“We were done anyway, Grant” Catherine hopped up from her ottoman.
“That’s right,” I smiled again, holding out my card. “You need my address, though, as well as my name and phone number, so that you can follow up on your interview. And send me a copy of the finished piece.”
“Yeah, sure,” Catherine mumbled, shooing me down the hall before I could say anything else in front of her grandmother.
CHAPTER 13
Quicksand?
I left the Bayard apartment feeling confused and annoyed. My mood wasn’t improved by the bright orange envelope on my car-another fifty dollars, this time for leaving the front end across a yellow line. A hundred and one dollars so far today in parking fees. I could have screamed in frustration. My eyes and joints ached from my cold, which made it hard for me to think clearly. I pulled the lever to recline the driver’s seat as far as it would go and leaned back with my eyes shut.
Strictly speaking, whether Catherine was lying or not about her grandfather was none of my business. The only thing about her that could remotely justify my scrutiny was whether she had known Marcus Whitby. And I thought she hadn’t. She wasn’t yet a sophisticated liar-her breathless manner when she was twirling away from the truth would disappear with practice.
That farrago she’d spun about her grandfather and Larchmont was truly infuriating, but I thought she was merely oblivious to Marcus Whitby. Hers was an adolescent absorption in her own affairs; it was so intense that she brushed off the dreadful notion of Whitby lying dead in the pool while she went about her own separate business. I don’t usually believe in coincidences, but Whitby and Catherine-and me-all being there on the same night could actually be one.
She was frustrating enough for me to want to find out what she was doing at Larchmont Hall. But I couldn’t ask Harriet Whitby to pay me to pursue a teenager for no reason except that she’d made me feel foolish.
I switched on the radio to see if they had anything on Olin Taverner’s death. More bombing runs outside Kandahar, dissension among the Afghan warlords, Illinois cutting funds for schools and health care to balance the state budget. Since September 11, just about every public figure in America has been declaiming that we’re a Christian nation; I guess that’s why widows and orphans carry the load for fiscal responsibility here.
During the interminable commercial breaks, I began to doze, but I jerked back awake at Taverner’s name.
One of Chicago’s most prominent figures, and one of its most controversial, is gone. Olin Tavernergained notoriety in the fifties when he served as counsel to Illinois congressman Walker Bushnell on the House Un-American Activities Committee. For two decades, Taverner was one of the most important voices of American conservatism. Of late years, he had been living quietly, almost reclusively, in a retirement home near Naperville. His personal attendant found Taverner in his armchair this morning, dead of an apparent heart attack. He has left no immediate survivors. Again, Olin Taverner, dead at ninety-one.
Are you sick of turning to your ten-year-old every time you want to cruise the Web? Well, here’s a perfect solution. I switched off the sound. Dead in a retirement home near Naperville? Could that have been Anodyne Park? Maybe Taverner had been Geraldine Graham’s neighbor in that exclusive little retirement resort. Maybe I could talk to her about him. And find out whether by some remote chance Catherine Bayard was telling the truth when she said her grandfather had a key to Larchmont Hall.
A Chicago cop started purposefully down the street, ready to give me a second ticket. I put the car in gear and drove to my office. I should check a few things, anyway, before seeing Ms. Graham again. Come to think of it, I could get a detailed report on Taverner from the Web.
As I let myself into the building, Tessa was locking her studio door. She
backed away from me when she saw I had a cold: she’s a bit of a nut about germs. I made a show of covering my mouth with my scarf. She laughed, but still edged quickly out the front door.
I went down the hall to the back of the building, switching on the tiny cooktop we put back there. We share a shower room and a refrigerator, too, but we meter our gas and electricity separately because Tessa’s metal sculpting is so power-demanding. I scrounged one of Tessa’s tea bags, conscientiously leaving an IOU: one ginger-lemongrass tea bag, and took it into my office.