Irony was wasted on him; he made a face. “I sometimes think so. His kid sister is twice the man that he is. But you didn’t bother my wife to find out whether J.C. and I were framing you, because you didn’t know we were friends until you ran into Jennifer out there.”

He was rattled by my investigation, or he wouldn’t have the chronology so pat in his mind. “I had hoped your wife could tell me something about Ms. Aguinaldo’s private life, but she apparently had no interest in a woman who was the most intimate caregiver of her children. Maybe you delved deeper?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He picked up his water glass but eyed me over the rim as he spoke.

I crossed my legs, smoothing out the crease in the silk—I’d taken time to go home to change before trekking out here. “Carnifice provides in–home surveillance and a reference service for nannies. I assume you employed it when you hired Nicola Aguinaldo.”

“It’s the old truth about the shoemaker’s children, I suppose: we relied on the credentials of the agency we had used in the past. It didn’t occur to me that Nicola was illegal. And I knew about her children, of course, but I wasn’t interested in any private life she might have had on her days off, as long as it didn’t spill over into my family.” He forced a smile. “Into my private point of view.”

“So you don’t know who she would have run to for help when she escaped last week? No lovers, no one who might have beaten her up?”

“Beaten her up?” he echoed. “I understood she was hit and killed by a car. One other than yours, of course.”

“Funny,” I said. “Your wife and her friends knew she’d been attacked. If they didn’t learn it from you, where did they hear it?”

Once again I could see the pulse jump at his temple, although he put his fingers together and spoke condescendingly. “I’m not going to try to untangle a game of who said what to whom. It’s childish and not good investigative work, as I often tell our new operatives. Perhaps I spoke to my wife before I had all the information from the Cook County State’s Attorney and the Chicago police. The latest word from them is that she was killed in a hit–and–run.”

“Then you should get your team to talk to the doctor who operated on her. Even though her body has disappeared, so the medical examiner can’t perform an autopsy, the ER doctor at Beth Israel saw that she’d been killed by a blow that perforated her small intestine. Inconsistent with being hit by a car.”