Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 08 (27 page)

“I’ll
borrow Peppy for the evening if that’s okay with you.”

“Sure,
doll, sure. She’s your dog as much as mine, you know that you don’t have to
ask. But with you gone so much ... ”

I
went out to the landing and kissed his cheek. “Right, I know. You do it out of
a keen sense of duty. And Peppy and I both appreciate it.”

Pushing
Mitch away, I ushered Peppy inside with me. She was delighted to be top dog
again, wagging her tail and affecting not to hear Mitch’s hurt cries from the
other side of the door.

After
brushing Peppy and playing a little fetch I phoned Camilla, hoping to reach her
ahead of Phoebe or one of her partners. The sunny cheer of her greeting
evaporated when I told her what I’d been doing this afternoon.

“I
didn’t mean to bring up Lamia’s affairs. But the response I got from Heccomb’s
office manager unsettled me.”

“What
kind of detective are you if you spill all you know every time you get
rattled?” Camilla asked, not unreasonably annoyed.

“I
scrupulously avoided your name until this afternoon But I’m getting more and
more uneasy. There is something wrong—with that organization, or with Phoebe’s
connection to it.”

I
told her about Phoebe’s reluctance to be seen at Home Free with Alec Gantner.
“Jasper Heccomb is a smooth dancer but his office manager is tripping over her
feet. I wanted to see if Lamia is the banana she’s afraid she’s going to slip
on.”

“And
was it? Because if we trip on it thanks to you, Warshawski, my mama is not
going to be the only member of this family who thinks you’re dirt.”

I
massaged the back of my neck with my left hand. “Look, Camilla, I agreed on
Sunday not to ask any more questions about Lamia. But Phoebe is sitting on
something that she’s not telling you. I would be a bad friend if I turned my
back on an illegal situation that landed you and your friends in hot water.

Think
about it. Talk about it with your partners.”

“We’ve
thought about it and talked about it. We’re happy. So you be happy, too, Vic.
Because no one wants you stirring this pot.” She hung up with a snap.

I
thought about calling Conrad, but I couldn’t rat on his sister to him. And I
was damned if I was going to run to him for comfort just because people were
annoyed with me. That was a fact of my business life: people were always more
or less peeved with me for the questions I asked. It was only fatigue, or chronic
financial stress, that made me care now.

“But
what else can I do now?” I cried out loud to Peppy. “I’m almost forty. I don’t
have any other skills and it’s been too long since I practiced law.”

She
looked at me in concern, hoping my anguish wasn’t connected to her, and was
relieved when I stopped howling to stomp into the kitchen.

It
had been some time since I’d been to the store. My lettuce was wilted, with
black slime on the tips of the leaves. In fact, the only vegetables I had that
weren’t withered or rotted were onions and garlic. I sauteed them in my last
tablespoon of olive oil while I cooked a pot of polenta. Stirring it all
together with the case-hardened end of a piece of cheddar, I sat in front of
the tube and watched the Cubs fumble through a game against St. Louis. At my
feet Peppy cleaned out the cookpot.

At
eight-thirty I couldn’t take any more, either of the Cubs or my own suffocated
mood. I went downstairs to knock on Mr. Contreras’s door.

“I’m
going out for a bit. I’m taking Peppy for company. Since it may be late when I
get back I’ll keep her overnight. Want me to take Mitch too?”

My
neighbor complains a lot about my neglecting the dogs, but he’s jealous of my
relations with them. As I’d expected he hung on to Mitch.

“Maybe
when you come back you’ll be in a better mood. You act this way around Conrad,
you’re going to be on your own again before you know it.”

“Yes,
sir. I’ll bear that in mind.” Conrad said it was my orneriness that had
initially attracted him, but I suppose like any repeated charm it might wear
thin with time.

The
Alfa Spider was still out front. In the dark it wasn’t possible to see into its
low-slung body, so I couldn’t tell if Ken was inside, but as we went down the
street I heard the engine start. What was the boy doing?

