V.I. Warshawski: Hard Time Part 8

He was rattled by my investigation, or he wouldn't have the chronology so pat in his mind. "I had hoped your wife could tell me something about Ms. Aguinaldo's private life, but she apparently had no interest in a woman who was the most intimate caregiver of her children. Maybe you delved deeper?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" He picked up his water gla.s.s but eyed me over the rim as he spoke.

I crossed my legs, smoothing out the crease in the silk-I'd taken time to go home to change before trekking out here. "Carnifice provides inhome surveillance and a reference service for nannies. I a.s.sume you employed it when you hired Nicola Aguinaldo."

"It's the old truth about the shoemaker's children, I suppose: we relied on the credentials of the agency we had used in the past. It didn't occur to me that Nicola was illegal. And I knew about her children, of course, but I wasn't interested in any private life she might have had on her days off, as long as it didn't spill over into my family." He forced a smile. "Into my private point of view."

"So you don't know who she would have run to for help when she escaped last week? No lovers, no one who might have beaten her up?"

"Beaten her up?" he echoed. "I understood she was. .h.i.t and killed by a car. One other than yours, of course."

"Funny," I said. "Your wife and her friends knew she'd been attacked. If they didn't learn it from you, where did they hear it?"

Once again I could see the pulse jump at his temple, although he put his fingers together and spoke condescendingly. "I'm not going to try to untangle a game of who said what to whom. It's childish and not good investigative work, as I often tell our new operatives. Perhaps I spoke to my wife before I had all the information from the Cook County State's Attorney and the Chicago police. The latest word from them is that she was killed in a hitandrun."

"Then you should get your team to talk to the doctor who operated on her. Even though her body has disappeared, so the medical examiner can't perform an autopsy, the ER doctor at Beth Israel saw that she'd been killed by a blow that perforated her small intestine. Inconsistent with being hit by a car."

"So all you wanted from Eleanor was a lead on Nicola's private life. I'm sorry we can't help you with that."

"Woman worked for you what-two years?-and you know nothing about who she saw on her days off, but in one afternoon you nail down my whisky preferences? I think you care more about your children's welfare than that."

He chuckled. "Maybe you're more interesting to me than a diaperchanging immigrant."

"She seemed to make a deep impression on your son. That didn't concern you?"

Again his mouth twisted in slight distaste. "Robbie cried when the cat caught a bird. Then he cried when the cat had to be put to sleep. Everything makes a deep impression on him. Military school might help cure that."

Poor kid. I wondered if he knew that lay in his future. "So what did you want with me that entailed my making the journey all the way out here?"

"I wanted to see whether you would make the trip."

I nodded but didn't say anything. His point: to prove he was big and I was small. Let him think he had made it successfully.

"You've been an investigator for sixteen years, Vic." He shifted deliberately to my first name: I was small, he could patronize me. "What keeps you going when your annual billings barely cover your expenses?"

I grinned and stood up. "Idealism and navete, Bob. And curiosity, of course, about what happens next."

He leaned against the padded leather of his armchair and crossed his hands behind his head. "You're a good investigator, everyone agrees with that. But they say you have a funny kink in you that keeps you picking up stray dogs and that stops you from making a success of yourself. Haven't you ever thought about giving up your solo practice and coming to work for-well, an outfit like mine?

You wouldn't have to worry about overhead. You'd even have a fully funded retirement plan."

"This isn't a job offer, by any chance?"

"Something for you to think about. Not an offer. What would you do if outfits like Continental United stopped tossing you their small jobs? We handle their big ones already; they might agree to roll everything into one package with us, after all."

My constant nightmare, but I made myself laugh, hoping the smile reached my eyes. "I'd cash in my CD's and go live in Italy for a while."

"You don't have enough CD's to live on."

"Your people have been thorough, haven't they? I guess I'd hang out in the alley and share a bone with the rest of the strays. Maybe chew on your old shoes-you know, if you've got a Ferragamo loafer missing its little tag and you're thinking of throwing it out anyway."

