“Was there ever a time when Bayard’s own finances were rocky? I met

Edwards Bayard yesterday, and he was hinting that Bayard Publishing was on shaky ground during that same time.”

“Mr. Edwards is bitter because of what Mr. Arnoff told you on Friday, that Mrs. Renee passed over him in distributing her shares.”

“Who inherits them, then?”

He thought a minute. “I guess there’s no real harm in your knowing. They go to Catherine Bayard, in trust until she’s twentyfive.”

Prodded further, he told me Darraugh was the trustee, jointly with the Lebold, Arnoff firm. And that the Drummonds, the Taverners and MacKenzie Graham’s father, Blair, had all been among the original shareholders of Bayard. The Bayard family held a thirty-one percent stake, the Drummonds, Taverners and Grahams a thirty-five percent total, with the remainder divided among twenty-some smaller shareholders.

“So Geraldine Graham has a controlling interest in the firm now? She inherited from her mother, her father and her husband, right?”

Yosano hesitated again, but finally said, “Actually, she only holds her husband’s five percent stake. Laura Drummond was angry both with Ms. Geraldine Graham and with Mr. Darraugh Graham when she made her will; she passed her shares on to Ms. Graham’s daugher, Ms. van der Cleef, who lives in New York State.”

“Laura Drummond really was a nasty woman, wasn’t she! So was it financial need that made Ms. Graham sell Larchmont?”

“No, oh no, she had a large fortune, partly from her husband’s estate, but her father also settled substantial monies on her when she married. No, I think-Mrs. Drummond could be very spiteful, especially where her daughter was concerned … Ms. Warshawski, I’d be grateful if you kept this information to yourself.”

“Of course,” I promised readily. I’d keep it to myself unless it had something to do with Marcus Whitby’s death, that is.

Amy’s return call came soon after I’d hung up. “Pelletier’s papers are right here beside me in the University of Chicago library. Want me to go look at them?”

“I think I’ll come down myself,” I said. “It’s a fishing trip and I don’t know what I’m fishing for.”

“From what I can tell on-line, it’s a huge archive,” she said. “Forty

Hollinger boxes-what they call the special cartons made for documents, you know. I could help you sort through it if you’re coming down now.”

I looked at my calendar: nothing on it until four, when I had a meeting with a small corporation for which I ran background checks. I told Amy I’d be with her in twenty minutes.

CHAPTER 44

Boy Wonder

Hey, Boy Wonder —

What meat cloth Caesar feed on? Your child bride is an attractive little colt and your infatuation is understandable, but until she grows up and learns how to read don’t fob my work off on her. If you don’t like Bleak Land, say so yourself-. getting a letter from the baby saying “it’s not right for our list at this time” is such an outsized insult I’m even willing to believe just barely, mind you, and only out of self-delusion-that you didn’t know your infant had written to me. What I also will delude myself into believing is that you can’t be as chickenshit as the rest of the industry, afraid to touch me because the lesser apes in Washington put me in the can for six months and had my books yanked from every embassy around the world. Me and Dash. No undersecretary of protocol in Canberra is going to have his morals corrupted by the Maltese Falcon, or A Tale of Two Countries. Dash, poor bastard, is drinking himself into an early grave, but I refuse to break so easily.