to the hall behind the elegant younger woman.
I looked after them, puzzled. I assumed at first that Paige must have met Jeannine at some Eudora Grain function when she was dating Boom Boom. But that last exchange made it sound like a fairly close relationship.
“How do you know Paige?” I asked.
Jeannine turned her tear-streaked face to me for the first time since I’d mentioned the invoices. “How do I know her? She’s my sister. Why wouldn’t I know her?”
“Your sister!” We sounded like a couple of damned parrots. “Sisters. I see.” Actually, I didn’t see a thing. I sat down. “Did you take her to the party where she met my cousin?”
She looked surprised. “What party was that?”
“I don’t know who gave it. Probably Guy Odinflute. He lives around here, doesn’t he? Niels Grafalk was interested in buying a share in the Black Hawks. My cousin came up along with some of the other players. Paige was there and she met my cousin. I want to know who brought her.”
Jeannine swallowed a sly smile. “That party. No, we didn’t go.”
“But were you invited?”
“Mr. Odinflute may have asked us… We get asked to a lot of parties at Christmas. If you want to know who Paige went with, though, you ask her.”
I looked at her narrowly: she knew, but she wouldn’t tell. I turned my attention to the money. “Tell me about the invoices, Jeannine.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do. You just said he’d promised no one would ever know. I called about them Saturday night-left a message with your son Paul. What did your husband do next?”
She shed a few more tears but in the end it came out that she didn’t know. They got back late. Paul had left the message by the kitchen phone. When Clayton saw it, he went into his study and shut the door. He made a phone call and left a few minutes later. No, not in the Alfa. Had someone picked him up? She didn’t know. He was very upset and told her not to bother him. It was about one-thirty Sunday morning when he went out. That was the last time she ever saw him.
“Now tell me about the invoices, Jeannine. He was padding them, wasn’t he?”
She didn’t say anything.
“People would give him bids on Eudora Grain cargoes and he would log the orders at one price but bill them at another. Is that right.”
She started crying again. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“You don’t know how he worked it, but you know he was doing it. That’s true, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t ask, as long as the bills got paid.” She was sobbing harder.
I was losing my temper. “Did you know what your husband’s salary was?”
“Of course I knew what Clayton earned.” Her tears stopped long enough for her to glare at me.
“Sure you did. And you
knew ninety-two thousand, however good it looks compared to the other girls at Park Forest South High, or whatever it was, wasn’t enough to pay for a boat. This house. Your designer clothes. The kid at Claremont. Those high-ticket cars. The Izod T-shirts little Terri runs around in. Dues at the Maritime Club. Just out of curiosity, what does the Maritime Club run you a year? I was betting twenty-five thousand.”
“You don’t understand!” She sat up and stared at me with fierce, angry eyes. “You don’t know what it’s like when all the other girls have everything they want and you’re making do with last year’s clothes.”
This sounded like a real heartache to me. “You’re right-I don’t. My high school, most of us girls had a couple of dresses we started with as sophomores and wore out the door when we graduated. Park Forest South may be a bit tonier than South Chicago-but not a lot.”
“Park Forest South! My mother moved there later. We grew up here in Lake Bluff. We had horses. My father kept a boat. We lived down the road from here. Then he lost everything. Everything. I was a junior in high school. Paige was only eight. She’s too young to remember the humiliation. The way people stared in school. Mother sold the silver. She sold her own jewels. But it didn’t do any good. He shot himself and we moved away. She couldn’t stand the pity people like old Mrs. Grafalk dished out at the country club. And I had to go to Roosevelt instead of Northwestern.”
“So you decided you were going to move back here, no matter what it took. What about your husband? He a Lake Bluffer in exile who made his way back?”
“Clayton came from Toledo. Eudora Grain brought him here when he was twenty-five. He rented an apartment in Park Forest and we met there.”
“And you thought he had possibilities, that he might go all the way for you. When did you find out that wasn’t going to happen?”