He stared at me without speaking. Before I could poke any deeper, Claudia came in to say that his Tokyo call was waiting for him.

I smiled. "Catch you later, Bob."

"Yes, Ms. Warshawski. I can guarantee our paths will cross."

The young woman who'd brought me up was waiting in the hall to escort me back down. To keep me from getting lost? Or to keep me from filching some of Carnifice's hightech gadgetry and using it to steal their clients? I asked her, but of course company policy forbade her telling me.

13.

Sat.u.r.day at the Mall The last dregs of light were staining the western sky pink when I got home. I took the dogs for a walk, then sat chatting in the backyard with Mr. Contreras until the mosquitoes drove us inside. All the time we were discussing whether the Cubs could stay alive in a race for the playoffs, whether Max and Lotty would ever get married, if a lump on Peppy's chest required a trip to the vet, I kept wondering what the real story of Nicola Aguinaldo's death was.

Something about it worried Baladine enough to pull me out to Oak Brook and alternately threaten and bribe me. Maybe his only agenda was to flex his muscles in my face, but I thought he was too sophisticated for simple acts of thuggery.

Had my last idle remark, about his shoes, really caught him off guard, or was it my imagination?

And who had claimed Nicola Aguinaldo's body so pat? Was it her mother-or had it been Baladine, trying to prevent Vishnikov from performing an autopsy? That seemed hard to imagine, since the body wasn't claimed until late Wednesday night, and Vishnikov might well have made his examination as soon as Aguinaldo's remains arrived.

"Whatcha thinking about, doll? I asked you three times if you wanted any grappa, and you're staring into s.p.a.ce like there was UFO's flying past the window."

"That poor young woman in the road," I said. "What is so important about her?

You'd think she was a fugitive Iraqi dissident or something, the way she's become the focus of so much attention."

Mr. Contreras was glad to talk it over with me, but after an hour of thrashing out the events of the week I didn't feel I had any more insight into what was going on. I finally told him I'd have to sleep on it and stumped slowly up to bed. It wasn't even ten o'clock, but I was too worn out to do anything but sleep.

Sat.u.r.day I woke so early that I was able to get a proper run in before the heat settled on the city. I even took the dogs swimming and still was out of the shower by eight.

Of the women around the Baladine pool two days ago, the most approachable seemed to be Global magnate Teddy Trant's wife. Maybe I could catch up with her someplace in the morning.

It was a pain having all my computing capability at the office. If Carnifice took over my little operation, I suppose Baladine would pay me enough to install a terminal at home. Until then I had to trundle down to Leavitt to look up the Trant family. I didn't want to spend the time or money on the kind of search I'd done on Baladine yesterday-all I wanted was Mrs. Trant's name and home address.

Her first name was Abigail, she used her husband's last name, and they lived four miles northwest of the Baladines with their nineyearold daughter, Rhiannon. I packed binoculars, picked up a couple of daily papers and a copy of Streetwise from Elton, and once again pointed the Rustmobile toward the Eisenhower and the western suburbs.

As soon as I got to Thornfield Demesne I realized the Skylark was badly suited for surveillance. For one thing it stood out hideously against the Range Rovers and other allterrain vehicles needed to navigate the perilous ground between mansion and mall. More to the point, you can't park on these leafy winding roads in front of the gated communities out here. The demesne's entrance was protected by a guard station that would have put the old Berlin Wall to shame. Not only that, a private security patrol-probably from Carnifice-periodically sent out a cruiser, no doubt to pick riffraff like me up and throw us back across the border.

I drove to a curve in the road about fifty feet from the entrance and pulled my maps out-I could probably pretend one time to the security patrol that I was lost. With the maps propped up on the steering wheel, I tried using my binoculars, but all I could see were tree leaves. If I was really going to survey the place, I needed a horse, or maybe a bicycle. I was on the point of driving to the nearest mall to see if I could rent one-preferably a bike, since I'd never been on a horse-when I had a bit of luck. The great wrought gates of the demesne opened, and the Mercedes Gelaendewagen with theGLOBAL 2 plates shot out.

