“Lots of things are against the law here. I’m not stalking you-I’m just
a reasonably competent investigator. If I wanted to go to the trouble, I could probably find traces of your clothes on that fire escape: rough metal like that always snags some fibers.”
While she tried to think of a response, I went over to inspect the photographs on the mantelpiece. Calvin Bayard and an eight-or nine-year-old Catherine fly-fishing, he with his easy smile, she with her face furrowed in intensity. Calvin with a short dark woman; Catherine with the same woman. Various other family groupings. It wasn’t immediately clear which ones were her parents.
“What do you have that’s mine?” she demanded of my back.
“Your little teddy bear. It came off your backpack in my hand when you broke away from me Sunday night.”
“Oh. That. You can keep it.”
I could see her in a mirror over the mantel. Her little face was pinched with anxiety. She wasn’t as unconcerned as she was trying to sound.
“Did you not know Marcus Whitby was dead when you went back last night?” I spoke to the trophies, keeping an eye on her in the mirror. “What are you talking about?”
“You must have been worried when he missed your rendezvous on Sunday. Or did you just assume I had frightened him off?”
“I don’t know any Marcus Whitby, so stop trying to pretend you’re, like, Jack McCoy.”
I swung around to look at her. “You don’t know Marcus Whitby? The man I fished out of the Larchmont pool? You don’t know he’s dead?” Her eyes and jaw opened in what looked like genuine bewilderment. “You found a dead man out there? What happened to him?”
“Don’t you look at the paper or the news? When you log onto your fancy computer there, doesn’t CNN or NBC or something come up to tell you what’s happening outside the Gold Coast?”
She stiffened. “For your information, I’m very involved in current events. But that doesn’t mean I read about every dead person in the world. Is that why you were at Larchmont? To look for him? Who was he?”
I sat down on one of the ottomans in front of the fireplace and gestured to her to take the other. “Marcus Whitby worked for T-square magazine.” She gave the elaborate shrug of adolescent indifference.
“Black arts and entertainment, middle class.” When she continued to mime ignorance, I added, “He wrote a piece on Haile Talbot. I thought maybe that was how you met.”
“I don’t know him. Marcus whoever, I mean. And I hardly know Haile Talbot. Just because I did PA stuff for him doesn’t mean I hung out with him when he did media. He had a publicist who took care of that.”
“Then who were you meeting out at Larchmont?”
She bit her lips. “No one. I was there on a dare. You caught me fair and square. Now you can give me my teddy back and go home.”
I shook my head. “No. I know you were there again last night, so even if I was gullible enough to believe-“
“And you say you’re not a stalker?”
I ignored the interruption. “I told you at the get-go that it was me or the cops. Since you won’t talk to me, it’s the cops. You were at the scene of a mysterious death, a crime scene, you fled, they will be incredibly interested in you. The good news is they’ll only talk to you with your parent or guardian present. So-your dad, your mom, your grandparents-which one of them should I explain this to?”
Her eyes darkened with dismay, but, before she could say anything, someone tapped on her door, and immediately opened it. The short dark woman from the photographs swept in, moving across the room to Catherine like the Wabash Cannonball.
CHAPTER 12
The Wabash Cannonball
Gran!” Catherine jumped and looked from her grandmother to me in alarm. “What are you doing home so early?”
Renee Bayard leaned over to kiss Catherine. She was older than in the mantel photos. Her dark hair was now well streaked with gray, but her skin was remarkably smooth and clear under its light foundation. Her red dress, made from a wool so soft I had an impulse to stroke it, looked as though it had been cut to fit her short, square body. A bracelet of ivory mahjongg tiles clacked when she put her arms around her granddaughter.