Rough Trade

her to her place beside Jeff at the foot of the coffin. Beau, the man who could not have afforded a pauper’s pine box, lay in a handsome bronze coffin lined with satin. Dressed in the fine blue suit that Chrissy had selected from his closet, he looked very much as he had in life—cantankerous, demanding, and formidable.
    I cast my eyes around the room and eventually found what I was looking for—the two police detectives who’d come to the house to question Jeff, loitering near the service door, conferring quietly. Suddenly the whole thing seemed ridiculous and far-fetched and I was tempted to just walk up and tell them so.
    Coach Bennato appeared from nowhere and took up his place beside me, both of us watching the pair of detectives from the distance.
    “I see that the police are here,” he announced conspiratorially and without preamble. “They were out at practice this morning.”
    “Really, what were they doing?”
    “Asking questions.Snooping around.”
    “Who did they talk to?”
    “Me, the security guard who found Beau, a lot of the front office people. I also heard they went down and talked to Jack McWhorter and some of the concession people to see if they saw anything.”
    “I’m sure it’s all just routine,” I replied.
    “When my father-in-law dropped dead of a heart attack at the barber shop last year, the cops didn’t come around asking questions.”
    “He didn’t own a football team,” I pointed out.
    “That’s true. He also really died of a heart attack.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “Oh, come on. You don’t think that the cops would waste the whole morning trying to pin down Jeff’s movements if all they were worried about is what time Beau died of a heart attack, do you?”
    “I’m sure they asked other people where they were, too,” I said, not feeling happy at all about the direction this conversation was headed.
    “Of course, they did,” he answered. “But you can be sure they didn’t get anything out of me.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, suddenly finding myself looking at the face that had been caricatured on a thousand sports pages: the eyebrows knitted to- gether into a single line, the jutting chin, the flinty eyes narrowed to a slit, giving nothing away.
    “I don’t know what you think has been going on with this team, but if you think that Beau was the only person who had something to hide, you’re sorely mistaken.”
     
    The Pfister Hotel is a Milwaukee landmark, a lovingly restored shrine to the Victorian era that sits in the shadow of Monarchs Stadium. I pulled up to the curb, ignored the look of barely concealed disdain the doorman gave my Volvo, and consulted the slip of paper on which I’d written the room number I’d scribbled off my voice mail.
    It was the break between afternoon and evening visitation, and I’d left Chrissy and Jeff in the hands of some friends who’d swooped them up and offered to feed them dinner. Lack of courtesy being the partner’s prerogative, I didn’t bother to call up from the lobby, but instead just made my way to the gilded elevator, took it to the fourth floor, and knocked on the door. I knew that Sherman Whitehead would not be taking a shower or a quick nap or indulging in the illicit pleasures of pay-per-view. What I expected was to find him pacing the floor with a copy of the EEOC complaint in one hand and a Diet Coke in the other. That’s why I was so surprised to see Stuart Eisenstadt open the door.
    “Hello, Kate,” he said. “Come on in.”
    “Where’s Sherman?” I asked, crossing the threshold into the living room of a large suite furnished in hotel Chippendale. The client might be hurting for cash, but that didn’t mean that Stuart was cutting comers.
    “I thought I’d bring the complaint up myself. That way you and I could just hash things out ourselves.”
    “Where’s the complaint?” I asked, taking off my coat, eager to get this over with and get back to the funeral home.
    “Over there on the table.”
    I sat down and made myself comfortable. Then I read everything through twice, determined to not let Stuart’s presence make me feel under the gun.
    “So what do you think?” he asked when I finally looked up. “Is that a baseless suit or what?”
    “There are a lot of similarities to the Hooters suit,” I pointed out. “Some of the language is nearly identical.” Hooters was a privately owned chain of restaurants whose main draw was amply