Blacklist (12 page)

The elevator opened onto what was essentially the apartment’s entryway, an area so big I could have set up my office there and no one would have tripped over me for at least a month. We went on through an arched doorway into the body of the apartment.

A middle-aged woman in a maid’s uniform came out from some back room. “Oh, it is you, Miss Katerina. And your friend?”

“A business acquaintance, Elsbetta. We’ll be in my room.”

“You want me to bring tea? Coffee? Juice?” Her English was precise, but her voice was soft and heavily accented, the “esses” slurred the way my father’s mother’s used to.

“We’re fine without anything,” Catherine said firmly: I was not a guest, I didn’t get refreshments.

“Were you here last night?” I asked Elsbetta. “Here? Yes, I sleep here.”

Catherine looked daggers at me, but she said, “This woman wants to know if I was here also.”

“What do you mean, was you-were you-here? Yes, of course you were here. You ate with friends, you came home, at ten-thirty you went to bed, so I also, I then went to bed.” Elsbetta turned to me. “When Mrs. Renee is not here, I stay awake until Miss Katerina is in bed.”

Catherine gave a tight, triumphant smile and led me to her room. It was decorated in bold colors, and furnished in a way that would remind you every time you came in that you had been born to special obligations-the Bang & Olufsen TV-stereo for starters, and then the antique armoire and desk, Navajo rugs worn enough to show they dated to the pre-Machine Epoch of Indian work. These lay on a hardwood floor so polished it reflected our legs as we walked across it. Another few were draped across a pair of ottomans in front of the working fireplace.

The room overlooked the back garden. I opened the French doors and looked out on a small balcony. You wouldn’t have to be a great athlete, only reasonably confident, to move from the balcony to a fire escape screwed into the brickwork about a yard away.

“So you went to bed at ten-thirty, you waited until Elsbetta’s light went out, then you climbed down, went out the back gate and headed for the western suburbs. You have a driver’s license, or anyway access to a car. You did your business out at the Larchmont estate, and retraced your steps. Only you were so worn out that you overslept and missed your algebra class this morning.”

She scowled ferociously. “What are you trying to prove, that you can stalk me? You know that’s against the law in Illinois.”

“Lots of things are against the law here. I’m not stalking you-I’m just

a reasonably competent investigator. If I wanted to go to the trouble, I could probably find traces of your clothes on that fire escape: rough metal like that always snags some fibers.”

While she tried to think of a response, I went over to inspect the photographs on the mantelpiece. Calvin Bayard and an eight-or nine-year-old Catherine fly-fishing, he with his easy smile, she with her face furrowed in intensity. Calvin with a short dark woman; Catherine with the same woman. Various other family groupings. It wasn’t immediately clear which ones were her parents.

“What do you have that’s mine?” she demanded of my back.

“Your little teddy bear. It came off your backpack in my hand when you broke away from me Sunday night.”

“Oh. That. You can keep it.”

I could see her in a mirror over the mantel. Her little face was pinched with anxiety. She wasn’t as unconcerned as she was trying to sound.

“Did you not know Marcus Whitby was dead when you went back last night?” I spoke to the trophies, keeping an eye on her in the mirror. “What are you talking about?”

“You must have been worried when he missed your rendezvous on Sunday. Or did you just assume I had frightened him off?”

“I don’t know any Marcus Whitby, so stop trying to pretend you’re, like, Jack McCoy.”

I swung around to look at her. “You don’t know Marcus Whitby? The man I fished out of the Larchmont pool? You don’t know he’s dead?” Her eyes and jaw opened in what looked like genuine bewilderment. “You found a dead man out there? What happened to him?”

“Don’t you look at the paper or the news? When you log onto your fancy computer there, doesn’t CNN or NBC or something come up to tell you what’s happening outside the Gold Coast?”

She stiffened. “For your information, I’m very involved in current events. But that doesn’t mean I read about every dead person in the world. Is that why you were at Larchmont? To look for him? Who was he?”

I sat down on one of the ottomans in front of the fireplace and gestured to her to take the other. “Marcus Whitby worked for T-square magazine.” She gave the elaborate shrug of adolescent indifference.

“Black arts and entertainment, middle class.” When she continued to mime ignorance, I added, “He wrote a piece on Haile Talbot. I thought maybe that was how you met.”

“I don’t know him. Marcus whoever, I mean. And I hardly know Haile Talbot. Just because I did PA stuff for him doesn’t mean I hung out with him when he did media. He had a publicist who took care of that.”

