Sara Paretsky - Indemnity Only

I took her hands. “Yes, I know, it’s tough, Jill. But you didn’t kill him by not eating with him, you know.” I patted her hands but didn’t say anything else for a while. Finally, though, as the sobs quieted a bit, I said, “Tell me what did happen, honey, and then we can try to figure out an answer to it.”

She worked hard to pull herself together, and then said, “There’s not much else to tell. My bedroom is above here and I can see the side of the house. I sort of-of wandered to the window and watched him-watched him drive his car down to the road.” She stopped to swallow but she had herself in hand. “You can’t see the road because of all the bushes in front of it, and anyway, you can’t see all the way down to the bottom from my room, but I knew from the sound that he’d gotten down and turned onto Sheridan.” I nodded encouragingly, still holding her hands tightly. “Well, I was sort of going back to my bed, I thought I might get dressed, when I heard all these shots. Only I didn’t know-know what they were.” She carefully wiped two new tears away. “It sounded horrid. I heard glass shattering, and then this squeal, you know, the way a car sounds when it’s turning a corner too fast or something, and I thought, maybe Daddy had an accident. You know, he was acting so crazy, he could have gone charging down Sheridan Road and hit someone.

“So I ran downstairs without taking off my nightgown and Lucy came running from the back of the house. She was yelling something, and trying to get me to go back upstairs and get some clothes on, but I went outside anyway and ran down to the drive and found the car.” She screwed up her face, shutting her eyes, and fought against her tears again. “It was terrible. Daddy-Daddy was bleeding and lying all spread out on the steering wheel.” She shook her head. “I still thought he’d been in an accident, but I couldn’t see the other car. I thought maybe they’d driven off, you know, the ones with the squealing tires, but Lucy seemed to guess about the shooting. Anyway, she kept me from going over to the car-I didn’t have any shoes on, and by then a whole lot of cars had stopped to stare at it and she-Lucy-made one of them call the police on his CB. She wanted me to come back to the house but I wouldn’t, not until the police came.” She sniffed. “I didn’t like to leave him there all by himself, you know.”

“Yeah, sure, honey. You did real well. Did your mother come out?”

“No, we went back to the house when the police came, and I came upstairs to get dressed and then I remembered you and called you. But you know when I hung up?” I nodded. “Well, Lucy went to wake up Mother and tell her, and she-she started crying and made Lucy get me, and she came in just then so I had to hangup.”

“So you didn’t get a glimpse of the people who killed your dad?” She shook her head. “Do the police believe he was in the car you heard taking off?”

“Yes, it’s something to do with shells. I think there weren’t any shells or something, so they think they must be in the car.”

I nodded. “That makes sense. Now for the big question, Jill: Did you want me to come out for comfort and support-which I’m happy to provide-or to take some kind of action?”

She stared at me through gray eyes that had seen and heard too much for her age lately. “What can you do?” she asked.

“You can hire me to find out who killed your dad and your brother,” I said matter-of-factly.

“I don’t have any money, only my allowance. When I’m twenty-one I get some of my trust money, but I’m only fourteen now.”

I laughed. “Not to worry. If you want to hire me, give me a dollar and I’ll give you a receipt, and that will mean you’ve hired me. You’ll have to talk to your mother about it, though.”

“My money’s upstairs,” she said, getting up. “Do you think the same person killed Daddy who killed Pete?”

“It seems probable, although I don’t really have any facts to go on.”

“Do you think it’s someone who might-well, is someone trying to wipe out my family?”

I considered that. It wasn’t completely out of the question, but it was an awfully dramatic way to do it, and rather slow. “I doubt it,” I said finally. “Not completely impossible-but if they wanted to do that, why not just get you all when you were in the car together yesterday?”

“I’ll go get my money,” Jill said, going to the door. She opened it and Lucy appeared, crossing the hall. “So that’s where you are,” she said sharply. “How can you disappear like that and your mother wanting you?” She looked into the room. “Now don’t tell me that detective woman got in here! Come on, you,” she said to me. “Out you go! We’ve got trouble enough around here without you stirring it up.”

“If you please, Lucy,” Jill said in a very grown-up way, “Miss Warshawski came up here because I invited her, and she will leave when I ask her to.”

“Well, your mother will have something to say about that,” Lucy snapped.

“I’ll talk to her myself,” Jill snapped back. “Can you wait here, please, while I get my money,” she added to me, “and then would you mind coming to see my mother with me? I don’t think I can explain it to her by myself.”

“Not at all,” I said politely, giving her an encouraging smile.

After Jill had gone, Lucy said, “All I can say is that Mr. Thayer didn’t want you here, and what he would say if he could see you-”

“Well, we both know he can’t,” I interrupted. “However, if he had been able to explain-to me or to anyone else-what was on his mind, he would very likely be alive this morning.

“Look. I like Jill and I’d like to help her out. She called me this morning not because she has the faintest idea of what I can do for her as a private detective, but because she feels I’m supporting her. Don’t you think she gets left out around here?”

Lucy looked at me sourly. “Maybe so, Miss Detective, maybe so. But if Jill had any consideration for her mother, maybe she’d get a little consideration back.”

“I see,” I said dryly. Jill came back downstairs.

“Your mother is waiting for you,” Lucy reminded her sharply.

“I know!” Jill yelled. “I’m coming.” She handed me a dollar, and I gravely wrote out a receipt on a scrap of paper from my handbag. Lucy watched the whole thing angrily, her lips shut in a thin line. We then retraced the route I’d taken Saturday through the long hall. We passed the library door and went clear to the back of the house.

Lucy opened the door to a room on the left, saying, “Here she is, Mrs. Thayer. She’s got some terrible detective with her who’s trying to take money from her. Mr. Thayer threw her out of the house on Saturday, but now she’s back.”

A patrolman standing beside the door gave me a startled look.

“Lucy!” Jill stormed. “That’s a lie.” She pushed her way past the disapproving figure into the room. I stood behind Lucy, looking over her shoulder. It was a delightful room, completely windows on three sides. It overlooked the lake out the east side, and a beautiful lawn, complete with a grass tennis court, on the north. It was furnished with white bamboo furniture with cheerful color accents in reds and yellows in the cushions, lamp bases, and floor covering. A profusion of plants gave it a greenhouse effect.

In the middle of this charming setting was Mrs. Thayer. Even with no makeup and a few tearstains, she was very handsome, easily recognizable as the original of the picture in yesterday’s Herald-Star. A very pretty young woman, an older edition of Jill, sat solicitously on one side of her, and a handsome young man in a polo shirt and checked trousers sat across from her, looking a little ill-at-ease.