Sara Paretsky - Blacklist

Behind my bleak thoughts, I could see my mother at the kitchen table, mending socks. It was three in the morning; my dad hadn’t returned from his shift and the West Side was an inferno of riots and looting. I had heard her, or felt her anxiety, I don’t know which, and crept down from my bed under the attic dormer. She held me close for a time, then made me a cup of cambric tea, and showed me how to darn a heel.

“We don’t give into our worries, cara,” she said. “That is for grand ladies, who can fancy themselves ill when their lover hasn’t written or the new dress is commonplace. We aren’t like that, self-indulgent. We do some job, like this, we do it well, we make the worries leave us alone.”

My father had come in around five, to find us both asleep at the kitchen table, our faces in his socks. A cop’s daughter, a reporter’s lover, that gave you plenty of practice in showing you weren’t a grand lady, or self-indulgent. I hadn’t darned a sock since I was fifteen, but I had plenty of other chores I could be doing.

I started with a phone call to Luke Edwards, the lugubrious mechanic who’s looked after my cars for years. Car locks are tricky; I didn’t want to tackle Whitby’s with my picklocks, where I might not only jam the lock, but get arrested if some cop saw me using a tool of questionable legality.

Whenever I talk to Luke, I have to endure a long lecture on everything I’ve done wrong to my current machine before he’ll work on it, but he’s kind of like the Car Talk brothers in what he knows about engines. When he heard I wanted to get into a locked Saturn, he made me sit through five minutes on the inadequate safety features of modern American cars,

but at the end he agreed to send his own locksmith to meet me on Giles Street.

Next on my list was Renee Bayard. Naturally, I only reached a secretary; naturally, Ms. Bayard was in an important meeting, but I left a carefully rehearsed message: I was a detective Ms. Bayard had met Wednesday night, the one who had discovered Marcus Whitby’s dead body. It was now clear that Whitby had met with Olin Taverner shortly before Taverner himself died, and I was assuming they had discussed Kylie Ballantine. I wanted to ask Ms. Bayard what she knew about Ballantine and Taverner. The secretary read the message back to me in a doubtful voice, but said she would pass it along.

After some internal debate, I also placed a call to Augustus Llewellyn’s office. Once again I only reached a secretary, a polished woman with executive office manners, not the rough hostility of their lobby receptionist. Once again I explained my mission for the Whitby family.

“Mr. Marc Whitby tried to see Mr. Llewellyn last week. When he made the appointment, did he say why?”

“We have procedures for staff writers, for all staff, who want to see Mr. Llewellyn. I explained that to Marc when he came up to the eighth floor and told him he had to send me a memo stating the reason for the meeting.” She put me on hold to answer another line.

“Did Marc send the memo?” I asked when she came back on the line. “He didn’t want to.” Her tone hardened. “He said it was sensitive material that he didn’t want to put in writing. He also didn’t want to discuss it with his editor. I told him he couldn’t be the only judge of what was worth intruding on Mr. Llewellyn. He was one of our best writers, but I really can’t relax the rules for one person, just because he’s a star.”

“I understand,” I said quickly, “but I’m also puzzled. It doesn’t sound like him, to try to contravene company policy. I think he was troubled by something Olin Taverner told him, and that he might have wanted to consult Mr. Llewellyn about it.”

“And what was that?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “If I could find out, it might explain who killed him. Mr. Whitby learned something unusual last week, something involving the old HUAC investigations. I can’t find a living soul he talked to about it, so if that’s why he tried to see Mr. Llewellyn, I’d really like to know. Could you check with Mr. Llewellyn, to see whether Marc actually talked to him? He might have waited for you to go to lunch, or even phoned Mr. Llewellyn at home.”

She said stiffly that when she was away from her desk, her assistant sat in for her and logged in any callers. Still, she took my details before hanging up to answer another call.

I stared at the picture over my desk, as if I could see Marc Whitby in the blur of color. What had come up that made him risk his job at T-Square by going directly to the magazine’s owner? Of course, it could have been anything-but no notes or papers remained in his desk or home. So I had to believe it involved the same story that took him to Olin Taverner last week. If I couldn’t find any papers in his car, then I’d have to grasp at my last straw, and see whether he’d dropped something in the pond when he fell in. I called around to places that rented diving equipment just in case.

I found a shop on Diversey that could help me. I stopped there on my way to the South Side. They rented me a wet suit. I bought a headlamp, goggles and an underwater knife; at a hardware store near Marc’s home I bought a roll of twine. That should get me through the pond if I had to go in.

I got to Marc’s house after the morning rush to work and school had ended. A stay-at-home mom out with a baby buggy eyed me curiously, but no one else was on the street. When Amy arrived, we started a deeper search than we’d done before, going through the basement, looking under rugs and tapping wallboard in the unfinished rooms-all the labor of a truly thorough search.

Around noon, Luke’s locksmith arrived. He had a box of keys and alarm codes. When he had opened the Saturn, he gave me the coded key that worked the ignition and alarm-for a hundred dollars.

While Amy continued doggedly inside the house, I made a similarly thorough, and equally futile, search of the car. I was lying under the chassis with a flashlight, while a couple of area winos offered helpful suggestions, when Renee Bayard returned my call.

I slid out from beneath the car and got into the driver’s seat so I could talk to her privately. The Wabash Cannonball came over the ether at full speed.

“Ms. Warshawski, you were talking to my granddaughter on Wednesday without my permission. You were out in New Solway yesterday questioning my staff without talking to me first. And now, finally as an afterthought, you want to talk to me. You should have started with me.”

My hand grew wet on my little phone. “I thought Catherine told you why we were talking.”

“Give me some credit, Ms. Warshawski: I didn’t just climb down from a tree and start walking erect. I’ve spoken to Darraugh Graham. Besides assuring me Catherine never asked him for the name of a detective, he says he told you to end the inquiry that took you to New Solway to begin with.”

“He’s not my only client, Ms. Bayard. I’m investigating Marcus Whitby’s death. Mr. Whitby died in New Solway and-“

“And has no connection with my husband or granddaughter that I can discern.”

“And has a definite connection with Olin Taverner, who also died this week in odd circumstances.” Annoyance stiffened my attitude. “Mr. Whitby met with Taverner shortly before his death. Taverner showed him his secret files, which are now missing. I’m assuming their mutual interest was Kylie Ballantine; I was hoping you knew what Taverner’s involvement was with Ballantine.”

“And I’m supposed to be your research file? Because we published one of Ballantine’s books?”

“Because you met Mr. Bayard during the HUAC hearings and you might remember whether Kylie Ballantine was also a target of Olin Taverner’s.” She paused for a moment, as if deciding whether I deserved an answer, before saying, “There used to be something called the Committee for Social Thought and justice, a kind of left-wing think tank. Olin always wanted them to be a Communist front. Ballantine might have taken part in some of their meetings, I don’t know. If she did, Olin might have questioned her privately, but I wouldn’t know. What were the odd circumstances of Olin’s death?”