I wrenched the Buick into a clumsy Uturn and followed at a discreet distance.

Once we got onto a main road I let a few cars get in between me and Abigail. To my relief she drove past all the entrances to the Oak Brook shopping mall-I couldn't imagine trying to engineer a meeting with her in there. We'd gone south a couple of miles when the Mercedes turned at a sign announcing the Leafy Vale Stables. It looked as though I could get my wish for a horse after all.

Fortunately, the leafy vale lay on the far side of the stables and house; I could see the Mercedes clearly from the road. I parked on the verge and watched as the little girl from the Baladine pool jumped out of the pa.s.senger seat.

Abigail Trant climbed out and escorted her toward one of the buildings. The child was wearing riding clothes, but the mother had on kneelength shorts and a bodyhugging top. Mother seemed to be giving directions to a woman who c.o.c.ked her head deferentially. Abigail Trant kissed her daughter and climbed back into her sports utility tank. I drove a little further and backed the Rustmobile onto the verge where I could turn in either direction. The Mercedes turned toward Oak Brook.

My heart sank when she headed into the mall. It's one thing to strike up a conversation over the produce counter, quite another in the middle of the couture salon at Neiman Marcus. I followed her gamely, parking a few cars beyond the Mercedes on the east side of the mall, and trailed behind her to the Parruca Salon. Parruca had a grand set of double doors. They were lined on the inside with red leather. I was able to detect that when a doorman opened them and greeted Abigail Trant by name. The doors closed as she asked after him with the graciousness of the true grande dame.

Short of pretending to be the new shampooer, I could hardly follow her while she had her weekly hair appointment. I wondered how long beautification took. At least long enough for me to wander into the maze of shops in search of a bathroom and a tall iced tea.

After half an hour I came back outside and waited with my newspaper. There wasn't any place to sit, since you're not supposed to be outside a mall-you're supposed to be inside buying. As the sun rose toward the middle of the sky, the shade cast by the buildings became a thin wedge. I pushed my shoulders against the stone wall separating Parruca from the sportswear shop to its south and tried to pay attention to the problems besetting Kosovo.

Teenagers swarmed past me, chattering about hair, clothes, boys, girls. Solitary shoppers strode past, their faces set in grim lines, as though buying were an onerous duty. Every now and then the doorman opened Parruca's red leather doors to decant a client or admit a new one. Finally, when my shirt was so soaked with sweat that I thought I'd have to slip into the sportswear shop to get a fresh one, Abigail Trant came out.

"We'll see you next week, Mrs. Trant," the doorman said, gracefully pocketing her tip.

I unglued my shoulders from the wall. Her honeystreaked hair was carefully combed into the right suggestion of windblown disorder, her makeup painted on with a subtle hand, her nails a gleaming pearl. To approach her in my sweaty sunburned state seemed almost sacrilegious, but I did it anyway.

She was startled but didn't run shrieking for a security guard. Yes, her pleasant face showing no disdain, she certainly remembered my visit to Eleanor Baladine's pool two days ago. But it was all she could do to keep track of her own daughter's nanny-she certainly didn't know anything about Eleanor's.

"And you know, Teddy and I didn't move back to the Chicago area until eighteen months ago, so that girl who was killed the other day wasn't even around then.

I'm afraid I can't answer any questions about her."

"Can you take ten minutes for a cup of coffee and answer a few other questions?"

A dimple appeared briefly at the corner of her mouth. "I've never been interrogated by a detective-maybe it will help me understand how to respond to the girls I'm sponsoring for the You Can Do It Foundation. Many of them seem to have been arrested before reaching high school, although usually for shoplifting." She looked at her wrist. "I have just about fifteen minutes before my next engagement."

The coffee bar was so mobbed we didn't bother waiting for drinks but perched at the high counter. Mrs. Trant readily stepped me through a few basics-she had grown up not too far from here, gone to school with Jennifer Poilevy, had been thrilled when Global sent her and her husband back from Los Angeles to the Midwest.

