It was only later that everyone realized Lily herself had disappeared.

III

Clare Rutland curled one foot toward her chin and massaged her stockinged toes. Her face, rubbed free of makeup, showed the strain of the day in its sharply dug lines.

“This could kill the Slims,” she remarked to no one in particular.

It was past midnight. I was in the windowless press room with her, Mary Ann, and a bunch of men, including Jared Brookings, who owned the PR firm handling the Slims in Chicago. Brookings had come in in person around nine, to see what could be done to salvage the tournament. He’d sent his fresh-faced minions packing long ago. They’d phoned him in terror when the police arrested Nicole Rubova, and clearly were not up to functioning in the crisis.

Arnold Krieger was there, too, with a handful of other reporters whose names I never learned. Krieger was the fat man who’d been listening in on Zina Garrison’s husband earlier in the dining area. He covered tennis for one of the wire services and had made himself at home in the press room when the cops commandeered it for their headquarters.

“She’ll be out on bond in the morning, right?” Krieger palmed a handful of nuts into his mouth as he started to talk, so his words came out clogged. “So she can play Martina at one, per the schedule.”

Clare looked at him in dismay but didn’t speak.

Brookings put his fingertips together. “It all depends, doesn’t it? We can’t be too careful. We’ve spent two decades building these girls up, but the whole fabric could collapse at any minute.”

I could see Mary Ann’s teacher instincts debating whether to correct his mixed metaphors and deciding against it. “The problem isn’t just having one of the stars arrested for murder,” she said bluntly. “Lily Oberst is a local heroine and now everyone is going to read that an evil lesbian who had designs on her killed her father because he stood between them. Chicago might rip Nicole apart. They certainly won’t support the tournament.”

“Besides,” Clare Rutland added in a dull voice, “two of the top seeds withdrew when they heard about Rubova’s arrest. They’ve gone off to locate a lawyer to handle the defense. The other Czechs may not play any more Slims this year if a cloud hangs over Rubova. Neither will Freddie Lujan. If they drop out, others may follow suit.”

“If a cloud hangs over Rubova, it’s over the whole tour,” Monte Allison, the Artemis Products representative, spoke for the first time. “We may withdraw our sponsorship for the rest of the year-I can’t speak for Philip Morris, of course. That’s a corporate decision, naturally, not mine, but we’ll be making it tomorrow or-no, tomorrow’s Saturday. We’ll make it Monday. Early.”

I’d never yet known a corporation that could make an important decision early Monday just because one of its vice presidents said so in a forceful voice. But Allison was fretful because none of the tennis people was paying attention to him. Since Artemis also helped Philip Morris promote the tour, Allison was likely to urge that they withdraw their sponsorship just because he didn’t like the way Clare Rutland kept snubbing him.

I muttered as much to Mary Ann.

“If they have to make a decision Monday, it gives you two days to solve the crime, Vic,” she said loudly.

“You don’t believe Rubova killed Oberst?” I asked her, still sotto voce.

“I believe the police wanted to arrest her because they didn’t like her attitude,” Mary Ann snapped.

The investigation had been handled by John McGonnigal, a violent crimes sergeant I know. He’s a good cop, but a soignée, sardonic woman does not bring out the best in him. And by the time he’d arrived Nicole had dressed, in a crimson silk jumpsuit that emphasized the pliable length of her body, and withdrawn from shock into mockery.

When McGonnigal saw me slide into the interrogation room behind Rubova, he gave an exaggerated groan but didn’t actively try to exclude me from his questioning sessions. Those gave me a sense of where everyone claimed to have been when Gary was killed, but no idea at all if McGonnigal was making a mistake in arresting Nicole Rubova.

Police repugnance at female-female sexuality might have helped him interpret evidence so that it pointed at her. I hadn’t been able to get the forensic data, but the case against Rubova seemed to depend on two facts: she was the only person known to be alone with Gary in the locker room. And one of her rackets had a big section of string missing from it. This last seemed to be a rather slender thread to hang her on. It would have taken a good while to unthread enough string from a racket to have enough for a garrote. I didn’t see where she’d had the time to do it.

McGonnigal insisted she’d spent Lily’s press conference at it, dismissing claims from Frederica Lujan that she’d been talking to Nicole while it was going on. Some helpful person had told him that Frederica and Nicole had had an affair last year, so McGonnigal decided the Spanish player would say anything to help a friend.

None of the Slims people questioned my sitting in on the inquiry-they were far too absorbed in their woes over the tournament. The men didn’t pay any attention to Mary Ann’s comment to me now, but Clare Rutland moved slightly on the couch so that she was facing my old coach directly. “Who is this, Mary Ann?”

“V. I. Warshawski. About the best private investigator in the city.” Mary Ann continued to speak at top volume.

“Is that why you came to the matches today?” The large hazel eyes looked at me with intense interest. I felt the power she exerted over tennis divas directed at me.

“I came because I wanted to watch Lily Oberst. I grew up playing basketball with her mother. Mary Ann here was our coach. After watching Gary train Lily last week I would have thought the kid might have killed him herself-he seemed extraordinarily brutal.”

Clare smiled, for the first time since Nicole Rubova had come running down the hall in her towel ten hours ago. “If every tennis kid killed her father because of his brutal coaching, we wouldn’t have any parents left on the circuit. Which might only improve the game. But Oberst was one of the worst. Only-why did she have to do it here? She must have known-only I suppose when you’re jealous you don’t think of such things.”

“So you think Rubova killed the guy?”

Clare spread her hands, appealing for support. “You don’t?”

“You know her and I don’t, so I assume you’re a better judge of her character. But she seems too cool, too poised, to kill a guy for the reason everyone’s imputing to her. Maybe she was interested in Lily. But I find it impossible to believe she’d kill the girl’s father because he tried to short-circuit her. She’s very sophisticated, very smart, and very cool. If she really wanted to have an affair with Lily, she’d have figured out a way. I’m not sure she wanted to-I think it amused her to see Lily blush and get flustered, and to watch Gary go berserk. But if she did want to kill Gary she’d have done so a lot more subtly, not in a fit of rage in the locker room. One other thing: If-if-she killed him like that, on the spot, it must have been for some other reason than Lily.”

“Like what?” Arnold Krieger had lost interest in Monte Allison and was eavesdropping on me, still chewing cashews.

I hunched a shoulder. “You guys tell me. You’re the ones who see these prima donnas week in and week out.”

Clare nodded. “I see what you mean. But then, who did kill Oberst?”

“I don’t know the players and I don’t have access to the forensic evidence. But-well, Lily herself would be my first choice.”

A furious uproar started from Allison and Brookings, with Clare chiming in briefly. Mary Ann silenced them all with a coach’s whistle-she still could put her fingers in her mouth and produce a sound like a steam engine.