“I admire Eleanor, I really do. She’s lucky to have a gift that absorbs her so completely. And she’s wonderful to take Rhiannon under her wing, especially since Rhiannon’s started to outperform Madison. But I think it’s a mistake to push children too hard. When they get to adolescence that can come back to haunt you, you know.”

I grunted noncommittally. “You said that you grew up with Jennifer Poilevy. Was Eleanor Baladine part of your childhood as well?”

Looking briefly at her watch, Abigail Trant explained she’d gotten to know Eleanor before they moved to Oak Brook when their husbands started doing business together four years ago. “BB was solving a lot of Global’s security problems, and the two of them seemed to hit it off. And of course, Jean–Claude Poilevy has been incredibly helpful to us since we moved out here.”

I could imagine how helpful the Illinois Speaker could be to someone with money to fling in his direction—zoning regulations bent, tax breaks for Global, a special deal on the mansion in Thornfield Demesne. “I know the prison notified Baladine as soon as Nicola Aguinaldo got away, so Eleanor knew all about her death before I showed up. Do you have any hunches about why she was so rattled?”

Abigail shrugged. “It’s hard when violence comes close to your children, and the girl had been her children’s nanny.”

I smiled in a way I hoped invited bad–girl chat. “But really—I know she’s your friend and you’ve known her for years—watching her with her son, she doesn’t strike me as the warmly concerned mother.”

Abigail smiled back but refused to play. “BB is such an athletic man, and his naval service was the most important part of his life. It’s understandable he wants his only son to follow his path, and that may blind him and Eleanor to how hard they are on him. And it’s a tough world for a boy these days, it would be better if he could develop the ability to compete in it. If that’s all you need to know, I have to get going. We have twenty people coming to dinner and the caterer is going to need directions from me.”

She slid from her stool; I followed and said, “BB called me out to his office last night to threaten to put me out of business for asking questions about how his kid’s old nanny died. Do you have any idea why?”

She paused next to her stool. A teenager demanded to know whether we could make up our minds—were we going or staying—other people are waiting for seats, you know. The rudeness made Abigail Trant lean a hand on her stool and say we’d be through in a minute. The teenager gave an exasperated sigh and swung around, deliberately hitting Trant with her bag.