I
bundled Peppy into the Trans Am and drove north to Belmont. The Spider was
definitely behind us. It stayed there all the way across Belmont to Lake Shore
Drive. I rode a mile south, then exited abruptly at Fullerton and waited at the
entrance to the park. A few seconds later the Spider trundled along, saw me too
late to stop behind me, and pulled over ten yards or so ahead. I ran up to it
and yanked open the passenger door. Ken Graham sat at the wheel grinning as
though he’d done something clever.

“What
the hell do you think you’re up to? Taking up harassment to tide you over until
you can start hacking again?”

“I’ve
got you interested. That was my goal.”

“And
what was the point of that? If you think you have to vamp me to keep me from
marrying your father, you’re insulting all three of us. Or at least your father
and me. You could use a few insults, I expect.”

“Maybe
I like you for your own sake.”

“Yeah,
and maybe my mother was the pope. Get a grip on yourself, Graham. If you keep
stalking me I’ll tell Darraugh without mincing words why I refuse to help find
a placement for you.”

“You
sound like my old baby-sitter. Behave or I’ll tell Papa. I had the hots for her
too.”

“Then
maybe it’s time you grew up, kiddo. I’m not interested in boys whose diapers I
have to change.”

I
turned on my heel and walked back to the Trans Am. While I stood with my hand
on the door handle he idled his engine for a bit, then gunned it and roared off
with a great show of speed.

The
Somewhat Lower Depths

I made
a U in the Trans Am and continued south. A couple of times I thought Ken might
still be following me, but it was hard to be sure. I wondered whether he really
did believe I was dating his father and posed a threat to his trust fund, or if
he was simply amusing himself. Presumably all his friends were off in school.
Time must lie heavy on his hands. Proving to a middle-aged detective that he
could track her and outwit her might seem like an agreeable game to him.

When
I left the drive at Forty-seventh Street I went past the light at Lake Park and
pulled over again. Two cars went on ahead of me; one even seemed to slow a bit,
but I’d lost the Spider. I drove on over to Fabian’s mansion and rang the bell.

When
the housekeeper answered the door she remembered me and let me in.

Whatever
the police had said to her they hadn’t persuaded her I was there under false
pretenses: I held out a card but she ignored it, saying “Oh, polices” and
turned back into the house, leaving me in the hall while she went upstairs. In
a few minutes she returned with the command to follow her.

She
led me on down the hall to a library built behind the massive stairwell.

It
was a room suitable for Fabian’s professorial status—dark cherry shelves lined
three walls, black leather chairs were stuck in alcoves, and an antique
double-fronted desk, covered in leather, sailed on top of a suitably threadbare
oriental rug. The room looked oppressive to me, but maybe if my income ever
went into six figures I’d change my mind.

I
lifted the edge of one of the crimson drapes on the far wall. Mullioned windows
overlooked the backyard. I squinted in the dark to try to see the extent of the
Messenger property, but could only make out an elaborate playset, as big as
Arcadia House provided its children.

Turning
back to the room I couldn’t resist the temptation to open the desk drawers.
Fabian claimed he’d been preparing to lecture Saturday morning. I didn’t trust
Terry to have checked his alibi. Presumably he had a diary or a lecture
schedule or something. I started rustling through his papers.

I
didn’t see anything of interest, certainly not a diary, and was closing the
drawer when Senator Gantner’s name jumped out at me. He had written a letter
stuck in a file labeled JAD holdings. I was starting to read it when I heard
Fabian’s footsteps outside the door. Feeling like a hundred kinds of fool I
stuffed the letter into my jeans pocket and slammed the drawer shut.

He
looked so ill I’m not sure he would have noticed my rifling the drawer in his
presence. He was huddled inside a flannel dressing gown, his face tinged with
yellow. He moved with something like a shuffle. It was hard to believe that he
was the same man who had bounded up my walk two days ago, accusing me of
kidnapping his daughter.