“Then who were you meeting out at Larchmont?”

She bit her lips. “No one. I was there on a dare. You caught me fair and square. Now you can give me my teddy back and go home.”

I shook my head. “No. I know you were there again last night, so even if I was gullible enough to believe-“

“And you say you’re not a stalker?”

I ignored the interruption. “I told you at the get-go that it was me or the cops. Since you won’t talk to me, it’s the cops. You were at the scene of a mysterious death, a crime scene, you fled, they will be incredibly interested in you. The good news is they’ll only talk to you with your parent or guardian present. So-your dad, your mom, your grandparents-which one of them should I explain this to?”

Her eyes darkened with dismay, but, before she could say anything, someone tapped on her door, and immediately opened it. The short dark woman from the photographs swept in, moving across the room to Catherine like the Wabash Cannonball.

CHAPTER 12

The Wabash Cannonball

Gran!” Catherine jumped and looked from her grandmother to me in alarm. “What are you doing home so early?”

Renee Bayard leaned over to kiss Catherine. She was older than in the mantel photos. Her dark hair was now well streaked with gray, but her skin was remarkably smooth and clear under its light foundation. Her red dress, made from a wool so soft I had an impulse to stroke it, looked as though it had been cut to fit her short, square body. A bracelet of ivory mahjongg tiles clacked when she put her arms around her granddaughter.

“I felt tired of the same meetings churning over the same stale material. I want to get to your school tonight for the parents’ meeting on what we can do with all these justice Department efforts to look at student files, so I thought I’d come home first, have a family supper if you’re not already engaged.”

Catherine bounced up from her ottoman. “I hope you make all those wusses take action. So many of them are like Marissa’s dad, yacking on and on about how it’s our duty to cooperate fully, we’re in a war situation, ordinary privacy doesn’t apply. Like it’s never dawned on him what they might find out about his own kid if the school gives them total access to our files. Marissa has-well, never mind. The Feds have been ruthless talking to Leila, since she’s from Pakistan. They figure since she’s Muslim she must have known Benji, but she’s such a snob she’s like totally offended they think she’d even talk to a dishwasher. And Marissa’s dad, well, how would he like to have the FBI in his files? I bet they’d find stuff like Enron if they only started looking.”

“Yes, darling, I know you’re ready to get on your horse and raise the siege of Orleans.” Renee smiled fondly at her granddaughter. “We can talk about it over dinner. Unless your friend is staying?”

“Oh. Oh. This isn’t a friend. It’s-” She floundered, unable to remember my name.

I stood. “I’m V I. Warshawski, Ms. Bayard. I’m a private investigator, although I originally trained as a lawyer.”

Catherine made a fast recovery. “I’m doing a story on her. On her work, I mean, for Vineleaves, you know, the school newspaper. A lot of kids meet private eyes who’ve been working on their parents’ divorces, but I figure not too many know anything about murder investigations.”

If Renee Bayard found her granddaughter’s restless manner odd, she didn’t comment on it: she was more concerned with me, saying in a voice heavy with censure, “Murder investigations? Why did you seek out my granddaughter?”

Catherine once more leapt into evasive action. “She didn’t, Gran. I mean, I called her. I had the idea, and I knew Mr. Graham worked with a lot of investigators, so I called and asked if he could suggest someone.”

“Mr. Graham needs a murder investigator?” Renee Bayard persisted, watching me sharply.

“Most of my work involves financial and industrial crime,” I said. “But some of my cases have included murders, and that’s always sexier to young people than someone shredding company papers to keep their financial fiddles secret.”

Renee Bayard gave a little nod, as if to acknowledge that I’d scored a point. “And are you working on something now for Mr. Graham?”

“Just think, Gran, she found a dead man in the pool out at Mr. Graham’s old home,” Catherine intervened.

“So it was you who found that unfortunate young man,” Renee Bayard said to me. “What made you look for him to begin with? Was that what Mr. Graham hired you to do?”

I smiled. “My clients appreciate having their private affairs kept private, ma’am. But I will tell you I found Marcus Whitby completely by accident. I was looking for-something else-and tumbled on him. Literally.”

“And you’re regaling my granddaughter with this tale?”

“We hadn’t got that far. Catherine was more interested in the techniques investigators use for getting information. She shows a remarkable capacity for imagining ways to circumvent the law.”

Renee Bayard frowned at me, perhaps because she found my words unacceptably frivolous, or maybe because she didn’t want me to encourage her granddaughter’s lawlessness: a girl enterprising enough to climb out through her bedroom window and drive off in the middle of the night probably had plenty of other escapades under her belt.

