Indemnity Only

10

Beautiful People

Lotty lifted her thick eyebrows as I came into the living room. “Ah,” she said, “success shows in your walk. The office was all right?”

“No, but I found what they were looking for.” I took out the draft and showed it to her. “Make anything of it?”

She put on a pair of glasses and looked at it intently, pursing her lips. “I see these from time to time, you understand, when I get paid for administering to industrial accident victims. It looks totally in order, as far as I can tell-of course, I don’t read them for their content, just glance at them and send them to the bank. And the name Gielczowski means nothing to me, except that it is Polish: should it?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Doesn’t mean anything to me either. I’d better make a copy of it and get it stowed away, though. Have you eaten?”

“I was waiting for you, my dear,” she answered.

“Then let me take you out to dinner. I need it-it took a lot of work finding this, physical I mean, although the mental process helped-nothing like a university education to teach you logic.”

Lotty agreed. I showered and changed into a respectable pair of slacks. A dressy shirt and a loose jacket completed the outfit, and the shoulder holster fitted neatly under my left arm. I put the claim draft in my jacket pocket.

Lotty scrutinized me when I came back into the living room. “You hide it well, Vic.” I looked puzzled and she laughed. “My dear, you left the empty box in the kitchen garbage, and I knew I had brought no Smith & Wesson into the house. Shall we go?”

I laughed but said nothing. Lotty drove us down to Belmont and Sheridan and we had a pleasant, simple dinner in the wine cellar at the Chesterton Hotel. An Austrian wine store, it had expanded to include a tiny restaurant. Lotty approved of their coffee and ate two of the rich Viennese pastries.

When we got home, I insisted on checking front and back entrances, but no one had been around. Inside, I called Larry Anderson, my cleaning friend, and arranged for him to right my apartment. Not tomorrow-he had a big job on, but he’d go over with his best crew personally on Tuesday. Not at all, he’d be delighted. I got hold of Ralph and agreed to meet him for dinner the next night at Ahab’s. “How’s your face?” he asked.

“Much better, thanks. I should look almost presentable for you tomorrow night.”

At eleven I bade Lotty a very sleepy good night and fell into bed. I was instantly asleep, falling down a black hole into total oblivion. Much later I began dreaming. The red Venetian glasses were lined up on my mother’s dining-room table. “Now you must hit high C, Vicki, and hold it,” my mother said. I made a tremendous effort and sustained the note. Under my horrified eyes, the row of glasses dissolved into a red pooh It way my mother’s blood. With a tremendous effort I pulled myself awake. The phone was ringing.

Lotty had answered it on her extension by the time I oriented myself in the strange bed. When I lifted the receiver, I could hear her crisp, soothing voice saying, “Yes, this is Dr. Herschel.” I hung up and squinted at the little illuminated face of the bedside clock: 5:13. Poor Lotty, I thought, what a life, and rolled back over to sleep.

The ringing phone dragged me back to life again several hours later. I dimly remembered the earlier call and, wondering if Lotty were back yet, reached for the phone. “Hello?” I said, and heard Lotty on the other extension. I was about to hang up again when a tremulous little voice said, “Is Miss Warshawski there?”

“Yes, speaking. What can I do for you?” I heard the click as Lotty hung up again.

“This is Jill Thayer,” the little voice quavered, trying to speak calmly. “Can you come out to my house, please?”

“You mean right now?” I asked.

“Yes,” she breathed.

“Sure thing, honey. Be right out. Can you tell me the trouble now?” I had shoved the receiver between my right shoulder and my ear and was pulling on some clothes. It was 7:30 and Lotty’s burlap curtains let in enough light to dress by without my having to fumble for the lamp switch.

“It’s-I can’t talk right now. My mother wants me. Just come, please.”

“Okay, Jill. Hold the fort. I’ll be there in forty minutes.” I hung up and hurriedly finished dressing in the clothes I’d worn last night, not omitting the gun under my left shoulder. I stopped in the kitchen where Lotty was eating toast and drinking the inevitable thick Viennese coffee.

