but at the end he agreed to send his own locksmith to meet me on Giles Street.
Next on my list was Renee Bayard. Naturally, I only reached a secretary; naturally, Ms. Bayard was in an important meeting, but I left a carefully rehearsed message: I was a detective Ms. Bayard had met Wednesday night, the one who had discovered Marcus Whitby’s dead body. It was now clear that Whitby had met with Olin Taverner shortly before Taverner himself died, and I was assuming they had discussed Kylie Ballantine. I wanted to ask Ms. Bayard what she knew about Ballantine and Taverner. The secretary read the message back to me in a doubtful voice, but said she would pass it along.
After some internal debate, I also placed a call to Augustus Llewellyn’s office. Once again I only reached a secretary, a polished woman with executive office manners, not the rough hostility of their lobby receptionist. Once again I explained my mission for the Whitby family.
“Mr. Marc Whitby tried to see Mr. Llewellyn last week. When he made the appointment, did he say why?”
“We have procedures for staff writers, for all staff, who want to see Mr. Llewellyn. I explained that to Marc when he came up to the eighth floor and told him he had to send me a memo stating the reason for the meeting.” She put me on hold to answer another line.
“Did Marc send the memo?” I asked when she came back on the line. “He didn’t want to.” Her tone hardened. “He said it was sensitive material that he didn’t want to put in writing. He also didn’t want to discuss it with his editor. I told him he couldn’t be the only judge of what was worth intruding on Mr. Llewellyn. He was one of our best writers, but I really can’t relax the rules for one person, just because he’s a star.”
“I understand,” I said quickly, “but I’m also puzzled. It doesn’t sound like him, to try to contravene company policy. I think he was troubled by something Olin Taverner told him, and that he might have wanted to consult Mr. Llewellyn about it.”
“And what was that?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “If I could find out, it might explain who killed him. Mr. Whitby learned something unusual last week, something involving the old HUAC investigations. I can’t find a living soul he talked to about it, so if that’s why he tried to see Mr. Llewellyn, I’d really like to know. Could you check with Mr. Llewellyn, to see whether Marc actually talked to him? He might have waited for you to go to lunch, or even phoned Mr. Llewellyn at home.”
She said stiffly that when she was away from her desk, her assistant sat in for her and logged in any callers. Still, she took my details before hanging up to answer another call.
I stared at the picture over my desk, as if I could see Marc Whitby in the blur of color. What had come up that made him risk his job at T-Square by going directly to the magazine’s owner? Of course, it could have been anything-but no notes or papers remained in his desk or home. So I had to believe it involved the same story that took him to Olin Taverner last week. If I couldn’t find any papers in his car, then I’d have to grasp at my last straw, and see whether he’d dropped something in the pond when he fell in. I called around to places that rented diving equipment just in case.
I found a shop on Diversey that could help me. I stopped there on my way to the South Side. They rented me a wet suit. I bought a headlamp, goggles and an underwater knife; at a hardware store near Marc’s home I bought a roll of twine. That should get me through the pond if I had to go in.
I got to Marc’s house after the morning rush to work and school had ended. A stay-at-home mom out with a baby buggy eyed me curiously, but no one else was on the street. When Amy arrived, we started a deeper search than we’d done before, going through the basement, looking under rugs and tapping wallboard in the unfinished rooms-all the labor of a truly thorough search.
Around noon, Luke’s locksmith arrived. He had a box of keys and alarm codes. When he had opened the Saturn, he gave me the coded key that worked the ignition and alarm-for a hundred dollars.
While Amy continued doggedly inside the house, I made a similarly thorough, and equally futile, search of the car. I was lying under the chassis with a flashlight, while a couple of area winos offered helpful suggestions, when Renee Bayard returned my call.
I slid out from beneath the car and got into the driver’s seat so I could talk to her privately. The Wabash Cannonball came over the ether at full speed.
“Ms. Warshawski, you were talking to my granddaughter on Wednesday without my permission. You were out in New Solway yesterday questioning my staff without talking to me first. And now, finally as an afterthought, you want to talk to me. You should have started with me.”