Lotty laid a hand over mine. “Liebchen, forgive me if I step on your toes, but—I’m wondering if you are overly involved with Ms. Zamir’s situation because she is a musician. A musician in trouble is perhaps a reminder of your mother, whom you couldn’t save.”
She was echoing what Peter had said earlier. I smiled painfully. After a moment she moved the conversation to less stressful topics: she and Max were planning a music lover’s vacation, from the Marlboro Festival in Vermont to England for the York Early Music Festival.
I myself was planning a hiking trip in Quebec’s Laurentian Mountains: before his murder, my cousin Boom-Boom had built a cabin there next to Pierre Fouchard’s. I’d inherited the cabin, and usually rented it through the agency the Fouchards used, but I had claimed it for a week later in the summer. I couldn’t join Peter in Turkey for his dig, but I didn’t want to spend the whole hot summer in Chicago.
Talk of music and hiking moved Lydia’s mental state and Leo’s death from the middle of my head to a small side room. Arlette Fouchard moved it closer to the middle again: she called as I was unlocking my front door to tell me she’d interrogated Bernadine about why she’d waited around for Leo when he stood her up.
“She said she was angry. She was wanting to give this Leo a piece of her mind. And then, when she saw his dead body, it was an enormous shock, she felt guilty, only she is ashamed to say about her anger. I believe her, Victoire. Me, I know when my child is lying to me.”
I, too, believed Arlette had dug the truth out of her daughter: I used to witness her interrogation methods with her husband and my cousin Boom-Boom, when the two men were playing for the Blackhawks. Arlette was thorough, merciless, and effective: You say there was a flat tire, but I see the spare is still in the trunk? Ah, you stopped for beer. Yes, that I believe.
Bernie’s reported answer felt authentic, too. She would have been pacing the sidewalk, building up a head of steam so that when Leo appeared she would be ready to lay into him with a highly polished—no. Not possible, don’t let your mind go there, Victoria.
I sat at the piano, moodily playing scales with one finger. Lotty might be right, that Lydia’s condition affected me more because she made me think of my mother. Her other point, that Lydia deserved to make her own decisions about her care, hit two contradictory impulses in me.
I myself hate being told what to do, especially unsolicited advice about what is good for me, so I had definite empathy for letting Zamir decide what she wanted for herself. At the same time, though, I can’t bear to leave wounded people by the side of the road.
I realized that I was picking out the vocal line to Grieg’s “The Swan,” one of the songs that Lydia had taken apart for her own work, and one of my mother’s favorite short lieder.
I turned away from the piano to call Murray. “I’m retiring from your case, Murray: it’s work I can’t do.”
“Warshawski—no! I need—”
“I’ll return your retainer, and there’s no charge for the time I spent on the search.”
“What the hell?” He was angry. “Did someone offer you more money to leave her hidden?”
“That is an insult I won’t respond to,” I said coldly. “Leo Prinz’s murder in the Burnham Wildlife Corridor last night—you know about that, right? That was around the corner from where Zamir had been camping out. The police are all over those streets, looking for a weapon and a killer. If Zamir is there, the cops will find her.”
“They would have found her by now if she were hiding out near where the Prinz kid was killed. She could have moved to a different part of town, or someone took her in.”
“In which case it would be beyond my resources to find her,” I said. “I’ve talked to her agent, to people she went to school with, to her mother, and Palurdo’s mother. None of them knows where she is. Maybe she was snatched from Provident, as one person who was in the hospital waiting area claims. Finding that person would take the cops or the FBI, not a solo op with other clients.”
Murray was sidetracked briefly by the mention of Hector Palurdo’s mother. He demanded a detailed report of the conversation; I gave him the highlights, since Elisa Palurdo hadn’t said anything he couldn’t have learned from other people.
“I’ve never known you to walk away from an investigation,” he said. “Someone got to you, didn’t they?”
“What is going on in your head, Ryerson? First you think someone outbid you, now you think someone warned me off? It’s my turn: What’s your real agenda here? It isn’t just that your boss threatened your career, is it?”
“I’m paying you out of my pocket because I don’t want the company to know I hired a detective,” he insisted.
“I can’t make sense of this, Murray. Actually, come to think of it, I don’t believe your initial rationale for hiring me. Since when does Global Entertainment stake their reputation on looking after a mentally ill person’s health care?”
“I said it’s because the Smithson woman was threatening a suit.”
“Global has so many lawyers that if they stood hand to hand they’d circle the equator with a few spares to reach the North Pole. A music agent whose glory days are behind her would make them laugh. Tell me a different story.” I wished I could sic Arlette Fouchard on him—she’d shake the truth loose.
“Give me one more day, Vic,” he pleaded.
“I’ve resigned. I’m returning your money. That’s final.”
My last call of the day was to Peter Sansen, to tell him how I’d been spending my time and why I needed to go to bed early, and alone. Still, five minutes on the phone with him helped calm some of the turbulence in my mind.
Despite my troubled state, I slept deeply. I was stiff when I woke up—the mildew on my aging joints, I suppose—but my mind felt clearer. I did a long and thorough workout, ending with a four-mile run with the dogs to the lake and back.
Before heading to my office, I used an encrypted service to leave a message for Elisa Palurdo: she deserved to know that I’d found Lydia, but that I was respecting her desire to be left alone. Palurdo phoned half an hour later. She wanted to know where Lydia was, and what shape she was in.
“She’s not well. She needs proper food and a proper bed and significant medical care. But what she needs and what she’s willing to receive—”
Palurdo interrupted me, distressed. “You should have called me yesterday. You should call an ambulance! Tell me where she is!”
“I can tell you how to find her, but she doesn’t want to see you.”
Palurdo didn’t respond for a long beat, then said quietly, “That’s probably because she feels my rejection. But—because of Hector—maybe she will listen to me now and get whatever help I can bring her to accept.”
“Getting to her means you’d expose yourself to public view,” I warned. “You’d have to be cautious and you still might make both her and yourself vulnerable to the kind of haters who are stalking you.”
“I’ll be careful,” Palurdo said in the same small voice.
I gave her a detailed description of how to locate Lydia’s hideout.