“So,” she said, “the second emergency of the day? Mine was a silly hemorrhaging child who had a bad abortion because she was afraid to come to me in the first place.” She grimaced. “And the mother was not to know, of course. And you?”

“Off to Winnetka. Another child, but pleasant, not silly.” Lotty had the Sun-Times open in front of her. “Anything new about the Thayers? She sounded quite panicked.”

Lotty poured me a cup of coffee, which I swallowed in scalding gulps while scanning the paper, but I found nothing. I shrugged, took a piece of buttered toast from Lotty, kissed her cheek, and was gone.

Native caution made me check the stairwells and the front walk carefully before going to the street. I even examined the backseat and the engine for untoward activity before getting into the car. Smeissen really had me spooked.

Traffic on the Kennedy was heavy with the Monday morning rush hour and people staggering home at the last minute from weekends in the country. Once I hit the outbound Edens, however, I had the road chiefly to myself, I had given Jill Thayer my card more to let her feel someone cared than because I expected an SOS, and with the half of my mind that wasn’t looking for speed traps I wondered what had caused the cry for help. A suburban teen-ager who had never seen death might find anything connected with it upsetting, yet she had struck me as essentially levelheaded. I wondered if her father had gone off the deep end in a big way.

I had left Lotty’s at 7:42, and turned onto Willow Road at 8:03. Pretty good time for fifteen miles, considering that three had been in the heavy city traffic on Addison. At 8:09 I pulled up to the gates of the Thayer house. That was as far as I got. Whatever had happened, it was excitement in a big way. The entrance was blocked by a Winnetka police car, lights flashing, and as far as I could see into the yard, it was filled with more cars and many policemen. I backed the Chevy down the road a bit and parked it on the gravel verge. It wasn’t until I turned the motor off and got out that I noticed the sleek black Mercedes that had been in the yard on Saturday. Only it wasn’t in the yard, it was tilted at a strange angle off the road. And it was no longer sleek, The front tires were flat, and the front windshield was a series of glass shards, fragments left from radiating circles. My guess was that bullets, and many of them, had caused the damage.

In my neighborhood a noisy crowd would have gathered to gape over the sight. This being the North Shore, a crowd had gathered, but a smaller and quieter one than Halsted and Belmont would have attracted. They were being held at bay by a lean young policeman with a mustache.

“Gee, they really got Mr. Thayer’s car,” I said to the young man, strolling over.

When disaster strikes, the police like to keep all the news to themselves. They never tell you what happened, and they never answer leading questions. Winnetka’s finest were no exception. “What do you want?” the young man said suspiciously.

I was about to tell him the candid truth when it occurred to me that it would never get me past the herd in the driveway. “My name is V. I. Warshawski,” I said, smiling in what I hoped was a saintly way. “I used to be Miss Jill Thayer’s governess. When all the trouble started this morning, she called me and asked me to come out to be with her.”

The young cop frowned. “Do you have any identification?” he demanded.

“Certainly,” I said righteously. I wondered what use a driver’s license would be in proving my story, but I obligingly dug it out and handed it to him.

“All right,” he said after studying it long enough to memorize the number, “you can talk to the sergeant.”

He left his post long enough to walk me to the gate. “Sarge!” he yelled. One of the men by the door looked up. “This is the Thayer girl’s governess!” he called, cupping his hands.

“Thank you, Officer,” I said, imitating Miss Jean Brodie’s manner. I walked up the drive to the doorway and repeated my story to the sergeant.

He frowned in turn. “We didn’t have any word about a governess showing up. I’m afraid no one is allowed in right now. You’re not with a newspaper, are you?”

“Certainly not!” I snapped. “Look, Sergeant,” I said, smiling a bit to show I could be conciliatory, “how about just asking Miss Thayer to come to the door. She can tell you if she wants me here or not. If she doesn’t, I can leave again. But since she did ask for me, she’s likely to be upset if I’m not allowed inside.”

The upsetness of a Thayer, even one as young as Jill, seemed to concern the sergeant. I was afraid he might ring for Lucy, but instead he asked one of his men to fetch Miss Thayer.

