Rough Trade

going to be a human eggplant. Case closed.”
    “You mean they’re going to stop investigating? Even though there are so many unanswered questions? I mean, who sent the fax to Jeff in L.A.? Who did he think he was going to catch in his father’s house? I mean, come on!”
    “Cops are supposed to close murder investigations, Kate—not look for reasons to keep them open. You should know that.”
    “Great. Now every time Chrissy sees her name in the paper it will say, ‘Mrs. Rendell, who became the owner of the Monarchs after her husband allegedly murdered his father.’ All Beau wanted was to pass the team down to his grandchildren, keep it in the family. Now Chrissy’s baby is going to grow up with everyone whispering that her father was a killer.”
    “Maybe he was.”
    “And maybe he wasn’t,” I shot back, frowning. “But if the cops drop the investigation, we’ll never know, will we?”
    Elliott leaned forward and kissed me again, this time chastely on the forehead. “The police are responsible for a lot of things, Kate Millholland. Providing happy childhoods for millionaires is not one of them.”
     
    I went back in the house and found Chrissy methodically emptying her kitchen cupboards. I didn’t need to ask her what she was doing. I indulged in similar behavior after Russell died. Sorting, cleaning, and rearranging. Your inner life is in turmoil so you seek to impose physical order on the objects around you.
    I pulled up a chair. “Do you mind if we talk while you do this?” I asked.
    “Not at all,” she replied, separating the wooden spoons and spatulas into different piles.
    “I have to know what you want to do about the team,” I said.
    “I know.”
    “Well?”
    “I just got off the phone with Jack. He said that L.A. is prepared to fax me a commitment letter to take to the bank.”
    “So you want to move the team?”
    “No,” she said, looking up. “Until a few minutes ago I thought I did. But being home, seeing this house, all my things, this is really where I belong, and more importantly this is where the team belongs. I’ve been trying to think of what Jeff would have wanted, what he would have considered to be the right thing, and I’m pretty sure that this is it. Even the idea of taking on a partner, which I know bothered Jeff, actually seems like a good idea now. That way I won’t be making all the decisions alone.”
    “Then let me go ahead and see if I can work out a deal,” I said. “But until I do, you have to promise me you won’t tell anyone about your decision. Right now my best lever is the notion that you can’t decide what to do. As soon as you make a decision it substantially weakens my bargaining position.”
    “I understand.”
    “I especially don’t want you discussing this with Jack. I know you view him as a friend, but believe me, he’s an interested party in this and you need to keep him in the dark just like everyone else.”
    “What do you mean by interested party? Do you think that I’m having an affair with him, too?” she asked in an aggrieved voice.
    “Not unless you tell me you are,” I answered truthfully. “But I have no idea what kind of finder’s fee or deal he may have struck with the people in L.A.”
    “Do you think that there’s really a chance that someone would be willing to make a deal for part of the team?”
    “We’ll know today. I mean, it’s one thing to think about what fun it would be to own a football team. It’s another when you start getting the lawyers involved and it’s time to start writing the check. Personality is an issue, too. When you take on a partner, you have to give some real thought to what it’s going to be like dealing with them day in and day out, year after year.”
    “I understand,” replied Chrissy, “but you also have to understand that right now I’d make a deal with the devil just to be able to put all of this behind me.”
     
    * * *
     
    I left Chrissy with the spoons and spatulas and went to call my office.
    “Congratulations on your promotion from word processing,” I told my secretary after she’d picked up the phone.
    “No thanks to you,” she replied. “I went to the secretarial administrator and told her that I was going to sue the firm for discrimination if they didn’t reinstate me.”
    “And it worked?”
    “Apparently. I have been thinking of changing the way I answer the phone to ‘Good morning, Pariahs R Us.’ It’s catchy and it pretty much sums