Sara Paretsky - Deadlock

At two-thirty on a weekday Lake Bluff was still. Just south of the Great Lakes Naval Training Station on Lake Michigan, the town is a tiny pocket of wealth. To be sure, there are small lots and eight-room ranch houses, but imposing mansions predominate. A weak spring sun shone on nascent lawns and the trees sporting their first pale green frills.

I turned south on Green Bay Road and meandered around until I found Harbor Road. As I suspected, it overlooked the lake. I passed an outsize red brick dwelling sprawled on a huge lot, perhaps ten acres, with tennis courts visible through the budding shrubs-they’d be hidden by midsummer when the plants were in full foliage. Three lots later I came to the Phillipses.

Theirs was not an imposing mansion, but the setting was beautiful. As I wrenched the Chevette up the drive I could see Lake Michigan unfold behind the house. It was a two-story frame structure, topped with those rough shingles people think imitate thatching. Painted white, with a silvery trim around the windows, it looked as if it might have ten rooms or so-a big place to keep up, but an energetic person could do it without help if she (or he) didn’t work outside the home.

A dark blue Olds 88 sedan, new model, rested outside the attached three-car garage. It looked as if the lady of the house might be in.

I rang the front bell. After a wait the door opened. A woman in her early forties, dark hair cut expensively to fall around her ears, stood there in a simple shirtwaist-Massandrea, it looked like. A good two hundred fifty dollars at Charles A. Stevens. Even though it was Monday afternoon at home, her makeup was perfect, ready for any unexpected visitors. Diamond drops hung from gold filigree attached to her ears.

She looked at me coldly. “Yes?”

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Phillips. I’m Ellen Edwards with Tri-State Research. We’re doing a survey of the wives of important corporate executives and I wanted to talk to you. Do you have a few minutes this afternoon, or could we set a time when it would be convenient?”

She looked at me unblinkingly for a few minutes. “Who sent you?”

“Tri-State did. Oh, you mean how did we get your name? By surveying the biggest companies in the Chicago area-or divisions of big companies like Eudora Grain-and getting the names of their top men.”

“Is this going to be published someplace?”

“We won’t use your name, Mrs. Phillips. We’re talking to five hundred women and we’ll just do some composite profiles.”

She thought about it and finally decided, grudgingly, that she would talk to me. She took me into the house, into a back room that gave a good view of Lake Michigan. Through the window I watched a tanned, well-muscled young man struggling with an eighteen-foot sailboat tied to a mooring about twenty yards from the shore.

We sat in wing chairs covered with needlepointed scenes in orange, blue, and green. Mrs. Phillips lighted a Kent. She didn’t offer me one-not that I smoke, it just would have been good manners.

“Do you sail, Mrs. Phillips?”

“No. I never cared to learn. That’s my son Paul. He just got home from Claremont for the summer.”

“Do you have any other children?”

They had two daughters, both in high school. What were her own hobbies? Needlepointing, of course-the ugly chair covers were examples of her handiwork. And tennis, she adored tennis. Now that they belonged to the Maritime Country Club she could play year round with good professionals.

Had she lived in Lake Bluff long? The last five years. Before that they’d been in Park Forest South. Much closer to the Port, of course-but Lake Bluff was such a wonderful place to live. Such a good home for the girls, and, of course, for her.

I told her the main things we were interested in were the advantages and disadvantages of being a corporate spouse. So the advantages had to include lifestyle-right? Unless she or he had independent means to support it?

She gave a rather self-conscious laugh. “No, we’re not like the-like some of the families around here. Every penny we spend Clayton earns. Not that some of these people aren’t finding out what it’s like to have to struggle a bit.” She seemed about to expand on the statement but thought better of it.

“Most of the women we talk to find their husbands’ schedules one of the biggest disadvantages-raising families alone, spending too much time alone. I imagine an executive like your husband puts in pretty long hours-and of course it’s quite a drive from here down to the Port.” The Tri-State Tollway to I-94 would be a smooth run, but he’d be doing it with the traffic as far as the Loop going in and starting at the Loop going home. Maybe ninety minutes if everything went well.

“What time does he usually get home?”

That varied, but generally by seven o’clock.

Paul had gotten the sails up and was untying the boat. It looked pretty big for one person to handle alone, but Mrs. Phillips didn’t seem worried. She didn’t even watch as the boat bobbed off into the lake. Maybe she had total confidence in her son’s ability to handle the boat. Maybe she didn’t care what he did.

I told her we’d just take a typical day in their lives together and go through it-say last Thursday. What time they had gotten up, what they had for breakfast, what she did with herself. What time her husband got home from work. I heard all the dreary details of a life without focus, the hours at the tennis club, at the beauty parlor, at the Edens Plaza Shopping Center, before I got the information I’d come for. Clayton hadn’t gotten home that night until nine. She remembered because she’d cooked a roast and finally she and the girls ate it without waiting for him. She couldn’t remember if he seemed upset or tired or if his clothes were covered with grease.

“Covered with grease?” she echoed, astonished. “Why would your research firm want to know a thing like that?”

I’d forgotten who I was supposed to be for a minute. “I wondered if you do your own laundry, or sent it out, or have a maid do it.”

“We send it out. We can’t afford a maid.” She gave a sour smile. “Not yet, anyway. Maybe next year.”

“Well, thank you for your time, Mrs. Phillips. We’ll mail you a copy of the report when we complete it. We’ll be bringing it out later this summer.”

She took me back through the house. The furniture was expensive but not very attractive. Someone with more money than taste had picked it out-she, or Phillips, or the two of them together. As I said good-bye I idly asked who lived in the big brick place up the road, the one with the tennis courts.

An expression combining awe and envy crossed her well-made-up face. “That’s the Grafalks. You ought to talk to her. Her husband owns one of the biggest first in town, ships. They have maids and a chauffeur-the works.”

“Do you spend much time with them?”

“Oh well, they lead their lives, we lead ours. They sponsored us in the Maritime Club and Niels takes Paul and Clayton sailing with him sometimes. But she ’s pretty standoffish. If you don’t belong to the Symphony Board you aren’t worth much to her.” She seemed to feel she might have said too much, for she hastily changed the subject and said good-bye.

I backed the Chevette onto Harbor Road and drove past the Grafalks’. So that was where the Viking lived. A pretty nice spread. I stopped the car and looked at it, half tempted to go in and try my pitch on Mrs. Grafalk. As I sat, a Bentley nosed its way through the gates and turned onto the road. A thin, middle-aged woman with graying black hair was at the wheel. She didn’t look at me as she came out-maybe they were used to gawkers. Or perhaps she wasn’t the owner but just a visitor-a sister member of the Symphony Board.