This sounded like a real heartache to me. “You’re right—I don’t. My high school, most of us girls had a couple of dresses we started with as sophomores and wore out the door when we graduated. Park Forest South may be a bit tonier than South Chicago—but not a lot.”
“Park Forest South! My mother moved there later. We grew up here in Lake Bluff. We had horses. My father kept a boat. We lived down the road from here. Then he lost everything. Everything. I was a junior in high school. Paige was only eight. She’s too young to remember the humiliation. The way people stared in school. Mother sold the silver. She sold her own jewels. But it didn’t do any good. He shot himself and we moved away. She couldn’t stand the pity people like old Mrs. Grafalk dished out at the country club. And I had to go to Roosevelt instead of Northwestern.”
“So you decided you were going to move back here, no matter what it took. What about your husband? He a Lake Bluffer in exile who made his way back?”
“Clayton came from Toledo. Eudora Grain brought him here when he was twenty-five. He rented an apartment in Park Forest and we met there.”
“And you thought he had possibilities, that he might go all the way for you. When did you find out that wasn’t going to happen?”
“When Terri was born. We were still living in that crappy three-bedroom house.” She was screaming now. “Terri and Ann had to share a room. I was buying all my clothes at Wieboldt’s. I couldn’t stand it! I couldn’t stand it anymore. And there was Paige. She was only eighteen, but she already knew—knew—”
“Knew what, Jeannine?”
She recovered some of her control. “Knew how to get people to help her out,” she said quietly.
“Okay. You didn’t want Paige outdressing you. So you put pressure on your husband to come up with more money. He knew he was never going to have enough if he just struggled along on his salary. So he decided to skim something off the top before it ever hit Eudora’s books. Did he fiddle with anything besides the invoices?”
“No, it was just the invoices. He could make—make—about a hundred thousand extra a year from them. He—he didn’t do it with all the orders, only about ten percent. And he paid taxes on them.”
“Paid taxes on them?” I echoed incredulously.
“Yes. We didn’t want to run—run a risk with the IRS auditing us. We called it commission income. They don’t know what his job’s supposed to be like. They don’t know whether he should be earning commissions or not.”
“And then my cousin found out. He was going through the papers, trying to see what a regional manager does to run an office like that, and he ended up comparing some invoices with the original contract orders.”
“It was terrible,” she gulped. “He threatened to tell David Argus. It would have meant the end of—of Clayton’s career. He would have been fired. We would have had to sell the house. It would have been—”
“Spare me,” I said harshly. A pulse throbbed in my right temple. “It was a choice between the Maritime Club and my cousin’s life.”
She didn’t say anything. I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “Answer me, damn you! You decided my cousin had to die to keep you in your Massandrea dresses. Is that what happened? Is it?”
In my rage I had lifted her from her wing chair and was shaking her. Mrs. Carrington came bustling into the room.
“What is going on here?” she fussed behind me. I was still screaming at Jeannine. Mrs. Carrington grabbed my arm. “I think you’d better go now. My daughter cannot afford any more upsets. If you don’t leave, I will call the police.”
Somehow her scratchy voice penetrated and I forced my anger back. “You’re right. I’m sorry, Mrs. Carrington. I’m afraid I got carried away by my work.” I turned to Jeannine. “Just one more question before I leave you to your mourning. What was Paige’s role in all this?”
“Paige?” she whispered, rubbing her shoulders where I had grabbed them. She gave the sly smile I’d seen earlier. “Oh, Paige was supposed to keep track of what Boom Boom was up to. But you’d better talk to her. She hasn’t given away my secrets. I won’t give away hers.”
“That’s right,” Mrs. Carrington said. “You girls should be loyal to each other. After all, you’re all that you have.”
“Besides a boat and a condo on Astor Place,” I said.
24
A Question of Policy
I was sick by the side of the road as soon as I got to the end of the drive. Terri rode up on her bicycle, a Peugeot ten-speed, I noticed as I wiped my mouth with a Kleenex. Boom Boom, you did not die in vain if you preserved a French racing bicycle for that girl.