Blacklist (2 page)

By the time I’d finished prying at windows, balancing on fence posts to see if any of the roof glass of the greenhouse was broken, and making sure that the doors to the stables and garage were not just secure, but showed no recent signs of tampering, it was past noon. I was hungry and thirsty, but dark still comes early the first week in March. I didn’t want to waste daylight searching for food, so I grimly set about circling the house.

It was an enormous building. From a distance it looked graceful, vaguely Federal in design, with its slender columns and square facades, but all I cared about was four floors’ worth of windows, doors at ground level on all four sides, doors leading off upper-level balconies-a burglar’s paradise.

Still, all the windows on the two lower floors held the telltale markers of a security system. I checked some on the ground floor with a meter, but didn’t see anyplace where the current was interrupted.

People did come onto the land: beer bottles, the silver foil from potato chip bags, crumpled cigarette packs, the inevitable condom, told their tales. Maybe Ms. Graham was only seeing local kids looking for privacy.

I was debating whether to shinny up the pillars to check the balcony doors when a squad car pulled up. A middle-aged cop came over to me at an unhurried gait.

“You got some reason to be out here?”

“Probably the same one you do.” I waved my meter toward the house. “I’m with Florey and Kapper, the mechanical engineers. We heard some woman thinks little green men are hovering around here in the night. I’m just checking the circuits.”

“You set something off in the garage,” the cop said.

I smiled. “Oh, dear: I was trying brute force. They warned us against that at IIT, but I wanted to see if someone could actually lift those doors. Sorry to bring you out here for nothing.”

“Not to worry: you saved me from our eighty-third call to look at suspicious mail.”

“It’s a hassle, isn’t it,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t ask for my ID. “I’ve got friends in the Chicago PD who feel stretched to the limit these days.” “Same out here. We’ve got the reservoir and a bunch of power stations we have to keep an eye on. It’s about time the FBI nailed this anthrax bastard-we waste an unbelievable amount of manpower, responding to hysterical calls about letters from old Aunt Madge who forgot to put her return address on the envelope.”

We hashed over the current situation the way everyone did these days.

Police forces were badly affected, because they had to gear up for incalculable terror attacks and couldn’t keep up with their local crime loads. Drive-by shootings, which had dropped to their lowest level in decades, had jumped in the last six months.

The cop’s cell phone rang. He grunted into it. “I’d better be going. You okay out here?”

“Yeah. I’m taking off, too. Place looks clean to me, except for the usual garbage-” I pointed a toe at an empty cigarette wrapper near the foundation. “I don’t see how anyone could be using the place.”

“You find Osama bin Laden in the attic, give me a call: I could use the extra credit.” He waved good-bye and got back into his squad car.

I couldn’t think of anything else to look for, and, anyway, it was getting too dark to see clearly. I walked to the edge of the gardens, where they faded into a substantial woods, and looked up at the house. From here I could see the attic windows, but they presented a blank face to the sky.

CHAPTER 2

The Iron Dowager

I had to go through various security checkpoints to reach Geraldine Graham. Anodyne Park was a well-gated community, with a guard at the entrance who wrote down my license plate number and asked my business before phoning Ms. Graham for permission to let me enter. As I snaked along the curved road that suburban developers relish, I saw that the complex was bigger than it appeared from the outside. Besides the town houses, apartment buildings and a nursing home the size of a small hospital, it held a little row of shops. Several golfing quartets, undeterred by the dreary weather, were leaving their carts outside a bar at the edge of the shops. I ran into a grocery store designed like an Alpine chalet for a bottle of overpriced water and a banana. Getting my blood sugar up would help me interview my client’s mother.

When she opened the door, I was disconcerted: Geraldine Graham looked so much like her son that I could almost believe it was Darraugh in the doorway dressed in rose silk. She had his long face and prominent nose and eyes of the same frosty blue, although hers were clouded now with age. The only real difference was her hair: over the years Darraugh’s blond has bleached to white; hers was dark, a white-streaked nut-brown that owed nothing to a bottle. She held herself as ramrod straight as her son. I pictured her mother tying her to a Victorian backboard which she then passed on to Darraugh.

It was only when Geraldine Graham moved away from the doorway and the light caught her face that I saw how deeply lined it was. “You’re the young woman my son sent out to see who is breaking into Larchmont Hall, eh?” She had the high fluting voice of deep age. “I wondered whether that policeman was going to arrest you, but you seemed to talk your way out of it. What made him arrive?”

“You were watching me, ma’am?”

“The hobbies of the elderly. Peeping through windows, prying into locks. Although I suppose my hobby is your livelihood. I’m making a cup of tea. I can offer you one. Or I have bourbon: I know detectives are used to stronger beverages than tea.”

I laughed. “That’s only Philip Marlowe. We modern detectives can’t drink in the middle of the day: it puts us to sleep.”

She moved down the short hallway to her kitchen. I followed and felt a stab of envy when I saw the double-door refrigerator and the porcelain cooktop. My own kitchen was last remodeled two tenants back. I wondered what it would cost to install an island cooktop like this one, with sleek electrical burners that looked painted into the surface. Probably two years of mortgage payments.

