Part 8 (1/2)
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 s.h.i.+fted 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 thras.h.i.+ng 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.