Part 6 (2/2)

I was briefly confused.

”It's a hard loss-”

”No, no.” She gave me the look of withering contempt that only adolescents seem able to produce. ”How come you were with her?”

”The woman who came into the funeral to kiss your sister good-bye, her name is Karen Buckley, she performs at Club Gouge. Karen Buckley's safety had been threatened. I'm a detective. I was trying to see that she didn't get hurt.”

”You did a good job, didn't you? It was my sister who got killed.”

I smiled painfully but held out my card. ”Would you talk to me if I came to your school or your home?”

Clara's eyes slid past me to someone behind me. The man in the black cashmere coat appeared next to me.

”Clara.” He took one of her bare hands between his two gloved ones. ”This is no time to be standing around without a coat!”

She pulled her hand away and gave him the same angry stare she'd turned on me a minute earlier, but didn't say anything.

”This is a hard time for your whole family,” the man said. ”Your mother needs to be able to count on you. So get into the car before you add to her worries by catching cold, okay?”

He put a hand on her neck to shepherd her to the car, but she twisted away from him. She climbed into the limo, and the man in black cashmere leaned in over her head to say something to the Guamans. He spoke so softly I couldn't hear him, but Cristina replied loudly, ”I do understand. You don't need to repeat yourself.”

He shut the door and slapped the car's top a couple of times, I guess as a signal to the driver to take off.

”Clara's a tough kid to talk to.” He had a light, pleasant baritone.

”All kids that age are. Or can be.”

”You a family friend?”

”I was close to Nadia at one time.” I didn't feel like explaining my connection as a private investigator. ”And you?”

”I'm sort of an honorary uncle to all of them, especially since poor Ernie had his accident.” He stuck a hand inside his coat and pulled out a card: Rainier Cowles, Attorney.

”They seem dogged by misfortune; they're lucky to have an honorary uncle who's a lawyer.” I didn't give him a card of my own; a La Salle Street lawyer like him probably wouldn't take kindly to a PI sniffing around the Guamans. ”I don't know the family well. Can Ernest be left alone?”

”Not really. It's not that he's dangerous, but his impulses are out of whack. Cristina worries about him leaving the stove on, that kind of thing. Lazar's mother lives with them, helps keep an eye on Ernest.”

”So how do they manage?”

I tried to imagine what home life must be like for Clara and her parents: hard work for the parents, but painful for a teenager who had to put her own life on hold.

”Are you a social worker looking for a customer?” His eyebrows were raised.

I smiled. ”Like you, I was worrying about the Guamans' welfare, wondering how they cope. And I gather there was another sister who also died-Alexandra.”

”They don't like to talk about her.” His voice was bland, but all the muscles in his face tightened.

”How did she die?”

One of Ernie's outbursts came back to me: Allie. Allie is a dove. Allie. Allie is a dove. When Nadia lay in my arms, her last word had been ”Allie.” Not bitterness at ending her life in an alley-she thought my face bending over hers was that of her dead sister. My insides twisted in an involuntary spasm of grief. When Nadia lay in my arms, her last word had been ”Allie.” Not bitterness at ending her life in an alley-she thought my face bending over hers was that of her dead sister. My insides twisted in an involuntary spasm of grief.

”You don't know?” Cowles said. ”It doesn't sound to me as though you ever knew Nadia at all.”

”We were close once,” I repeated, ”but not for long. She let me know Allie was very important to her, but she didn't spell out why.”

His face relaxed again. ”I'd let that dead dog lay, then. It's too painful to Cristina and Lazar-you'll never hear them talk about Alexandra. By the way, who was the woman who interrupted the service? She knocked poor Father Ogden off balance.”

I shrugged. ”Her name is Karen Buckley.”

”And what was she to Nadia?”

I shook my head. ”Anybody's guess.”

”What's yours?”

I smiled again. ”Not enough data to begin to guess.”

”So you're a careful woman, are you? Not a risk taker, hmm?”

For some reason, the time I'd swung from a gantry and landed in the Sanitary Ca.n.a.l flashed through my head, and I laughed but didn't say anything.

He eyed me narrowly, annoyed at my frivolity but smart enough not to expose himself to possible ridicule. He looked at his watch: the conversation was over. He asked perfunctorily if I was heading to the cemetery, and when I said no, he strode briskly down the street to his car. It was a BMW sedan, which looked a bit like him-expensive cut, s.h.i.+ny black exterior, sleek lines.

I moved slowly to my Mustang. This was its third winter in Chicago, and it didn't look sleek at all. It looked like me, tired and even confused, since the front and rear axles seemed to be pointing in opposite directions.

11.

The Mama and the Papa, in Concert.

Back in my office, I found messages from Lotty and Freeman Carter. Lotty had called to say that her neurosurgeon, Dr. Rafael, had visited Chad at Cermak Hospital. Rafael had insisted on his removal to Beth Israel. Freeman's message let me know he'd provided the court order to expedite Chad's move-he should be at Beth Israel already.

I called Freeman to thank him, and tried to reach Lotty, both to thank her and to try to get an idea about Chad's health. Unfortunately, she wasn't available, and the charge nurse had a scrupulous sense of protocol: I wasn't part of the family or one of the lawyers; I didn't get any news. John Vishneski's phone was turned off; that probably meant he was with his son in the ICU. I asked him to call me and opened the case file I'd started on Chad.

I added Rainier Cowles's name to the Vishneski file, but the name sounded so bogus I did a LexisNexis check on him. He was a partner at Palmer & Statten, one of the globe's megafirms whose Chicago presence occupied eight floors of a Wacker Drive high-rise.

Cowles had grown up in the northwest suburbs and was respectably educated, with a BA from Michigan and his JD/MBA from Penn. He'd joined Palmer & Statten right after pa.s.sing the bar, and during the next twenty years had moved steadily up the path to partner. The Palmer & Statten website listed his particular expertise as corporate litigation, with a specialty in multinationals.

I didn't find a record of a name change, but it still seemed incredible that parents had burdened their child with such a name. ”Prince Rainier,” I murmured to the computer. He'd probably been called that a ton in his subdivision growing up. Maybe it's why he'd put on the carapace of corporate success. Imposing trial presence, important car. But he must have a soft center, or he wouldn't be involved with the hard-luck Guamans. Or maybe he'd represented them in litigation over Ernie's injuries.

None of this speculation was helping me look at Chad's relations.h.i.+p with Nadia.

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