Ms. Graham saw me staring and said, “Those are designed to keep the old from burning down the house. They turn off automatically if there’s no pan on them, or after some minutes if you haven’t set a special timer. Although we’re told the old should burn and rave at the end of day.”

When she slowly pushed a small stepladder into position to reach her tea bags, I moved forward to help. She waved me off with a brusqueness like her son’s.

“Just because I’m old and slow doesn’t mean the young and swift need muscle me away. My son keeps wanting to install a housekeeper here so I can vegetate in front of the television or behind my binoculars. As you can see, we’d be tripping over each other all day in this tiny space. I was glad to give up all that nonsense when I moved out of the big house. Housekeepers, gardeners, you can’t take a step without consulting someone else’s feelings and timetables. One of my old maids comes every day to tidy and prepare meals-and to make sure I haven’t died in the night. That’s enough intrusion.”

She poured hot water over tea bags into slender porcelain mugs. “My mother would be shocked to see me use tea bags, or to drink my tea out of a great mug. Even when she was ninety herself, we had to get down the Crown Derby every afternoon. Mugs and tea bags feel like freedom, but I’m never sure whether it’s freedom or laxity.”

These cups, with their gold-leaf rims and intricate stencils, weren’t exactly Pacific Gardens Mission service. When Ms. Graham nodded at me to pick them up, I could hardly get my fingers into their slender handles. The tea scalded my fingers through the eggshell-thin china. Following her slow tread down the hall to her sitting room felt like some kind of biblical ordeal involving furnaces.

If Geraldine Graham had been living in a mansion like those across the street, the apartment might seem like tiny space, but the sitting room alone was about the size of my whole apartment in Chicago. Pale Chinese rugs floated on the polished wood floor. Armchairs covered in straw satin straddled a fireplace in the middle of the wall, but Ms. Graham led me to an alcove facing Larchmont Hall, where an upholstered chair stood next to a piecrust table. This seemed to be where she lived: books, reading glasses, her binoculars, a phone, covered most of the tabletop. An oil painting of a woman in Edwardian dress hung behind the chair. I studied the face for a resemblance to my hostess and her son, but it was the oval of a classic beauty. Only the coldness in the blue eyes made me think of Darraugh.

“My mother. It was a great disappointment to her that I inherited my father’s looks: she was considered the most beautiful woman in Chicago when she was young.” With her deliberate motions, Geraldine Graham moved the binoculars and glasses onto the books, then placed coasters for our mugs. Settling herself in her chair, she told me I might bring over one of those by the fireplace for myself. Her fluting voice started while I was still around the corner in the main part of the room.

“I probably shouldn’t have bought a unit facing the house. My daughter warned me I would find it hard to see strangers in the place, but of course I haven’t, except for the few months that they could afford the payments.

A computer baron who melted like snow in last year’s business upheavals. So humiliating for the children, I always think, when their horses are sold. But since they left, I haven’t seen anyone until these last few days. Nights. I see nothing out of the ordinary during the day. Although my son hasn’t said so, he seems to think I have Alzheimer’s. At least, I assume he does, since he actually drove out to visit me Thursday evening, which is a rare occurrence. I am not demented, however: I know what I’m seeing. I saw you there this afternoon, after all.”

I ignored the end of her statement. “Larchmont Hall was your home? Darraugh didn’t tell me that.”

“I was born in that house. I grew up in it. But neither of my children wanted the burden of looking after such a property, not even to hold in trust for their own children. Of course my daughter doesn’t live here, she’s in New York with her husband; they have his family’s property in Rhinebeck, but I thought Darraugh might want his son to have the chance to live in Larchmont. He was adamant, however, and when Darraugh has made up his mind he is as hard as any diamond.”

Why hadn’t Darraugh told me he grew up here? Anger at feeling blindsided distracted me from what she was saying. What else had he concealed? Still, I could see that looking after Larchmont Hall would be a full-time job, not something a widower wedded to his business would take on willingly. I pictured Darraugh in a Daphne du Maurier childhood, learning to ride, to hunt, to play hide-and-seek in the stables. Perhaps it’s only bluecollar kids like me who imagine that you’d feel nostalgia for such a childhood and find it hard to give up.

“So you watch the place to see how it’s faring without you, and you’ve noticed someone hanging around there?”

“Not exactly.” She swallowed noisily and set the mug down on her coaster with a jolt that sprayed drops onto the wood. “When you’re old, you don’t sleep long hours at a time. I wake in the night, I go to the bathroom, I read a little and doze in my chair here. Perhaps a week ago,” she stopped to count backward on her fingers, “last Tuesday, it would be, I was up around one. I saw a light glow and go out. At first I assumed it was a car on Coverdale Lane. You can’t see the lane from here, but you can see the reflection of the headlights along the facades.”

