An indefinable expression crossed her face. “I don’t know who that is.”
“He’s one of the second-string players. Boom Boom didn’t like him, so he might never have introduced you to him… Where did you two go on that last Saturday? Anyplace that he might have seen the guy?”
She shrugged and gave me a disdainful look, designed to make me feel like a ghoul. I waited. “You’re being extremely vulgar, Vic. That was my last private day with Boom Boom. I want to keep it to myself.”
“You didn’t see him Monday night?”
She turned red. “Vic! I know you’re a detective, but this is excessive. You have a morbid interest in your cousin that’s very unhealthy. I believe you can’t stand the thought that he might have been close to any other woman but you!”
“Paige, I’m not asking you to tell me what kind of lover Boom Boom was or to describe any intimate passages of your lives together. I just want to know what you did on Saturday and whether you saw him on Monday… Look, I don’t want to turn this into a big, hostile ordeal. I like you. I don’t want to start calling Ann Bidermyer and your mother and everyone you know to get a bead on you. I’m just asking you.”
The honey-colored eyes filled with tears. “I like you too, Vic. You remind me of Boom Boom. But he was never so aggressive, even though he was a hockey player.
“We were sailing on Saturday. We got back at four so I could get to rehearsal. He may have stayed in Lake Bluff with the boat. I don’t know. Monday night we had dinner at the Gypsy. I never saw him after that. Are you satisfied? Does that tell you what you have to find out? Or will you still be calling my mother and everyone else I know?”
She turned and left. My head was aching again.
13 Sherry at Valhalla
Monday morning, Lotty removed the cast, pronounced the swelling down and healing well under way, and had me released from bondage. We went north to her tidy apartment.
Lotty drives her green Datsun recklessly, believing that all other cars will move out of the way. A dent in the right fender and a long scrape along the passenger door are testimony to the success of her approach. I opened my eyes on Addison-a mistake, since it was in time to see her swerve in front of a CTA bus and to turn right onto Sheffield.
“Lotty, if you’re going to drive like this, get a semi-the guy who’s responsible for putting my shoulder in this sling walked away from the accident unscratched.”
Lotty turned off the ignition and hopped out of the car. “Firmness is necessary, Vic. Firmness or the others will drive one from the streets.”
It was hopeless; I gave up an unequal struggle.
We had stopped by my apartment to pick up clothes and a bottle of Black Label-Lotty doesn’t keep whiskey in the house. I’d also taken my Smith & Wesson from a locked cupboard in the bedroom closet. Someone had tried to smash me to bits on the Dan Ryan. I didn’t feel like roving the streets unprotected.
Lotty went to the clinic she operates nearby. I settled down in her living room with a telephone. I was going to talk to everyone who’d had a chance to take a crack at me. My rage had disappeared as my head wound healed, but my sense of purpose was strengthened.
I reached the helpful young office manager at the Pole Star Line on the third ring. The news she gave me was not encouraging. The
Baffled there, I called down to Eudora Grain’s office and asked for Janet. She came to the phone and told me she was sorry about my accident and glad I was feeling better. I asked her if she knew where Phillips lived-I might pay a surprise visit to his wife to find out what time her husband had come home the night of my accident.
Janet didn’t know. It was up north someplace. If it was important, she could ask around and find out. It was important, I said, and gave her Lotty’s number.
While I was waiting I got Howard Mattingly’s number from Myron Fackley. Boom Boom told Pierre he’d seen Mattingly in a strange place. I was betting Mattingly was hanging around Lake Bluff when Boom Boom went sailing there with Paige the Saturday before he died. I wanted to find out.
Mattingly wasn’t home, but his wife, Elsie the Breathless, was. I reminded her we’d met at a number of hockey functions. Oh yes, she gasped, she remembered me.
“Boom Boom told me he’d seen your husband sailing on the twenty-third. Did you go with him?”
She hadn’t gone out with Howard that day-she was pregnant and she got tired so easily. She didn’t know if he’d been sailing or not-he certainly hadn’t said anything about it. Yes, she’d tell Howard to call me. She hung up without asking why I wanted to know.
Lotty came home for lunch. I fixed sardines on toast with cucumber and tomato and Lotty made a pot of the thick Viennese coffee she survives on. If I drank as much of it as she does they’d have to pull me off the chandeliers. I had orange juice and half a sandwich. My head still bothered me and I didn’t have much appetite.
Janet called from Eudora Grain after lunch. She’d pilfered the personal files while everyone was eating and gotten Phillips’s address: on Harbor Road in Lake Bluff. I thanked her absently-a lot seemed to go on in Lake Bluff. Grafalk. Paige had grown up there. Phillips lived there. And Paige and Boom Boom had gone sailing there on the twenty-third of April. I realized Janet had hung up and that I was still holding the receiver.
I put it down and went into the guest room to dress for a trip to the northern suburbs. We were in the second week in May and the air was still cold. My dad used to say Chicago had two seasons: winter and August. It was still winter.
I put on the blue Chanel jacket with a white shirt and white wool slacks. The effect was elegant and professional. Lotty had given me a canvas sling to keep as much pressure off the shoulder as possible-I’d wear it up in the car and take it off when I got to Phillips’s house.
Lotty’s spare room doubles as her study and I rummaged in the desk for a pad of paper and some pens. I also found a small leather briefcase. I put the Smith & Wesson in there along with the writing equipment. Ready for any occurrence.
Until they processed my claim check, the Ajax Insurance Company provided me a Chevette with the stiffest steering I’ve ever encountered. I’d considered using Boom Boom’s Jaguar but didn’t think I could operate a stick shift one-handed. I was trying to get Ajax to exchange the Chevette for something easier to handle. In the meantime it was going to make getting around difficult.
Driving up the Edens to Lake Bluff was a major undertaking. Every turn of the wheel wrenched my healing shoulder and strained the muscles in my neck, also weak from the accident. By the time I pulled off the Tri-State Tollway onto Route 137, my entire upper back was aching and my professionally crisp white blouse was wet under the armpits.
At two-thirty on a weekday Lake Bluff was still. Just south of the Great Lakes Naval Training Station on Lake Michigan, the town is a tiny pocket of wealth. To be sure, there are small lots and eight-room ranch houses, but imposing mansions predominate. A weak spring sun shone on nascent lawns and the trees sporting their first pale green frills.
I turned south on Green Bay Road and meandered around until I found Harbor Road. As I suspected, it overlooked the lake. I passed an outsize red brick dwelling sprawled on a huge lot, perhaps ten acres, with tennis courts visible through the budding shrubs-they’d be hidden by midsummer when the plants were in full foliage. Three lots later I came to the Phillipses.
Theirs was not an imposing mansion, but the setting was beautiful. As I wrenched the Chevette up the drive I could see Lake Michigan unfold behind the house. It was a two-story frame structure, topped with those rough shingles people think imitate thatching. Painted white, with a silvery trim around the windows, it looked as if it
