Melancholy Baby

61

We were all gathered now in Lolly’s office: Lolly, Sarah, Lewis Bender, Corsetti, and me. The pictures of Lolly were discreetly back in their manila envelope.

“You realize,” Bender said, “and I’m sure an ADA will so inform you, if it gets that far, that you have no real evidence of anything very much here.”

“The letter,” I said, “and the photos would get us a court-ordered DNA test, I’ll bet.”

Bender shrugged.

“Surely all of this would be very embarrassing to Miss Drake,” he said. “And possibly harmful to her career. But there is no evidence of criminal behavior.”

Corsetti bent forward with his forearms resting on the table and his chin resting on his forearms. He looked like a happy bulldog.

“We can let you fight that out with the prosecutor’s office when the time comes,” he said. “But here’s what it looks like to me. Lolly starts out twentysomething years ago as some sort of weather girl in East” — Corsetti glanced at Sarah — “ah, Overshoe.”

“I was a talk-show host in Moline,” Lolly said. Her voice was chilly.

“Sure thing,” Corsetti said. “And if you’d stayed there, getting knocked up wouldn’t have mattered. But you didn’t stay there, and all of a sudden, getting knocked up became a pretty big deal, because you were selling some kind of true love and total feeling within the frame of marriage ragtime, and here you were, pregnant and single, and you didn’t even know who the kid’s father was.”

Bender looked bored. “Are you through, Detective?”

“What I can’t figure out is why you didn’t abort her.” Corsetti said to Lolly.

I saw Sarah flinch a little. I put my hand on her shoulder. Bender raised his hand toward Lolly, but he was too late.

“I do not believe in abortion,” she said.

Bender’s face showed nothing. “Lolly,” he said. “Silence is golden.”

She looked startled. It was probably a long time since anyone had admonished her.

“Whatever,” Corsetti said. “All of a sudden you found yourself a whizbang, and you had to do something about the kid, so you conned Markham. I don’t know if you conned him because you thought he’d be a good father...”

“He was,” Sarah said loudly.

Everyone in the room looked at her.

“I’m glad he was,” Corsetti said to Sarah, then looked back at Lolly. “Or because he was easy to con and needed money. And the rest of the whole elaborate goddamned thing with Bright Flower, to hide the payments, and then threatening Sunny and the kid when they started looking into her parentage, then murdering a couple of people who knew too much.”

“Do I hear you accusing my client of murder?” Bender said. “On no evidence at all?”

“Not yet,” Corsetti said. “But there’s evidence, and your gofer Delk will roll on you sooner or later. We got conspiracy. We got charity fraud, and we’ll get murder.”

Bender shook his head as if Corsetti was mad.

“Lewis,” Lolly said. “I want this to go away. I can set this child up with a trust fund that will make her secure for life, if that’s what it takes.”

“Two people died,” I said. “It’s not going away.”

Lolly paid me no attention. “You hear me, Lewis?” she said. “I want this stopped now.”

Bender nodded thoughtfully. “We’ll talk again, I’m sure,” he said to Corsetti.

Corsetti nodded and stood. “Only a matter of time,” he said.

Sarah and I stood with him. Corsetti paused a moment and grinned at Lolly. “Nice photos,” he said.