Warshawski 09 - Hard Time by Sara Paretsky Page B

Baladine about Nicola Aguinaldo.”
    Eleanor Baladine rushed over. “My children’s old nanny, you know, the one we had to send to Coolis for robbery—”
    “Burglary, wasn’t it?” I interrupted. “Or did she break in and use a weapon?”
    “Excuse me, Detective.” Baladine poured rich sarcasm over her words. “Not being used to the criminal element, I don’t understand these distinctions.”
    “How did you hire Ms. Aguinaldo to begin with?” I asked.
    “Through an agency. We all use it—Help Across Borders—they’re usually utterly reliable. They assured me Nicola’s immigration status was in order and vouched for her references. She was very good with the children, which I suppose wasn’t surprising since she had one of her own—”
    “I thought it was two,” I interrupted.
    “Maybe you’re right. This was several years ago; the details are vague to me now. Madison! Work with the kickboard and concentrate on your hips! You’re using way too much leg motion. You’re a seal with little flippers: let’s see them move.”
    “She lived here? With her children?”
    “Certainly not. I’m not running a day–care center, and the person who works here has to concentrate on that: work.”
    “So how often did she see her own family? And how did she get to them?”
    “I always gave her Sundays off, even though it was often inconvenient for us. Except when we traveled, when I had to have her along. Do you have children, Detective? Then you don’t know how hard it is to travel with three little ones. The girls are always getting into something, and my son tends to be secretive and wander off where no one can find him. In an effort to avoid anything approaching exercise.” Her eyes stayed on the pool; she was moving her hands up and down like little seal flippers, as if trying to get Madison to move properly.
    The other two women threw in their own murmured complaints about how hard it is to manage children on the road. “They need their own little routines and friends,” one explained.
    And pools and ski slopes and who knows what else. “And to see her children every Sunday, someone drove her to the train?”
    Mrs. Baladine took her eyes from her daughter long enough to stare at me in some hauteur. “Since the robbery for which Nicola was arrested was over two years ago I can’t imagine what bearing her transport has on the situation.”
    “I’d like to know who could have picked her up when she fled Coolis. She can’t have walked all the way to Chicago from there. Did some man fetch her on her days off? Or a woman friend? Or did you or Mr. Baladine drive her to the train?”
    “We couldn’t take that kind of time. Sometimes Robert gave her a lift if he was going into Oak Brook for a meeting, but she usually picked up the Metra bus at the bottom of Gateway Terrace. Once or twice he drove her all the way home, when he had to be in the city. I knew it was a long trip for her, so I let her spend the night in town and took on getting the kids ready for school myself Monday mornings.”
    “That was quite a sacrifice on your part.” I tried to conceal my contempt, since I wanted information from her, but she wasn’t stupid, and she bristled at my words.
    I continued hastily. “She’d never stolen anything before she took that necklace, is that right? Did you ever get any sense of what drove her to do that?”
    “She was poor and we were rich. What other reason would there be?” She was watching the pool again, but a stiffness in her posture made me think she knew more than that.
    “I’m trying to find out who was in her background. If some man who badly needed money was controlling her, or if she had started to use drugs . . .” I let my words trail away suggestively.
    “Yes, that’s it, Eleanor,” the third woman put in eagerly. “She must have known a lot of guys who could have attacked her. Didn’t one of them come out here one weekend?”
    “Attack her?” I asked. “Who said