Bitter Business

in with the red. He sat quietly for a minute, seemingly measuring me for something while I squirmed inwardly, worried about what had prompted this cozy chat.
    “So,” he said finally. ‘Tell me how you know Elliott Abelman.”
    So that was it. I hadn’t expected the police to be ecstatic about the Cavanaughs hiring a private investigator. But I also hadn’t expected the news to get out quite so quickly.
    “It’s not that the family doesn’t have complete confidence in the police....” I ventured, managing to sound lame and lawyerly at the same time. But Blades acted as if he hadn’t heard me.
    “Is it just professional between the two of you?” he asked. “Or is there something else going on?”
    “No,” I replied, taken aback by his question. “What makes you think there is?”
    “Just the way Elliott talks about you. He gets this goofy look on his face I haven’t seen since he first started seeing Janice.”
    “Who’s Janice?” I asked, in spite of myself.
    “She works for the Wall Street Journal. They split up right around the time Elliott left the prosecutor’s office.”
    “Is that why they broke up?” I asked, imagining that some women might be less than supportive when they learned that the man in their life intended to jettison his legal career in order to hang out his shingle as a PI.
    “Nah, that’s not it. Elliott wanted kids. Janice wanted to wait. At some point Elliott started wondering what exactly she was waiting for. Then one day he comes home and finds Janice waiting for him, all excited. She’s got a bottle of champagne in one hand and two glasses in the other.”
    “Was she pregnant?”
    “No. She’d just been named chief of the paper’s Hong Kong bureau.”
    “Ouch.”
    “It took a little while, but after that it was pretty much over. There really hasn’t been anybody since then.”
    “Why are you telling me this?”
    “Because Elliott is my friend. We play basketball together”— Detective Blades stroked his beard thoughtfully—“and I think he has a thing for you.”
    “I'd really rather not discuss my personal life.”
    “From what I’ve heard, you don’t have much of one,” Blades countered, not unkindly.
    “That’s my business.”
    “Elliott’s a nice guy. You could do a lot worse.”
    “So I take it you don’t object to his involvement in the case?”
    “I’ll take any help I can get, especially from someone with Elliott’s brains. Who knows? If he’s got the family’s cooperation, he may be able to get to people in a way that I can’t.”
    “Do you know what killed them yet?” I asked, not sure whether he’d say even if he knew.
    “It’s too soon to tell. The health department hasn’t turned anything up in the office itself, though I’ve ordered that it remain under seal until they get all of their test results back. They still haven’t done the autopsy. Jack Cavanaugh’s been on the phone all day, pulling strings, trying to get it moved up. I understand him wanting to make funeral arrangements, but unfortunately, there was a triple murder in the Robert Taylor homes yesterday and two uniforms showed up at a domestic call last night to find both combatants ten-seven. They’re a little backed up at the medical examiner’s office.”
    “What does it mean to be ‘ten-seven’?” I asked, curious.
    “Police communication code for ‘out of service,’ ” replied Blades, with a grin meant to forgive his own callousness. “There’s no way you can do this job without developing a diseased sense of humor. No offense. Why did you ask Elliott to come in on this thing? What’s your interest?”
    “I’m the lawyer for the Cavanaughs’ company. I was there when both women died. That in and of itself should be enough for me to take an interest. But there’s more to it because of Dagny. I didn’t know her for very long, so it’s hard to explain. But if you’d met her, you’d realize she was the type of person who, no matter what the circumstances, would know exactly what to do. I know that doesn’t seem like much, but there are so few people like that in the world. Maybe that’s why her death seems such a loss to me—that and the fact that I really liked her. I just don’t want her death to be one of those things that just falls through the cracks.”
    “What about Cecilia Dobson?”
    “It’s all part of the same thing, don’t you think?”
    “It sounds like you think they were murdered.”
    “I don’t know what