Minutes went by without her appearance, and I began to wonder whether Lucy had seen me after all and set the police straight on my governess story. Eventually Jill arrived, however. Her oval face was pinched and anxious and her brown hair had not been brushed. Her face cleared a little when she saw me. “Oh, it’s you!” she said. “They told me my governess was here and I thought it was old Mrs. Wilkens.”

“Isn’t this your governess?” the patrolman demanded.

Jill gave me an anguished look. I moved into the house. “Just tell the man you sent for me,” I said.

“Oh, yes, yes, I did. I called Miss Warshawski an hour ago and begged her to come up here.”

The patrolman was looking at me suspiciously, but I was in the house and one of the powerful Thayers wanted me to be there. He compromised by having me spell out my name, letter by laborious letter, for his notebook. Jill tugged on my arm while I was doing this, and as soon as we were through spelling, before he could ask more questions, I gave her a little pat and propelled her toward the hall. She led me to a little room near the big green statue and shut the door.

“Did you say you were my governess?” She was still trying to figure that one out.

“I was afraid they wouldn’t let me inside if I told them the truth,” I explained. “Police don’t like private detectives on their turf. Now suppose you tell me what’s going on.”

The bleak look reappeared. She screwed up her face. “Did you see the car outside?” I nodded. “My father-that was him, they shot him.”

“Did you see them do it?” I asked.

She shook her head and wiped her hand across her nose and forehead. Tears were suddenly streaming down her face. “I heard them,” she wailed.

The little room had a settee and a table with some magazines on it. Two heavy-armed chairs stood on either side of a window overlooking the south lawn. I pulled them up to the table and sat Jill in one of them. I sat in the other, facing her. “I’m sorry to put you through it, but I’m going to have to ask you to tell me how it happened. Just take your time, though, and don’t mind crying.”

The story came out in little sobs. “My dad always leaves-leaves for work between seven and seven thirty,” she said. “Sometimes he goes earlier. If something special-special is-going on at the bank. I’m usually asleep when he goes. Lucy makes-made him breakfast, then I get up and she makes another breakfast. Mother has toast and coffee in her room. She’s-she’s always on a-a diet.”

I nodded to explain not only that I understood these details but why she was reporting them. “But today you weren’t asleep.”

“No,” she agreed. “All this stuff about Pete-his funeral was yesterday, you know, and it shook me up so I couldn’t-couldn’t sleep very well.” She’d stopped crying and was trying to control her voice. “I heard Daddy get up, but I didn’t go down to eat with him. He’d been so strange, you know, and I didn’t want to hear him say anything terrible about Pete.” Suddenly she was sobbing, “I wouldn’t eat with him, and now he’s dead, and now I’ll never have another chance.” The words came out in great heaving bursts between sobs; she kept repeating them.

I took her hands. “Yes, I know, it’s tough, Jill. But you didn’t kill him by not eating with him, you know.” I patted her hands but didn’t say anything else for a while. Finally, though, as the sobs quieted a bit, I said, “Tell me what did happen, honey, and then we can try to figure out an answer to it.”

She worked hard to pull herself together, and then said, “There’s not much else to tell. My bedroom is above here and I can see the side of the house. I sort of-of wandered to the window and watched him-watched him drive his car down to the road.” She stopped to swallow but she had herself in hand. “You can’t see the road because of all the bushes in front of it, and anyway, you can’t see all the way down to the bottom from my room, but I knew from the sound that he’d gotten down and turned onto Sheridan.” I nodded encouragingly, still holding her hands tightly. “Well, I was sort of going back to my bed, I thought I might get dressed, when I heard all these shots. Only I didn’t know-know what they were.” She carefully wiped two new tears away. “It sounded horrid. I heard glass shattering, and then this squeal, you know, the way a car sounds when it’s turning a corner too fast or something, and I thought, maybe Daddy had an accident. You know, he was acting so crazy, he could have gone charging down Sheridan Road and hit someone.

