I estimated I had about four hundred square feet to cover. I grimly set about working the lanes: headstand, paw my way through the roots, feel the bottom, surface for air, repeat. The breathing tube was useless, so I laid it along the pond ledge. Each time I reached one of the walls, I’d tie off a length of twine. I started at the west end, where I’d tumbled onto Marc’s body on Sunday.
At the end of an hour, I’d covered about a hundred square feet. I’d found three rusty cans, a corroded watch, shards of china with edges worn smooth by the water and a crystal champagne goblet miraculously whole. I’d also found a number of pieces of wood so logged by water they’d sunk to the bottom.
It was seven o’clock and completely dark now in the upper world. My shoulders ached from pushing through the weeds, my nose was running and I was feeling sorrier for myself than ever. I put the goblet on the edge of the pond next to the china, tied off my line, and dove again.
At seven-thirty, I’d added more cans, some forks and spoons, more china shards and a woman’s ring to my trove. The ring had been there for some time, judging by the amount of dirt on it, but it looked as though it might have impressive stones in it. I zipped it into a pocket of the wetsuit.
At eight, when I was so cold and discouraged I wanted to quit, I found a pocket organizer. I surfaced and stared at it. I was numb, unable to summon any excitement, but I knew it had to be either Marc’s or his murderer’s-beneath the muck of dirty water and plant detritus, the grain on the brown leather was still visible. My hands were too thick with cold to try to open it here. I hoisted myself out far enough to zip it into my pocket next to the ring.
I’d covered most of the pool by then. I was tempted to call it quits, but I only had one more section to do. If I didn’t search it, I’d lie awake all night imagining the vital piece of evidence I’d overlooked. I sucked cold air into my damp lungs for a few minutes, then slid back into the water.
Nothing else was there except more wood. One piece felt as though it might actually be an artifact, not just a dead branch. I brought it to the surface with me. Pushing myself thankfully free of the murk, I walked around the pond undoing my lengths of twine, looping it around my shoulder. My legs were wobbly from two hours of diving and kicking.
Before I could start gathering up my trove of china and glass, I heard footsteps whicking across the lawn. I gripped the breathing tube between my teeth and slid into the pond, remembering at the last second to switch off my headlamp.
Water amplifies sound. The feet-Catherine Bayard’s? Ruth Lantner’s?sounded as though they were pounding past in hobnailed boots. I waited a long minute, giving her time to clear the pond and head up the lawn to the house. As I was starting to climb out again, I heard another set of feet crunching along the brick walk next to me. I dropped back under water. The steps stopped. A light shone across the pond’s surface.
My heart stood still. I held my breath while the light played through the tangle of reeds, lily pads, dead fish. Surely my breathing tube didn’t stand out in that mess. After a moment, the light swept away; the steps moved on.
It was a windless night. If I scrambled out of the pond now, sound might carry to a suspicious ear. If I stayed where I was, someone might be attacking Catherine Bayard. I lifted my head out of the water, straining to see through the dark. In front of me, up near the house, a flashlight bobbed. I heard voices-an exclamation of surprise?-followed by murmurs. It didn’t sound like an assault.
I’d been standing still in the cold water too long: my teeth were chattering so loudly I couldn’t believe they couldn’t hear me up at the house. The noise couldn’t be louder than I’d make climbing out of the pond. For the third time, I hoisted myself out of the water, moving as carefully as I could. I slipped out of the fins and trotted to the far side of the pond where I’d left my shoes. Before I could put them on, the voices sounded more loudly. I was damned if I was going into that rank and chill water one more time. Grabbing my shoes, I rolled under one o? the stone benches.
“Catherine, you’re lying to me and I don’t like it. Ruth told me the detective who was at Banks Street on Wednesday came out to see her yesterday with a tale of you coming over here in the night with a key belonging to your grandfather. So-“
“I told you, she made it up. I don’t know why. Not Ruth, the detective-“
“No.” Renee Bayard halted a yard from my nose. “I called Darraugh yesterday. I didn’t like the idea that he would send a detective to you who dealt with murder. There’s time, and to spare, for you to delve into human misery, but-at any rate, he said he hadn’t heard from you recently, and nor had his staff. So either you found this woman on your own, or she found you. Why?”
