Sara Paretsky - Indemnity Only

I realized that I’d passed the Addison exit and turned onto the Belmont off-ramp. “Sorry-that answer turned into a sermon, and I got so carried away I missed my exit. Does it help any?”

Jill nodded and was quiet again as I drove north along Pulaski and then turned east on Addison. “It’s lonely now, with Peter gone,” she said finally. “He was the only one in the family who-who cared about me.”

“Yeah, it’s going to be rough, sweetie,” I said gently, and squeezed her hand.

“Thank you for coming up, Miss Warshawski,” she whispered.

I had to lean over to hear her. “My friends call me Vic,” I said.

Friendly Persuasion

I stopped at the clinic before going to the apartment to let Lotty know I’d made free with her hospitality and to see if she thought Jill needed anything for shock. A small group of women, most of them with younger children, were waiting in the little anteroom. Jill looked around her curiously. I poked my head into the inner door, where Lotty’s nurse, a young Puerto Rican woman, saw me. “Hello, Vic,” she said. “Lotty’s with a patient. Do you need something?”

“Hi, Carol. Tell her that I’d like to bring my young friend back to her apartment-the one I went out this morning to see. She’ll know whom you mean. And ask her if she can take a quick look at her-healthy kid, but she’s had a lot of stress lately.”

Carol went into the tiny examining room where she spoke for a few minutes. “Bring her into the office. Lotty will take a quick look at her after Mrs. Segi has left. And of course, take her to the apartment.”

I took Jill into Lotty’s office, among disapproving frowns from those who had been waiting longer. While we waited, I told her a little bit about Lotty, Austrian war refugee, brilliant London University medical student, maverick doctor, warm friend. Lotty herself came bustling in.

“So, this is Miss Thayer,” she said briskly. “Vic has brought you down for a little rest? That’s good.” She lifted Jill’s chin with her hand, looked at her pupils, made her do some simple tests, talking all the while.

“What was the trouble?” she asked.

“Her father was shot,” I explained.

Lotty clicked her tongue and shook her head, then turned to Jill. “Now, open your mouth. No, I know you haven’t got a sore throat, but it’s free, I’m a doctor, and I have to look. Good. Nothing wrong with you, but you need some rest and something to eat. Vic, when you get her home, a little brandy. Don’t talk too much, let her get some rest. Are you going out? ”

“Yes, I’ve got a lot to do.”

She pursed her lips and thought a minute. “I’ll send Carol over in about an hour. She can stay with Jill until one of us gets home.”

At that moment I realized how much I liked Lotty. I’d been a little uneasy about leaving Jill alone, in case Earl was close on my trail. Whether Lotty knew that, or simply felt a scared young girl should not be left alone, it was a worry I now did not have to speak aloud.

“Great. I’ll wait until she gets there.”

We left the clinic among more baleful stares while Carol summoned the next patient. “She’s nice, isn’t she? ” Jill said as we got into the car. “Lotty or Carol?”

“Both, but Lotty, I meant. She really doesn’t mind me showing up like this, does she?”

“No,” I agreed. “All of Lotty’s instincts are directed at helping people. She’s just not sentimental about it.”

When we got back to the apartment, I made Jill stay in the car while I checked the street and the entranceway. I didn’t want to add to her fears, but I didn’t want anyone getting a shot at her, either. The coast was still clear. Maybe Earl really did believe he’d scared me off. Or maybe with the police arresting poor Donald Mackenzie, he was resting easy.

When we got inside, I told Jill to take a hot bath. I was going to prepare some breakfast, and I would have to ask her a few questions, but then she was to sleep. “I can tell by your eyes that you haven’t been doing that for a while,” I said.

Jill agreed shyly. I helped her unpack her small suitcase in the room I’d been sleeping in; I could sleep on the daybed in the living room. I got out one of Lotty’s enormous white bath sheets and showed her the bathroom.

I realized that I was quite hungry; it was ten and I hadn’t eaten the toast Lotty had thrust at me. I foraged in the refrigerator: no juice-Lotty never drank anything out of cans. I found a drawer full of oranges and squeezed a small pitcher of juice, and then took some of Lotty’s thick light Viennese bread and turned it into French toast, whistling under my breath. I realized I felt good, despite Thayer’s death and all the unexplained dangling pieces to the case. Some instinct told me that things were finally starting to happen.

When Jill emerged pink and sleepy from the bath, I set her to eating, holding my questions and telling her a little bit about myself in answer to her inquiries. She wanted to know if I always caught the killer.

“This is the first time I’ve ever really dealt directly with a killer,” I answered. “But generally, yes, I do get to the root of the problems I’m asked to look into.”

“Are you scared?” Jill asked. “I mean, you’ve been beaten up and your apartment got torn up, and they-they shot Daddy and Pete.”

“Yes, of course I’m scared,” I said calmly. “Only a fool would look at a mess like this and not be. It’s just that it doesn’t panic me-it makes me careful, being scared does, but it doesn’t override my judgment.

“Now, I want you to tell me everything you can remember about whom your father talked to in the last few days, and what they said. We’ll go sit on the bed, and you’ll drink some hot milk with brandy as Lotty ordered, so that when I’m done you’ll go to sleep.”

She followed me into the bedroom and got into bed, obediently sipping at the milk. I had put in brown sugar and nutmeg and laced it heavily. She made a face but continued sipping it while we talked.

“When I came out on Saturday, you said your father at first didn’t believe this Mackenzie they’ve arrested killed your brother, but the neighbors talked him out of it. What neighbors?”

“Well, a lot of people came by, and they all more or less said the same thing. Do you want all their names?”

“If you can remember them and remember what they said.”

We went through a list of about a dozen people, which included Yardley Masters and his wife, the only name I recognized. I got some long histories of relations among the families, and Jill contorted her face in the effort of trying to remember exactly what they’d all said.

“You said they ‘all more or less said the same thing,’ “ I repeated after a while. “Was anyone more emphatic about it than the others?”

She nodded at that. “Mr. Masters. Daddy kept raving that he was sure that Anita’s father had done it, and Mr. Masters said something like, ‘Look, John, you don’t want to keep going around saying things like that. A lot of things could come out that you don’t want to hear.’ Then Daddy got mad and started yelling, ‘What do you mean? Are you threatening me?’ And Mr. Masters said, ‘No, of course not, John. We’re friends. Just giving you some advise,’ or something like that.”

“I see,” I said. Very illuminating. “Was that all?”

“Yes, but it was after Mr. and Mrs. Masters left that Daddy said he guessed he was wrong, which made me glad at the time, because of course Anita wouldn’t try to kill Peter. But then he started saying terrible things about Peter.”