“I’m not suggesting anything—just asking.”
“Well, you sponsored them at the Maritime Club. That’s impossible for the nouveaux riches to crack, from everything I read. Not enough to have a quarter million a year for that place—you have to trace yourself back to the Palmers and the McCormicks. But you got them in. You must have known something about them.”
“That was my wife. She undertakes odd charities—Jeannine was one that she’s since come to regret.”
A phone rang somewhere in the house, followed shortly by a buzz on an instrument I hadn’t noticed earlier, set in an alcove by the bar. Grafalk answered it. “Yes? Yes, I’ll take the call … Will you excuse me, Miss Warshawski?”
I got up politely and moved into the hallway, going the opposite direction from which we’d come in. I wandered into a dining room where a thickset middle-aged woman in a white blouse and blue skirt was laying the table for ten. She was putting four forks and three spoons at each place. I was impressed—imagine having seventy matching forks and spoons. There were a couple of knives apiece, too.
“I bet they’ve got more besides that.”
“Are you talking to me, miss?”
“No. I was thinking aloud. You remember what time Mr. Grafalk got home Thursday night?”
She looked up at that. “If you’re not feeling quite well, miss, there’s a powder room down the hall to your left.”
I wondered if it was the sherry. Maybe Grafalk had put something into it, or maybe it was just too smooth for my scotch-raddled palate. “I feel fine, thanks. I just wanted to know if Mr. Grafalk got home late Thursday night.”
“I’m afraid I couldn’t say.” She went back to the silver. I was wondering if I could beat her into talking with my good arm but it didn’t seem worth the effort. Grafalk came up behind me.
“Oh, there you are. Everything under control, Karen?”
“Yes, sir. Mrs. Grafalk left word she’ll be back by seven.”
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave now, Miss Warshawski. We’re expecting company and I’ve got to do a couple of things before they arrive.”
He showed me to the front door and stood watching until I went through the brick pillars and got into the Chevette. It was six o’clock. The sherry left a nice light glow in my head. Not anything like drunk, not even mildly sloshed. Just glowing enough to take my mind off my aching shoulder, not enough to impair my consummate handling of the stiff steering.
14
Potluck
As I headed back toward the Edens and poverty, I felt as though someone were spinning me around in a swivel chair. Grafalk’s sherry and Grafalk’s story had clearly been provided for a reason. But what? By the time I got back to Lotty’s the sherry had worn off and my shoulder ached.
Lotty’s street is even more decrepit than the stretch of Halsted I inhabit. Bottles mingled with crumpled paper cups in the gutter. A ’72 Impala drooped on the near front side where someone had removed the wheel. An overweight woman bustled along with five small children, each staggering under a heavy bag of groceries. She yelled at them in shrill Spanish. I don’t speak it, but it’s close enough to Italian for me to know it was good-natured chivvying, not angry bullying.
Someone had left a beer can on Lotty’s front steps. I picked it up and carried it in with me. Lotty creates a small island of sanity and sanitation on the street and I wanted to help maintain that.
I smelled pot-au-feu as I opened the door; I suddenly felt good about being here to eat a hearty meal rather than at a seven-course affair in Lake Bluff. Lotty was sitting in the spotless kitchen reading when I came in. She put a marker in her book, took off her black-rimmed glasses, and placed both on a corner of the butcher block.
“It smells great. Anything for me to do? … Lotty, did you ever own seventy matching forks and spoons?”
Her dark eyes gleamed with amusement. “No, my dear, but my grandmother did. At least that many. I had to polish them every Friday afternoon when I was eight. Where have you been that they have seventy matching forks and spoons?”
I told her about my afternoon’s inquiries while she finished the stew and served it. We ate it with thick-crusted Viennese bread. “The trouble is, I’m going in too many different directions. I need to find out about Bledsoe. I need to find out about my car. I need to find out about Phillips’s money. I need to know who broke into Boom Boom’s apartment and killed Henry Kelvin. What were they looking for, anyway? I’d been through all his papers and he didn’t have anything that looked like a hot secret to me.” I pushed an onion around my plate, brooding. “And of course, top of the list, who pushed Boom Boom into Lake Michigan?”