Thayer held out my card. “What’s this about, Warshawski?”
“Just what it says. I want to talk about your relations with the Knifegrinders.”
He gave a humorless smile. “They are as minimal as possible. Now that Peter is-gone, I expect them to be nonexistent.”
“ I wonder if Mr. McGraw would agree with that.”
He clenched his fist, crushing the card. “Now we get to it. McGraw hired you to blackmail me, didn’t he?”
“Then there is a connection between you and the Knifegrinders.”
“No!”
“Then how can Mr. McGraw possibly blackmail you?”
“A man like that stops at nothing. I warned you yesterday to be careful around him.”
“Look, Mr. Thayer. Yesterday you got terribly upset at learning that McGraw had brought your name into this. Today you’re afraid he’s blackmailing you. That’s awfully suggestive.”
His face was set in harsh, strained lines. “Of what?”
“Something was going on between you two that you don’t want known. Your son found it out and you two had him killed to keep him quiet.”
“That’s a lie, Warshawski, a goddamned lie,” he roared.
“Prove it.”
“The police arrested Peter’s killer this morning.”
My head swam and I sat down suddenly in one of the leather chairs. “What?” My voice squeaked.
“One of the commissioners called me. They found a drug addict who tried to rob the place. They say Peter caught him at it and was shot.”
“No,” I said.
“What do you mean, no? They arrested the guy.”
“No. Maybe they arrested him, but that wasn’t the scene. No one robbed that place. Your son didn’t catch anyone in the act. I tell you, Thayer, the boy was sitting at the kitchen table and someone shot him. That is not the work of a drug addict caught in a felony. Besides, nothing was taken.”
“What are you after, Warshawski? Maybe nothing was taken. Maybe he got scared and fled. I’d believe that before I’d believe your story-that I shot my own son.” His face was working with a strong emotion. Grief? Anger? Maybe horror?
“Mr. Thayer, I’m sure you’ve noticed what a mess my face is. A couple of punks roughed me up last night to warn me off the investigation into your son’s death. A drug addict doesn’t have those kinds of resources. I saw several people who might have engineered that-and you and Andy McGraw were two of them.”
“People don’t like busybodies, Warshawski. If someone beat you up, I’d take the hint.”
I was too tired to get angry. “In other words, you are involved but you figure you’ve got your ass covered. So that means I’ll have to figure out a way to saw the barrel off your tail. It’ll be a pleasure.”
“Warshawski, I’m telling you for your own good: drop it.” He went over to his desk. “I can see you’re a conscientious girl-but McGraw is wasting your time. There’s nothing to find.” He wrote a check and handed it to me. “Here. You can give McGraw back whatever he’s paid you and feel like you’ve done your duty.”
The check was for $5,000. “You bastard. You accuse me of blackmail and then you try to buy me off?” A spurt of raw anger pushed my fatigue to one side. I ripped up the check and let the pieces fall to the floor.
Thayer turned white. Money was his raw nerve. “The police made an arrest, Warshawski. I don’t need to buy you off. But if you want to act stupid about it, there’s nothing more to say. You’d better leave.”
The door opened and a girl came in. “Oh, Dad, Mother wants you to-” She broke off. “Sorry, didn’t know you had company.” She was an attractive teenager. Her brown straight hair was well brushed and hung down her back, framing a small oval face. She was wearing jeans and a striped man’s shirt several sizes too big for her. Maybe her brother’s. Normally she probably had the confident, healthy air that money can provide. Right now she drooped a bit.
“Miss Warshawski was just leaving, Jill. In fact, why don’t you show her out and I’ll go see what your mother wants.”
He got up and walked to the door, waiting until I followed him to say good-bye. I didn’t offer to shake hands. Jill led me back the way I’d come earlier; her father walked briskly in the opposite direction.
“I’m very sorry about your brother,” I said as we got to the greenish statue.
“So am I,” she said, pulling her lips together. When we got to the front of the house, she followed me outside and stood staring up in my face, frowning a little. “Did you know Peter?” she finally asked.
“No, I never met him,” I answered. “I’m a private investigator, and I’m afraid I’m the person who found him the other morning.”
“They wouldn’t let me look at him,” she said.
“His face was fine. Don’t have nightmares about him-his face wasn’t damaged.” She wanted more information. If he’d been shot in the head, how could his face look all right? I explained it to her in a toned-down, clinical way.
“Peter told me you could decide whether to trust people by their faces,” she said after a minute. “But yours is pretty banged up so I can’t tell. But you told me the truth about Peter and you’re not talking to me as if I was a baby or something.” She paused. I waited. Finally she asked, “Did Dad ask you to come out here?” When I replied, she asked, “Why was he angry?”
“Well, he thinks the police have arrested your brother’s murderer, but I think they’ve got the wrong person. And that made him angry.”
“Why?” she asked. “I mean, not why is he mad, but why do you think they got the wrong person?”
“The reasons are pretty complicated. It’s not because I know who did it, but because I saw your brother, and the apartment, and some other people who’ve been involved, and they’ve reacted to my seeing them. I’ve been in this business for a while, and I have a feel for when I’m hearing the truth. A drug addict wandering in off the streets just doesn’t fit with what I’ve seen and heard.”
She stood on one foot, and her face was screwed up as if she were afraid she might start crying. I put an arm around her and pulled her to a sitting position on the shallow porch step.
“I’m okay,” she muttered. “It’s just-everything is so weird around here. You know, it’s so terrible, Pete dying and everything. He-he-well-” She hiccuped back a sob. “Never mind. It’s Dad who’s crazy. Probably he always was but I never noticed it before. He’s been raving on and on about how Anita and her father shot Pete for his money and dumb stuff like that, and then he’ll start saying how it served Pete right, like he’s glad he’s dead or something.” She gulped and ran her hand across her nose. “Dad was always in such a stew about Peter disgracing the family name, you know, but he wouldn’t have-even if he’d become a union organizer he would have been a successful one. He liked figuring things out, he was that kind of person, figuring things out and trying to do them the best way.” She hiccuped again. “And I like Anita. Now I suppose I’ll never see her again. I wasn’t supposed to meet her, but she and Pete took me out to dinner sometimes, when Mom and Dad were out of town.”
“She’s disappeared, you know,” I told her. “You wouldn’t know where she’s gone, would you?”
She looked up at me with troubled eyes. “Do you think something’s happened to her?”
“No,” I said with a reassurance I didn’t feel. “I think she got scared and ran away.”
“Anita’s really wonderful,” she said earnestly. “But Dad and Mother just refused even to meet her. That was when Dad first started acting weird, when Pete and Anita began going together. Even today, when the police came, he wouldn’t believe they’d arrested this man. He kept saying it was Mr. McGraw. It was really awful.” She grimaced unconsciously. “Oh, it’s been just horrible here. Nobody cares about Pete. Mother just cares about the neighbors. Dad is freaked out. I’m the only one who cares he’s dead.” Tears were steaming down her face now and she stopped trying to fight them. “Sometimes I even get the crazy idea that Dad just freaked out totally, like he does, and killed Peter.”