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
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
