He admired her: she accepted that the game was tough, but she had a quiet determination to keep playing.
“Drink?” she offered.
“You sit, I’ll fix them,” he said. “What’ll you have?”
“Scotch and a little water. There’s ice in the bucket.”
It was a handsome bucket, silver, engraved with the emblem of the New York Racquet and Tennis Club and beneath that the words Scott Devens, Squash Championship, 1978.
He fixed two stiff Scotches and handed her one. She was sitting in an armchair, crutches resting against her and forming a little barricade.
Outside the windows, sun splashed the private park.
“How much pain can you take?” he asked.
“How much are you offering?”
“The psychiatrist’s report on your daughter.”
Her whole expression changed. She was looking him straight in the eye, the way people do when they’re scared of showing they’re scared.
He opened the manila envelope. It was a calculated risk: it meant showing her that people she’d trusted had taken her life apart.
He handed her Flora Vogelsang’s pages.
Her blue gaze went slowly across the sheets, and there was an ache for her in his chest.
She didn’t move except to turn the pages. She didn’t say anything or even show she was reacting. But he could feel her taking it in, and he could feel her world turning dark.
When she’d finished she looked more numb than anything else. The shock didn’t seem to have happened yet. She just sat swaying a little against the chair.
“Strange how it catches you unawares. A minute ago I was happily making lists of guests for my first party, and now …”
She sat looking across the room at him.
“There’s more,” he said.
She looked up, hands hanging a little way from her body, breathing shallowly, lips parted, braced for the second blow.
He gave her the other document.
After the first paragraph she stiffened. Behind her eyes came the sudden flare-up of understanding.
At that moment Cardozo felt a tightness in the back of his throat, an overpoweringly tender melancholy for her.
“We know why your parents accepted the plea bargain. They weren’t going to let this come out.”
Her face held like a struck mirror determined not to break apart.
“It takes money to keep a secret. A lot of people knew this one. Dr. Vogelsang. Ted Morgenstern. Your ex-husband. Your daughter. Maybe the D.A. Maybe even the judge.”
She mused on that. He watched her pulling in.
“You’re thinking something,” he said.
“I wonder if Mrs. Banks knew. It might explain …”
“It might explain what?”
She told him about Mrs. Banks’s restaurant, her clothes, her new face and manners and social set.
Suddenly Cardozo’s mind was making connections. He asked questions: where did Babe’s parents bank, did she know where Scott Devens and Mrs. Banks had accounts, where did Cordelia get her money and where did she keep it, how close were the Vanderwalks to Judge Davenport?
“I’ve always called him Uncle Frank. My mother was angry that he didn’t give Scottie a harsher sentence, but they were certainly close till the trial.
Cardozo’s face darkened. “They’re your parents,” he said, “but they’re sons of bitches. I think we should take them.”
“Take them?”
“Confront them. Get this cleared up for once and all.”
The taxi stopped before a five-story German schloss in the middle of a block of French châteaus. A Mercedes limousine was parked at the curb, in front of iron gates bearing the sign, NO PARKING ACTIVE DRIVEWAY 24 HOURS A DAY. Cardozo calculated it was the kind of house that went nowadays for six million and change.
He paid the cabby and helped Babe and her crutches onto the sidewalk.
Babe turned. “All I told Mama was that I was bringing a friend for tea. She’ll be dreadful with you. She says I only introduce her to men I’ve decided to marry. I never allow her any input, she claims.”
“I’ll handle it.”
Babe gave him a nervous smile and the smile he gave back was not nervous at all. She pressed the brass doorbell. Murky clouds scudded across the sky and thunder rumbled overhead.
After a moment a butler opened the door: there was the merest of stiff-backed bows. “Good day, Mrs. Devens.”
“How are you today, Auchincloss? Please tell my parents that Lieutenant Cardozo and I are here.”
“Certainly. Would you care to wait in the drawing room?”
The butler vanished, and a panting chow chow came running up, barking, darting its black tongue over Babe and her crutches, then sniffing at Cardozo’s trousers. The dog preferred the trousers.
“If Jill annoys you just push her away,” Babe said.
Cardozo let the dog play with his cuff. His gaze took in the marble staircase, the paintings, the narrow blue Oriental carpet that seemed designed precisely to fit the hallway and leave a six-inch border of gleaming dark parquetry.
He followed Babe into the drawing room. The walls were vivid orange—an unusual color for a room, bright and haunting. The sofas and chairs were ivory-colored satin. The teacups and service were waiting on the coffee table.
“Well, we’re the first here,” Babe said.
Cardozo could see she was fidgety. For distraction, he asked about a Japanese urn under the Steinway. Babe said the urn had belonged to the last mistress of the last king of Rumania.
Cardozo began to get a sense of the house. Everything was rich, fantastic, beautiful. The tchotchkes of the world’s rulers had fallen to the Vanderwalks in astonishing quantity. Not just the urn, but Queen Victoria’s fan, in a glass case above the door; Winston Churchill’s watercolor of Somerset Maugham’s villa, in a gold frame that must have cost a patrolman’s annual salary. Babe said the tea service had been designed by Paul Revere for the empress Josephine.
A woman in a navy blue dress came through the doorway, fixing Cardozo with pale blue eyes. “How do you do—I’m Beatrice’s mother, Lucia.”
Her face was like an artist’s painting, the white of her skin contrasting delicately with her gray hair and pale crimson lips. She wore a single strand of pearls. A tiny circle of diamonds pinned to the silk dress caught the light and threw out flashes of color.
“How do you do, ma’am,” Cardozo said. “Vince Cardozo.”
A man in a navy blue blazer sauntered into the room. Babe introduced her father.
Hadley Vanderwalk had the look of a gray-haired American aristocrat, tall and lean and sharp-featured, his skin tanned by years spent on yacht decks and golf courses. There was something pleasant and intelligent in the set of his mouth.
Lucia Vanderwalk moved to a sofa and took a seat by the tea service. It was a signal for the men to sit. Her hands moved powerfully, gracefully, over the silver, seeming to communicate with it.
“Tell me about yourself, Leftenant.” She pronounced his rank that way, British. Lef, not lou.
“I was born in New York, I grew up in New York, I became a cop in New York.”
“Homicide or vice?”
“Homicide.”
“You look familiar.” She stared at him, something more than ordinary interest in her eyes. “Ceylon or China?”
He realized she was talking tea and he figured what could he lose. “China.”
She poured from the teapot on the left. “Lemon or milk?”
“Lemon, please.”
“Sugar”—she glanced at him—“or NutraSweet?”
“A little NutraSweet, thanks.”
“Yes, I use it too.”
She handed him a cup. It was almost weightless. The china was as delicate and fine as the skull of a newborn baby.
“Please help yourself to sandwiches. The dark bread’s petit-suisse, the light’s watercress. No one’s allergic to watercress, I hope?”
Petit-suisse, Cardozo discovered, was cream cheese with a pleasantly tart accent.
Lucia Vanderwalk distributed tea and directed conversation.
Cardozo gradually got a feel for the Vanderwalks. They were wealthy liberals. They’d hung a sign on their lives—Do Not Disturb. They knew social inequity existed and they dealt with it by electing Lena Horne and Paul Newman to the country club.