Rough Trade

the baby. She nodded and I gathered my namesake up in my arms, effecting the transfer without disturbing either baby or bottle. I found a comfortable spot on the other side of the hearth and looked down at the baby, blond like her mother, eyes closed and furiously sucking down the funky-smelling formula, oblivious to everything else. The relaxation in her small body was practically intoxicating.
    I waited through a series of Chrissy’s yeses and uh-huhs in response to whomever she was talking to on the phone. Jeff poured a cup of coffee and set it at my elbow, returning to the griddle in time to fill a serving plate with overdone and vaguely misshapen pancakes.
    Chrissy finally punched the end button with barely disguised relish and ran her fingers through her hair with a sigh. “That was Mr. Massy from the funeral home. He says that we’re all set up for visitation this afternoon.”
    “Does that mean they’ve already released the body?” I asked.
    “I guess so,” replied Chrissy, getting up and taking three plates out of the cupboard and laying them on the table. “I don’t think many people are going to be willing to make the trip to the funeral home just to pay their respects to us.”
    “Did he say anything about when the death certificate would be issued?”
    “No, he didn’t mention it,” replied Chrissy.
    “What’s the big deal about the death certificate?” inquired Jeff, setting the plate of pancakes in the center of the table and rooting in the back of the refrigerator before coming up with a bottle of syrup.
    “I talked to a friend of mine who knows a detective in the Milwaukee Police Department,” I replied.
    “You mean the cute private detective Claudia is always telling me you should dump Stephen for?”
    “His name is Elliott,” I said, not at all pleased that my friends had apparently been discussing my love life behind my back, “and according to what his friend says, ' Beau was strangled.”
    “Strangled?” cried Chrissy, instinctively reaching out for the baby and gathering her back up in her arms. “There must be some kind of mistake. They told us that he’d had a heart attack. Everyone knew he had a bad heart—”
    “Are you saying that he was murdered?” asked Jeff, incredulously.
    “I’m afraid so.”
    “Who could have done such a thing?” he inquired, his voice hollow with shock.
    “It had to have been someone at the stadium that morning,” I replied, taking his question at face value. “Who else was there?”
    “Probably a couple of hundred people. The security people could give you a list. What day was it? Monday? The team was there, broken up into specialty teams reviewing Sunday’s game films with the coaching staff. The grounds crew was probably getting the field ready for afternoon practice. The front office people were there. The concession guys are always in cleaning up and taking inventory the day after a game.... I still can’t believe they’re saying he was murdered.”
    “Who was on your father’s appointment schedule that morning?” I prodded.
    “I don’t know. Gus Wallenberg was supposed to have a meeting, so I’m sure Feiss was somewhere around. Dad always sat down with Bennato the morning after a game. But what does any of it matter? Aren’t the police in charge of trying to figure out who killed him?”
    “Right now the police think it was you,” I said softly. Chrissy and Jeff’s response was a stunned silence that was eventually interrupted by the ringing of the telephone. As if in a daze, Chrissy picked up the portable phone.
    “Hello?” she asked, sounding unsure whether this was the appropriate greeting. She listened for a few seconds, frowning, then handed the phone to me. “It’s for you,” she said.
    “Who is it?” I whispered, holding my hand over the mouthpiece.
    “I have no idea,” replied Chrissy with a bewildered shrug of her shoulders. “But whoever he is, he sounds really upset.”
     

CHAPTER 12
     
     
    It was Sherman Whitehead, who along with Cheryl was supposed to be holding down the fort on the Avco case. He sounding like he was calling from his car phone, but Chrissy was wrong about his state of mind. He wasn’t upset. He was hysterical.
    “We have a terrible problem,” he whimpered through the static.
    “What is it?” I shot back, getting to my feet and heading toward the dining room in search of privacy. Unlike a lot of associates, Sherman wasn’t an alarmist. If he said we had a