On Wednesday, I was still snuffling, but finally had enough energy to get back to work. I’d slept too late to catch young Catherine Bayard at home. So I could find out whether to waylay her at home or at school, I called the Vina Fields Academy, pretending I was part of the Bayard mansion’s staff. The director’s secretary answered.
“Did Catherine Bayard get to class on time this morning? We had to drop her at the train, and I don’t think she caught the early one,” I said in my basso profundo. “I promised her I would explain to the school if she was late.”
They put me through a few hoops-protection for their students, since a school full of wealthy kids is a target for kidnappers. The sketchy data about the Bayard household I’d garnered from Nexis was enough to
convince them to tell me she’d arrived late for algebra. I didn’t push my luck by asking what time Catherine’s school day ended: at least she was in Chicago, within relatively easy striking distance.
My day off left me fit enough to do a complete set of exercises, stretching my tight muscles, working up a modest sweat with my weights, and finishing by taking the dogs on a short jog around the neighborhood. (“You be sure you’re bundled up, cookie, you get a chill on top of that cold, it could turn real serious,” Mr. Contreras once again adjured me.)
When we got back, I did feel better. It’s sometimes hard to believe that motion does you more good than bed; I hoped my looser muscles would get me through the day.
Lotty Herschel called to remind me we were having dinner together tonight: we have a standing date once a month to make sure we don’t lose track of each other. “Yes, I can hear you’re under the weather, my dear, but I see more germs in an hour than you could possibly shed on me, so unless you’re too unwell to go out come and have some company to cheer you.”
Her dry, wry concern was a good tonic. I dressed quickly, in a greenand-black-striped trouser suit that I liked: it was professional but had a bit of style in the jacket waist.
Down at my office, I started my calls with one to Darraugh, so I could report on his mother’s early morning alarm. Darraugh was in New York, but his assistant said she would make sure he knew the sheriff’s deputies hadn’t found any signs of a breakin. She added that they’d already heard twice from Ms. Graham (“She wasn’t sure you understood the urgency of the assignment, but I assured her that Mr. Graham has full confidence in your abilities.”)
“I can’t get a handle on what Marcus Whitby was doing out there,” I told Caroline. “Jerry Hastings, the DuPage County ME, only did a superficial autopsy. It would be helpful if we could pin down the cause of death more exactly than drowning-if we could even make sure Marcus Whitby drowned in that water. Do you think Darraugh would be willing to call Dr. Hastings? Hastings won’t respond to a Chicago PI, but-you know how the world goes. Darraugh’s family has been prominent in DuPage for a long time.” “I’ll mention it to him when we next talk,” Caroline promised.
I next phoned Harriet Whitby at the Drake. I explained that besides
trying a strategy to buy time on the release of Marc’s body, I was also trying to get someone to push on the DuPage ME to do a more complete autopsy. “In case neither of these ideas pan out, you should get your mother to agree to a private autopsy”
“I guess I can try,” she said, without a lot of enthusiasm. “What else will you be doing?”
“I’m going over to Llewellyn Publishing, see if they’ll tell me what your brother was working on when he died. They’ve been stonewalling the press, but they might tell me since I’m working for you. I’m going to be in motion all day; take my cell phone number so you can call me if you need to-especially if Amy finds someone to let us into your brother’s house. How long will you be in town?”
“It all depends on Mother,” she said. “If I can persuade her to slow down… but she’d like to hold the funeral on Friday or Saturday.”
I offered to talk to her mother myself, but Harriet still didn’t think that would be a good idea. “It’s not as if there’s any evidence of, well, that there was anything wrong, except for him being out there to begin with. Unless you find something concrete, she’s not going to listen. She’s determined to believe it was a tragic accident.” She let out a harsh squawk of a laugh. “Maybe I’m just doing the opposite, pretending he didn’t die for no reason at all.”
“Let’s not worry about your motives right now,” I said gently. “The questions you’re asking deserve answers.”
Before going to Llewellyn Publishing, I wrapped up the work I needed to do on my three small jobs. I also looked up Marcus Whitby’s previous work. His stories for T-Square had centered on African-American writers and artists: Shirley Graham, Ann Perry, Lois Mailou Jones, the Federal Negro Theater Project of the thirties. He had detailed the rise, fall and current resurgence of Bronzeville-the South Side neighborhood where he’d bought a house-as a way of showcasing Richard Wright’s Chicago years. Whitby had occasionally written for Rolling Stone, and had done a recent piece on a young black writer whose first novel had made a big splash a year or so back. About ten years ago, Whitby wrote a biting essay on his arrest and imprisonment during an antiapartheid demonstration in Massachusetts. So that was how he’d picked up a sheet: he didn’t have any other arrests on his record that I could see.
Before I could get out the door, Murray Ryerson phoned, hoping I knew something about Whitby that hadn’t been in any of the official material.
“He had on an Oxxford suit,” I said helpfully. “I think the shoes were Johnston & Murphy, but I’m not a hundred percent sure.”
“So he was a conservative dresser. He wrote hip and dressed square. Anything else?”
I thought a long minute. Pros, cons. “The DuPage medical examiner seems to have given the body a lick and a promise. Some people are wondering if they would have been as cursory if Whitby had been white.” “What people?” Murray was on it like a flea on a dog.
“Unnamed sources,” I said primly. “A client I won’t reveal. Anyone been able to find out what he was working on at T-Square?”
“They’ve got a lockdown at Llewellyn. The editor, Simon Hendricks, he’s the guy with a face like a tomahawk if you were watching last night’s news, if you try to ask him anything he chops you off at the knees for violating editorial integrity.”
I hoped that didn’t apply to an ambassador from the dead man’s family, but it definitely meant going in person with a note instead of facing the runaround of voice mail. I checked my e-mail one last time, even though I knew Morrell had said he’d be out of touch for a week. And of course the new messages in my in box were either spam or business related.
An old lover of Morrell’s, an English journalist, was also in Afghanistan. Morrell traveling with Susan Horseley-I tried to put that thought out of my mind. What did Penelope really do those twenty years that Ulysses was sleeping with Calypso and fighting the Cyclops? Only a man would imagine she spent it all weaving and unweaving. She probably took lovers, went on long trips herself, was sorry when the hero came home.
I locked up and headed south to the trendy stretch of land developers like to call River North. Llewellyn’s building was an eight-story cube, built when the streets west of the Magnificent Mile were a no-man’s-land between the Cabrini Green housing project and the Gold Coast. Land was cheap then, and it was also spitting distance from both the river and the expressways-valuable for a publisher needing to bring in tons of paper every week.