“Do you have any idea how the young man-Whitney, is it?-came to die out at Larchmont? Is there any thought of whether it was an accident or intentional?” Renee Bayard asked.

“Whitby. I don’t know what the DuPage sheriff is thinking, but Catherine has just been explaining to me that Rick Salvi is an old friend of your family. Salvi might say more to you than he would tell the press.”

Renee Bayard cocked her head at Catherine. “Trina, you shouldn’t call Sheriff Salvi a family friend. He’s a political acquaintance.”

She turned back to me. “I know you don’t want to reveal client secrets, but are you looking into young Whitney’s-no, Whitby’s-death? If he was murdered-my husband spends the whole year out in New Solway now.”

“We should call the Lantners,” Catherine said. “If there’s a murderer roaming around New Solway, they need to be on the lookout.”

I shook my head. “If Mr. Whitby was murdered, it was more likely by some homeowner out there who resented his presence on their land. I assumed when I found him it was an accident: I assumed he was meeting someone by appointment, and that he tripped on a loose brick by the pool and fell in-because that’s how I happened to find him.” I broke off to look at Catherine, fidgeting on her ottoman. “Wouldn’t it be helpful to take some notes, in case you actually decide to write up our interview?”

“Yes, darling,” Renee Bayard agreed. “You should never assume that you will have an accurate memory of what someone has said.”

Catherine glowered at me, but went to the work counter built into the far corner of the room and fished a spiral notebook from her backpack. Her grandmother frowned over what I’d said. “But if he was meeting someone out there, why haven’t they come forward?”

“He could have been having an affair with someone who lived out there and was taking advantage of the old Graham house standing empty, although he’d have to have a key to bypass the security system.”

Catherine jabbed her pencil through the holes in her notebook and started pulling apart the ends of the paper.

“Is that what you think?” her grandmother asked.

“I did at first, but he didn’t have any keys on him, not even his car keys. It’s possible they fell into the pond when he went in, but his car wasn’t anywhere on the grounds. I suppose the sheriff’s police will be finding out how he got there-he could have gone by train.” I wasn’t hopeful about that-Salvi seemed to want to wrap the story up in a package and be done with it. “After I met with Mr. Whitby’s associates at T-square this morning, I did wonder if he’d gone out there to consult your husband.”

Ms. Bayard’s hand went to her throat in a reflexive gesture of selfprotection. “Why would-what made you think that?”

“It was a leap. Mr. Whitby was doing a story on someone in the Federal Negro Theater of the thirties. You probably know they were pilloried in Congress for being Communists. I just thought-if some of Bayard Publishing’s writers had been blacklisted, Mr. Whitby might have wanted your husband’s inside view on how that affected them.”

“Mr. Bayard doesn’t grant interviews these days. If a journalist tried to call-well, our staff are very protective. They would have turned him away.” “Then maybe Mr. Whitby tried to pay a visit without an invitation,” I said, wondering whether it was Calvin or Renee’s decision that he didn’t grant interviews. “The T-Square staff don’t seem to know why Mr. Whitby went to New Solway-unless his editor, Simon Hendricks, does and won’t say. Hendricks says they have a policy against talking to anyone at Bayard Publishing.”

Renee Bayard smiled faintly. “Augustus Llewellyn muscled his way into becoming a journalism giant against a great deal of opposition-he was

launching T-square about the time my husband acquired Margent magazine. None of the big banks would fund a venture by a black publisher. My guess is that Augustus is simply unwilling to make the white journalism establishment a present of one of his reporters’ work.”

“Didn’t Grample help him out?” Catherine said, continuing to twist the edges of her notepaper. “I thought he put together the consortium-” “Yes, darling, but we’re not talking about your grandfather right now. Why don’t you finish your interview with Ms.-“

I fished a card out of my briefcase. “Warshawski. If you know Mr. Llewellyn, do you think he’d be willing to talk to you about what Marcus Whitby was working on?”

She gave a grim smile. “The fact that my husband helped him get financing doesn’t make him an automatic ally of mine, but if I have time I’ll try to call him.”

Elsbetta appeared in the doorway. “Mrs. Renee, excuse me, a man is calling from a television station. Are you wanting to talk to him?”

Ms. Bayard cocked her head to one side. “You don’t know what it’s about, Elsbetta? No?” She brushed Catherine’s forehead with her fingertips and steamed out of the room as quickly as she had entered it.

