He kept his tone light, but he was upset that I’d one–upped him in a philosophy discussion—he controlled his hands, but he couldn’t control a pulse in his temple. I made sure that the breath of relief I exhaled went out very softly indeed.
“My own, Mr. Baladine. With all the money you spent finding out about my whisky preferences, I’m sure you must have put a dollar or two into learning about the State’s Attorney’s attempt to arrest me for a hit–and–run involving your former nanny. Or was he doing that at your and Jean–Claude Poilevy’s request?”
He laughed with a practiced humor that didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m honored you have that much respect for my power, but I don’t think Nicola’s death was anything but an unfortunate accident. She ran away from jail; she got hit by a car. I can’t even say I’m sorry: she was a liar and she was a thief. My strongest feeling is annoyance, because my hyper–emotional son is having another tiresome episode over her death.”
“Poor Robbie,” I said. “Not the son for a manly man. Maybe he was swapped at birth with an artist’s child.”
Irony was wasted on him; he made a face. “I sometimes think so. His kid sister is twice the man that he is. But you didn’t bother my wife to find out whether J.C. and I were framing you, because you didn’t know we were friends until you ran into Jennifer out there.”
He was rattled by my investigation, or he wouldn’t have the chronology so pat in his mind. “I had hoped your wife could tell me something about Ms. Aguinaldo’s private life, but she apparently had no interest in a woman who was the most intimate caregiver of her children. Maybe you delved deeper?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” He picked up his water glass but eyed me over the rim as he spoke.
I crossed my legs, smoothing out the crease in the silk—I’d taken time to go home to change before trekking out here. “Carnifice provides in–home surveillance and a reference service for nannies. I assume you employed it when you hired Nicola Aguinaldo.”
“It’s the old truth about the shoemaker’s children, I suppose: we relied on the credentials of the agency we had used in the past. It didn’t occur to me that Nicola was illegal. And I knew about her children, of course, but I wasn’t interested in any private life she might have had on her days off, as long as it didn’t spill over into my family.” He forced a smile. “Into my private point of view.”
“So you don’t know who she would have run to for help when she escaped last week? No lovers, no one who might have beaten her up?”
“Beaten her up?” he echoed. “I understood she was hit and killed by a car. One other than yours, of course.”
“Funny,” I said. “Your wife and her friends knew she’d been attacked. If they didn’t learn it from you, where did they hear it?”
Once again I could see the pulse jump at his temple, although he put his fingers together and spoke condescendingly. “I’m not going to try to untangle a game of who said what to whom. It’s childish and not good investigative work, as I often tell our new operatives. Perhaps I spoke to my wife before I had all the information from the Cook County State’s Attorney and the Chicago police. The latest word from them is that she was killed in a hit–and–run.”
“Then you should get your team to talk to the doctor who operated on her. Even though her body has disappeared, so the medical examiner can’t perform an autopsy, the ER doctor at Beth Israel saw that she’d been killed by a blow that perforated her small intestine. Inconsistent with being hit by a car.”
“So all you wanted from Eleanor was a lead on Nicola’s private life. I’m sorry we can’t help you with that.”
“Woman worked for you what—two years?—and you know nothing about who she saw on her days off, but in one afternoon you nail down my whisky preferences? I think you care more about your children’s welfare than that.”
He chuckled. “Maybe you’re more interesting to me than a diaper–changing immigrant.”
“She seemed to make a deep impression on your son. That didn’t concern you?”
Again his mouth twisted in slight distaste. “Robbie cried when the cat caught a bird. Then he cried when the cat had to be put to sleep. Everything makes a deep impression on him. Military school might help cure that.”
Poor kid. I wondered if he knew that lay in his future. “So what did you want with me that entailed my making the journey all the way out here?”
“I wanted to see whether you would make the trip.”
I nodded but didn’t say anything. His point: to prove he was big and I was small. Let him think he had made it successfully.
“You’ve been an investigator for sixteen years, Vic.” He shifted deliberately to my first name: I was small, he could patronize me. “What keeps you going when your annual billings barely cover your expenses?”