I assumed from Marcena’s suggestive grin that site inspections meant she’d been out with Romeo Czernin in his big truck, having sex at the CID landfill golf course, or maybe the high school parking lot. What point was there in acting so cute about it? Because he was married, or because he was a blue-collar guy? It was as though she thought I was a prude whom this kind of teasing would both offend and titillate. Maybe because I’d told her the kids were talking about their affair, or whatever it should be called.
“Let it go,” I whispered to myself in the dark. “Relax and let it go.” After a while I managed to doze off again.
Morrell was still asleep when I got up at five-thirty to give the dogs a short run. When we got back from our dash to the lake, I opened the door to the spare room so Mitch and Peppy could wake Marcena while I showered. I put on the one business outfit I’d left at Morrell’s. It was a perfectly nice suit in an umber wool, but when Marcena appeared in a red-checked swing jacket I did look like a prude next to her.
There’s no easy way to get from Morrell’s place by the lake to the vast sprawl beyond O’Hare where By-Smart had its headquarters. My own eyes sandy with fatigue, I threaded my way along the side streets, which were already full, even at this hour. I had the radio on, keeping awake to Scarlatti and Copeland, mixed in with ads and dire warnings about traffic mishaps. Marcena slept through it all, through the radio, through the woman in the Explorer who almost creamed us as she pulled out of her driveway without looking, the man in the Beemer who ran the red light at Golf Road, and then gave me the finger for honking.
She even slept, or skillfully feigned sleep, when Rose Dorrado called me back around a quarter to seven.
“Rose! I owe you an apology. I’m sorry I suggested you could be involved in sabotaging the plant; that was wrong of me.”
“I don’t mind, you don’t need to mind.” She was mumbling, hard to hear over the traffic sounds. “I think—I think I worry for nothing about what is happening—a few accidents and I am imagining the worst.”
I was so startled I let my attention slip from the road. A loud honking from the car to my left brought me back in a hurry.
I pulled over to the curb. “What do you mean? Glue doesn’t fall accidentally into locks, and a sackful of rats doesn’t just drop into a ventilation system.”
“I can’t explain how these things happen, but I can’t worry about them no more, so thanks for your trouble, but you need to leave the factory alone.”
That sounded like a rehearsed script if ever I heard one, but she hung up before I could press her further. Anyway, I couldn’t afford to be late out here; I’d have to worry about Rose and Fly the Flag later.
I gave Marcena’s shoulder a tap. She groaned again, but sat up and began putting herself together, putting on makeup, including mascara, and fishing her trademark red silk scarf out of her bag to knot under her collar. By the time we turned onto By-Smart Corporate Way, she looked as elegant as ever. I glanced at myself in the rearview mirror. Maybe mascara would further enhance the red in my eyes.
By-Smart’s headquarters had been designed along the utilitarian lines of one of their own megastores and appeared as big, a huge box that overwhelmed a minute park around it. Like so many corporate parks, this one looked tawdry. The prairie had been stripped from the rolling hills, covered with concrete, and then a tiny bit of grass Scotch-taped in as an afterthought. By-Smart’s landscaper also included a little pond as a reminder of the wetlands that used to lie out here. Beyond the wedge of brown grass, the parking lot seemed to stretch for miles, its gray surface fading into the bleak fall sky.
When we’d tapped our high-heeled way across the lot to the entrance, it was clear that the building’s utility stopped at its shape. It was constructed from some kind of pale gold stone, perhaps even marble, since that seemed to be what covered the lobby floor. The lobby walls were paneled in a rich red-gold wood, with amber blocks set into them here and there. I thought of the endless rows of snow shovels, flags, towels, ice-melt in the warehouse on Crandon, and Patrick Grobian, hoping to make the move out here from his dirty little office. Who could blame him, even if it meant sleeping with Aunt Jacqui?
This early in the day, no receptionist sat behind the giant teak console, but a sullen-faced guard got up and demanded our business.
“Are you Herman?” I asked. “Billy the Ki—young Billy Bysen invited me up for the morning prayer meeting.”
“Oh, yes.” Herman’s face relaxed into a fatherly smile. “Yes, he told me a friend of his would be stopping by for the prayer meeting. He said you should go straight to the meeting room. This lady with you? Here, these passes are good for the day.”