Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 08 (7 page)

“Sorry,
honey,” I said. “My fault for startling you. How about if I pick them up—no one
will ever know they’ve been on the floor—and you find someone to help me with
my coat.”

He
stuffed his fist into his mouth, nodded nervously, and fled toward the back of
the hall, calling “Emily!Emily!” through his fingers.

I
knelt below the uproar and reassembled the tray, putting pastry caps back on
lopsided blobs of mushrooms and bacon. Deirdre must have spent a day on these,
if she’d made enough to feed thirty-five. They’d come out rubbery and a bit
burned. Why had she bothered, with dozens of catering firms to choose from?

As I
was dusting off the sides of the last few pastries the boy reappeared through
the swinging door at the end of the hall. He was hand-in-hand with a young
woman whom I took for his nanny—the Emily he’d gone crying for. She was wearing
a dress cut from an expensive wool, but designed for a woman broader in the
bust and smaller in the waist than she was. Presumably she wore Deirdre’s
castoffs without caring too much how they looked on her, since the rich pink
didn’t go with her brown suede shoes.

She
moved awkwardly in front of me, muttering something I couldn’t catch over the
uproar. When she finally took the tray from me, her round, undefined wrists
showed she was much younger than I’d thought at first, surely a teenager still.

“What
should I do with my coat?” I bellowed through the din. “Upstairs?”

“Josh
will take it. Be careful,” she said as the child grabbed it. “Don’t let it drag
on the ground.”

She
watched him anxiously as he ran up the stairs, trailing the coat along the
carpeting. She took a step toward him, then glanced at me as if expecting
censure.

“It’s
old,” I said lightly. “He can’t make it grubbier than it already is.”

She
didn’t smile back. Her expression was lackluster under her mass of ill-cut
frizzy hair; I wondered if she might be retarded.

“Drinks
are in there. Can I get you something?” Her voice was so soft I had to strain
to hear her.

“That’s
okay, I’ll serve myself. Is Mrs. Messenger in there?”

She
shook her head speechlessly, then roused herself to say Deirdre was in the
kitchen. I declined an offer to go back to see her—kitchen chaos moments before
putting a big dinner on the table strains guest and hostess alike.

Assembling
what I hoped was a social smile I pushed into the living room.

Fabian
Messenger was holding court near the fireplace, his left arm on the mantel, his
right casually touching Manfred Yeo’s shoulder. A half dozen men were laughing
at something he was saying.

I
fought through the crowd around the drinks. Two bartenders, the only black men
in the room, were working flat out to keep up with the group’s thirst. I asked
for whisky and was offered Red Label or Jim Beam. I would never serve guests
such thin, raw Scotch, and my income is probably a tenth of Fabian’s. I took
the Scotch, grumpily—my day had been too long for chardonnay to do me any good.

I
moved over to the sidelines to drink. A waitress who’d taken over the tray of
hors d’oeuvres offered them to me, but I passed—they looked like the ones I’d
just finished picking off the floor. Josh reappeared, his gaiety restored,
clutching a bowl of nuts. I took a handful and watched him pirouette through
the room.

Fabian
apparently was calling to him. I didn’t hear it, but one of the women tapped
Josh’s shoulder and pointed him toward his father. He immediately stopped
gyrating and walked over, looking like an altar boy summoned to the pope.
Fabian put a hand on his head, seeming to pose a question. The group around him
laughed and Fabian laughed as well, but Josh squirmed between their legs. He
ran through the side door, the nuts still clutched to his stomach.

“Cute
kid,” a man next to me said.

“He
looks a lot like Deirdre did when I first met her—he even has her dreamy air.”

“Oh,
you an old friend of hers? I’ve done a little work with Fabian, but I hardly
know her.”

We
wended through the laborious party chat of strangers and made it to
introductions. He was Donald Blakely, the president of Gateway Bank.