“When Terri was born. We were still living in that crappy three-bedroom house.” She was screaming now. “Terri and Ann had to share a room. I was buying all my clothes at Wieboldt’s. I couldn’t stand it! I couldn’t stand it anymore. And there was Paige. She was only eighteen, but she already knew-knew-”
“Knew what, Jeannine?”
She recovered some of her control. “Knew how to get people to help her out,” she said quietly.
“Okay. You didn’t want Paige outdressing you. So you put pressure on your husband to come up with more money. He knew he was never going to have enough if he just struggled along on his salary. So he decided to skim something off the top before it ever hit Eudora’s books. Did he fiddle with anything besides the invoices?”
“No, it was just the invoices. He could make-make-about a hundred thousand extra a year from them. He-he didn’t do it with all the orders, only about ten percent. And he paid taxes on them.”
“Paid taxes on them?” I echoed incredulously.
“Yes. We didn’t want to run-run a risk with the IRS auditing us. We called it commission income. They don’t know what his job’s supposed to be like. They don’t know whether he should be earning commissions or not.”
“And then my cousin found out. He was going through the papers, trying to see what a regional manager does to run an office like that, and he ended up comparing some invoices with the original contract orders.”
“It was terrible,” she gulped. “He threatened to tell David Argus. It would have meant the end of-of Clayton’s career. He would have been fired. We would have had to sell the house. It would have been-”
“Spare me,” I said harshly. A pulse throbbed in my right temple. “It was a choice between the Maritime Club and my cousin’s life.”
She didn’t say anything. I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “Answer me, damn you! You decided my cousin had to die to keep you in your Massandrea dresses. Is that what happened? Is it?”
In my rage I had lifted her from her wing chair and was shaking her. Mrs. Carrington came bustling into the room.
“What is going on here?” she fussed behind me. I was still screaming at Jeannine. Mrs. Carrington grabbed my arm. “I think you’d better go now. My daughter cannot afford any more upsets. If you don’t leave, I will call the police.”
Somehow her scratchy voice penetrated and I forced my anger back. “You’re right. I’m sorry, Mrs. Carrington. I’m afraid I got carried away by my work.” I turned to Jeannine. “Just one more question before I leave you to your mourning. What was Paige’s role in all this?”
“Paige?” she whispered, rubbing her shoulders where I had grabbed them. She gave the sly smile I’d seen earlier. “Oh, Paige was supposed to keep track of what Boom Boom was up to. But you’d better talk to her. She hasn’t given away my secrets. I won’t give away hers.”
“That’s right,” Mrs. Carrington said. “You girls should be loyal to each other. After all, you’re all that you have.”
“Besides a boat and a condo on Astor Place,” I said.
24 A Question of Policy
I was sick by the side of the road as soon as I got to the end of the drive. Terri rode up on her bicycle, a Peugeot ten-speed, I noticed as I wiped my mouth with a Kleenex. Boom Boom, you did not die in vain if you preserved a French racing bicycle for that girl.
I walked slowly down the road to the Omega and sat in it for a long time without starting the engine. My shoulder ached from grabbing Jeannine and lifting her up.
I had found out about Boom Boom’s death. Or proved to myself what I had suspected for several days, at any rate. I felt a sharp pain across my diaphragm, as though someone had inserted a little needle behind it which jabbed me every time I breathed. That’s what people mean when they say their hearts ache. They really mean their diaphragms. My face felt wet. I passed a hand across my eyes, expecting to find blood. I was crying.
After a while I looked at my watch. It was one o’clock. I looked at my face in the rearview mirror. It had gone very pale and my gray eyes stood out darkly in contrast. There were days when I’d looked better, but that couldn’t be helped. I switched on the engine and slowly turned the car around on the narrow pavement. My arms felt leaden, so heavy I could scarcely lift them to the steering wheel. It would be nice to follow Bobby’s advice and go someplace warm for a few weeks. Instead I drove up the road past the Phillips house to the Grafalks’.
