In the distance the orderly Chicago skyline appeared. I swung onto the expressway–Arthur seeing Avalon through the mists and eagerly returning. Not that the pockmarked apartments and burned–out lots lining the inbound Eisenhower were any more delightful than the western suburbs.
A roar in the Skylark’s exhaust made it hard for me to think about the Baladines. I hadn’t gotten what I’d gone out there for: the name of anyone who might have hurt Nicola Aguinaldo. And what had I learned? That the very rich are different from you and me?
Certainly they’re different from me. The neighborhood where I grew up was a lot more like Uptown than Oak Brook. Every kid on my block knew what a pawnshop was: we were often the ones our parents sent with the radio or coat or whatever was going up the spout to pay the rent.
By the same token I didn’t know what life with a full–time nanny was like. Did they talk about their private lives to their young charges? You couldn’t live intimately with people for two years without sharing many intimacies, I suppose, if you found a language in common.
Had Nicola preyed on young Robbie’s sympathies? A sensitive overweight boy would be an easy mark in this house of obsessed athletes. Maybe Nicola got tired of Mom—I certainly had after twenty minutes—and decided to steal both her son’s affections and her jewelry. Not that I was investigating this long–gone burglary, but I wondered if Nicola Aguinaldo really had an asthmatic daughter.
And what about Dad? Robbie had been awfully quick to get the implication of Eleanor Baladine making an excuse to fire Nicola. And those friends of the Baladines knew something—there was a whiff of concealed knowledge in the stiffening, the glances. Had Robert started playing with the help on those days off when he drove her to Chicago? When she ran away from prison did she think he would come to her rescue—leave Eleanor for a Filipina immigrant? Could he perhaps have killed her to keep her from messing with his happy home?
The rush hour was building. The drive home took almost twice as long as the one out, and the exhaust got louder in the long backup off the Eisenhower to the northbound Kennedy. By the time I pulled up in front of my apartment, my bones were vibrating from it. Definitely not a car I wanted to spend the rest of my life in.
Mr. Contreras was out back with the dogs, working over his tomatoes. I called from my back porch and Peppy came up to see me. Mitch was gnawing on a tree branch and barely lifted his head.
As I changed into jeans Peppy followed me around the apartment, making it clear she expected to come with me. “I’m going to Uptown, girl. What if someone assaults me and you’re left in the car for days? Not that a car on that block gets left for long. And I’d have to leave the windows open—anyone could come by and steal you or hurt you.” I couldn’t withstand the longing in her amber eyes. After taking my gun from the safe and checking the clip and the safety, I leashed her up and called down to my neighbor that I was taking her with me on an errand.
As I parked between a rusted Chevy and an empty pickle jar, I wondered what went through Nicola Aguinaldo’s mind when she made that long trip home on Sundays. Suburban bus to train, train to Union Station, walk to State Street, L to Bryn Mawr, the six blocks over to her apartment on Wayne. Over two hours, even if all connections went smoothly. And when she got home, instead of a pool and manicured grounds for her children, she’d find a tiny glass–strewn square of hard–packed dirt in front of her building. If she had fallen in with some scheme of Baladine’s, maybe it was in the hopes of buying her children’s way out of Wayne Street.
The girls who’d helped me canvass the street last night were jumping double–dutch when I pulled up. I picked the pickle jar out of the gutter before someone could run over or throw it. I didn’t see a garbage can so I tossed it into the open rear window of the Skylark. Peppy stuck her head out, hoping that meant I wanted her. The girls caught sight of her and stopped jumping.
“Is that your police dog, miss?” “Does he bite, miss?” “Can I pet him?” “Will he stay in the car?”
“It’s a girl dog who is very gentle; she’d love to say hi to you. Shall I let her out?”
They giggled nervously but approached the car. Peppy has perfect manners. When I let her out of the back, after dancing for a minute to show her pleasure at being released, she sat and extended a paw to the girls. They were enchanted. I showed them how she would take a dog biscuit from my mouth, our noses brushing gently.
“Can I do that, miss?” “Did you raise her from a baby?” “Ooh, Derwa, she likes you, she licked your hand!” “Mina, that police dog going to bite you!”
“Do any of you remember Nicola Aguinaldo?” I asked as casually as I could. “I’d like to talk to her mother.”
“Did she steal that gold thing we found?”
“Don’t be stupid,” another girl with thick braids and a head scarf snorted. “How could she steal something when she was already in jail?”