“Do you enjoy having your own business? Doing all the work yourself, do you ever have time for a private life?”
I admitted a private life was hard for me to maintain. “Since I have to work for a living, I’m happier working for myself than I would be in a big outfit like Carnifice. Anyway, I like knowing that it’s my work that’s solved a problem.”
“Do you think BB could put you out of business?”
I hunched an impatient shoulder. “I don’t know. But I’m curious to know why my asking questions about his kid’s old nanny makes him want to.”
She tapped the wooden counter with one pearl–colored nail. “I don’t think there’s any special mystery about the dead girl. I think it has to do with BB’s personality. You came to his house, you interrogated his wife and his son, and it makes him feel that you proved he was vulnerable. He’s threatening you so he can feel better about the fact that a private detective with a very small company could penetrate his security systems.” She looked at her watch and gave a little gasp. “The time! I really have to run now.”
She threaded her way expertly through the crowds of shoppers. Everything about Abigail Trant depressed me—her polished good looks and manners, the fact that she had stiffed me half a dozen times with perfect good manners, and the possibility she could be right about Nicola Aguinaldo. She was only thirty–five, but she could dance rings about me—no wonder she was entertaining important guests in Oak Brook and I was taking my sweaty body back to my un–air–conditioned car.
14 Crumbs from the Table
When I got back to the city I was too worn out by the heat to go to my office. I’d been planning on buckling down on my project for Continental United, but I went home and showered and lay down.
As I dozed through the midday heat my conversation with Abigail Trant kept coming into my dreams. In some of them she was sweetly commiserating because my work interfered with my social life. In others she was standing on the sidelines as BB Baladine threatened me. I woke for good from a nightmare in which Baladine was choking me while Abigail Trant said, “I told you he didn’t like to be threatened.”
“But I wasn’t threatening him,” I said aloud. “It was the other way around.” And what was I supposed to do, back away from Baladine because he interpreted any approach as aggression? Anyway, maybe Abigail Trant was right about Baladine’s character, but I thought there was more to the story than that—some issue about Nicola Aguinaldo, either her life or her death. Perhaps when she escaped from prison she approached Baladine and he interpreted that as a threat, knocked her out, then ran over her. As he got back into his car the emblem came off his loafer. My research said he was a Porsche man. I wondered if his Carrera had been in a body shop lately.
It was all a load of speculative nonsense. Except for the fact that Nicola Aguinaldo was dead. I wished I could talk to her mother. Why had Abuelita Mercedes disappeared so suddenly just at the time her daughter died? Maybe if I went back to Aguinaldo’s neighborhood I could find the mysterious Mr. Morrell, the man asking questions about people who escaped from jail. I made myself an espresso to cut through the dopiness I felt from dozing in the heat, and got dressed again.
I dumped my sweaty jeans in the hamper and chose my outfit carefully—Abigail Trant had made me feel like a grubby hulk. I laughed at myself, a little shamefaced, but still put on clean linen slacks with a big white shirt, even dabbing on lipstick and powder. The result didn’t approach Ms. Trant’s perfection: a polished appearance is like any other skill—you have to work at it a lot to be good. Maybe weekly visits to Parruca’s would help, too.
Saturday is errand day in Uptown just as in Oak Brook, but the girls here were doing chores, not taking riding lessons. When I rang Mrs. Attar’s bell, a sullen Mina, huffy at having to dust, came to the door. The girls had mentioned someone named Aisha; it was Aisha’s father Morrell was talking to. After some grumbling, Mina directed me to the other girl’s apartment, two doors up the street.
Aisha’s father was home, looking after a small boy who was wearing only a diaper. The man greeted me with unsmiling reserve and didn’t move out of the doorway. In stilted but passable English he demanded to know what business of mine it was whether he had a daughter named Aisha? When I explained my errand, the man shook his head. He was afraid the neighborhood girls liked to tease strangers. He didn’t know anyone named Morrell. His wife might have known a woman named—what was it? Abuelita Mercedes?—but she was at the market; the name meant nothing to him. And now if I would excuse him he was very busy. I handed him a card, with a request to call me if he ever heard from Mr. Morrell. It fluttered to the floor in front of him, where I left it.