The garage was behind the house to the left; I couldn’t see the cars to tell if anyone was home. I climbed up the shallow wide step to the front porch and rang the bell. A minute or two passed; I was going to ring again when the thickset maid, Karen, answered. She looked at me grudgingly. She remembered my vulgar interest in Mr. Grafalk’s movements last week.
I gave her my card. “Is Mrs. Grafalk in, please?”
“Is she expecting you?”
“No. I’m a detective. I want to talk to her about Clayton Phillips.”
She seemed undecided about whether or not she was going to take my card back. I was too worn out from my encounter with Jeannine to put up much of a fight. As we stood there at an impasse, a high, clipped voice demanded of Karen who it was.
The maid turned around. “It’s a detective, Mrs. Grafalk. She says she wants to talk to you about Mr. Phillips.”
Mrs. Grafalk came into the hall. Her graying black hair was styled to emphasize her high cheekbones, which she had further accentuated with a dark rouge. She was dressed to go out, in a salmon silk suit with a ballet skirt and a flared, ruched jacket. Her eyes were sharp but not unfriendly. She took the card from Karen, who positioned herself protectively between us.
“Miss Warshawski? I’m afraid I don’t have much time. I’m on my way to a Ravinia planning meeting. What did you want to talk about?”
“Clayton and Jeannine Phillips.”
An expression of distaste crossed her face. “There’s not a lot I can tell you about them. Clayton is-was, I should say-a business associate of my husband’s. For reasons I have never understood, Niels insisted we entertain them, even sponsor them at the Maritime Club. I tried to interest Jeannine in some of the work t
hat I do, particularly with the poor immigrant community in Waukegan. I’m afraid it’s hard to get her to think of anything but her clothes.”
She spoke rapidly, scarcely pausing for breath between sentences.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Grafalk, but Mr. Grafalk implied that Jeannine was a protégée of yours and that you wanted to get her into the Maritime Club.”
She raised her black, painted eyebrows and opened her eyes very wide. “Why did Niels say that? I wonder. Clayton obliged him on some business deal and Niels sponsored him in the club to show his appreciation. I’m perfectly sure that was the way it happened. Niels keeps what he does with Grafalk Steamship to himself, so I’ve never known what the arrangement was-in fact I can’t imagine being interested in it. I’m sorry Clayton’s dead, but he was an insufferable climber and Jeannine is no better… Does that answer your questions? I’m afraid I must go now.” She started for the door, buttoning on a pair of pale salmon gloves. I didn’t know anyone wore gloves anymore. She walked outside the door with me, moving at a good clip on needle-pointed shoes. A woman with less force of personality would have looked absurd in that outfit. Mrs. Grafalk seemed elegant.
As I got into the Omega, someone drove the Bentley up for her. A thin, sandy-haired man got out, helped her into the car, and headed back to the garage behind the house.
Slowly driving back to Chicago, I thought about Mrs. Grafalk’s remarks. The business deal must have been connected with the Eudora shipping invoices. What if Phillips had split the difference in the bills with Grafalk? Say he got ninety thousand dollars extra over the price registered on the computer for the shipment and gave forty-five thousand to Grafalk. That didn’t make sense, though. Grafalk was the biggest carrier on the lakes. What did he need with penny-ante stuff like that? If Grafalk were involved, the payoff had to be more impressive. Of course, Grafalk operated all those older ships. It cost him more to carry cargo. The amount in the invoices was probably the true price of what it cost Grafalk to carry the stuff. If that was the case, Phillips was really stealing from Eudora Grain-not just pocketing the difference between how much he logged into the contract and the ultimate invoice, but losing money for Eudora on every shipment he recorded when Grafalk was the carrier. What Grafalk got out of it was more shipments in a depressed market in which he had a hard time competing because of his older, inefficient fleet.
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