I ignored the coldness in his voice. “You know Eleanor Baladine is a mad swimmer? She missed a chance to swim in the Olympics and is determined her children will do it for her. I went out there this afternoon and watched her lashing kids around the pool. Besides her own they included Edmund Trant’s daughter and Jean–Claude Poilevy’s sons. By the way, if you heard the names Utah and Madison, would you imagine you were being given street directions or hearing about two little girls?”
“If you’re trying to imply that Edmund Trant and Jean–Claude Poilevy got together with Robert Baladine to kill Baladine’s ex–nanny, you’re so far over the edge that no one can pull you back, Warshawski. I have to run—I’m going to be late for dinner.”
“Sandy Fishbein or Alexandra Fisher or whoever it is can wait five minutes without hurting your television prospects. The Rogers Park police lost the incident report and now they’re saying I was driving drunk and refused a blood test. They want me to take a fall on a hit–and–run in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Don’t you think that’s queer?”
He was silent for a long moment. “It’s unusual. But it doesn’t make me think Baladine is in a conspiracy with Trant and Poilevy to get you.”
I fidgeted with the phone cord. “I don’t think anyone’s out to get me—I mean, not because I’m me. But I do think someone with a heavy hand is leaning on Rogers Park and the State’s Attorney to make a tidy end to the case. Because I happened along and called an ambulance I was nominated for the tidy ending—they couldn’t know housekeeping has always been my weakest point. Poilevy could be leaning on the State’s Attorney as a favor to Baladine, you know, to keep anyone from asking questions about his relations with his kids’ ex–nanny. Stranger things have happened in this town. They might have rushed in to charge me, except I’m a detective, my passenger was an ex–cop, and I sent my car to a private lab for forensic work. Along with the clothes Aguinaldo was wearing when she died.”
“Vic, it’s not that I don’t love you, but I’m late, and I don’t have a clue why you’re telling me all this.”
I suppressed a sigh of impatience. “What do you know about Trant and Poilevy’s working together, or Poilevy and Baladine, that would tell me whether it’s Poilevy pulling this particular lever?”
“Nothing. And I’m not stirring up water around Edmund Trant. For any consideration you can think of. Not even the chance to watch Eleanor Baladine chase him around the pool with a whip.”
“Because you know he’s Mr. Clean? Or because you’re squeamish about taking on your great–grandboss?”
“My great–grand—oh.” When he spoke again, it was without the irritation he’d shown before. “Look, Vic. Maybe I’m being chicken. Okay, I am chicken. But you know how hard I tried to peddle my ass after Global bought the Star. In nine months I got three offers, and they weren’t for serious journalism: hardly anyone’s doing that now. I’m forty–six. If I start bird–dogging Trant or his friends I could find myself on the street—with no one wanting to hire a guy who guns for his own boss. So you think I’m a sellout for going on the tube. You want to lord it over me, oh queen of the incorruptibles, be my guest, but—there’s plenty to investigate in this town without my taking on Trant.”
“I don’t want to lord it over you. But—here’s one thing I’ve been worrying about. What if Baladine was sleeping with the help and set her up—initially, I mean. Maybe he gave her the necklace, then pretended she stole it.”
The more I said, the stupider it sounded, so the faster I talked. “Then she runs away, she needs money, she calls the one person with money she knows—Baladine—”
“Do you have one shred of evidence for this?”
Embarrassment made me hug my knees to my chest, but I bluffed past it. “Well, the three women in Oak Brook sure knew something about Aguinaldo—they knew she’d been assaulted before I mentioned it, and you guys hadn’t printed a line of type about her. Not only that, her body disappeared from the morgue before Vishnikov could do the autopsy.”
“Vic, this isn’t like you. You haven’t done your homework,” Murray said dryly. “Carnifice runs Coolis for the State of Illinois. So Baladine knew Aguinaldo had escaped, because he heads the company that runs the prison. And he probably got an ID on her from the morgue same as you, only faster. So it’s not surprising the ladies already knew. Sorry, Vic. This is a nonstarter. Although I could talk to Trant—I hear the Hollywood operation can use a boost, and that story has Keanu Reeves and Drew Barrymore written all over it. Unless someone’s paying you a big fee for fishing in this pond, I’d pull my line in.”