Sara Paretsky - Blacklist

Edwards turned down offers of refreshment and aggressively moved my desk chair into the area where I meet with clients.

I sat on the arm of the couch. “So tell me why you broke into Olin Taverner’s apartment on Thursday and then pretended to your family you’d been in Washington until Catherine was shot.”

“I wasn’t-“

“No, no, you’re a busy man, let’s not add to your burdens by sifting through lies. We both know you were there; you weren’t wearing gloves.” “Yes, I was,” he started, and then bit his lip midsentence.

He’d never been interrogated-he’d fallen for the easiest trick in the book. “We’ll take that as a `Yes, I was there.’ Catherine will find it thrilling when she learns you’re a housebreaker-it’ll make you seem younger, more daring in her eyes. Not to mention your mom, who thinks you’re on the stodgy side.”

His jaw dropped. “I-my daughter is too young to understand why I might have to do something unorthodox.”

I smiled sweetly. “And your mother is too old. So what was in those files Taverner kept in his locked drawer?”

“You know so damned much, you tell me.”

“Bayard, for a smart guy, you’re not so bright. Rick Salvi may be in your family’s pocket, but Chicago’s Captain Mallory is starting to pay serious attention to New Solway. He can call on some of the working cops out in DuPage to do a real criminal investigation out there. So stop stalling, because the next time you do, I’m on the phone to the captain.”

He smacked his thigh with a balled-up fist. “I’m Olin’s executor; I had a right to be there.”

“Then why break in through the patio? Why not go over to Julius Arnoff’s office and present your credentials and get him to let you in?” When he didn’t say anything, I said, “Is it because Arnoff is really the executor and your Spadona Foundation is one of the heirs? Is it because you didn’t want anyone to know you weren’t really in Washington on Thursday? Had you flown out on Sunday and killed Marcus Whitby, without realizing the important papers were in Taverner’s desk?”

Bayard turned pale. “That’s an outrageous accusation. I did not kill Marcus Whitby or any other person.”

“Including Olin Taverner?”

“Especially not Olin. He-was an important figure in my life.” “More important than your father,” I suggested.

His lip curled in a scornful smile. “Certainly more important than Calvin, who barely registered my existence.”

I looked at him curiously. “Olin Taverner paid active attention to you when you were a child? He was the one who took you to ball games and taught you to ride your first pony?”

He turned his head away, discomfited. “No, but Calvin sure as hell didn’t-he was too busy being a hero to the whole damned world. Olin lived in Washington when I was growing up. He had an active law practice there, and, anyway, after the hearings, Calvin and Renee took over New Solway; they made Olin uncomfortable in his own home. Can you believe that? Calvin and Renee bore him such a grudge that they persuaded people he’d known his whole life to cut him!”

“He tried to destroy your father’s life,” I said. “It’s not too surprising your parents weren’t his biggest well-wishers.”

“Well, they had their own dirty laundry to hide. Or at least Calvin did, and Renee, of course, trotted around after him in her busy efficient way helping him bury it.”

“So when did Taverner show you what their laundry was?”

He cast me a sidelong glance, as if trying to decide what story I’d be most likely to believe.

I spoke before he chose a version. “This afternoon at your mother’s, you were implying that your father’s financial dealings were shaky. Did Taverner tell you that?”

“Not exactly.”

“So what exactly?”

“I found a letter in Calvin’s desk,” he blurted out. “From old Mrs. Drummond-Mrs. Graham’s mother.”

“She knew about your father’s financial situation?” I was incredulous. “Apparently, Calvin was stealing from the Drummonds, or maybe the Grahams. I can still recite that damned letter by heart:

Dear Calvin,

I am aware of the theft you are committing against my household. A streak of hypocrisy seems to grow deep within your family’s character; your mother had a similar tendency to parade the halls draped in righteousness while her conduct behind the scenes didn’t bear close scrutiny. I shall, of course, expect restitution, and you may be sure that I will take appropriate measures should your actions continue.

“She signed it with her full name, Laura Taverner Drummond, which is how I learned she was related to Olin. No one ever told me anything about all those people-I kept stumbling on bits of information like that and feeling goddamned blindsided”

The resentment from twentyfive years earlier still burned: his cheeks were red now, and his voice shaking with anger.

“So then did you take the letter to Taverner?”

“I was only sixteen, I went to Renee and demanded she tell me what the letter was about. She laughed-laughed, mind you, as if it were a joke,

not a character flaw. She said Calvin had been `a bit unscrupulous’ in borrowing from the neighbors, but that when she married him she put a stop to all that. But you know, word always seeps out in a small town, and people gossip endlessly. It’s one thing I owe Renee-growing up chiefly in Chicago instead of that dead-alive fishbowl on Coverdale Lane. Weekends there were bad enough.”

“Yes, indeed.” In any small community, including the urban neighborhood o? my own childhood, people gossip mercilessly about Mrs. This’s daughter’s pregnancy and how poor Mrs. That felt when her husband lost all the rent money at craps. I felt momentary compunction for Darraugh and for the angry man in front of me-both of them poor little rich boys in their way.

“I wonder why your father kept the letter? Anyone on your family’s staff might have found it and blackmailed him.”

“Calvin is-was-an incurable pack rat. His study out in New Solway is crammed with papers. I can’t imagine the Lantners being bothered to look through all that crap.”

“And why were you looking at it? A congenital weakness for poking through other people’s desks?” I spoke with deliberate roughness, hoping to goad a further response.

Deepening anger turned Bayard’s blue eyes black. “All that damned talk. We’d had a big house party-the fortieth anniversary of Calvin taking over Bayard Publishing, his pals from the left’s glory days came, even old Armand Pelletier-he stayed with us for three days, until he got into a huge shouting match with Calvin and stormed out. There was one of those daylong parties-people came to ride and have breakfast and stayed on all day until we had dinner for eighty-Renee loved showing off, not her possessions, her genius for organizing.

“All the neighbors from Coverdale Lane showed up, except Olin, of course. Old Mrs. Drummond creaked over in her diamonds. She was ninety-eight and forced everybody to drop anything they were doing if she had any kind of whim. Even Renee danced when Mrs. Drummond banged her drum. Geraldine Graham came, too, although she and Renee didn’t get along. And she didn’t get along that great with Mrs. Drummond, with her mother, come to think of it. And I heard some of the women talking in those delicious breathless voices, `Does he even suspect, do you think? After all, he looks just like his mother, so why would he?”’

His chin jutted out as if he dared me to mock him. “I do look like Renee, so if Calvin isn’t my father, I can’t tell by looking in the mirror. When I was little, I kept believing I’d grow up as tall as he was, and then I was sixteen and stuck at five foot eight. I look like Renee’s father, like his younger twin, there’s not a trace of Bayard in me!