“V 1. Warshawski.” I handed her one of my cards.
“Yes, I see. Now. Why were you here on-Wednesday afternoon, wasn’t it? How did you come to follow Catherine home? And why did you then go to New Solway on Thursday to bother my staff?”
“Ma’am, I have a great deal of respect for your husband, and am acquiring a fair amount for you as I watch you in action-but you mustn’t jump over facts to get to the conclusion you want.”
Edwards’s eyebrows shot up; he apparently wasn’t used to seeing people stand up to his mother. Renee studied me. “And what fact do you think I’m `jumping over’?”
“You assume, or want to believe, that I followed Catherine home last week.”
Elsbetta entered with a trolley holding another ornate china service. When she’d served us and left, Renee continued as if there had been no interruption.
“I know Catherine didn’t get your name from Darraugh Graham. How did you meet her?”
I told her about finding Marcus Whitby, about my investigation into his death, and why I wanted to talk to Catherine in the first place-it seemed pointless to cover up Catherine’s presence at Larchmont on Sunday night. I even told Renee about being in the pond on Friday, but not that I’d heard her and Catherine talking. And I stuck to my story about finding the kitchen door open at Larchmont Hall: I didn’t want competing versions of my activities floating around.
“I was startled when the sheriff’s police suddenly arrived,” I said. “And I did wonder if it was you who’d alerted them to the notion that there really was someone in the house.”
Renee’s hand didn’t pause as she lifted her eggshell cup to her lips. She drank and set it down. “And what made you wonder that?”
“You knew Catherine was wandering around Larchmont in the dark;
she wouldn’t tell you why. She’s an ardent spirit, but she’s very youngperhaps you thought she might not recognize as dangerous someone she’d agreed to help. Perhaps you thought she had some outlaw holed up, someone she’d romanticized into a Robin Hood. I don’t know how you would have imagined this person, but you knew she valued her oath to protect him more even than the very strong bond between you and her. You wanted him found and moved off the Larchmont property.”
“So you did know she was wandering around there,” Edwards said to his mother. “And you did nothing to stop her!”
“I only learned on Friday.” For once, Renee was on the defensive. “I called Rick Salvi to tell him someone was hiding in the house; o? course I didn’t tell him it was someone Catherine was meeting.”
“Even so,” Edwards burst out, “you should have-“
“I thought I had Catherine well under my eye,” Renee said. “I looked in on her at midnight, right before I phoned Rick, and she was-she seemed to be -sleeping. I thought I’d have the problem solved before she woke up in the morning. Instead, she apparently waited for me to check on her, then went out her window onto the veranda roof and slid down a column to the ground. When I heard shots coming from the woods, I went back to her room-and found her gone. I don’t think anyone ever covered that ground to Larchmont faster than I did that night. Which was fortunate, since when I got there they were staring down at Catherine as if she were a movie they were watching. They hadn’t even sent for an ambulance.”
Edwards’s eyes flashed. “I’m sure your organizational skills saved her life. It’s a pity you didn’t apply them to keeping her from risking it.”
“She’s your daughter, Eds, she’ll do what she wants to do no matter how much I try to engineer a different outcome.” Renee spoke with the kind of saintly resignation that makes the hearer long to belt the speaker.
Edwards took a breath and turned to me. “How deep is her involvement with the kid, with Sadawi?”
“I’ve only met your daughter a few times, but I think she was in love with the romance of the situation, not with the young man himself. What did your buddies in Washington learn about him? Is he a serious security threat?”
“We don’t know anything about him, per se, but he’s connected to a
suspect group. The mosque that he frequents puts out some pretty fiery rhetoric, and he’s been renting a room from one of their members, a guy who’s sent money to the Brothers in Harmony Foundation.”
“I take it these Brothers aren’t in harmony with American interests?” I pursued.
“Oh, they’re murky, like all these groups. We know they’ve sent an X-ray machine to the Chechen rebels; they’ve bought food for Egyptian families, but we believe other funds get funneled through honey sales into AlQaeda hands.”