After the pause for civilities, Schorr and the U.S. attorney both jumped in again, Schorr wanting to know why I had fled before he questioned me, the attorney angry because the Feds had been hunting Benjamin Sadawi for four weeks-I’d been within centimeters of him without telling them.
“Benjamin Sadawi? Is that the boy who’s been a dishwasher at that fancy Gold Coast school?” I paused briefly, hoping they would stop picturing a big man in a head scarf and start seeing a skinny teenager. “I didn’t know I was within centimeters of him. Larchmont Hall was empty when I got there. Lieutenant Schorr’s men thought whoever was hiding in the attic jumped out a third-floor window when he-or she-heard me come in.”
“It didn’t make you suspicious when you found Arab-language books up in that attic?” Derek asked.
“The whole situation was so confusing that I didn’t know how to make sense of it.”
“You went upstairs, didn’t you?” the U.S. attorney asked. He and the DuPage attorney had been introduced as Jack and Orville, but they looked so much alike that I couldn’t remember which was which.
When I nodded, he said, “What did you think when you saw that some of the books were in Arabic?”
I wrinkled up my face, puzzled woman thinking. “There were a bunch of old kids’ books with Calvin Bayard’s name in the flyleaf. The house had belonged to the Drummond family-Geraldine Graham’s father-so I wondered why Mr. Bayard’s books were there. Then I saw the Arab-English dictionary and thought maybe Mr. Bayard was coming over in the middle of the night to study Arabic. I thought he might be translating his childhood books or something.”
“You couldn’t possibly have thought that!” Orville or Jack slapped the tabletop.
“No, you couldn’t have, Vicki,” Bobby spoke quietly, but sternly. “Tonight isn’t an occasion for joking. Since September 11, every law enforcement officer in this country has been stretched past the point of endurance. So give us straightforward answers to our questions.”
Terry Finchley suggested I start by explaining what I’d been doing in Larchmont in the first place. For what seemed to be the thousandth time, I went through my litany about Marcus Whitby’s death and his sister’s hiring me to investigate.
We paused while the woman in the corner changed disks in the machine and checked that it was recording. When she nodded at Terry, he continued. “You didn’t think that was police business? Dragging the pond?”
“I did. Completely. Just as I thought searching Marcus Whitby’s house was police business. But I couldn’t persuade your buddies in DuPage any more than I could persuade you. Since you all took a pass on the investigation, I went out to New Solway on behalf of the family.”
“And searched the pool,” the lanky woman from Cook County said. “And searched the pool,” I agreed.
“Find anything relevant?” Orville or Jack asked.
I spread my hands. “Hard to say. A lot of old china. Nothing that said who put Whitby into the pond. What I did find, though, was the golf cart that the murderer used to drive Mr. Whitby to the pond.”
That got their attention in a hurry. Although Jack or Orville poohpoohed the idea (we know he went there drunk to kill himself privately), Bobby spoke up, asking Lieutenant Schorr how Marc had gotten to the
estate: Had they checked the trains, the taxis, and so on? Schorr and Jack or Orville blustered in a way that proved they hadn’t done any digging into this problem. Bobby would have blasted a subordinate who’d been so slack; to Schorr, he only said quietly that he thought the question merited some research.
“What’s this about the golf cart, Vicki?”
I told him about finding the culvert this evening, and talking to the equipment supervisor. The Finch nodded and made a note. I breathed a quiet sigh of relief. The police machinery was going to take over the laborintensive part of the inquiry.
“But this doesn’t make you a heroine,” Bobby warned me. “What did you do after you searched the pond yesterday? Break into the house?” “Bobby-Captain!” I protested, wounded.
Bobby glared at me and let Schorr take over the questions. We rehashed Geraldine Graham’s interest in her old home. We rehashed the fact that the kitchen door was open.
“You say,” Derek Hatfield put in. “I’ve worked with Warshawski before. She skirts the law; I’ve never proved it, but she’s not above breaking and entering.”
“This DuPage gorilla here-excuse me, this lieutenant-searched me. Thoroughly enough for a sexual misconduct claim. Ask him if he found any tools on me.”
“You were there alone for God knows how long,” Schorr shouted. “You had plenty of time to hide any picklocks.”
I raised my brows in exaggerated disbelief. “You didn’t search that mansion from top to bottom? And all the time thinking you had a terrorist cell hanging out there? On less evidence than an Arab-English dictionary, the government just took apart my home without a warrant.”