My Chevy felt embarrassed turning through twin stone pillars, especially when it saw a small Mercedes, an Alfa, and an Audi Fox off to one side of the drive. The circular drive took me past some attractive flower gardens to the front door of a limestone mansion. Next to the door a small sign requested tradesmen to make deliveries in the rear. Was I a tradesman or -woman? I wasn’t sure I had anything to deliver, but perhaps my host did.
I took a card from my wallet and wrote a short message on it: “Let’s talk about your relations with the Knifegrinders.” I rang the bell.
The expression on the face of the neatly uniformed woman who answered the door reminded me of my black eye: the bute had put it out of my mind for a while. I gave her the card. “I’d like to see Mr. Thayer,” I said coolly.
She looked at me dubiously, but took the card, shutting the door in my face. I could hear faint shouts from beaches farther up the road. As the minutes passed, I left the porch to make a more detailed study of a flower bed on the other side of the drive. When the door opened, I turned back. The maid frowned at me.
“I’m not stealing the flowers,” I assured hen “But since you don’t have magazines in the waiting area, I had to look at something.
She sucked in her breath but only said, “This way.” No “please,” no manners at all. Still, this was a house of mourning. I made allowances.
We moved at a fast clip through a large entry room graced by a dull-green statue, past a stairway, and down a hall leading to the back of the house. John Thayer met us, coming from the other direction. He was wearing a white knit shirt and checked gray slacks—suburban attire but muted. His whole air was subdued, as if he were consciously trying to act like a mourning father.
“Thanks, Lucy. We’ll go in here.” He took my arm and moved me into a room with comfortable armchairs and packed bookcases. The books were lined up neatly on the shelves. I wondered if he ever read any of them.
Thayer held out my card. “What’s this about, Warshawski?”
“Just what it says. I want to talk about your relations with the Knifegrinders.”
He gave a humorless smile. “They are as minimal as possible. Now that Peter is—gone, I expect them to be nonexistent.”
“ I wonder if Mr. McGraw would agree with that.”
He clenched his fist, crushing the card. “Now we get to it. McGraw hired you to blackmail me, didn’t he?”
“Then there is a connection between you and the Knifegrinders.”
“No!”
“Then how can Mr. McGraw possibly blackmail you?”
“A man like that stops at nothing. I warned you yesterday to be careful around him.”
“Look, Mr. Thayer. Yesterday you got terribly upset at learning that McGraw had brought your name into this. Today you’re afraid he’s blackmailing you. That’s awfully suggestive.”
His face was set in harsh, strained lines. “Of what?”
“Something was going on between you two that you don’t want known. Your son found it out and you two had him killed to keep him quiet.”
“That’s a lie, Warshawski, a goddamned lie,” he roared.
“Prove it.”
“The police arrested Peter’s killer this morning.”
My head swam and I sat down suddenly in one of the leather chairs. “What?” My voice squeaked.
“One of the commissioners called me. They found a drug addict who tried to rob the place. They say Peter caught him at it and was shot.”
“No,” I said.
“What do you mean, no? They arrested the guy.”
“No. Maybe they arrested him, but that wasn’t the scene. No one robbed that place. Your son didn’t catch anyone in the act. I tell you, Thayer, the boy was sitting at the kitchen table and someone shot him. That is not the work of a drug addict caught in a felony. Besides, nothing was taken.”
“What are you after, Warshawski? Maybe nothing was taken. Maybe he got scared and fled. I’d believe that before I’d believe your story—that I shot my own son.” His face was working with a strong emotion. Grief? Anger? Maybe horror?
“Mr. Thayer, I’m sure you’ve noticed what a mess my face is. A couple of punks roughed me up last night to warn me off the investigation into your son’s death. A drug addict doesn’t have those kinds of resources. I saw several people who might have engineered that—and you and Andy McGraw were two of them.”
“People don’t like busybodies, Warshawski. If someone beat you up, I’d take the hint.”
I was too tired to get angry. “In other words, you are involved but you figure you’ve got your ass covered. So that means I’ll have to figure out a way to saw the barrel off your tail. It’ll be a pleasure.”
“Warshawski, I’m telling you for your own good: drop it.” He went over to his desk. “I can see you’re a conscientious girl—but McGraw is wasting your time. There’s nothing to find.” He wrote a check and handed it to me. “Here. You can give McGraw back whatever he’s paid you and feel like you’ve done your duty.”
The check was for $5,000. “You bastard. You accuse me of blackmail and then you try to buy me off?” A spurt of raw anger pushed my fatigue to one side. I ripped up the check and let the pieces fall to the floor.