“I’m
one of your happy beneficiaries,” I said. “I sit with Deirdre on the board of
Arcadia House—we’re terrifically grateful for your generous check.”

“Arcadia
House?” Blakely looked blank.

“Domestic
violence shelter in Logan Square. You—or your bank—just gave us twenty-five
thousand dollars.”

He
smiled. “Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. We welcome the chance to help out important
community service groups. Do you work for them, Ms. ... uh?”

“Warshawski,”
I repeated. “No. I’m just on their board.”

He
looked around the room, hunting for more important prey. When he didn’t see it
he turned back to me and asked what I did, with enough show of politeness that
I sketched a description of my work. Who knows—Gateway might need an
independent investigator.

“Actually,
I seem to be spending an inordinate amount of time on nonpaying investigations
these days. I’m wondering if you might be able to help me with one of them.”

He
took a step away from me. “Not me, Ms. ... uh. The work I do for nonprofits is
limited to writing the occasional check. Anyway, I never wanted to be Dick
Tracy, running around town with a gun.”

I
laughed. “Not that kind of help. But I wondered if you knew anyone at Century
Bank who might talk to me.”

Again
he scanned the room, then asked why I wanted an introduction. As I explained
Camilla’s problem he started to pay closer attention, but when I finished, he
said he didn’t know anyone at Century well enough to send me to them. He asked
how I would proceed. I gave him a brief precis of my usual methods.

“You’d
be that thorough on apro bono project?” he demanded.

“I’m
that thorough on everything I do. It’s the only way I can compete with the big
guys.”

He
looked around again, finally spotting someone who would release him from me.
Briefly clasping my forearm, he wished me well and hurried to the other side of
the room.

Emily
reappeared, tripping on her scuffed pumps as she interrupted Fabian.

Fabian
smiled graciously and left the group at the fireplace to head to the hall. The
others walked off as well, leaving Manfred Yeo alone for a moment. I took the
opportunity to go over to him.

He
recognized me at once. “Victoria! How wonderful to see you. How are you, my
dear? We’ve graduated many distinguished jurists, and a lot of them are here
tonight, but it brings me great pleasure to read about your work—jumping from
bridges is much more exciting than filing writs of certiorari.”

Yeo
had taught my class in constitutional law my second year. I’d started law
school young, through an option the university gave of finishing my last year
in college at the same time. My father had begun to show signs of the illness
that would kill him five years later, and I was desperate to find a career with
some financial security. Yeo’s wit and insight had made me feel the study of
law could generate passion as well.

He’d
liked something about me, too, and rescued me from summers of factory and
clerical work with a couple of good internships. He still sent me hand-signed
cards at Christmas, but I felt I’d let him down by leaving law to be a private
eye, and a penurious one at that.

I
said this, a bit awkwardly, and he put an arm around me. “My dear, I’m proud of
you for not abandoning your principles. I’m ashamed of the law these days. It’s
not the work I signed on joyfully to do fifty years ago, and I’m ashamed of too
many of our graduates for putting billable hours ahead of justice.”

Unexpected
tears stung my eyes. My dreary work load, even my fatigue, dwindled in the face
of his praise. At the same time I felt a kind of ignominious triumph: Donald
Blakely, the banker, was pointing me out to the group he was with. My stock had
risen fast at a touch from Manfred’s arm. The thought made me chuckle a little.

“Ah
... the cause of the hubbub,” Manfred said, releasing me. “We can go in to
dinner now.”

Fabian
was coming back into the room with a man about my age, handsome in the
too-perfect way that makes people love themselves more than they ever can
someone else. He looked vaguely familiar; I wondered if I’d seen him in the movies.

“Alec
Gantner,” Manfred explained. “His father was one of my first students.

Fabian
brought young Alec to represent the family—I’d better greet him.”

Of
course. Alec senior, the Republican senator from Illinois, had the same
chiseled good looks, turned distinguished with age. No wonder Fabian had waited
dinner for the son. If Deirdre was right and he was pining for a federal
judgeship, courting senators was the easiest way to go about it.

