Sara Paretsky - Blacklist

Damn and double damn. I hadn’t gotten a good look at him, just a confused impression of a youngish white man with dark thick hair, in jeans and running shoes. A burglar who knew the place was standing empty, or someone after Taverner’s secret papers?

I found my way back to the assisted nursing compound and returned to Taverner’s apartment. It wasn’t so hard to find the locked drawer. Except the lock was broken and the drawer was empty.

Like Domingo Rivas, I didn’t want to spend a whole lot of time with the police, especially not the suburban forces. I thought of driving back to Chicago and leaving this mess for the Anodyne Park management to sort out when they got the apartment ready to sell. I thought of the hollow in the pillow disarranged on the bed, the glass rinsed out. What if Taverner’s visitor Monday night had put something in his bourbon to make him drowsy, and then taken the pillow from the bed and held it against his face until-well, until, yes.

I couldn’t think of one thing about Olin Taverner that I didn’t despise. The careers he’d ruined through the blacklist, the homosexuals he’d hounded

in public life while remaining deeply closeted himself, the list could go on for days. Did it really matter if someone had hastened the end of an old HUAC hatchet man?

On the other hand, he’d died soon after showing Marc Whitby some secret papers. And Marc Whitby had died soon after seeing them. Who had Whitby discussed those papers with? His young assistant? But then, why hadn’t she mentioned them to me? Maybe she’d been more forthcoming with Harriet and Amy.

I rubbed my sore diaphragm. The man who’d butted me was either lucky or well trained. Maybe he’d murdered Whitby and Taverner and come back to search the premises. But that made no sense-he’d have had plenty of time to search when Taverner died. Unless he hadn’t known until later that Whitby had seen the documents?

I pulled out my cell phone and called Stephanie Protheroe, the sheriff’s deputy I’d been dealing with.

“Warshawski, isn’t your boyfriend jealous of the amount of time you’re spending with me? I’ve lent you clothes, I’ve lost and found documents for you. Now what?”

“You’re right,” I said. “I’ve been imposing. Maybe I should take this to the New Solway cops.”

She sighed. “Okay, I’ll bite. What is it?”

“I was visiting Geraldine Graham this afternoon. She lives in the same complex as Olin Taverner-the guy who died on Monday or Tuesday. As I was leaving her place, I discovered that someone had broken into Taverner’s apartment.”

“That someone wasn’t you, was it, Ms. Warshawski?”

“No, ma’am. That someone was a man who knocked me to the ground when I went in to investigate. White, maybe forty, lots of hair-I didn’t get much of a look.”

“Okay,” she sighed again. “We’ll send someone over.”

“And, Deputy-Marc Whitby visited Olin Taverner last Thursday night. I don’t know if Whitby came back here on Sunday before he diedbut it seems worth exploring. And Taverner had an anonymous visitor on Monday, someone who washed out Taverner’s whisky glass. Just thought you’d like to know.”

It wasn’t until I was back in my own home that I remembered the wheel tracks going into the culvert. I was bone tired, too tired to think about it further, let alone try to decide whether I should do something about the tracks. I soaked in the tub for half an hour and ate a bowl of canned chicken soup. It wasn’t anything like as good as Mrs. Aguilar’s, but it was what I had.

I was drifting off to an early sleep when Deputy Protheroe called me back. I tried to rise to her level of energy as she explained what she’d done. The guard at the entrance to Anodyne Park couldn’t possibly identify my intruder: too many people came in all day, either making deliveries or visiting families, for him to recognize anyone from my vague description.

She added, almost casually, “You didn’t bust the lock on that desk, did you, during your look-around?”

“Deputy, if I’d gone into that desk, you wouldn’t know about it. You got a crime scene team doing prints and so on?”

“The Anodyne management doesn’t like a big police presence-it lowers morale and leads to lawsuits.” She gave a dry laugh. “But just to keep you from calling six times an hour, I did take the glass into our lab.”

“And you’ll let me know what they tell you? Just to keep me from calling you six times an hour?”

“You never know: I might even do that.”

When she’d hung up, I went back to bed, but I’d woken up too much and couldn’t relax. It was still early, only nine. I phoned Amy Blount to see if she’d had any luck either at T-Square, or from Mare’s other neighbors. Unfortunately, the nursing mother was the only person who’d been up in the middle of the night, or at least the only one who’d seen any sign of activity at Mare’s house.

“When I asked who used to visit him, the kids thought I was some jealous girlfriend trying to stake him out-they could remember seeing me come out of Mare’s house, but not anyone else. They began creating a scenario where I had murdered him. It made me laugh, and then it made me cry-I can’t believe how lonely he must have felt, and I can’t believe he’s dead.”

“Yeah. Investigation sometimes feels like a game, until you remember a person died who was important to their friends and family… What about Mare’s editor-Simon Hendricks?”

“Umh. Cold fish. He had to talk to us, because Harriet was there. We started the way you suggested, with Mare’s assistant Aretha, but she didn’t think there was anything specific to the tension between him and Hendricks beyond professional insecurity. Marc had a contract for a book about Kylie Ballantine-we found that in his desk drawer at the office. Aretha said Hendricks was furious about that because he-Hendricks-had been trying for five years to sell a book about Martin Luther King’s summer in Chicago.”

“So why did Marc tell him about his own book contract?” “Had to-terms of employment.”

“Do you think Hendricks was bitter or jealous enough to kill Marc over it?”

She thought it over. “I’m no expert on why people kill each other. But-well, why would Hendricks lure Marc all the way out to that pond?” “There is that,” I admitted. “What about Mare’s cellmate, Jason Tompkin? Did you get him to say anything about the company relations with Bayard?”

“He runs his mouth so much it’s hard to know whether to trust anything he says. For what it’s worth, the company policy is not to discuss work in progress with anyone outside Llewellyn Publishing. However, he says that

Hendricks really stresses it in relation to Bayard Publishing. J.T. says that comes down from Llewellyn, that there’s some kind of bad blood between Calvin Bayard and Augustus Llewellyn, nobody knows what, but he, J.T., thinks it’s because Llewellyn took money from Bayard to start up T-Square, and Bayard acted patronizing-like Llewellyn was proof of what a goodhearted liberal Bayard was. But here’s something really weird: according to J.T, Hendricks and Marc had a big blowup last week because Marc tried seeing Llewellyn in person.”

I was astounded: you don’t survive corporate life by trying to see the company owner behind your boss’s back. “What was that about?”

“No one knows. Maybe Marc wanted to persuade Mr. Llewellyn to relax the company’s policy on talking to Bayard because Bayard was part of the Kylie Ballantine story”

“So if Marc had wanted to talk to Bayard, he’d definitely have done it quietly,” I said. “I found out today that Marc went out to New Solway at least twice, and the first time wasn’t to see Bayard, but Olin Taverner.”