“She found me, she stalked me!” Catherine cried.
Renee was silent for a few beats, apparently collecting her thoughts; when she spoke again, her voice was tired. “Darling, if she were stalking you, why did you support the stories she was telling yesterday afternoon? If she’s blackmailing you, you need to tell me. If you think you need a detective for something, can’t you tell me that, too?”
“I can’t. If I could, I would, but I can’t. Don’t make me say any more because it will only be lies and you’ll know and get angrier.”
“Were you here Sunday night?” Renee said. “Did something frighten you?”
“You mean, if I was out here, did I interrupt whoever killed that journalist? No, Granny: I wasn’t here, I didn’t have a clue a murderer was hanging around here.”
Renee sucked in a breath, as if she was about to dispute Catherine’s repeated claim of not being here, then paused, as if aware that this argument was futile. I clenched my jaws together to keep my teeth from rattling at her feet.
“But now you do know, Trina, you mustn’t come back here. We don’t know who killed that reporter. Someone is taking advantage of Larchmont standing empty to use the house: that’s why your detective was here. Geraldine Graham has been seeing lights in the attic, and while Darraugh thinks she could be making it up to force him to spend more time with her, I don’t agree: she’s a shrewd woman, she doesn’t use petty tricks. A deranged person could be hiding in this house. If you’re coming here to meet a friend or a lover or to use drugs or anything you don’t want me to know about, please-” She broke off, unable to complete the thought.
“No one can get into these buildings, they have a security system,” Catherine said. “An alarm goes off in Julius Arnoff’s office.”
“Do you know that because you’ve triggered it?”
“It’s not like it’s a secret. I mean, we all have alarms on our houses, and we all know what to do when they go off, and everyone knows they ring at the lawyer’s office and at the police.”
Catherine was talking in the breathless run-on sentences she’d used on me yesterday when she wanted to rush me past sensitive topics. What didn’t she want her grandmother to push on here? Renee Bayard clearly was wondering the same thing, because there was another long pause before she spoke again.
“Do you have a key to the alarm system, Catherine?”
“No, Gran-how could I have a key to someone else’s house?”
“By taking it if you found it lying around.” Renee Bayard’s voice was casual, almost as if she wasn’t interested in the subject. “I expect this house is like all the houses out here. We’re such special people in New Solway, so unusually honest and moral by virtue of our wealth and position, that newcomers don’t have to bother with new alarm systems: they know the old owners won’t come around breaking in. I daresay the-what was the name of the family that bought Larchmont?-I daresay they left the Grahams’ alarm in place and keys to that system could have been drifting around out here for years. I’m not suggesting you stole anything, but that you couldn’t resist using a key once you’d found it.”
“Oh, please, Gran, I couldn’t stand those Jablon kids long enough to get a key from them, they were such nounous with their-“
“Such what?” her grandmother demanded.
“Sorry,” Catherine mumbled. “We use it at school. Nouveaux-nouveaux riches, you know”
“I do now,” Renee said dryly. “Contempt for those born in different circumstances than your own is the easiest way to stop thinking.”
“I know, I know, but if you’d-hey, Gran, someone has been herelook at all this stuff laid out, like they’d been having a picnic or something, except using all this old broken china.”
Renee swept a circle of light outward toward the china shards Catherine had seen. These were from my first lot, at the end of the pond closest to us. I watched her feet march over. Catherine followed.
“Was the sheriff here, do you think? Was he dredging the pond for clues?”
“I don’t know,” Renee said. “Rick Salvi doesn’t seem that interested in the situation. Maybe it was your detective, returning to the scene of the crime. These look like bits of Geraldine Graham’s mother’s Coalport. She
had place settings for a hundred, all in this blue-and-gilt. They must have fallen into the water during alfresco evenings.”
“People got drunk and threw china into the pond?”
