He gave a grateful half smile. “Nicola, she didn’t speak much English. Some Spanish, but her real language was Tagalog. That’s what they speak in the Philippines, you know; that’s where she came from. She always said it was better to read and know many things from books than be able to swim. Without an education she could only be a nanny or clean houses. She taught me how to know the stars so I could track at night. I got a book of constellations in Spanish and English, which made Mom crazy; she thought Nicola should learn English instead of me Spanish. Maybe Nicola called me butterball in Tagalog.”
That seemed to be an attempt at a joke, so I laughed a little with him. “Who were the women who were there today?”
“Oh, they’re friends of Mom’s. Mrs. Trant, her daughter and Madison are in the same grade. And Mrs. Poilevy. Parnell and Jason Poilevy. I’m supposed to play with them because their father is important to my father, but I can’t stand them.”
Poilevy. The Speaker of the Illinois House. He’d been standing next to Edmund Trant at the party Tuesday night.
“Tell me about the necklace,” I suggested to Robbie.
“What about it?”
“Do you know if it was really valuable? Do you think it was really missing?”
“You mean, did Mom only pretend it was gone so she could make a scene about Nicola?”
Say what you will about today’s children—all those crime shows they watch make them understand the double–cross young. “Something like that.”
“You don’t know how tough Mom is. If she wanted Nicola gone, phht, out the door she’d go. No, Nicola took it all right.” He frowned. “She sold it at a place near where she lived. When Mom raised the roof and called the cops and everything, the Chicago police found it at this—some kind of jewelry resale shop.”
“Pawnshop,” I suggested.
“Yeah, that’s what it was. Pawnshop. And the man from the pawnshop picked out Nicola from a photograph. And I remember Dad saying”—here he flushed painfully again—”’Stupid spick only got twelve hundred dollars for a fifty–thousand–dollar necklace.’“
“Do you know why she stole the necklace to begin with?”
“Her little girl had asthma and it got real bad, she had to go to the hospital, only Nicola couldn’t pay the bill, I guess. I heard her asking Mom for a loan, and, well, it was thousands of dollars, I guess Mom couldn’t possibly loan her that much money, it would be years before Nicola could pay it off. I gave her five hundred dollars—the money I’ve saved from my grandparents’ birthday checks—only then somehow Dad found out, he stopped the checks, that was when he and Mom made me—”
He pulled at his T–shirt, so that the Space Berets stern faces distorted into sneers; when he spoke again it was in such a rapid monotone I could barely make out the words. “They made me go to this camp for fat kids where you had to run all day and only eat carrots for dinner, and by the time that was over, Nicola was arrested and on trial and everything. I never saw her again. I thought if she ran away from jai . . . only now she’s dead. Who killed her? Did you tell Mom she got kicked to death?”
If I’d known this sensitive boy was listening I wouldn’t have been so graphic with Eleanor. “The doctor who tried to save her life at the hospital said he thought she’d been punched or kicked, but no one knows who did it. I’m hoping I can find that out. Did she ever talk to you about any of the people in her life, anyone she was afraid of, or owed money to?”
“It’s only that she was—she wasn’t very big and she was afraid of people hitting her; once she thought Mom was mad enough to throw something at her, she—it was horrible, she was begging her not to hurt her. I wish—” His face crumpled and he began to cry. “Oh, shit, oh, shit, only crybabies cry, oh, stop.”
Before I could offer any words of comfort he vanished into the shrubbery. I got back in my car, then, wondering if he might be lurking within earshot, got out again.
“I’m going to leave one of my business cards behind this post,” I said loudly. “If anyone finds it who wants to call me, my number’s on it.”
The grounds were so carefully groomed there were no pebbles or branches to weight the card. I finally tore a twig from the shrubbery and placed it behind the gate–release post with my card. As I released the gate I heard a motor revving behind me. The Mercedes Gelaendewagen appeared, going fast. It overtook me before I finished turning onto Gateway Terrace. Mrs. Trant was at the wheel. She and Mrs. Poilevy still had on their heavy glasses, which made them look like the menacing action toys at the pool’s edge.
The Skylark huffed after them but couldn’t keep pace. Before I reached the first intersection the Mercedes had disappeared.
In a few minutes I was back on the main roads, where strip malls and office towers made the Baladine home seem a remote Eden. Buildings of unrelated size and design are plunked haphazardly on the prairie out here, as if their haste to fill the vast space makes developers dig it up at random. It reminded me of a giant box of chocolates, where someone had eaten bits off dozens of pieces in a greedy desire to consume the whole thing at once.