As
Manfred went off to shake young Gantner’s hand Emily moved among the guests.
When she came to me she whispered her message: we could go into the dining room
now.

Of
Riches, Drunks, and Rats

A
long table dominated the center of the dining room. It was covered in linen so
white I thought I might go snowblind if I stared at it too long. Complete with
silver, flowers, and candelabra, it might well have been labeled important
guests only. Others were relegated to small tables at the sides.

We
all hunted our name cards at the main table first, hoping to be among the chosen.
Disappointment rippled through the room as people found themselves excluded.
Even I felt let down that Manfred’s warm greeting hadn’t extended to a desire
to sit next to me at dinner: I was decanted with the dregs to a table near the
kitchen door. I had to laugh at myself—all my professional choices have
consciously led me away from wealth and power. It was absurd to resent denial
from their ranks.

Deirdre
arrived suddenly through some swinging doors near my table. She stood
stock-still in the center of the room, her head thrust back on her shoulders
like a cobra’s, her eyes glittering. As people surged past her they tried to
greet her, but she said nothing, until someone asked her point-blank for help
in finding his seat.

Deirdre
pulled her lips back in a parody of a smile. “If you need help, check with my
darling daughter; she did the table arrangements. Like that old Georgie Price
cartoon: Yes, there’s something you can do, put around the place cards—while
the wife is up to her eyeballs in the kitchen.”

She
spoke loudly enough that the people at the kitchen end of the room could hear.
Most laughed, but Emily, who’d come in with a toddler in her arms, turned red
and hung her head.

It
dawned on me with dreadful certainty that she wasn’t the nanny, but Deirdre’s
daughter. Her broad forehead and wide cheekbones might have been stamped from
Fabian’s face. The resemblance was so obvious that my failure to notice it when
she’d stood next to him in the front room seemed unbelievable.

I
tried to remember if I’d said anything that would make her realize my mistake.
And at the same time I wondered how Deirdre could be so cruel as to put her
into one of her own dresses. The pink wool not only fit the girl badly but was
clearly designed for an older person, a matron, not a child. Dressing her to
look like an adult only added to confusion about Emily’s status, especially
since she seemed consumed with child care.

The
toddler, who looked about two, squirmed in her arms. Emily tried to distract
him by pointing at the chandelier, a massive piece whose pendants cracked light
into winking blues and yellows. The child refused to be placated.

The
late hour, the noise, the strangers, all turned him fractious. He whimpered and
lunged in his sister’s arms, but neither Deirdre nor Fabian paid any attention.

Finally
the main table sorted itself out, with Fabian at one end and Manfred Yeo at the
other. Donald Blakely, the Gateway Bank president, and Alec Gantner sat near
Fabian. Women were sprinkled along the table like poppies among penguins. They,
too, may have been distinguished jurists or business owners, but they looked as
though they had been invited strictly as decoration.

Two
small tables each seating six were tucked into the bays at the south end of the
room. I dubbed their denizens the rising stars—young, well dressed, and
self-assured, they gaily discussed the end of the skiing season and the start
of sailing.

Joshua,
perched on a couple of dictionaries, was sitting by an empty chair at the main
table. I assumed his mother would move next to him, but as Fabian finished
seating his dinner partner, Deirdre planted herself aggressively at my table.
This could present a golden opportunity to discuss housing for Tamar Hawkings
and her three children, but Deirdre didn’t look up to discussing anything more
major than another bottle of wine.

Emily
had been hovering near me with the toddler while people found their places. As
soon as Fabian got settled she brought the child over to him. Her father made
an impatient gesture and pointed down the table at Manfred. Emily flushed and
dragged the boy down to him. The professor showed the usual enthusiasm of
dinner guests for small children; after a quick look at her father, who ignored
her, Emily headed from the room.