“We weren’t quite as wild as that, darling. I shall have to call Rick and see if he sent a crew to the pond. Recently it would be, too, there are still wet patches under these pieces. You didn’t see anyone? I thought I heardbut I didn’t see-” The flashlight swept around again.
“Here’s something else.” Catherine had moved to the far end of the pond, her own flashlight cutting a narrow cone along the pond’s edge. If I’d left wet footprints on the walk she was obliterating them. “Oh, it’s just more grubby old bits of something. Not more china from Mrs. Graham’s drunken orgies, it’s all dark and nasty-hey, if you look close, it looks like a mask, you know, like the one Grample has in his study. Didn’t some friend in the arts or something give that to him? It looks like they gave one to the Grahams who didn’t like it quite as much.”
Renee’s feet crunched on the broken brick as she strode over to her granddaughter’s side. “I think you’re right. We’ll have to clean it up: most of it’s here, it’s just the top corner around the left eye that’s broken off. I must say, this explains a lot.”
“About what, Gran?”
“Life, Trina, although it is always an inexplicable mystery. Let’s go home now” As their footsteps crunched out of the garden, she added, “What did you see here Sunday night?”
But Catherine wasn’t to be tricked. Their voices were fading, but I heard her say, “Since I wasn’t here, I couldn’t possibly have seen anything.”
CHAPTER 25
Scaling the North Face
I slept three hours at the nearest motel. When the alarm went off at midnight, I lay blinking at the unfamiliar surroundings. Why had I set the alarm when what I really needed was eight-no, make that ten-hours in a warm bed? It was too cold, I was too old, for nighttime derring-do. But when I rolled over and wriggled back under the blankets, I couldn’t get back to sleep.
Catherine had a key to Larchmont Hall. She was shielding someone inside the house. And Renee Bayard was too shrewd not to understand both these things. Renee would have the DuPage sheriff out there first thing in the morning and my chance of finding-Marcus Whitby’s murderer, say, or a possible witness to the murder-would evaporate.
“As if it’s your business.” I could hear Catherine Bayard say that, her narrow face pinched up in scorn, but I got out of bed anyway.
I put my jeans back on, but my socks and sweatshirt were wet and stank of rotted vegetation. The silk blouse I’d worn to see Julius Arnoff was in my trunk. I didn’t want to wear it for strenuous work, but one thing the suburbs have in abundance is all-night shopping. The motel itself was across the street from a twenty-four-hour behemoth. I put on my blouse and suit jacket and stuck the pocket organizer into my day pack before crossing the highway-I didn’t want to leave my precious booty alone for a minute.
Before falling into the bed, I’d tried to pry the organizer open, but dirt and wet weeds clogged it shut. I didn’t force it-if this was Marc Whitby’s, I didn’t want to destroy any notes or documents zipped inside. I’d get it to the forensic lab I use for this kind of problem.
The ring I rinsed off under the bathroom tap. A jeweler would have to clean it up properly, but as I’d thought, it was an expensive, garish piece of jewelry. A kind of beehive of stones was built up from a gold band-diamond and emerald chips banked around four good-sized rocks. A couple of the small chips were missing, but what remained could probably pay Mr. Contreras’s and my taxes for a couple of years.
Had it been Geraldine Graham’s? Her mother’s? I pictured a teenage Darraugh throwing his grandmother’s ring in the pond after they’d fought about his father-the father for whom he defiantly named his own son. Or perhaps Geraldine herself had thrown it away, out of disgust with her marriage. Or perhaps I was being melodramatic-maybe she or her mother, or even some guest, had lost it during one of those al fresco dinners Renee Bayard mentioned-the owner would be thrilled to see it again.
My fingers were swollen from the cold water, but at their normal shape the ring would have slid down over the knuckle. I held out my hand to study the ring in the bathroom mirror. Wedged against my knuckle, with my fingers showing a spider network of cuts, the piece looked even more grotesque. Definitely the possession of someone with more money than taste-although I guess a claim to superior taste is the weak comfort of the poor. I stuffed the ring into my jeans and went out to buy skulking clothes.