“So I ran downstairs without taking off my nightgown and Lucy came running from the back of the house. She was yelling something, and trying to get me to go back upstairs and get some clothes on, but I went outside anyway and ran down to the drive and found the car.” She screwed up her face, shutting her eyes, and fought against her tears again. “It was terrible. Daddy-Daddy was bleeding and lying all spread out on the steering wheel.” She shook her head. “I still thought he’d been in an accident, but I couldn’t see the other car. I thought maybe they’d driven off, you know, the ones with the squealing tires, but Lucy seemed to guess about the shooting. Anyway, she kept me from going over to the car-I didn’t have any shoes on, and by then a whole lot of cars had stopped to stare at it and she-Lucy-made one of them call the police on his CB. She wanted me to come back to the house but I wouldn’t, not until the police came.” She sniffed. “I didn’t like to leave him there all by himself, you know.”

“Yeah, sure, honey. You did real well. Did your mother come out?”

“No, we went back to the house when the police came, and I came upstairs to get dressed and then I remembered you and called you. But you know when I hung up?” I nodded. “Well, Lucy went to wake up Mother and tell her, and she-she started crying and made Lucy get me, and she came in just then so I had to hangup.”

“So you didn’t get a glimpse of the people who killed your dad?” She shook her head. “Do the police believe he was in the car you heard taking off?”

“Yes, it’s something to do with shells. I think there weren’t any shells or something, so they think they must be in the car.”

I nodded. “That makes sense. Now for the big question, Jill: Did you want me to come out for comfort and support-which I’m happy to provide-or to take some kind of action?”

She stared at me through gray eyes that had seen and heard too much for her age lately. “What can you do?” she asked.

“You can hire me to find out who killed your dad and your brother,” I said matter-of-factly.

“I don’t have any money, only my allowance. When I’m twenty-one I get some of my trust money, but I’m only fourteen now.”

I laughed. “Not to worry. If you want to hire me, give me a dollar and I’ll give you a receipt, and that will mean you’ve hired me. You’ll have to talk to your mother about it, though.”

“My money’s upstairs,” she said, getting up. “Do you think the same person killed Daddy who killed Pete?”

“It seems probable, although I don’t really have any facts to go on.”

“Do you think it’s someone who might-well, is someone trying to wipe out my family?”

I considered that. It wasn’t completely out of the question, but it was an awfully dramatic way to do it, and rather slow. “I doubt it,” I said finally. “Not completely impossible-but if they wanted to do that, why not just get you all when you were in the car together yesterday?”

“I’ll go get my money,” Jill said, going to the door. She opened it and Lucy appeared, crossing the hall. “So that’s where you are,” she said sharply. “How can you disappear like that and your mother wanting you?” She looked into the room. “Now don’t tell me that detective woman got in here! Come on, you,” she said to me. “Out you go! We’ve got trouble enough around here without you stirring it up.”

“If you please, Lucy,” Jill said in a very grown-up way, “Miss Warshawski came up here because I invited her, and she will leave when I ask her to.”

“Well, your mother will have something to say about that,” Lucy snapped.

“I’ll talk to her myself,” Jill snapped back. “Can you wait here, please, while I get my money,” she added to me, “and then would you mind coming to see my mother with me? I don’t think I can explain it to her by myself.”

“Not at all,” I said politely, giving her an encouraging smile.

After Jill had gone, Lucy said, “All I can say is that Mr. Thayer didn’t want you here, and what he would say if he could see you-”

“Well, we both know he can’t,” I interrupted. “However, if he had been able to explain-to me or to anyone else-what was on his mind, he would very likely be alive this morning.

“Look. I like Jill and I’d like to help her out. She called me this morning not because she has the faintest idea of what I can do for her as a private detective, but because she feels I’m supporting her. Don’t you think she gets left out around here?”

Lucy looked at me sourly. “Maybe so, Miss Detective, maybe so. But if Jill had any consideration for her mother, maybe she’d get a little consideration back.”

“I see,” I said dryly. Jill came back downstairs.

“Your mother is waiting for you,” Lucy reminded her sharply.

