As soon as she saw him, Bernie’s animation returned. Father and daughter exclaimed in French for a moment until Pierre turned to embrace me. “Ah, so good to see you, Victoire, much too long since we were last together. Thank you for caring so tenderly for our tourbillon.”
He brushed Bernie’s hair from her forehead, saw the fading bruises where she’d scraped her face against the concrete. “Yes, petite, you’ve had far worse injuries on the ice rink, that is for sure. As for you, V.I., you look much more like Boom-Boom with that nose and your face all green, but it’s a badge of courage. Arlette and I, we don’t forget that you saved our darling’s life.”
“After putting it at risk,” I said dryly.
He made a dismissive gesture. “Bernadine has a gift for mischief, so enough of that. Now—you must be my guest for dinner. Not much of a thanks—for that, as soon as the hockey season ends—as soon as the Canadiens defeat the Blackhawks for the Stanley Cup—you will come for a week or a month or a summer to the Laurentians, right?”
“Canadiens beating the Hawks?” I said. “Not only Boom-Boom’s ghost but the Golden Jet will come for you, you renegade.”
“Americans are so greedy,” Bernie said. “The Blackhawks have won for years and the Canadiens not since 1993, before I was even born! If Vic is coming downtown to dinner, then can we ask Uncle Sal? He’s so very sad that I am leaving and I am sad to be going.”
The upshot was that we collected both Mr. Contreras and Jake on our way into the city. I changed out of jeans into gray silk trousers and my favorite rose-colored top and the five of us went into the Loop in a festive mood. The bartender at the hotel restaurant, who remembered Pierre from the Blackhawks glory days, sent over a bottle of wine, while the hostess, who knew Jake’s playing, put together an off-menu meal.
The first bottle disappeared quickly, the second one only slightly less so, and we were partway through a third by the time the hostess presented us with a cart of artisanal cheeses. Bernie was drinking her share and more besides, but her father didn’t object, and thankfully she was no longer my worry.
As Jake sliced a pear, twirling it around and laying uniform sections out on the cheese board, Bernie brought up her complaint, or perhaps concern, that I was letting Boom-Boom down by paying too much attention to that “dreary woman’s missing brother,” and not enough to the slander against my cousin.
Jake said he was just as happy if something had taken my mind off getting beaten up in South Chicago. “Dreary is good. Dreary is low-risk.”
I decided it would be prudent not to mention that the dreary woman’s brother might have a connection to the Uzbeki Mob.
“But what is happening with this history of Boom-Boom?” Pierre said. “His name has not been in the news since ten days. I thought this tracasserie about a girl being terrified of him had died down.”
“It has, in a way,” I said. “And up until two days ago, I’d become convinced that Stella Guzzo, or maybe her handlers, had invented her daughter’s diary. Then I saw some photos that made me think the diary might actually have existed.”
I pulled out my phone and showed Pierre the photographs from Mr. Villard’s collection. “This is the young woman who was murdered. Did you ever see Boom-Boom with her? Or did he ever talk about the day he went to Wrigley Field with his boyhood friend?”
Pierre beckoned to the hostess to bring over a better lamp. “Vic, you know this is many years in the past. What do I remember of the thirty thousand times your cousin and I spoke? The camaraderie, not the details. Especially no details of Boom-Boom’s love life. Me, I was always with Arlette, but for Boom-Boom, in those early years, it was a new love every three or four months.”
Still, he took his time going through the photos, tilting the phone so the light hit the screen at the best angle. When he put the phone down, Bernie snatched it and looked through the file herself.
“That man, the drunk one with the soft hands, he thought I was this girl, but me, I don’t see it at all.”
Mr. Contreras leaned over her shoulder. “No, I see what he meant, Peanut. You both have a kind of liveliness in you. Reckless, maybe.”
I looked at Mr. Contreras with respect. He was right: it was that quality that Joel Previn had been responding to, not the fact that the two had the same coloring or were the same age.
“And this was the girl whose mother murdered her?” Bernie said. “And now I see, she was playing hide-and-seek with Uncle Boom-Boom—where? At the baseball stadium? And she is holding—quoi?—pas une pochette. A little book, no? You didn’t tell me this, Vic, you didn’t tell me you saw this girl with the diary in her hand.”
“I’m not sure that’s what it is,” I said. “It’s not clear—”
“When it quacks, and waddles, and drops white feathers on the grass, you still say, it is not a duck?” Bernie slapped the phone back on the table, throwing up her hands to emphasize her sarcasm.
“Bernadine! You are jumping to conclusions like a kangaroo. Pas plus de vin.” Pierre moved the third bottle out of her reach, adding to me, “As for this poor girl—so terrible to think she was soon to be dead, she is so—so vivace in the photo. But I never saw her with your cousin.”
He tapped the screen. “In these pictures, if anyone was afraid it was Boom-Boom, after all. Look at his face—it’s not a game for him. She’s leading him in the dance all over this stadium.”
Mr. Contreras and Jake took their turn to look at the pictures. “Whatever she was carrying, she don’t have it when she comes out of that tunnel, or wherever she went off to,” my neighbor said.
Bernie grabbed the phone again. “Uncle Sal, you are right. This Annie left the diary behind, and then the mother saw the pictures and went back and found it as soon as she got out of prison.”
“Nobody knew the pictures existed until after the story about the diary surfaced,” I objected. “And then—”
I stopped.
“What are you thinking?” Bernie demanded.
“Mr. Villard’s house was burgled and some of his Cubs memorabilia were taken. I was going to say, maybe the thieves were looking for these pictures. Well, not these specifically, but the break-in happened soon after the story ran about Boom-Boom being at Wrigley. Maybe I’m wrong—maybe the break-in was random and not connected to Boom-Boom or Stella’s quest for exoneration.”
“These pictures prove the diary!” Bernie cried, cheeks flaming.
“This conversation proves that you cannot have more than one glass of wine, Bernadine,” Pierre said. “You are behaving as if you were with your teammates, not at a dinner party. You and I, we are going up to our room and let these people have some peace and quiet.”
He took my hand and kissed it. “Tomorrow, Bernadine and I will see the sights of Chicago, including a chance to watch the Blackhawks skate against St. Louis. You must come, too. The Blackhawks, they will be thrilled to have Boom-Boom’s cousin in the house. And these gentlemen?”
Mr. Contreras was torn, but decided he needed a night at home. Jake seemed thankful to plead a rehearsal, but I accepted happily.
HIGH AND INSIDE
Between the wine, my cold and my lingering injuries, I was ready for bed within minutes of getting home. It was a luxury to stretch out in Jake’s clean sheets, not to have my brain on partial alert for Bernie sliding out of the building.
Jake had recently been selected to play the Martinsson Double Bass Concerto with the Chicago Symphony and wanted to practice fingering. I fell asleep to the soft rumbling of his playing and for once managed a full night with no intrusions from Guzzos or mobsters or tar pits.