In the superstore across the road, I found aspirin, orange juice, socks, fresh batteries for the work lamp, work gloves with rubber palms and a hooded navy sweatshirt-all for twentythree dollars. I had an uneasy feeling that slaves in China or Burma had made these items. They never say that on the label: made for Megatherium Superstores by slave labor so you can have it cheap, but a sweatshirt, gloves and so on for twentythree dollars ought to tip you off. Ought to tip me off. I could have driven all the way home for gloves, sweatshirt, and so on, not to mention my gun, but I was an American-fast, cheap and easy, was my motto.
Back in the motel, I drank half the orange juice with two aspirins: that would do me as much good as another six hours in bed. The rest I put in
my day pack along with the small knife and the headlamp. I left a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door in case I wanted to use the room again, but I put all my stuff in the car: if my luck-and stamina-held, I wanted to drive straight home when I finished.
I was in one of the peaks of alertness that you sometimes reach when you’re basically exhausted. At the entrance to Coverdale Lane, I pulled the Mustang behind a bush. I wanted to approach Larchmont on foot-1 didn’t want the noise of my car to alert anyone who might be hanging around.
Five nights ago the trip had spooked me; the road had seemed endless, the night animals major menaces. Now I knew the area well enough that I jogged along. I was wearing my diver’s headlamp, but the moon outlined the road in enough ghostly light that I didn’t have to switch it on.
Movement loosened my muscles, helping the aspirin kick in. I stretched my arms. Some muscle between my shoulder blades gave me a stab of pain sharp enough that I winced. I hoped it was a muscle I wasn’t going to want again tonight.
Twice, cars went past and I ducked into the shrubbery. I thought about cutting across the fields, but I’d make less noise on the tarmac. I was betting Renee Bayard would wait until morning to call the sheriff, but I couldn’t be sure of it-the Wabash Cannonball moved fast, and if she thought her granddaughter was sheltering a murderer, she’d act at once. I was also betting Catherine wouldn’t try to slide out past her grandmother again tonight, but I couldn’t be sure of that, either.
When I turned up the Larchmont carriageway, I slowed down, stopping periodically to listen to the night sounds. Jogging had warmed me up; now I could feel the late-winter air against my back. A wind had come up, rustling the leaves and dead grasses, making me stop more often-in my nervous state, ever
y noise sounded like someone moving through the underbrush.
When I reached the house, I first made a tour of the outbuildings, looking for any signs of other people. I had uneasy visions of Renee Bayard or the DuPage sheriff leaping out at me, but I didn’t see anyone. A loud crashing near the pond sent me to the ground, my heart hammering, but it was only a couple of white-tailed deer, startled into flight by my approach.
At last I crossed the yard to the big house, to the main entrance on the
west side, where white columns supported a domed porch. Without giving myself time to think it over, I ran the last twenty feet, jumped and grabbed the crossbar between the column capitals. The sore muscle in my shoulder protested, but I moved fast, bending my arms, pulling my body up, hooking my legs around one of the columns so my thighs were bearing my weight. I stuck an arm up to the edge of the dome, found a stone knob that I could hang on to, and heaved myself up, landing like a dying fish on the curved surface.
When I’d caught my breath, I scooted backward until I was leaning against the wall. From my vantage point, I could see more of the grounds. The only movement I could make out, besides the wind rustling the dead grasses, was of the deer, returning to the pond. Through the bare tree branches I looked at the night sky. Wisps of clouds floated across the moon, but the stars were bright and crisp and close, the way they never are in the city. My burst of alert energy was fading; I started to doze off.
Get up and get your head in the game, Warshawski. I could hear my high school basketball coach’s deep bark almost as if she’d been standing next to me. I forced myself to my feet and looked at the window behind me. It led into an upper hallway, but it held the telltale markers of the security system. Which meant going up another layer. There was no easy access to the third story, no columns to shinny up, but gaps in the old mortar left finger-and toeholds here and there. I started up.
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