“I know!” Jill yelled. “I’m coming.” She handed me a dollar, and I gravely wrote out a receipt on a scrap of paper from my handbag. Lucy watched the whole thing angrily, her lips shut in a thin line. We then retraced the route I’d taken Saturday through the long hall. We passed the library door and went clear to the back of the house.

Lucy opened the door to a room on the left, saying, “Here she is, Mrs. Thayer. She’s got some terrible detective with her who’s trying to take money from her. Mr. Thayer threw her out of the house on Saturday, but now she’s back.”

A patrolman standing beside the door gave me a startled look.

“Lucy!” Jill stormed. “That’s a lie.” She pushed her way past the disapproving figure into the room. I stood behind Lucy, looking over her shoulder. It was a delightful room, completely windows on three sides. It overlooked the lake out the east side, and a beautiful lawn, complete with a grass tennis court, on the north. It was furnished with white bamboo furniture with cheerful color accents in reds and yellows in the cushions, lamp bases, and floor covering. A profusion of plants gave it a greenhouse effect.

In the middle of this charming setting was Mrs. Thayer. Even with no makeup and a few tearstains, she was very handsome, easily recognizable as the original of the picture in yesterday’s Herald-Star. A very pretty young woman, an older edition of Jill, sat solicitously on one side of her, and a handsome young man in a polo shirt and checked trousers sat across from her, looking a little ill-at-ease.

“Please, Jill, I don’t understand a word you or Lucy are saying, but don’t shout, darling, my nerves absolutely won’t stand it.”

I moved past Lucy into the room and went over to Mrs. Thayer’s couch. “Mrs. Thayer, I’m very sorry about your husband and your son,” I said. “My name is V. I. Warshawski. I’m a private detective. Your daughter asked me to come up here this morning to see if I could help out.”

The young man answered, sticking his jaw out. “I’m Mrs. Thayer’s son-in-law, and I think I can safely say that if my father-in-law threw you out of the house on Saturday, that you’re probably not wanted here.”

“Jill, did you call her?” the young woman asked, shocked.

“Yes, I did,” Jill answered, setting her jaw mulishly. “And you can’t throw her out, Jack: it’s not your house. I asked her to come up, and I’ve hired her to find out who killed Daddy and Pete. She thinks the same person did it both times.”

“Really, Jill,” the other woman said, “I think we can leave this to the police without upsetting Mother by bringing in hired detectives.”

“Just what I tried telling her, Mrs. Thorndale, but of course she wouldn’t listen.” That was Lucy, triumphant.

Jill’s face was screwed up again, as if she were going to cry. “Take it easy, honey,” I said. “Let’s not get everyone more worked up than they are already. Why don’t you tell me who’s who?”

“Sorry,” she gulped. “This is my mother, my sister, Susan Thorndale, and her husband, Jack. And Jack thinks because he can boss Susan around he can do that to me, but-”

“Steady, Jill,” I said, putting a hand on her shoulder.

Susan’s face was pink. “Jill, if you hadn’t been spoiled rotten all these years you would show a little respect to someone like Jack who has a lot more experience than you do. Do you have any idea what people are going to be saying about Daddy, the way he was killed and all? Why, why it looks like a gang killing, and it makes Daddy look as if he was involved with the gang.” Her voice rose to a high pitch on the last sentence.

“Mob,” I said. Susan looked at me blankly. “It looks like a mob killing. Some gangs may go in for that style of execution, but usually they don’t have the resources.”

“Now look here,” Jack said angrily. “We’ve already asked you to leave. Why don’t you go, instead of showing off your smart mouth! Like Susan said, it’s going to be hard enough explaining away the way Mr. Thayer died, without having to explain why we got a private detective involved as well.”

“Is that all you care about?” Jill cried. “What people will say? With Pete dead, and Daddy dead?”

“No one is sorrier than me that Peter was shot,” Jack said, “but if he had done what your father wanted and lived in a proper apartment, instead of that slummy dump with that slut of a girl, he would never have been shot in the first place.”

