Only the waves crashing onto the beach below sounded as we moved, hushed like congregants summoned to a secret sunset ceremony, through a tall grass prairie preserve and into a dense tunnel of arched trees that shrouded the path in almost complete darkness. We emerged fifty yards later into a clearing where the last of the day’s sun shone again. Some of those ahead of us had apparently participated in such gatherings before, and were forming a broad semicircle facing a lit-up, miniature stone cottage.
A large woman stood in front of the tiny rock house. Her closely cropped dark hair was streaked with gray, and she wore a loose-flowing, multi-hued robe that, in the backlighting from the little windows behind her, made her look like a pagan priestess afire with the setting sun. She held a champagne flute in her right hand, and the end of a leash in the other. I stepped around the people in front to see more clearly. The other end of the leash was attached to a pig.
It was not the sort of small pink pig seen on farms, destined to become bacon. This pig was larger, with brown and white spots, and looked to weigh two hundred pounds.
The woman in the robe raised her champagne. ‘Welcome Jasmine, everybody,’ she shouted to the sky.
Everyone raised their glasses.
As I raised my champagne, I snuck a glance at Amanda. She was looking directly back at me, her own flute raised, but not toward the pig. She was toasting my ignorance. ‘My new half-sister,’ she mouthed above the muffled applause, the best the crowd could do while holding champagne.
After a few last claps, and several more shouts of ‘Welcome, Jasmine,’ the group began to disperse in the direction of the path back to the food and stronger booze. The homage had ended. I turned to follow, when Amanda stepped up and seized my hand.
‘No, Vlodek,’ she said. It was the first time she’d ever used my given name. ‘You must meet Delores, the woman at the center of my father’s not-quite-rational universe.’
Her fingernails dug into my palm as she half tugged me to the small group of people clustered around the woman in robes. As we got closer to the cottage, I noticed that the thick Plexiglas windows were deeply scratched and smeared milky, no doubt from snouts.
Just then, the rubber door swung outward and, to the faint strains of classical music playing inside, another pig lumbered out, this one pure black and half the size of the leashed Jasmine. I glimpsed straw on the floor of the rock cottage before the rubber door slapped shut.
Delores spotted Amanda standing at the edge of the little group. The way the two women stiffened simultaneously said it all. Amanda put her arm under my elbow and marched me forward.
‘Amanda,’ Delores Phelps said.
‘Delores.’
People to the left of us stepped back, to make room for the pig that had come from the cottage.
‘Peter!’ Delores Phelps cried, holding out her champagne flute low enough for the new arrival, the black pig, to insert his tongue. ‘Peter just loves Dom Perignon,’ Delores said.
Several in the small cluster murmured approvingly, and Peter the pig grunted, a low, long snorting sound, likely in agreement.
Delores turned to me. ‘And you are Mr Rudolph, Amanda’s most successful young man?’
‘Not young, nor successful, nor Mr Rudolph. I’m Dek Elstrom.’
‘We’re divorced,’ Amanda said, of me.
‘I believe I did hear something about that,’ Delores said. ‘Lovely tie, Mr Elstrom.’
Peter nudged Delores for more Dom Perignon.
‘Peter is so attached to his mommy, aren’t you, Peter?’ Delores cooed, lowering her flute to give him another taste. ‘Peter is a Vietnamese potbellied pig,’ she said. ‘He used to sleep in his own bedroom, just down the hall from ours, but after he outgrew his bassinet, he started coming into our bedroom.’ She stopped, noticing the look on my face. ‘He was mostly potty trained, of course, but still, he did have his accidents.’ She bent down again to nuzzle the pig’s hairy ear. ‘So we built him his own little cottage, and got him some brothers and sisters.’ She straightened up and nodded to the pig at the other end of the leash. ‘Jasmine’s our newest, a Kunekune from New Zealand.’
I looked at my empty champagne flute, simply because I couldn’t think of what to say.
Delores noticed, and held out her own flute, swishing the little in the bottom that Peter had not licked out.
I shook my head. ‘Thank you, no.’ I took a quick look around for Amanda, but she’d disappeared. Only the bodyguard remained.
‘It was lovely meeting you,’ I told Delores Phelps.
‘Likewise, I’m sure.’
‘You, too,’ I said to the guard, but he made no move to step away. We walked back to the mansion, me in front, him a close two steps behind.
Amanda was talking to her father on the terrace. ‘What have you been telling my daughter, Elstrom?’ he asked, when I walked up.
‘That you’ve not been forthcoming, and nothing else.’
‘We’ll discuss your ignorance privately.’ Then, to Amanda, ‘Just he and I, my dear.’
‘I’m part of this,’ she said.
‘I’ll explain later,’ he said.
For a moment he stood silent, I stood silent, and she glared. Finally, she shrugged and walked away.
Wendell led us across the lawn, a small parade with him in the lead, me in the middle, and three body guards bringing up the rear. We entered the house through a side door and passed a laundry room with a porcelain-topped table for folding clothes and a kitchen fitted out, wall-to-wall, with stainless steel. A right turn down another hall brought us to the passage that led to his study door. We didn’t go in. The three guards moved up close behind me as Wendell continued marching us through the long dark foyer to the front of the house.
‘What are you hiding, Wendell?’ I asked the back of his head.
He opened the front door. ‘Why call the police?’
‘I didn’t call any cops.’
He stepped back, and two of the three guards came up on either side of me. I took the hint. I pressed Wendell’s refund check onto the guard at my right, and stepped outside. The door slammed.
A valet had been alerted to bring up the Jeep. I got in and drove through the gates. I pulled over fifty yards from the house and called Amanda. Her phone went automatically to voice mail. I didn’t leave a message because by then I noticed the glint of a familiar bumper parked just past a copse of trees alongside the road ahead. I started up, motored past without looking directly at the driver. It didn’t take long to be sure. The car, a black junior-grade BMW, pulled out and stayed far back at every turn, from Lake Forest all the way south and into Evanston.
I found the sort of cul-de-sac I was looking for just before I got to the outskirts of Chicago. I turned in, spun around fast, and was waiting for him when he eased into the cul-de-sac. He slammed on his brakes but he was too late; I’d pulled sideways to block him in. I jumped out of my car.
His window was open, and so was his collar. I reached in and grabbed it.
It was Jason, or Brad. I couldn’t tell because they’d been so similarly barbered.
‘Tell Mrs Barberi that I’ll report when I’m ready,’ I shouted. ‘And tell yourself that if I see you again, I’ll break your snout.’
As I got back into the Jeep and drove away, I realized I’d misspoken. I’d meant to say nose, not snout.
It had been that sort of day.