"L.A. is a difficult place to raise a child. Everyone is on perpetual display, and the kids get sucked into that precocious environment far too young. Out here Rhiannon can simply be a child."

With her swimming exercises, her horse, and all those other accoutrements of the simple life. But I wanted help, so I kept my sardonic observations to myself.

"It doesn't seem as though Eleanor Baladine's children have that same freedom,"

I said. "Although I guess the girls are following her swimming regimen pretty enthusiastically."

"I admire Eleanor, I really do. She's lucky to have a gift that absorbs her so completely. And she's wonderful to take Rhiannon under her wing, especially since Rhiannon's started to outperform Madison. But I think it's a mistake to push children too hard. When they get to adolescence that can come back to haunt you, you know."

I grunted noncommittally. "You said that you grew up with Jennifer Poilevy. Was Eleanor Baladine part of your childhood as well?"

Looking briefly at her watch, Abigail Trant explained she'd gotten to know Eleanor before they moved to Oak Brook when their husbands started doing business together four years ago. "BB was solving a lot of Global's security problems, and the two of them seemed to hit it off. And of course, JeanClaude Poilevy has been incredibly helpful to us since we moved out here."

I could imagine how helpful the Illinois Speaker could be to someone with money to fling in his direction-zoning regulations bent, tax breaks for Global, a special deal on the mansion in Thornfield Demesne. "I know the prison notified Baladine as soon as Nicola Aguinaldo got away, so Eleanor knew all about her death before I showed up. Do you have any hunches about why she was so rattled?"

Abigail shrugged. "It's hard when violence comes close to your children, and the girl had been her children's nanny."

I smiled in a way I hoped invited badgirl chat. "But really-I know she's your friend and you've known her for years-watching her with her son, she doesn't strike me as the warmly concerned mother."

Abigail smiled back but refused to play. "BB is such an athletic man, and his naval service was the most important part of his life. It's understandable he wants his only son to follow his path, and that may blind him and Eleanor to how hard they are on him. And it's a tough world for a boy these days, it would be better if he could develop the ability to compete in it. If that's all you need to know, I have to get going. We have twenty people coming to dinner and the caterer is going to need directions from me."

She slid from her stool; I followed and said, "BB called me out to his office last night to threaten to put me out of business for asking questions about how his kid's old nanny died. Do you have any idea why?"

She paused next to her stool. A teenager demanded to know whether we could make up our minds-were we going or staying-other people are waiting for seats, you know. The rudeness made Abigail Trant lean a hand on her stool and say we'd be through in a minute. The teenager gave an exasperated sigh and swung around, deliberately hitting Trant with her bag.

"Mall brats," Abigail Trant said. "Why Rhiannon is not allowed to hang out here-I don't want her acquiring these manners. Tell me a little about your business. I gather you're not as big as Carnifice."

Thank heaven for mall brats-Trant would be in her Mercedes by now if she hadn't wanted to stomp on the kid. I gave her a thumbnail sketch of the difference between Warshawski Investigations and Carnifice Security. Something about it piqued a genuine interest from her-she forgot about the time and asked me how I'd gotten into detection, what special training I'd needed, how long I'd been doing it.

"Do you enjoy having your own business? Doing all the work yourself, do you ever have time for a private life?"

I admitted a private life was hard for me to maintain. "Since I have to work for a living, I'm happier working for myself than I would be in a big outfit like Carnifice. Anyway, I like knowing that it's my work that's solved a problem."

"Do you think BB could put you out of business?"

I hunched an impatient shoulder. "I don't know. But I'm curious to know why my asking questions about his kid's old nanny makes him want to."

She tapped the wooden counter with one pearlcolored nail. "I don't think there's any special mystery about the dead girl. I think it has to do with BB's personality. You came to his house, you interrogated his wife and his son, and it makes him feel that you proved he was vulnerable. He's threatening you so he can feel better about the fact that a private detective with a very small company could penetrate his security systems." She looked at her watch and gave a little gasp. "The time! I really have to run now."