Reflection along the facades. Her precise speech made her sound even more formidable than her commanding manner. I stood at the window and cupped my hands around my eyes to peer through the wintry twilight. Across Powell Road, I could just make out the hedge that shielded New Solway from the vulgar. Larchmont Hall lay on the far side, in a direct line from where I was standing. It was back far enough from the road that even in the dusk I could make out the whole house.

“Take the binoculars, young woman: they allow one to see in the dark, even an old woman like me.”

The binoculars were a lovely set of Rigel compact optics, with a nightvision feature usually used by hunters. “Did you buy these so you could see in the dark, ma’am?”

“I didn’t buy them originally to spy on my old home, if that’s what you’re asking: my grandson MacKenzie gave them to me when I still managed Larchmont. He thought they would be helpful to me since my vision was deteriorating, and he was correct.”

The glasses brought the dormers of the attic into sharp relief. I couldn’t make out great detail in the dark, but enough to see the skylight cut into the steep roof. The small windows underneath the eaves were uncurtained. The main entrance, where the local cop and I had both parked, was to the left, at right angles to the side facing Anodyne Park. Anyone coming onto the property from the road would be easy to spot from here, if you were looking, but if someone approached from the meadows at the rear, they would be shielded from view by the stable and greenhouse.

“I found empty bottles and so on when I was walking around,” I said, still scanning the house for any signs of light or life. “People are clearly coming onto the property now that it’s vacant. Do you think that’s who you’re seeing?”

“Oh, I suppose working people feel a certain triumph in having sex on the old Drummond grounds,” she said dismissively, “but I have seen lights flicker in the attic late at night. The skylight is revealing of what’s inside as well as what’s out. It was the servants’ common room when my mother managed Larchmont. As a child, I used to go up there and watch the maids play poker. She didn’t know about their card games, but children and servants are natural allies.

“After Mother died, I shut up the attic and moved the remaining staff to the third floor. I wasn’t entertaining on a grand scale, I didn’t use those bedrooms. Or all those servants Mother thought essential for running Larchmont as if it were Blenheim Palace.

“It’s been most odd to see those lights, as if my mother’s servants had returned to play poker up there. My son assured me you were a competent investigator. I do expect you to take my complaint seriously, unlike our local police force. After all, my son is paying you.”

I turned back to her, laying the binoculars on the piecrust table. “Did you or Darraugh report this business to the titleholder, or the estate agents? They’d be the ones most concerned.”

` Julius Arnoff. He’s courteous, but he doesn’t quite believe me. I realize that I no longer own the house,” she said. “But I still feel a keen interest in its well-being. I told Darraugh when the police were so unhelpful that I would prefer my own investigator, who would owe me the necessity of reports. Which reminds me: I don’t believe you told me your name, young woman. Darraugh did, but I’ve forgotten it.”

“Warshawski. V 1. Warshawski.”

“Oh, these Polish names. They’re like eels sliding around the tongue. What did my son tell me he calls you? Vic? I will call you Victoria. Will you write your phone number on this pad? In large numbers; I don’t want to have to use a magnifying glass if I need to summon you in a hurry.”

Horrifying visions of Ms. Graham feeling free to call me at three in the morning when she had insomnia, or at odd moments during the day when loneliness overtook her, made me give her only my office number. My answering service would deflect her most of the time.

“I hope Darraugh hasn’t exaggerated your abilities. I will watch for you tonight.”

I shook my head. “I can’t stay out here tonight. But I’ll be back tomorrow” That didn’t please her at all: if her son was employing me it was my duty to work the hours that they set.

“And if someone else hires me tomorrow, should I drop my work for Darraugh to respond to that client’s demands?” I said.

The heavy lines around her nose deepened. She tried to demand what obligation could possibly take precedence over her needs, but I wasn’t

about to tell her. To her credit, she didn’t waste a long time on argument when she saw I wasn’t giving in.

“But you will tell me personally what you find out. I don’t want to have to get reports from Darraugh: there are times when I wish he was more like his father.”

Her tone didn’t make that sound like a compliment. When I stood to leave, she asked me-ordered, really-to take the cups back to the kitchen. I turned them over before putting them in the sink: Coalport bone china. Mugs, indeed.

I spent the drive to Chicago going over her surprising remarks. I wondered why Darraugh hated Larchmont so much. I found myself constructing Gothic scenarios. Darraugh was a widower. Perhaps his beloved wife had died there, while his wastrel father absconded with Darraugh’s wife’s diamonds and his own secretary. Or perhaps Darraugh suspected Geraldine of drowning his wife-or even his father-in the ornamental pond and had vowed never to set foot on Drummond land again.

As I returned to the small bungalows of Chicago’s West Side, I realized the situation was probably something far less dramatic. Darraugh and his mother no doubt merely had the the usual frictions of any family.

Whatever their history, Ms. Graham resented her son’s failure to visit her as often as she wanted. I wondered if phantom lights in the upper windows were a way of forcing Darraugh to pay attention to her. I foresaw the possibility of getting squeezed between these two strong personalities. At least it beat fretting about Morrell.