doing by a prominent progressive would only give rightwing radicals more cause for triumphalism. I couldn’t bear to contribute to their jubilant trampling on human rights. I couldn’t pursue this investigation further.
I looked again at Kylie Ballantine’s silhouette. She had lost her career because someone had betrayed her to Olin Taverner. Marc had lost his life for the simple crime of trying to revive her memory. No amount of good that Calvin had done, through his foundation, or the books he’d published, could outweigh the crime of killing Marcus Whitby. If it was Renee who’d killed him. And look at the probabilities: she was the one who relished organizing great enterprises. I could imagine Edwards ordering a subordinate to “take care of this problem for me”; I couldn’t imagine him doing it himself.
I shouldn’t discount Augustus Llewellyn. He could have given Marc doped whisky more easily than a stranger. And he, too, had secrets he was determined to hide.
I tried to imagine a confrontation that would make Renee or Llewellyn show their hand. Nothing came to me. Let the police figure it out. Bobby Mallory had been telling me for years that murder was police work. I’d give him all my tangled ideas, the nurse with seizures, every little thing I’d learned from Geraldine Graham and from the archives. He could turn the police machinery on and if it led to Renee then that’s where it would go.
I pushed myself to my feet, my joints stiff from sitting so long in the cold. The weight in my bag reminded me of my own brief jubilation. Marc’s bottle of bourbon-I’d turn that over to Bobby, too. In exchange, I’d ask Bobby to protect Benji, tell him that Benji was his material witness to whoever put Marc in that Larchmont pond. Bobby was at odds with the federal attorney, he’d work out something.
I thrust away a nagging voice that said Bobby would brush off my ideas as insubstantial, or unsubstantiable. Or that he’d be so angry with me for hiding Benji he wouldn’t listen to me. I didn’t have evidence, the nagger said, only the connections that came from reading archives and listening to people; I didn’t have hard evidence. I fought the notion that Bobby would flat out refuse to investigate that New Solway crowd.
Anyway, I shouldn’t go to Bobby without talking it over with Benji and Father Lou. I’d explain to Benji that things had changed since yesterday
morning: now I knew the murderer was one of two, maybe three, people, all I needed from him was a shortcut to the person’s identity. Bobby and Benji would both do my bidding. They had to.
I went slowly down the stairs to the front walk and climbed into Marc’s Saturn. To my astonishment, it was only four o’clock: I felt as though the day had been going on for thirty or forty hours by now.
The girls were still jumping double Dutch in the road. Among them was the one who’d pointed out Marc’s car to me last week. She nudged someone waiting a turn at the ropes. They all stopped jumping to stare at me. I waved as I climbed into the driver’s seat.
“You with the police, miss? The police want that car or are you stealing it?” my informant asked, hands on hips.
“Stealing,” I said, rolling down the window so they could hear me. That made them laugh and draw closer. “What the police want with Mr. Whitby’s car, miss?”
“Clues. He was killed, you know. We’re hoping the car will hold some clues about who killed him. None of you saw the person who drove this car back here last Sunday night, did you?”
That was too strong. They pulled away, huddling together, quiet. A killer coming right onto the block, no, they didn’t need that fear over their young heads.
I said cheerfully, “Don’t worry if you see lights on in the house tonight. We’re bringing in a caretaker, someone to live here until the family decides to sell. Okay? And don’t worry about this killer-they’re not going to come back here.”
“How do you know?” one of them demanded. “No one been arrested, no one been suspected.”
“Three people are suspected. They live far away. You’re safe here in your neighborhood.”
When I drove up the street, I could see them in my rearview mirror, jump ropes dangling from their hands. While I waited at the light on Thirtyfifth, they finally started turning the ropes again, but the energy had gone out of their play. Good work, VI., sucking the enthusiasm out of little girls.
I took a look at the traffic stalled on the Dan Ryan Expressway and stayed on the side streets, driving slowly but quietly up to St. Remigio’s.
Marc’s green Saturn was just the car for these streets, not flashy, not the kind that people stare at and remember. I parked two blocks west of the church and made a great circle around it on foot so that I came up to the school entrance from the south.