“Your grandmother has a lot of energy,” I remarked. “Running a publishing house and looking after you-I couldn’t do it.”

“No one wants you to,” Catherine said. “You can stop bugging me now and go home.”

“I think I should give you a tip first. For Vineleaves.” I sat down again, facing her. “You told your grandmother a lie about Darraugh Graham and-no, don’t interrupt-it’s one she can easily check. The two of them know each other; when she asks him if he referred you to me, Darraugh will be astonished and he won’t bother to hide it.”

She flushed. “You could ask him to say I had called.”

“Why would I want to do that for a girl who’s been lying to me and stiffing me? I admit I terrified you by tackling you Sunday night, but I still don’t know why you were at Larchmont Hall the same night that Marcus Whitby died there.”

“It was a coincidence,” she muttered. “Can’t you believe that?”

“Not really. You’re a pretty accomplished liar-your grandmother, who’s known you your whole life, believes what you’re saying.” In the background behind us the phone kept ringing, and then the doorbell.

Catherine’s mouth set in a mutinous line. “I did not know this man was out there dead. And I never heard of Marcus Whitby, just because he was on the local news, which I don’t watch. And I am not the person he was meeting out there.”

“So who were you meeting at Larchmont?”

“That isn’t any of your business. Believe what you want, be with the sex police if you want, I’m not going to tell you.” Panic was rising in her voice. “There is someone in the old Graham house. And you know a way in that doesn’t trigger the alarms. What is it, I wonder?”

“You’re wrong, there’s no one in the house. If old Mrs. Graham thinks there is-she’s almost a hundred and she can hardly see.”

“She’s not blind, she’s just nearsighted, and she’s by no means deranged. And after talking to her, and talking to you, well, if she said your hair was green, I’d believe her before I believed you telling me it was brown.”

I paused, hoping she’d blurt out something-her flushed, turbulent face showed she wasn’t used to being called a liar. After a moment, I went on. “You wouldn’t have to meet a boyfriend there. As clever as you are about jumping out of fire escapes, if you wanted to see someone your grandmother didn’t like you’d find an easier way to do it, unless there was a thrill attached … Is that how you get into Larchmont? You shinny up a drainpipe or something to reach a third-floor window that doesn’t have the alarm system wired to it?”

“No. Is that what you would do?” She had her arms crossed, the very portrait of a hostile teenager, but it felt to me more like a pose than a real act. “Whoever you’re meeting, you don’t want your grandmother to know, because you tap-danced your way mighty fast past anyplace where she’d ask a question. She’s obviously proud of you and your strong beliefs. I guess I’d have to find out what would hit her the wrong way. I can’t imagine drugs, since even if you were a user you’d have an easier place to score than that.” I got to my feet. “It’s a puzzle, and puzzles make me curious, even when they aren’t my business. When they may be-and I don’t have any way of knowing this one isn’t-well, then I keep digging.”

Catherine scrunched up her face. “One night last summer when I couldn’t sleep, I saw my grandfather going through the woods. I followed him and he was going over to Larchmont-that was after the nounous moved out. I don’t know why he had a key, I guess from when the Grahams lived there and they were all good friends, but he was letting himself in. And-and I went in after him. So Sunday when I couldn’t sleep I went in to his room to see if he was sleeping-Gran had gone back to Chicago because she had an early meeting Monday, but my first class wasn’t until ten. Anyway, Grample, my grandfather, wasn’t in his room, so I just thought I’d go see if he was over at Larchmont. It’s a private place to talk. Out at our house, you know, someone on the staff is always around and it’s hard to be private.”

“Right.” I smiled affably. “And last night when you couldn’t sleep, you drove out to Larchmont to find your grandfather and talk to him. Privately, I mean.”

Her flush deepened, but before she could say anything, Renee Bayard sailed back into the room. “Trina, something unexpected happened: Olin Taverner has died and the local television stations want to talk to me. I don’t know how long it will take, so we won’t be able to have dinner together. Elsbetta will lay something out for you in the kitchen.”

“No, I want to hear you do your stuff, Gran. I hope he was writhing in agony.”

Oh. Olin Taverner. He’d been senior counsel to Walker Bushnell, the Illinois congressman who’d been HUAC’s point man in going after Calvin Bayard all those years ago. Catherine had presumably grown up on tales of him as the family villain.

Renee put her hands on her granddaughter’s shoulders. “Darling, you absolutely must not say that in public. And in public includes in front of strangers. We rise-“

“Above these things so that no one can tell from our public face that they matter to us,” Catherine finished in chorus with her.