“No, I want to hear you do your stuff, Gran. I hope he was writhing in agony.”

Oh. Olin Taverner. He’d been senior counsel to Walker Bushnell, the Illinois congressman who’d been HUAC’s point man in going after Calvin Bayard all those years ago. Catherine had presumably grown up on tales of him as the family villain.

Renee put her hands on her granddaughter’s shoulders. “Darling, you absolutely must not say that in public. And in public includes in front of strangers. We rise-“

“Above these things so that no one can tell from our public face that they matter to us,” Catherine finished in chorus with her.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I admired your husband’s work so much that after he spoke to my Constitutional Law class, I got a job as an intern at the Bayard Foundation.”

Renee ignored me, telling her granddaughter that she was going over to

Channel 13 to do a segment for their post-news discussion show, Chicago Talks. “You can sit in, but you cannot butt in. Do you understand, Trina? It’s very important.”

“Don’t worry, Gran. Even if you start saying that Olin Taverner was a well-respected member of the bar, I won’t barf or anything on camera.,, “You need to show your guest out: I have to leave for the studio in ten minutes. I told them it was now or never, because I’m determined to get to the parents’ meeting at Vina Fields.”

“We were done anyway, Grant” Catherine hopped up from her ottoman.

“That’s right,” I smiled again, holding out my card. “You need my address, though, as well as my name and phone number, so that you can follow up on your interview. And send me a copy of the finished piece.”

“Yeah, sure,” Catherine mumbled, shooing me down the hall before I could say anything else in front of her grandmother.

CHAPTER 13

Quicksand?

I left the Bayard apartment feeling confused and annoyed. My mood wasn’t improved by the bright orange envelope on my car-another fifty dollars, this time for leaving the front end across a yellow line. A hundred and one dollars so far today in parking fees. I could have screamed in frustration. My eyes and joints ached from my cold, which made it hard for me to think clearly. I pulled the lever to recline the driver’s seat as far as it would go and leaned back with my eyes shut.

Strictly speaking, whether Catherine was lying or not about her grandfather was none of my business. The only thing about her that could remotely justify my scrutiny was whether she had known Marcus Whitby. And I thought she hadn’t. She wasn’t yet a sophisticated liar-her breathless manner when she was twirling away from the truth would disappear with practice.

That farrago she’d spun about her grandfather and Larchmont was truly infuriating, but I thought she was merely oblivious to Marcus Whitby. Hers was an adolescent absorption in her own affairs; it was so intense that she brushed off the dreadful notion of Whitby lying dead in the pool while she went about her own separate business. I don’t usually believe in coincidences, but Whitby and Catherine-and me-all being there on the same night could actually be one.