Teenagers swarmed past me, chattering about hair, clothes, boys, girls. Solitary shoppers strode past, their faces set in grim lines, as though buying were an onerous duty. Every now and then the doorman opened Parruca’s red leather doors to decant a client or admit a new one. Finally, when my shirt was so soaked with sweat that I thought I’d have to slip into the sportswear shop to get a fresh one, Abigail Trant came out.

“We’ll see you next week, Mrs. Trant,” the doorman said, gracefully pocketing her tip.

I unglued my shoulders from the wall. Her honey–streaked hair was carefully combed into the right suggestion of windblown disorder, her makeup painted on with a subtle hand, her nails a gleaming pearl. To approach her in my sweaty sunburned state seemed almost sacrilegious, but I did it anyway.

She was startled but didn’t run shrieking for a security guard. Yes, her pleasant face showing no disdain, she certainly remembered my visit to Eleanor Baladine’s pool two days ago. But it was all she could do to keep track of her own daughter’s nanny—she certainly didn’t know anything about Eleanor’s.

“And you know, Teddy and I didn’t move back to the Chicago area until eighteen months ago, so that girl who was killed the other day wasn’t even around then. I’m afraid I can’t answer any questions about her.”

“Can you take ten minutes for a cup of coffee and answer a few other questions?”

A dimple appeared briefly at the corner of her mouth. “I’ve never been interrogated by a detective—maybe it will help me understand how to respond to the girls I’m sponsoring for the You Can Do It Foundation. Many of them seem to have been arrested before reaching high school, although usually for shoplifting.” She looked at her wrist. “I have just about fifteen minutes before my next engagement.”

The coffee bar was so mobbed we didn’t bother waiting for drinks but perched at the high counter. Mrs. Trant readily stepped me through a few basics—she had grown up not too far from here, gone to school with Jennifer Poilevy, had been thrilled when Global sent her and her husband back from Los Angeles to the Midwest.

“L.A. is a difficult place to raise a child. Everyone is on perpetual display, and the kids get sucked into that precocious environment far too young. Out here Rhiannon can simply be a child.”

With her swimming exercises, her horse, and all those other accoutrements of the simple life. But I wanted help, so I kept my sardonic observations to myself.

“It doesn’t seem as though Eleanor Baladine’s children have that same freedom,” I said. “Although I guess the girls are following her swimming regimen pretty enthusiastically.”