I repeated Louisa’s name correctly. “Yes?”
“Mr. Humboldt says he talked to Dr. Chigwell about her and that it is probable that Joey Pankowski was the child’s father.” She had trouble with Pankowski too. I expected better from Humboldt’s private secretary.
I took the receiver away from my ear and looked at it, as though I could see Ms. Hollingsworth’s face in it. Or Humboldt’s. At last I held it back to my mouth and asked, “Do you know who did the investigation for Mr. Humboldt?”
“I believe he interested himself directly in the matter,” she said primly.
I said slowly, “I think Dr. Chigwell may have misled Mr. Humboldt. It’s important that I see him to discuss the matter with him.”
“I doubt that very much, Ms. Warshawski. Mr. Humboldt and the doctor have worked together a long time. If he gave Mr. Humboldt the information, you may certainly depend on it.”
“Perhaps so.” I tried to make my tone conciliatory. “But Mr. Humboldt told me himself that his staff sometimes try to protect him from unfortunate events. I suspect something like that may have been going on in this case.”
“Really,” she said huffily. “You may work in an environment where people can’t trust each other. But Dr. Chigwell has been a most reliable associate of Mr. Humboldt’s for fifty years. Maybe someone like you can’t appreciate it, but the idea of Dr. Chigwell lying to Mr. Humboldt is totally ludicrous.”
“Just one thing before you hang up in righteous indignation. Someone misled Mr. Humboldt terribly about the true nature of the suit Pankowski and Ferraro brought against Xerxes. That’s why I’m not too confident about this last bit of news.”
There was a pause, then she said grudgingly, “I’ll mention the matter to Mr. Humboldt. But I doubt very much that he’ll want to talk to you.”
That was the best I could get from her. I frowned at the phone some more, wondering what I would say to Humboldt if I saw him. Fruitless. I locked up the office and drove up to the little hardware store on Diversey. They hadn’t wanted to talk to me on the phone, but when they saw I was prepared to be vocal in front of their customers they took me into the back and reluctantly wrote out another check. Plus the ten dollars handling for the bad one. I paid it directly into my bank and went home.
Slipping in through the back entrance, I managed to sidestep Mr. Contreras and the dog. I stopped in the kitchen to inspect the food supply. Still grim. I fixed a bowl of popcorn and took it into the living room with me. Popcorn and corned beef—um-um good.
Four-thirty is a terrible time to find anything on TV—I flipped through game shows, Sesame Street, and the beaming face of The Frugal Gourmet I finally turned off the set in disgust and reached for the phone.
The Chigwells were listed under Clio’s name. She answered on the third ring, her voice distant, unyielding. Yes, she remembered who I was. She didn’t think her brother would want to speak to me, but she went to see, anyway. He didn’t.
“Look, Ms. Chigwell. I hate having to be such a pest, but there’s something I want to know. Has Gustav Humboldt called him in the last few days?”
She was surprised. “How did you know?”
“I didn’t. His secretary passed on some information that Humboldt supposedly got from your brother. I wondered if Humboldt made it up.”
“What did he say Curtis told him?”
“That Joey Pankowski was Caroline Djiak’s father.”
She asked me to explain who they were, then went off to confront her brother. She was gone for a quarter of an hour. I finished the popcorn and did some leg raises, lying with the phone near my ear so I could hear her return.
She came back on the line abruptly. “He says he knew about the man, that the girl’s mother had told him all about it back when they hired her.”
“I see,” I said weakly.
“The trouble is, you can’t spend your whole life with someone without knowing when they’re lying. I don’t know what part of it Curtis is making up, but one thing I can tell you—he’d say anything Gustav Humboldt told him to.”
While I struggled to add this news to my pickled brain, something else struck me. “Why are you telling me this, Ms. Chigwell?”
“I don’t know,” she said, surprised. “Maybe after seventy-nine years, I’m tired of having Curtis hide behind me. Good-bye.” She hung up with an abrupt click.