“Robbie! You know Mom will have a fit if she sees you in there.” To me she added, “He’s supposed to walk instead of riding. You can see he has a weight problem. Are you the Chicago cop? You’re supposed to go around back; Mom’s waiting for you there. She sent me to tell Rosario to open the gate when you got here, but I suppose Robbie already let you in.”
Robbie left the car while she was piping out her report. The girl was young enough to parrot adult comments without editing; the Baladines must have reported Robbie’s weight problem to strangers so often that it seemed natural to her to tell me about it. I wanted to say something reassuring to him, but he had slipped around the other side of the house.
“You know, there are worse things in life than being overweight,” I pointed out as I followed the girl past the garage.
“Yes, like stealing and getting sent to jail. That’s what Nicola did, so we had to get Rosario instead. I was only six when they arrested Nicola, so it was still all right for me to cry. I cried when Fluffy got hit by a car, too.”
“You are sensitive, aren’t you,” I said in admiration.
“No, that’s for crybabies. I don’t do it anymore, but Robbie cried over Nicola and he was almost eleven. He even cried when Fluffy killed a bird. That’s only nature. Mom! She’s here! She gave Robbie a ride from the gate to the house!”
We had arrived on the far side of the garage, where a four–lane twenty–five–meter pool and a tennis court offered the Baladines a chance to unwind after whatever rigors a day might hold for them. The pool and court were fringed with trees that created pleasing shade against the heat.
Two women were leaning back on padded chaises, eyes shielded by outsize sunglasses. Their swimsuits showed off bodies made perfect by total devotion to their care. They looked up when the girl and I appeared, but continued a desultory conversation with each other.
A third woman, also showing the kind of body that wealth and leisure afford, stood in the shallow end of the pool. She was coaching two little girls who were splashing along the lane next to her. Twin boys were jumping into the water at the deep end, chasing each other with plastic weapons. Several had been dropped at the edge of the pool. Space Berets action figures. I’d seen them at Mary Louise’s—both her boys collected them.
“Not so much motion with your kicks, Utah,” the woman in the pool commanded. “Rhiannon, don’t lift your arms so high coming out of the water. One more length, both of you, with less wave action. Jason and Parnell”— here she raised her voice to a shout, “if you don’t stop making so much commotion you’re getting out until we’re done here.”
She stood with her back to me while Utah and Rhiannon did another twenty–five meters, working hard to keep their splashing to a minimum. My guide watched critically.
“Utah’s my sister. She can do better than me when I was her age, but my form is improving. I’m definitely better than Rhiannon. Want to see?”
“Not today,” I said. “If Utah’s your sister, are you Wyoming or Nevada?”
The girl ignored me and dived into the pool, so smoothly that she barely caused a ripple. She surfaced a third of the way down her lane. Her form was definitely better than mine.
The woman boosted Utah out of the pool, then hoisted herself out with one smooth push from her upper arm. A fourth woman, dark and round as a Gauguin portrait, came out of the shadows and wrapped a towel around the smaller girl. She silently handed another towel to the mother, then walked off with Utah.
“I’m Eleanor Baladine. I hope this is important, because you’re interrupting my training program.”
“The Sydney Olympics?” I asked.
“I know you think you’re being funny,” she said coldly. “Robert and I don’t know how good our girls may get, but they could have a shot at a team in ten years. Especially Utah—although Madison is looking better all the time. And Rhiannon Trant is shaping up fast, even though she only started last summer.”
Rhiannon Trant? Daughter of Edmund, Murray’s new owner? That explained the Global plate out front—I’d thought it stood for Baladine’s plans for world domination. “That’s good. It would be a shame if they only swam for fun.”
“No one swims for fun. You either compete or you aren’t motivated enough to get in the water. I missed an Olympic spot by six–tenths of a second. I don’t want my girls to lose out like that.”
She broke off to call out an instruction to Madison. One of the women in the chaise longues, feeling Rhiannon was being neglected, sat up to call encouragement to her. If she was Edmund Trant’s wife, no wonder gossip columnists like Regine Mauger were slobbering over her. It wasn’t just her gold hair and tan, but the way she moved, even in a beach chair, and the little twitch of humor at her mouth, as if laughing at herself for caring about her daughter’s ability to compete in a neighborhood pool. She made me feel as wide and clumsy as young Robbie.
“I’m V. I. Warshawski.” I approached the pair in the chaise longues. “I’m a detective who has some questions for Ms. Baladine about Nicola Aguinaldo.”