I agreed with him wholeheartedly-I’d watched him cutting people’s heads open on the ice with good-natured enthusiasm many times.
I sprinted back to my car, too late. A zealous meter maid had already filled out a parking ticket for letting the meter run out. I stuck it into my shoulder bag and inched my way across the Loop to Ontario Street, the closest entrance to the Kennedy Expressway.
The weather had finally warmed up slightly. Under a clear blue sky, trees along the expressway put out tentative, pale green leaves toward the sun. The grass was noticeably darker than it had been the week before. I started singing some Elizabethan love songs. They suited the weather and the chirping birds better than Fauré’s moodiness. Off the Kennedy to the Edens, past the painfully tidy bungalows of the Northwest Side where people balanced their paychecks with anxious care, up to the industrial parks lining the middle-class suburbs of Lincolnwood and Skokie, on to the Tri-State Tollway and the rarefied northern reaches of the very rich.
“ ‘Sweet lovers love the spring,’ ” I sang, turning off onto route 137. Over to Green Bay Road, making the loop around to Harbor Road without a single wrong turn. I went on past the Phillips residence and parked the Omega around the southern bend in the road, away from the house. I was wearing my navy Evan Picone pantsuit, a compromise between comfort and the need to look respectable in a house of mourning.
I walked briskly back along the greensward to the Phillips house in my low-heeled loafers, my legs a little sore from the unaccustomed run this morning.
Once on the driveway, I stopped singing. That would be indecorous. Three cars were parked behind the blue Oldsmobile 88. Phillips’s green Alfa. So he hadn’t driven himself down to the Port Sunday morning? Or had the car been returned? I’d have to ask. A red Monte Carlo, about two years old and not kept up as well as the neighborhood demanded. And a silver Audi 5000. The sight of the Audi drove any desire to sing from my heart.
A pale teenager in Calvin Klein jeans and an Izod shirt answered the door. Her brown hair was cut short and frizzed around her head in a perm. She looked at me with an unfriendly stare. “Well?” she said ungraciously.
“My name is V. I. Warshawski. I’ve come to see your mother.”
“Well, don’t expect me to pronounce that.” She turned her head, still holding onto the doorknob. “Mo-ther,” she yelled. “Some lady’s here to see you. I’m going for a bike ride.”
“Terri. You can’t do that.” Jeannine’s voice floated in from the back.
Terri turned her whole attention to her mother. She put her hands on her hips and shouted down the hall, “You let Paul take the boat out. If he can take the boat out, how come I can’t go for a stupid little bike ride? I’m not going to sit here and talk to you and Grandma all day long.”
“Real charming,” I commented. “You read about that in Cosmopolitan or pick it up watching ‘Dallas’?”
She turned her angry face to me. “Who asked you to butt in? She’s back in there.” She jerked her arm down the hall and stomped out the front door.
An older woman with carefully dyed hair came out into the hallway. “Oh dear. Did Terri go out? Are you one of Jeannine’s friends? She’s sitting back in here. It’s awfully nice of you to stop by.” The skin around her mouth had gotten soft, but the pale eyes reminded me of her daughter. She was wearing a long-sleeved beige dress, tasteful but not in the same price range as her daughter’s clothes.
I followed her past the pale blue living room into the family room at the back where I had interviewed Jeannine the week before. “Jeannine dear, someone’s come to visit you.”
Jeannine was sitting in one of the wing chairs at the window overlooking Lake Michigan. Her face was carefully made up and it was hard to tell how she felt about her husband’s death.
Across the room, feet tucked up under her on an armchair, sat Paige Carrington. She put down her teacup with a crash on a glass coffee table at her left arm. It was the first thing I’d seen her do that wasn’t totally graceful.
“I thought I recognized your Audi out there,” I remarked.
“Vic!” Her voice came out in a shout. “I won’t have it. Are you following me everywhere?”
At the same time Jeannine said, “No, you must go away. I’m not answering any questions now. My-my husband died yesterday.”
Paige turned to her. “Has she been after you, too?”
“Yes. She was out here last week asking me a lot of questions about my life as a corporate wife. What was she talking to you about?”
“My private life.” Paige’s honey-colored eyes flicked over me warily.
“I didn’t follow you here, Paige: I came to see Mrs. Phillips. I might start staking out your place, though-I’m kind of curious about who’s paying those monthly assessmerits. Astor Place-that’s got to run you seven, eight hundred a month without the mortgage.”
Paige’s face turned white under her rust-toned makeup. Her eyes were dark with emotion. “You had better be joking, Vic. If you try bothering me any further, I’ll call the police.”
“I’m not bothering you at all. As I said, I came here to see Mrs. Phillips… I need to talk to you, Mrs. Phillips. Privately.”
“What about?” Jeannine was bewildered. “I answered all your questions last week. And I really don’t feel like talking to anyone right now.”
“That’s right, dear,” her mother said. She turned to me. “Why don’t you leave now? My daughter’s worn out. Her husband’s death came as quite a shock.”
“I can imagine,” I said politely. “I hope his life insurance was paid up.”
Jeannine gasped. Paige said, “What a singularly tasteless remark, even from you.”
I ignored her. “Mrs. Phillips, I’m afraid I talked to you last week under false pretenses. I’m not from a survey research firm. I’m a detective, and I was trying to find out if your husband might have attempted to murder me two weeks ago.”
Her tightly clenched jaw went momentarily slack with surprise.
“My investigations have shown me that your husband had substantial sources of income beyond his salary. I’d like to talk to you privately about it. Unless you want your mother and Ms. Carrington to hear.”
At that, her composure cracked. “He promised me no one would ever know.” Tears carved two furrows in the makeup on her cheeks. Her mother hurried over with a box of tissues and fussed over her, telling her somewhat confusedly to go ahead and have a good cry.
I was still standing. “I really think we’d better continue this conversation alone. Is there another room we can go to, Mrs. Phillips?”
“What are you talking about?” her mother said. “Clayton had a very good salary at Eudora Grain. Why, when they made him an officer five years ago, he and Jeannine bought this house.”
“That’s okay, Mother.” Jeannine patted the older woman’s hand. “I’d better talk to this woman.” She turned to Paige and said with sudden venom, “I suppose you know all about it.”
Paige gave her triangular smile. “I know a fair amount.” She shrugged her slim shoulders. “But who am I to cast stones, after all?” She picked up a sweater lying on the table beside her. “Better talk to Vic, Jeannine. If you don’t, she’ll only come in and burglarize the place so she can examine your bankbooks.” She drifted over to Jeannine’s chair and kissed the air by her cheek. “I’m going back to the city. I’ll see you at the funeral tomorrow afternoon-unless you want me to come up before then.”
“No, that’s all right, dear,” Jeannine’s mother said. “We’ll manage fine.” She bustled out to the hall behind the elegant younger woman.
I looked after them, puzzled. I assumed at first that Paige must have met Jeannine at some Eudora Grain function when she was dating Boom Boom. But that last exchange made it sound like a fairly close relationship.