Sara Paretsky - Indemnity Only

“Off to Winnetka. Another child, but pleasant, not silly.” Lotty had the Sun-Times open in front of her. “Anything new about the Thayers? She sounded quite panicked.”

Lotty poured me a cup of coffee, which I swallowed in scalding gulps while scanning the paper, but I found nothing. I shrugged, took a piece of buttered toast from Lotty, kissed her cheek, and was gone.

Native caution made me check the stairwells and the front walk carefully before going to the street. I even examined the backseat and the engine for untoward activity before getting into the car. Smeissen really had me spooked.

Traffic on the Kennedy was heavy with the Monday morning rush hour and people staggering home at the last minute from weekends in the country. Once I hit the outbound Edens, however, I had the road chiefly to myself, I had given Jill Thayer my card more to let her feel someone cared than because I expected an SOS, and with the half of my mind that wasn’t looking for speed traps I wondered what had caused the cry for help. A suburban teen-ager who had never seen death might find anything connected with it upsetting, yet she had struck me as essentially levelheaded. I wondered if her father had gone off the deep end in a big way.

I had left Lotty’s at 7:42, and turned onto Willow Road at 8:03. Pretty good time for fifteen miles, considering that three had been in the heavy city traffic on Addison. At 8:09 I pulled up to the gates of the Thayer house. That was as far as I got. Whatever had happened, it was excitement in a big way. The entrance was blocked by a Winnetka police car, lights flashing, and as far as I could see into the yard, it was filled with more cars and many policemen. I backed the Chevy down the road a bit and parked it on the gravel verge. It wasn’t until I turned the motor off and got out that I noticed the sleek black Mercedes that had been in the yard on Saturday. Only it wasn’t in the yard, it was tilted at a strange angle off the road. And it was no longer sleek, The front tires were flat, and the front windshield was a series of glass shards, fragments left from radiating circles. My guess was that bullets, and many of them, had caused the damage.

In my neighborhood a noisy crowd would have gathered to gape over the sight. This being the North Shore, a crowd had gathered, but a smaller and quieter one than Halsted and Belmont would have attracted. They were being held at bay by a lean young policeman with a mustache.

“Gee, they really got Mr. Thayer’s car,” I said to the young man, strolling over.

When disaster strikes, the police like to keep all the news to themselves. They never tell you what happened, and they never answer leading questions. Winnetka’s finest were no exception. “What do you want?” the young man said suspiciously.

I was about to tell him the candid truth when it occurred to me that it would never get me past the herd in the driveway. “My name is V. I. Warshawski,” I said, smiling in what I hoped was a saintly way. “I used to be Miss Jill Thayer’s governess. When all the trouble started this morning, she called me and asked me to come out to be with her.”

The young cop frowned. “Do you have any identification?” he demanded.

“Certainly,” I said righteously. I wondered what use a driver’s license would be in proving my story, but I obligingly dug it out and handed it to him.

“All right,” he said after studying it long enough to memorize the number, “you can talk to the sergeant.”

He left his post long enough to walk me to the gate. “Sarge!” he yelled. One of the men by the door looked up. “This is the Thayer girl’s governess!” he called, cupping his hands.

“Thank you, Officer,” I said, imitating Miss Jean Brodie’s manner. I walked up the drive to the doorway and repeated my story to the sergeant.

He frowned in turn. “We didn’t have any word about a governess showing up. I’m afraid no one is allowed in right now. You’re not with a newspaper, are you?”

“Certainly not!” I snapped. “Look, Sergeant,” I said, smiling a bit to show I could be conciliatory, “how about just asking Miss Thayer to come to the door. She can tell you if she wants me here or not. If she doesn’t, I can leave again. But since she did ask for me, she’s likely to be upset if I’m not allowed inside.”

The upsetness of a Thayer, even one as young as Jill, seemed to concern the sergeant. I was afraid he might ring for Lucy, but instead he asked one of his men to fetch Miss Thayer.

Minutes went by without her appearance, and I began to wonder whether Lucy had seen me after all and set the police straight on my governess story. Eventually Jill arrived, however. Her oval face was pinched and anxious and her brown hair had not been brushed. Her face cleared a little when she saw me. “Oh, it’s you!” she said. “They told me my governess was here and I thought it was old Mrs. Wilkens.”

“Isn’t this your governess?” the patrolman demanded.

Jill gave me an anguished look. I moved into the house. “Just tell the man you sent for me,” I said.

“Oh, yes, yes, I did. I called Miss Warshawski an hour ago and begged her to come up here.”

The patrolman was looking at me suspiciously, but I was in the house and one of the powerful Thayers wanted me to be there. He compromised by having me spell out my name, letter by laborious letter, for his notebook. Jill tugged on my arm while I was doing this, and as soon as we were through spelling, before he could ask more questions, I gave her a little pat and propelled her toward the hall. She led me to a little room near the big green statue and shut the door.

“Did you say you were my governess?” She was still trying to figure that one out.

“I was afraid they wouldn’t let me inside if I told them the truth,” I explained. “Police don’t like private detectives on their turf. Now suppose you tell me what’s going on.”

The bleak look reappeared. She screwed up her face. “Did you see the car outside?” I nodded. “My father-that was him, they shot him.”

“Did you see them do it?” I asked.

She shook her head and wiped her hand across her nose and forehead. Tears were suddenly streaming down her face. “I heard them,” she wailed.

The little room had a settee and a table with some magazines on it. Two heavy-armed chairs stood on either side of a window overlooking the south lawn. I pulled them up to the table and sat Jill in one of them. I sat in the other, facing her. “I’m sorry to put you through it, but I’m going to have to ask you to tell me how it happened. Just take your time, though, and don’t mind crying.”

The story came out in little sobs. “My dad always leaves-leaves for work between seven and seven thirty,” she said. “Sometimes he goes earlier. If something special-special is-going on at the bank. I’m usually asleep when he goes. Lucy makes-made him breakfast, then I get up and she makes another breakfast. Mother has toast and coffee in her room. She’s-she’s always on a-a diet.”

I nodded to explain not only that I understood these details but why she was reporting them. “But today you weren’t asleep.”

“No,” she agreed. “All this stuff about Pete-his funeral was yesterday, you know, and it shook me up so I couldn’t-couldn’t sleep very well.” She’d stopped crying and was trying to control her voice. “I heard Daddy get up, but I didn’t go down to eat with him. He’d been so strange, you know, and I didn’t want to hear him say anything terrible about Pete.” Suddenly she was sobbing, “I wouldn’t eat with him, and now he’s dead, and now I’ll never have another chance.” The words came out in great heaving bursts between sobs; she kept repeating them.