bowl by the front entrance when I took Catherine’s teddy bear out of my pockets. I went back for them and showed them to Harriet and Amy.

Water had gummed the matchbook into a solid mass that wouldn’t open. The cover had originally been some shade of green. Water had turned it blackish, and whatever the logo had been, it now looked like a child’s amorphous picture of a star. The cover didn’t have an address or phone number. I might be able to get a forensics lab to open it to see whether Whitby had written something on the inside. The pencil was an ordinary number 2 with no names stamped on it.

Harriet turned the matchbook over in her hands. Neither she nor Amy had any idea where it was from, but Harriet wanted to keep it, as the last thing her brother had touched. I looked closely at both the matchbook and the pencil again. They weren’t going to tell me anything. I handed them over to Harriet Whitby.

When I’d ushered them out, I was utterly beat. I steamed myself for a few minutes in a hot pot of my mother’s invention-herbal tea, lemon, ginger-and crawled into bed, where I fell at once down a hole of sleep. The phone dragged me out of it at one in the morning.

“Is this V I. Warshawski?” the night operator from my answering service demanded. “We’ve gotten a phone call from a Mrs. MacKenzie Graham. She says it’s an emergency and insisted that we wake you.”

“Mrs. MacKenzie Graham?” I echoed, bewildered: I knew Darraugh’s son, MacKenzie, and didn’t think he’d gotten married. Then I remembered through the fog of sleep that MacKenzie had also been Darraugh’s father’s name. I switched on a light and fumbled around on the mghtstand for a pen.

When I had Geraldine Graham’s number, I was tempted to make her wait until morning. But-I’d found a dead man in her childhood pond Sunday night. Maybe someone was making a habit of tossing bodies there and she was watching them do it again. I dialed the number.

“I want you out here at once, young woman.” She sounded as though she thought I was the night chambermaid.

“Why?”

“Because it’s your job to discover who is breaking into Larchmont. You didn’t find them last night, but they are here right now”

“What are you seeing?” I croaked hoarsely.

“What is that, young woman? Don’t grumble at me.”

I tried to clear my throat. “What are you seeing? People? Phantom lights? Cars?”

“I’m seeing the lights in the attic. Didn’t I tell you that? If you come right now, you’ll find whoever it is red- handed.”

“You need to call the cops, Ms. Graham. I live more than forty miles from you.”

She brushed the distance aside: the cops had proved how useless they were; she hoped I wasn’t going to be similarly ineffectual.

“If someone is using Larchmont as a dump for dead bodies, you need to get the local cops there at once. Me arriving ninety minutes from now would serve very little purpose. If you’d like me to call them for you, I can.”

She took my offer as a face-saving out. “And what is your direct number, young woman? I’m tired of relaying messages to you through your help. They’re not cooperative.”

“They’re your best chance of reaching me, Ms. Graham. Good night.” I didn’t want to call Stephanie Protheroe again: one favor a night is all I expect from anyone. I finally remembered the young lawyer on emergency duty for the rich and famous. I found his card with a pager number and beeped him. When he called me back ten minutes later, he was as groggy with sleep as I was, but he agreed to get someone from the New Solway police to drive over to Larchmont.

“Will you let me know what they find?” I asked. “I’m working for the Graham family, you know.”

“It’s a strange life, isn’t it,” he said, “responding to the demands of the very wealthy. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a lawyer joke that covered that aspect of our work.”

While I waited, I made myself another pot of herbal tea. My mother had brought me up to believe one drank coffee as a matter of course, but tea only in illness. I took it into the living room and drank two cups, idling away the early morning by watching Audrey Hepburn stare wistfully at Gregory Peck. All the time I looked at Hepburn’s doelike eyes, I kept wondering whether the New Solway police would catch Catherine Bayard breaking into Larchmont Hall.

After an hour, Larry Yosano called me back. “Ms. Warshawski? I went over with the New Solway police, and we didn’t see anyone. We made a circuit of the house and the outbuildings and didn’t notice any breakage; the security company confirms that no one has tripped an alarm out here.

We double-checked the pond: you’ll be glad to know there aren’t any new bodies there. Maybe Ms. Graham confused lights in the attic with the traffic going by on Coverdale Lane.”

I felt absurd, breathing a sigh of relief. I saw nothing but shoals ahead in talking to young Catherine Bayard, but I was still happy that if she was the person Geraldine Graham had seen at Larchmont Hall, she’d finished whatever she was doing before the cops arrived.

CHAPTER 9

Ice Cube Editor

When I woke again the sun was bright in the sky. I, on the other hand, was stiff and congested; when I tried my voice, I sounded more like Sam Ramey than Renee Fleming. I stumbled out of bed and into my clothes, but the late night with Harriet Whitby and Amy Blount-followed by Geraldine Graham’s demands-had knocked out any reserves I had. I was too hoarse even to make phone calls. Finally I gave in to the luxury of a day off. I played tapes of my mother’s old concerts, listened to Leontyne Price sing Mozart, and ate soup that Mr. Contreras brought in from the market.

On Wednesday, I was still snuffling, but finally had enough energy to get back to work. I’d slept too late to catch young Catherine Bayard at home. So I could find out whether to waylay her at home or at school, I called the Vina Fields Academy, pretending I was part of the Bayard mansion’s staff. The director’s secretary answered.

“Did Catherine Bayard get to class on time this morning? We had to drop her at the train, and I don’t think she caught the early one,” I said in my basso profundo. “I promised her I would explain to the school if she was late.”

They put me through a few hoops-protection for their students, since a school full of wealthy kids is a target for kidnappers. The sketchy data about the Bayard household I’d garnered from Nexis was enough to

convince them to tell me she’d arrived late for algebra. I didn’t push my luck by asking what time Catherine’s school day ended: at least she was in Chicago, within relatively easy striking distance.

My day off left me fit enough to do a complete set of exercises, stretching my tight muscles, working up a modest sweat with my weights, and finishing by taking the dogs on a short jog around the neighborhood. (“You be sure you’re bundled up, cookie, you get a chill on top of that cold, it could turn real serious,” Mr. Contreras once again adjured me.)

When we got back, I did feel better. It’s sometimes hard to believe that motion does you more good than bed; I hoped my looser muscles would get me through the day.

Lotty Herschel called to remind me we were having dinner together tonight: we have a standing date once a month to make sure we don’t lose track of each other. “Yes, I can hear you’re under the weather, my dear, but I see more germs in an hour than you could possibly shed on me, so unless you’re too unwell to go out come and have some company to cheer you.”

Her dry, wry concern was a good tonic. I dressed quickly, in a greenand-black-striped trouser suit that I liked: it was professional but had a bit of style in the jacket waist.

Down at my office, I started my calls with one to Darraugh, so I could report on his mother’s early morning alarm. Darraugh was in New York, but his assistant said she would make sure he knew the sheriff’s deputies hadn’t found any signs of a breakin. She added that they’d already heard twice from Ms. Graham (“She wasn’t sure you understood the urgency of the assignment, but I assured her that Mr. Graham has full confidence in your abilities.”)

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