“Oh!” Jill screamed. “How can you talk about Peter that way! He was trying to do something warm and real instead of-You’re such a fake. All you and Susan care about is how much money you make and what the neighbors will say! I hate you!” She ended on another flood of tears and flung herself into my arms. I gave her a hug and wrapped my right arm around her while I fished in my bag for some tissues with the left.

“Jill,” her mother said in a soft, complaining voice, “Jill, honey, please don’t shout like that in here. My nerves just absolutely cannot take it. I’m just as sorry as you are that Petey is dead, but Jack is right, honey: if he’d listened to your father all this wouldn’t have happened, and your father wouldn’t be-be…” Her voice broke off and she started weeping quietly.

Susan put an arm around her mother and patted her shoulder. “Now, see what you’ve done,” she said venomously, whether to me or to her sister I wasn’t sure.

“Now you’ve caused enough disturbance, you polack detective, whatever your name is,” Lucy began.

“Don’t you dare talk to her like that,” Jill cried, her voice partly muffled by my shoulder. “Her name is Miss Warshawski, and you should call her Miss Warshawski!”

“Well, Mother Thayer,” Jack said with a rueful laugh, “sorry to drag you into this, but since Jill won’t listen to her sister or me, will you tell her that she has to get this woman out of the house?”

“Oh, please, Jack,” his mother-in-law said, leaning on Susan. She stretched out a hand to him without looking at him, and I was interested to note that her eyes didn’t turn red with crying. “I just don’t have the strength to deal with Jill in one of her moods.” However, she pulled herself into a sitting position, still holding on to Jack’s hand, and looked at Jill earnestly. “Jill, I just cannot stand for you to have one of your temper tantrums right now. You and Peter never listen to what anyone has to say to you. If Petey had, he wouldn’t be dead now. With Petey dead, and John, I just can’t take anything else. So don’t talk to this private detective any longer. She’s taking advantage of you to get her name in the paper, and I can’t bear another scandal about this family.”

Before I could say anything, Jill tore herself away from me, her little face crimson. “Don’t talk like that to me!” she screamed. “I care about Pete and Daddy and you don’t! You’re the one who’s bringing scandals into the house. Everybody knows you didn’t love Daddy! Everybody knows what you and Dr. Mulgrave were up to! Daddy was probably-”

Susan leaped up from the couch and slapped her sister hard on the face. “You goddamn brat, be quiet!” Mrs. Thayer started weeping in earnest. Jill, overcome by assorted strong and uncontrollable feelings, began sobbing again.

At that moment a worried-looking man in a business suit came into the room, escorted by one of the patrolmen. He crossed to Mrs. Thayer and clasped her hands. “Margaret! I came as soon as I heard the news. How are you? ”

Susan blushed. Jill’s sobs died away. Jack looked as though he had been stuffed. Mrs. Thayer turned large tragic eyes to the newcomer’s face. “Ted. How kind of you,” she said in a brave voice, barely above a whisper.

“Dr. Mulgrave, I presume,” I said.

He dropped Mrs. Thayer’s wrists and stood up straight. “Yes, I’m Dr. Mulgrave.” He looked at Jack. “Is this a policewoman?”

“No,” I said. “I’m a private investigator. Miss Thayer has hired me to find out who killed her father and brother.”

“Margaret?” he asked incredulously.

“No. Miss Thayer. Jill,” I said.

Jack said, “Mrs. Thayer just ordered you to leave her house and leave her daughter alone. I’d think even an ambulance chaser like you would know how to take a hint like that.”

“Oh, cool it, Thorndale,” I said. “What’s eating you? Jill asked me to come up here because she’s scared silly-as any normal person would be with all this going on. But you guys are so defensive you make me wonder what you’re hiding.”

“What do you mean?” he scowled.

“Well, why don’t you want me looking into your father-in-law’s death? What are you afraid I’ll find out-that he and Peter caught you with your fingers in the till and you had them shot to shut them up?”

I ignored his outraged gasp. “What about you, Doctor? Did Mr. Thayer learn about your relations with his wife and threaten divorce-but you decided a wealthy widow was a better bet than a woman who couldn’t make a very good case for alimony?”