She threaded her way expertly through the crowds of shoppers. Everything about Abigail Trant depressed me-her polished good looks and manners, the fact that she had stiffed me half a dozen times with perfect good manners, and the possibility she could be right about Nicola Aguinaldo. She was only thirtyfive, but she could dance rings about me-no wonder she was entertaining important guests in Oak Brook and I was taking my sweaty body back to my unairconditioned car.

14.

Crumbs from the Table When I got back to the city I was too worn out by the heat to go to my office.

I'd been planning on buckling down on my project for Continental United, but I went home and showered and lay down.

As I dozed through the midday heat my conversation with Abigail Trant kept coming into my dreams. In some of them she was sweetly commiserating because my work interfered with my social life. In others she was standing on the sidelines as BB Baladine threatened me. I woke for good from a nightmare in which Baladine was choking me while Abigail Trant said, "I told you he didn't like to be threatened."

"But I wasn't threatening him," I said aloud. "It was the other way around." And what was I supposed to do, back away from Baladine because he interpreted any approach as aggression? Anyway, maybe Abigail Trant was right about Baladine's character, but I thought there was more to the story than that-some issue about Nicola Aguinaldo, either her life or her death. Perhaps when she escaped from prison she approached Baladine and he interpreted that as a threat, knocked her out, then ran over her. As he got back into his car the emblem came off his loafer. My research said he was a Porsche man. I wondered if his Carrera had been in a body shop lately.

It was all a load of speculative nonsense. Except for the fact that Nicola Aguinaldo was dead. I wished I could talk to her mother. Why had Abuelita Mercedes disappeared so suddenly just at the time her daughter died? Maybe if I went back to Aguinaldo's neighborhood I could find the mysterious Mr. Morrell, the man asking questions about people who escaped from jail. I made myself an espresso to cut through the dopiness I felt from dozing in the heat, and got dressed again.

I dumped my sweaty jeans in the hamper and chose my outfit carefully-Abigail Trant had made me feel like a grubby hulk. I laughed at myself, a little shamefaced, but still put on clean linen slacks with a big white shirt, even dabbing on lipstick and powder. The result didn't approach Ms. Trant's perfection: a polished appearance is like any other skill-you have to work at it a lot to be good. Maybe weekly visits to Parruca's would help, too.

Sat.u.r.day is errand day in Uptown just as in Oak Brook, but the girls here were doing ch.o.r.es, not taking riding lessons. When I rang Mrs. Attar's bell, a sullen Mina, huffy at having to dust, came to the door. The girls had mentioned someone named Aisha; it was Aisha's father Morrell was talking to. After some grumbling, Mina directed me to the other girl's apartment, two doors up the street.

Aisha's father was home, looking after a small boy who was wearing only a diaper. The man greeted me with unsmiling reserve and didn't move out of the doorway. In stilted but pa.s.sable English he demanded to know what business of mine it was whether he had a daughter named Aisha? When I explained my errand, the man shook his head. He was afraid the neighborhood girls liked to tease strangers. He didn't know anyone named Morrell. His wife might have known a woman named-what was it? Abuelita Mercedes?-but she was at the market; the name meant nothing to him. And now if I would excuse him he was very busy. I handed him a card, with a request to call me if he ever heard from Mr. Morrell. It fluttered to the floor in front of him, where I left it.

It was humiliating to be mistaken for an INS officer. Or an agent of a foreign secretpolice force. I didn't know which would be worse.

There might have been something more profitable I could have done with the rest of the afternoon, but I went home and worked on personal projects, matting some prints I'd picked up at a flea market. One of the pictures showed a young woman about Aguinaldo's age. She was partly dressed, in a kind of camisole, and was staring at a window; what I liked about the picture was the reflection of her face in the gla.s.s.

I started wondering about the shirtdress Aguinaldo had been wearing. The lab's report had explained only how they'd tested the outside of the fabric for automobile traces. Maybe the inside of the shirt could tell me something about how Nicola Aguinaldo had died.