Ness laughed shortly. 'You and Sam Wild are sure cut out of the same cloth.'
'Are you comparing me with that sleazy reporter pal of yours? Why, we got nothin' in common, except one poor misguided friend.'
Ness smiled and climbed off the garbage can. 'I better get back inside.'
'Yeah. You better. I'll go in with you. What time's the memorial service tomorrow?'
'Two-thirty. You don't have to come, Nate. This was more than enough.'
'I'll be there. When are you heading back to Cleveland?'
'I don't know. Wednesday, maybe. Maybe Thursday.'
'If you're still in town Wednesday, I'll buy you lunch at the Berghoff.'
'It's a deal,' Ness said. 'With the kind of money you're making off the city of Cleveland, you can afford it.'
They went back inside.
Heller whispered, 'Isn't that Ev MacMillan, the book illustrator?'
'Yeah.'
'She's a doll. Is that a case you're working on?'
'Yes it is. Hands off, Heller.'
'Just asking. Besides, do I look like a guy who'd come on to a dame in a funeral home?'
'Yes.'
Soon Heller was having a conversation with several Chicago cops who had dropped by to pay their respects (the Wentworth District Station was two doors down), and Ness walked out onto the wide, shallow outer parlor where some of the mourners were smoking and lounging in the comfortable leather chairs. Ev was sitting, having a cigarette, taking a break from making conversation with strangers.
He sat next to her. 'How are you holding up?'
'Fine. I'm sorry about that business with the wreath… I guess I should have recognized what 'Frank and the Boys' referred to.'
'No you shouldn't. Forget it.'
'I hope you don't mind my sending that friend of yours back out there to see you.'
'So you've met Heller?'
'Not really. He's a nice-looking man. What's the story on him?'
'He used to be a cop. A plainclothes dick on the pickpocket squad. He was one of the few relatively honest cops I could count on as a reliable contact.'
'What is he up to now?'
'He got into some political trouble on the force, and quit. The corruption was getting to him. He's more honest than he likes to think.'
She smiled knowingly, nodding. 'At a time like this, it's nice to have a friend like that.'
He held her hand. 'Yes it is. You know, you don't have to hang around here if you-'
'Shush. Are you going to stay at the hotel again tonight?'
'Well, I was planning to. If I stayed with Effie and her husband, the only bed available-'
'Is your mother's.'
He swallowed. 'Yes.'
'I have an apartment on the North Side, you know.'
'Don't you have a roommate?'
'No. But I'd like to have one. Tonight.'
'This is…'
'So sudden? Eliot, I like you. And I think you need somebody at your side, right now. We don't have to be anything but friends.'
He squeezed her hand. 'Oh yes we do.'
She touched his face with a smooth, cool hand. 'It's going to be fine. It's going to be fine.'
They rose, and he slipped his arm around her waist.
'Did you ever hear,' he said, whispering in her ear, 'that Cleveland is very beautiful during the wintertime?'
'Uh… no. I never heard that.'
'Well, don't you think you ought to judge for yourself?'
She smiled gently and nodded.
CHAPTER 17
Evelyn MacMillan was in Cleveland, and in love, and only the latter could explain the former.
It strained her artistic sensibilities to their limits to find anything aesthetically pleasing about this cold gray city. She supposed a stark watercolor of this bleak urban landscape would have its merits; a nice place to paint, but she wouldn't want to live there.
But, nonetheless, she was considering doing just that.
She had accompanied Eliot from Chicago on Thursday of last week, his family matters settled. Other than a brief emotional outpouring just hours after he learned of his mother's passing, he had remained stoic; but Ev knew he wasn't emotionless: he was just holding it all in.
The death of his mother had affected Eliot deeply, whether he admitted it or not, whether he expressed it or not, and knowing that gave Ev an irresistible urge to be supportively at his side.
So here she was in Cleveland, of all places. Where she had, of all things, spent the afternoon interviewing with Frank Darby at the May Company and Charles Bradley at Higbee's for a position as fashion illustrator. And both gentlemen had indicated that some work, if not a full-time position, would be available to her.
She knew very well that Eliot had pulled some strings for her. That didn't bother her: She knew that all the string-pulling in the world couldn't get an artist a job if said artist's portfolio wasn't up to snuff. And hers was up to snuff, and then some. She was an independent woman, but she didn't mind having a man open a door for her.
And she could see, from their evening at the country club this Saturday past, that this particular man was well liked and well-entrenched in the upper social circles of Cleveland (though till Saturday night the notion of Cleveland having any 'society' had never occurred to her). There was no question that Eliot was an influential public official, and even more famous here than in his native Chicago.
He had prominence and power and fame, and she liked that. Moreover, she liked him. She found him enormously attractive, even if he wasn't storybook hand-some or flashy. There was a boyishness about him that made her want to mother him. He had been, after all, a motherless child from the very start of their love affair.
And, though just a little over a week old, it was a love affair, all right, in full swing. Nothing boyish about Eliot in that department.
And as unglamorous, as cheerless, as colorless as this city was, there was one small pocket of it she had already come to cherish: King Eliot's castle. She had fallen immediately in love with the turreted boathouse at Clifton Lagoon in that posh pocket of posh Lakewood. It had a barren sort of beauty, this weathered gray-stone palace, the gray-blue of its front-yard lagoon broken only by the occasional wave and the luxury yachts moored there.
Best of all, atop its two sturdy stories was a squat tower, which Eliot had already promised her for a studio.
My, this had gotten serious fast.
Today, she had met him at City Hall, just after five, but he hadn't got away till seven; she had amused herself till then, wandering the stately building, taking in particularly the famous painting The Spirit of '76, not the original but a copy by Archibald Willard himself. Perhaps Cleveland was cultured after all.
Now, after an informal bite of supper at the Theatrical Grill, they were in the black Ford sedan with its personalized plates, EN-1, and she was sitting close to him, though both his hands were on the wheel. His eyes were not always on the road.
They looked like twins, though quite by accident, both wearing tan camel's hair coats and leather gloves; her jaunty felt hat, with its turned-down brim, echoed his snap-brim fedora, although hers was wine color and his a dark