“Now look here, whatever your name is. I don’t have to listen to that kind of crap,” Mulgrave started.

“Then leave,” I said. “Maybe Lucy is using this house as a center for burglarizing wealthy homes on the North Shore-after all, as a maid, she probably hears a lot about where jewelry, documents, and so on are kept. When Mr. Thayer and his son got too hot on her trail, she hired a murderer.” I smiled enthusiastically at Susan, who was starting to babble-I was getting carried away by my own fantasies. “I could probably think of a motive for you too, Mrs. Thorn-dale. All I’m trying to say is, you people are so hostile that it starts me wondering. The less you want me to undertake a murder investigation, the more I start thinking there might be something to my ideas.”

When I stopped talking, they were silent for a minute. Mulgrave was clasping Mrs. Thayer’s hands again, sitting next to her now. Susan looked like a kitten getting ready to spit at a dog. My client was sitting on one of the bamboo side chairs, her hands clenched in her lap, her face intent. Then Mulgrave said, “Are you trying to threaten us-threaten the Thayer family?”

“If you mean, am I threatening to find out the truth, the answer is yes; if that means turning up a lot of sordid junk along the way, tough.”

“Just a minute, Ted,” Jack said, waving an arm at the older man. “I know how to deal with her.” He nodded at me. “Come on, name your price,” he said, pulling out his checkbook.

My fingers itched to bring out the Smith & Wesson and pistol-whip him. “Grow up, Thorndale,” I snapped. “There are things in this life that money can’t buy. Regardless of what you, or your mother-in-law, or the mayor of Winnetka says, I am investigating this murder-these murders.” I laughed a little, mirthlessly. “Two days ago, John Thayer tried to give me $5,000 to buy me out of this case. You guys up here on the North Shore live in some kind of dream world. You think you can buy a cover-up for anything that goes wrong in your lives, just like you hire the garbagemen to take away your filth, or Lucy here to clean it up and carry it outside for you. It doesn’t work that way. John Thayer is dead. He couldn’t pay enough to get whatever filth he was involved in away from him, nor away from his son. Now whatever it was that caused their deaths isn’t private anymore. It doesn’t belong to you. Anyone who wants it can find out about it. I intend to.”

Mrs. Thayer was moaning softly. Jack looked uncomfortable. With an effort to save his dignity he said, “Naturally, if you choose to poke around in something that’s none of your business we can’t stop you. It’s just that we think matters are better off left to the police.”

“Yeah, well, they’re not batting a thousand right now,” I said. “They thought they had a guy behind bars for the crime, but while he was eating his prison breakfast this morning John Thayer got killed.”

Susan turned to Jill. “This is all your fault! You brought this person up here. Now We’ve been insulted and embarrassed-I’ve never been more ashamed in my life. Daddy’s been killed and all you can think about is bringing in some outsider to call us names.”

Mulgrave turned back to Mrs. Thayer, and Jack and Susan both started talking to him at once. While this was going on, I walked over to Jill and knelt down to look her in the face. She was looking as though she might collapse or go into shock. “Look, I think you need to get away from all this. Is there any friend or relative you can visit until the worst of the fuss is over?”

She thought for a minute, then shook her head. “Not really. I’ve got lots of friends, you know, but I don’t think any of their mothers would like having me around right now.” She gave a wobbly smile. “The scandal, you know, like Jack said. I wish Anita were here.”

I hesitated a minute. “Would you like to come back to Chicago with me? My apartment’s been torn up, and I’m staying with a friend, but she’ll be glad to have you, too, for a few days.” Lotty would never mind another stray. I needed Jill where I could ask her some questions, and I wanted her away from her family. She was tough and could fight back, but she didn’t need to do that kind of fighting on top of the shock of her father’s death.

Her face lightened. “Do you really mean that?”

I nodded. “Why don’t you run upstairs now and pack an overnight bag while everyone is still arguing here.”

