“They either don’t know or won’t say. Lieutenant Schorr tried to talk to Whitby’s boss, but didn’t get anywhere. You know the magazine?”
“It’s a kind of Vanity Fair for the African-American market-covers a mix of high-profile figures in black entertainment, politics and sports. They usually have a political section, too.” Tessa, my lease partner, has a subscription; they’d profiled her last year in “Forty Under Forty: Brothers and Sisters to Watch.”
“Did he live out there?” I asked.
“Uh, his address is somewhere in Chicago.” She fumbled with her notes again. “A street called Giles. Also, we got an autopsy result. He hadn’t been dead long when you found him, maybe an hour or two. And he died from drowning. They’re saying he got himself drunk and went to a place to die where he thought he could be private.”
“They’re saying? That means they found blood alcohol levels of some alarming height?”
“I haven’t seen the detailed report, so I can’t tell you that. All I know is, Sheriff Salvi talked to the press this afternoon. I guess it will be on the news tonight. His secretary says he told reporters that Marcus Whitby came all the way out to DuPage County to commit suicide. I thought you’d like to know”
“Did they do a complete autopsy? Are they giving this a lick and a promise because he was a black man in white superpower country?” Hoarseness made it impossible for me to sound as forceful as I wished.
“I can only tell you what I’m told. I’m not very high up the chain of command here, but the summary makes it sound like they did check his
blood alcohol level. And we’d have found him through AFIS, anyway-it turns out he had a sheet. The sheriff slid that into his remarks.”
I frowned, trying to put a record together with the quiet-looking man I’d pulled from the pond. Although I guess we all look quiet in death; I probably will myself.
I tried to invest some enthusiasm in my thanks before hanging upProtheroe hadn’t had to call me, after all.
What had Whitby been doing at the Larchmont estate to begin with? Did the sheriff, or even the New Solway police, care about that question? If the magazine wasn’t saying, did that mean they didn’t know, or that they wouldn’t tell? Maybe Marcus Whitby was thinking of buying Larchmont. Or writing a story about it for T-Square magazine. Or perhaps some wealthy black entrepreneurs had moved onto Coverdale Lane, and Whitby was doing a piece on what it was like to own the house that your mother could only enter as a housekeeper.
Catherine Bayard could shed light on all these speculations. I needed to talk to her as soon as possible. I wanted to do it right now, this minute, but it was an interview I’d need my best wits to handle; the only thing I was smart enough to know right now was that I couldn’t corner a slippery teenager in my present condition.
Instead, I returned to Nexis and looked up Marcus Whitby. He ownedhad owned-a house at Thirty-sixth and Giles, where he was the property’s sole occupant. No spouse, no lover, no tenant to share the mortgage.
I looked up the address on my city map. Bronzeville. The part of Chicago where blacks had been confined when they first started migrating to the city in large numbers after the First World War. After decades of deterioration, the block where Whitby had bought was making a comeback. Black professionals were buying what are some of the most beautiful homes in Chicago and restoring the stained glass and ornate woodwork, returning them to the glory they had when Ida B. Wells lived there. Whitby had borrowed a hundred thousand from the Ft. Dearborn Trust to move into twenty-seven hundred square feet. Of course if he was thinking of buying Larchmont, he’d need about eighty times that.
I logged off and stared at the disarray that had built up on my desk and worktable in the short time since Mary Louise had quit. I hadn’t needed
Christie Weddington from my answering service to remind me that Mary Louise’s resignation had left me with a pressing problem. Mary Louise had brought organizational gifts to my operation, along with eight years’ experience-and contacts-from the Chicago police force. She’d only been working for me while she went to law school; now she’d taken a full-time job with a big downtown firm. I’d interviewed a number of people but hadn’t found anyone yet who had both the street smarts and the organizational skills to take her place.
It hadn’t been a problem the last few weeks, because I’d been so lethargic I wasn’t generating a lot of business. On a day like today, when I was under the weather and clients were getting cranky, I realized I’d better put serious time into finding someone new. Papers on Mary Louise’s old desk, on mine, filing so far in arrears I wasn’t sure I could bring myself to start on it.
At least I’d better not just toss papers about this situation onto Mary Louise’s work space-that’s what I’d been doing with my other open investigations. I dug a hanging folder out of the supply closet and set it up the way she would have, labeled “Larchmont,” subfolders for Darraugh and his mama, for Marcus Whitby, for Catherine Bayard. Stapled to the front, a time sheet. As long as Darraugh was paying me, I’d keep working.
CHAPTER 7
Before shutting down my system for the day, I opened my message from Morrell. It wasn’t as much of a treat as I’d hoped.
Darling, I’m sorry it’s been so long, but my phone isn’t working. I’m borrowing a hookup through Giulio Carrera at Humane Medicine, so I don’t know when I’ll be able to get back to you again. I love you, I miss you, I wish you were here with me-it would be a help to have someone on my wavelength. I’m doing a tricky investigation, won’t say more on an open line, but it’s not physically dangerous, scout’s honor. Giulio and I don’t go anywhere alone-we’ve made friends with some local toughs who seem to know their way around both literally and metaphorically, so don’t worry, darling, although it may be a week before I can get back to you.
His e-mail left me feeling hollow and lonely-irrationally, I suppose he wasn’t any further away now than he’d been ten minutes ago. But a week before he could write again… somehow the hopeful anxiety of thinking each day might be the one with the message that he was coming home was better than knowing there would be no message at all.
“Okay, Penelope, time to start weaving that tapestry,” I muttered-and realized that underneath my loneliness, I felt a spurt of anger-toward
Morrell, and also myself. I was acting like the woman of tradition, home alone and anxious, while my hero lover wandered the globe seeking adventure. “That is not the story of my life,” I croaked loudly. “I do not sit around waiting, for you or any person, Morrell.”
I called up my phone log again, determined to work my way through the whole backlog before I left my office. I returned a dozen calls from reporters who had learned I’d found Whitby’s body, and even got back to Murray.
By then my cold and my sore legs made me long for bed, but in the end I decided to make one last call. A maid answered Geraldine Graham’s phone. “Madam” was resting. I was Ms. Warshawski? “Madam” wanted to speak to me.
When Geraldine Graham’s high flutey voice came on, I croaked out my name.
“Are you ill, young woman? Is that your excuse for not returning my phone calls sooner?”
“I return calls as I have time, Ms. Graham. I did speak to Darraugh this afternoon, since he’s my client. Did he tell you what happened at Larchmont last night?”
“Young woman, I know what happened, since I had a visit from an extremely impertinent policeman this morning. He called himself Schorr; I should think it would be `Boor. I was seriously annoyed that you had not seen fit to advise me of what happened in my pool last evening.”