own car on the North Side. McGraw was going to have quite a bill for expenses-all these cabs, and then the navy suit had cost a hundred and sixty-seven dollars.
A lot of people were out enjoying the day, and the clean fresh air lifted my spirits too. By two I was on the Edens Expressway heading toward the North Shore. I started singing a snatch from Mozart’s
For some reason the Edens ceases to be a beautiful expressway as it nears the homes of the rich. Close to Chicago it’s lined with greensward and neat bungalows, but as you go farther out, shopping centers crop up and industrial parks and drive-ins take over. Once I turned right onto Willow Road, though, and headed toward the lake, the view became more impressive-large stately homes set well back on giant, carefully manicured lawns. I checked Thayer’s address and turned south onto Sheridan Road, squinting at numbers on mailboxes. His house was on the east side, the side where lots face Lake Michigan, giving the children private beaches and boat moorings when they were home from Groton or Andover.
My Chevy felt embarrassed turning through twin stone pillars, especially when it saw a small Mercedes, an Alfa, and an Audi Fox off to one side of the drive. The circular drive took me past some attractive flower gardens to the front door of a limestone mansion. Next to the door a small sign requested tradesmen to make deliveries in the rear. Was I a tradesman or -woman? I wasn’t sure I had anything to deliver, but perhaps my host did.
I took a card from my wallet and wrote a short message on it: “Let’s talk about your relations with the Knifegrinders.” I rang the bell.
The expression on the face of the neatly uniformed woman who answered the door reminded me of my black eye: the bute had put it out of my mind for a while. I gave her the card. “I’d like to see Mr. Thayer,” I said coolly.
She looked at me dubiously, but took the card, shutting the door in my face. I could hear faint shouts from beaches farther up the road. As the minutes passed, I left the porch to make a more detailed study of a flower bed on the other side of the drive. When the door opened, I turned back. The maid frowned at me.
“I’m not stealing the flowers,” I assured hen “But since you don’t have magazines in the waiting area, I had to look at something.
She sucked in her breath but only said, “This way.” No “please,” no manners at all. Still, this was a house of mourning. I made allowances.
We moved at a fast clip through a large entry room graced by a dull-green statue, past a stairway, and down a hall leading to the back of the house. John Thayer met us, coming from the other direction. He was wearing a white knit shirt and checked gray slacks-suburban attire but muted. His whole air was subdued, as if he were consciously trying to act like a mourning father.
“Thanks, Lucy. We’ll go in here.” He took my arm and moved me into a room with comfortable armchairs and packed bookcases. The books were lined up neatly on the shelves. I wondered if he ever read any of them.
Thayer held out my card. “What’s this about, Warshawski?”
“Just what it says. I want to talk about your relations with the Knifegrinders.”
He gave a humorless smile. “They are as minimal as possible. Now that Peter is-gone, I expect them to be nonexistent.”
“ I wonder if Mr. McGraw would agree with that.”
He clenched his fist, crushing the card. “Now we get to it. McGraw hired you to blackmail me, didn’t he?”
“Then there is a connection between you and the Knifegrinders.”
“No!”
“Then how can Mr. McGraw possibly blackmail you?”
“A man like that stops at nothing. I warned you yesterday to be careful around him.”
“Look, Mr. Thayer. Yesterday you got terribly upset at learning that McGraw had brought your name into this. Today you’re afraid he’s blackmailing you. That’s awfully suggestive.”
His face was set in harsh, strained lines. “Of what?”
“Something was going on between you two that you don’t want known. Your son found it out and you two had him killed to keep him quiet.”
“That’s a lie, Warshawski, a goddamned lie,” he roared.
“Prove it.”
“The police arrested Peter’s killer this morning.”
My head swam and I sat down suddenly in one of the leather chairs. “What?” My voice squeaked.
“One of the commissioners called me. They found a drug addict who tried to rob the place. They say Peter caught him at it and was shot.”
“No,” I said.
“What do you mean, no? They arrested the guy.”
“No. Maybe they arrested him, but that wasn’t the scene. No one robbed that place. Your son didn’t catch anyone in the act. I tell you, Thayer, the boy was sitting at the kitchen table and someone shot him. That is not the work of a drug addict caught in a felony. Besides, nothing was taken.”
“What are you after, Warshawski? Maybe nothing was taken. Maybe he got scared and fled. I’d believe that before I’d believe your story-that I shot my own son.” His face was working with a strong emotion. Grief? Anger? Maybe horror?
“Mr. Thayer, I’m sure you’ve noticed what a mess my face is. A couple of punks roughed me up last night to warn me off the investigation into your son’s death. A drug addict doesn’t have those kinds of resources. I saw several people who might have engineered that-and you and Andy McGraw were two of them.”
“People don’t like busybodies, Warshawski. If someone beat you up, I’d take the hint.”
I was too tired to get angry. “In other words, you are involved but you figure you’ve got your ass covered. So that means I’ll have to figure out a way to saw the barrel off your tail. It’ll be a pleasure.”
“Warshawski, I’m telling you for your own good: drop it.” He went over to his desk. “I can see you’re a conscientious girl-but McGraw is wasting your time. There’s nothing to find.” He wrote a check and handed it to me. “Here. You can give McGraw back whatever he’s paid you and feel like you’ve done your duty.”
The check was for $5,000. “You bastard. You accuse me of blackmail and then you try to buy me off?” A spurt of raw anger pushed my fatigue to one side. I ripped up the check and let the pieces fall to the floor.
Thayer turned white. Money was his raw nerve. “The police made an arrest, Warshawski. I don’t need to buy you off. But if you want to act stupid about it, there’s nothing more to say. You’d better leave.”
The door opened and a girl came in. “Oh, Dad, Mother wants you to-” She broke off. “Sorry, didn’t know you had company.” She was an attractive teenager. Her brown straight hair was well brushed and hung down her back, framing a small oval face. She was wearing jeans and a striped man’s shirt several sizes too big for her. Maybe her brother’s. Normally she probably had the confident, healthy air that money can provide. Right now she drooped a bit.
“Miss Warshawski was just leaving, Jill. In fact, why don’t you show her out and I’ll go see what your mother wants.”
He got up and walked to the door, waiting until I followed him to say good-bye. I didn’t offer to shake hands. Jill led me back the way I’d come earlier; her father walked briskly in the opposite direction.
“I’m very sorry about your brother,” I said as we got to the greenish statue.
“So am I,” she said, pulling her lips together. When we got to the front of the house, she followed me outside and stood staring up in my face, frowning a little. “Did you know Peter?” she finally asked.
“No, I never met him,” I answered. “I’m a private investigator, and I’m afraid I’m the person who found him the other morning.”
“They wouldn’t let me look at him,” she said.
“His face was fine. Don’t have nightmares about him-his face wasn’t damaged.” She wanted more information. If he’d been shot in the head, how could his face look all right? I explained it to her in a toned-down, clinical way.
“Peter told me you could decide whether to trust people by their faces,” she said after a minute. “But yours is pretty banged up so I can’t tell. But you told me the truth about Peter and you’re not talking to me as if I was a baby or something.” She paused. I waited. Finally she asked, “Did Dad ask you to come out here?” When I replied, she asked, “Why was he angry?”
“Well, he thinks the police have arrested your brother’s murderer, but I think they’ve got the wrong person. And