When she had left the room, I explained what I was doing to Mrs. Thayer. This, predictably, started a fresh uproar from the family. Finally, though, Mulgrave said, “It’s important that Margaret-Mrs. Thayer-be kept absolutely quiet. If Jill really is worrying her, perhaps it would be better if she did leave for a few days. I can make some inquiries about this person, and if she’s not reliable, we can always bring Jill back home.”

Mrs. Thayer gave a martyred smile. “Thank you, Ted. If you say it’s all right, I’m sure it will be. As long as you live in a safe neighborhood, Miss-”

“Warshawski,” I said dryly. “Well, no one’s been machine-gunned there this week.”

Mulgrave and Jack decided I ought to give them some references to call. I saw that as a face-saving effort and gave them the name of one of my old law professors. He would be startled but supportive if he got an inquiry into my character.

When Jill came back, she’d brushed her hair and washed her face. She went over to her mother, who was still sitting on the couch. “I’m sorry, Mother,” she muttered. “I didn’t mean to be rude to you.”

Mrs. Thayer smiled wanly. “It’s all right, dear. I don’t expect you to understand how I feel.” She looked at me. “Take good care of her for me.”

“Sure,” I answered.

“I don’t want any trouble,” Jack warned me.

“I’ll keep that in mind, Mr. Thorndale.” I picked up Jill’s suitcase and she followed me out the door.

She stopped in the doorway to look at her family. “Well, good-bye,” she said. They all looked at her but no one said anything.

When we got to the front door, I explained to the sergeant that Miss Thayer was coming home with me for a few days to get a little rest and attention; had the police taken all the statements they needed from her? After some talk with his lieutenant over the walkie-talkie, he agreed that she could leave, as long as I gave him my address. I gave it to him and we walked down the drive.

Jill didn’t say anything on the way over to the Edens. She looked straight ahead and didn’t pay much attention to the countryside. As we joined the stop-and-go traffic on the southbound Kennedy, though, she turned to look at me. “Do you think I was wrong, leaving my mother like that?”

I braked to let a fifty-ton semi merge in front of me. “Well, Jill, it seemed to me that everyone there was trying to play on your guilt feelings. Now you’re feeling guilty, so maybe they got what they wanted out of you.”

She digested that for a few minutes. “Is that a scandal, the way my father was killed?”

“People are probably talking about it, and that will make Jack and Susan very uncomfortable. The real question, though, is why he was killed-and even the answer to that question doesn’t have to be a scandal to you.” I threaded my way around a Herald-Star delivery van. “Thing is, you have to have your own sense of what’s right built inside you. If your father ran afoul of the type of people who do machine-gun-style executions, it may be because they tried to violate his sense of what’s right. No scandal to that. And even if he happened to be involved in some kind of shady activity, it doesn’t have to affect you unless you want it to.” I changed lanes. “I don’t believe in the visitation of the sins of the fathers, and I don’t believe in people brooding over vengeance for twenty years.”

Jill turned a puzzled face toward me. “Oh, it can happen. It’s just that you’ve got to want to make it happen. Like your mother-unhappy woman-right?” Jill nodded. “And probably unhappy because of things that happened thirty years ago. That’s her choice. You’ve got the same choice. Suppose your father did something criminal and we find that out? It’s going to be rough, but it only has to be a scandal and make your life miserable if you let it. Lots of things in this life happen to you no matter what you do, or through no fault of your own-like your father and brother getting killed. But how you make those events part of your life is under your control. You can get bitter, although I don’t think you have that kind of character, or you can learn and grow from it.”

I realized that I’d passed the Addison exit and turned onto the Belmont off-ramp. “Sorry-that answer turned into a sermon, and I got so carried away I missed my exit. Does it help any?”

Jill nodded and was quiet again as I drove north along Pulaski and then turned east on Addison. “It’s lonely now, with Peter gone,” she said finally. “He was the only one in the family who-who cared about me.”

“Yeah, it’s going to be rough, sweetie,” I said gently, and squeezed her hand.

“Thank you for coming up, Miss Warshawski,” she whispered.

I had to lean over to hear her. “My friends call me Vic,” I said.