“Oh,
it’s you, Warshawski. They warned me, but Karin told me the police were here.”

I
blinked, taken aback by the greeting. “Who warned you? The cops?”

He
stood next to one of the leather armchairs, looking around uncertainly as
though he, not I, were the stranger to this room. “It doesn’t matter. Did you
come to tell me Emily killed her mother? I’d already figured that out.”

“How
handy for you. Are you sure of that? Or is Emily turning into a handy scapegoat
for you? First a surrogate mother for your children, now a surrogate murderer
of your wife.”

“My
family’s private life is none of your business.” He tried to speak with his
usual hauteur, but the words came out in a fireless mumble. “The police came
around and found my Nellie Fox bat in her room. Which she’d clearly used to
kill her mother.”

“Come
on. You can’t possibly believe that. Anyway, it had been wiped clean of prints.
Didn’t they tell you that?”

When
I sat down in one of the padded chairs he stumbled into the room and sat as
well, not behind his desk, but in a straight-backed chair near the door. He
pulled his robe close around him as though it might protect him from me.

“Not
of all prints, Warshawski—Emily’s were on it.”

I
took a breath. “The popular theory seems to be she killed Deirdre. Let alone
that she wouldn’t have wiped everyone else’s prints from the bat only to plant
hers smack on it, why would she want to kill her mother?”

Fabian
smiled with a flash of his usual smugness. “I’ve consulted a psychiatrist on
this one, Warshawski. It’s totally plausible that she would want to be caught
if she’d murdered Deirdre. Adolescent girls go through this stage.

Rivalry
with their mothers for their fathers’ affections. She might have thought with
her mother out of the way she could step into her place, and then been overcome
with guilt and taken steps to ensure her arrest.”

“You
must have found a senile Freudian, Fabian—a lot of people think those sexual
ideas are way out-of-date. And anyway, Emily already had taken over her mother’s
job in a lot of ways, hadn’t she? She might have been angry about it, but she
sure didn’t need to kill her to displace her.”

“What
do you mean? What kind of ugly thing are you trying to insinuate now with your
sewer mind, Warshawski?” Despite the fierceness of his words he remained
huddled in his chair, looking like a wounded animal.

“She
already looked after your younger children. She seemed to be the main person in
charge of the family at that dinner party. Deirdre was too drunk to be of much
use, and you were too concerned with preening yourself in front of your guests.
But a different question has to do with your alibi. You were very fierce with
her last weekend, demanding she confirm you’d been here all night. How could
she know that if she wasn’t here to vouch for you?”

“Oh.
Oh, I see. That’s a good point.” He subsided back into his robe and chewed on
his lip.

“Maybe
you were both gone,” I suggested, thinking of the mouse between two cats.
“Maybe you went downtown together to kill Deirdre and decided you’d better give
each other an alibi.”

“I
thought I’d made it clear that I was here all night that night. I didn’t go
out.”

“And
Emily?”

“I
don’t know. I thought so, but she must have left after I went to bed. She was
here in the morning, though: she got the children dressed and fed.”

“How
did she seem that morning?”

“Seem?
What do you mean?” He blinked as if I’d asked him to explain the principles of
general relativity.

“Was
she upset? Did she act like a girl who might have spent the night killing her mother?”

“Oh.”
He chewed his lip some more. “I don’t think I talked to her that morning; I was
in here preparing my lecture. I think I might have called to her when I heard
her go into the kitchen.”

“What
do you think you might have said?” I felt as though I were rowing a boat
through molasses.

“Probably
to make sure Joshua drank his milk. Something like that. She can be too lax in
getting him to do things he should be doing—like letting him get away with not
memorizing the poem for Manfred. Still, that’s water over the dam. I may have
told her not to leave until Mrs. Sliwa came, because we had to make sure
someone was here with Nathan.”