Sara Paretsky - Burn Marks

I smiled at him again. “I can give you Lieutenant Mallory’s home number if you want to ask him to do it. But I never said I was with the city. I told Mr. Garrison I was a detective. He could have asked for my ID up front. I know Ernie and Ron-I can phone up tomorrow and see who you called.”

“Then do that. Get off my building. Fast. Before some one has an accident and drops a load of steel on your cute little head.”

He was breathing hard. I didn’t see any reason to be so excited, but it seemed to me that the prudent course was to vacate the premises. There are just so many dead bodies a construction site can absorb in one night.

Back in the Chevy I suddenly felt a wave of exhaustion wash over me. My feet were sore; they throbbed inside my pumps. It had really been stupid to subject the poor things to so much rough terrain. I slipped out of them and drove home in my nylons. The cold accelerator pedal felt good against my hot soles.

At the apartment I resisted the temptation to ring Vinnie’s bell. Not out of any nobility of character-I wanted to sleep in and he’d be bound to retaliate in some awful way if I woke him now.

Peppy whimpered behind Mr. Contreras’s door when she heard me go by but thankfully she didn’t start barking. The old man was just deaf enough that he’d sleep through her crying, but not her barking. Upstairs I started shedding clothes as soon as I got inside. By the time I reached my bedroom I was naked. I climbed into bed and was asleep almost immediately.

I slept deeply, but my dreams were filled with Elena and Cerise chasing me through miles of steel beams. I’d think I was in the clear and then suddenly a giant elevator pit would open in front of me. Just as I was backing away Cerise would be there staring at me, naked as she’d been at the morgue, her braids tangled, stretching her arms out and begging me to save her. In the background Velma Riter’s voice echoed against the steel, saying, Mind you own business, Vic, a lot of people think you’re a pain in the butt.

When the ringing phone woke me at ten I came to heavily. I fumbled with the phone before getting the mouthpiece the right way up. “‘Lo,” I mumbled heavily.

“May I speak to Victoria Warshawski, please.”

It was the efficient voice of a professional secretary. I managed to get the idea across that it was me. When she put me on hold I sat up to grapple with a sweatshirt-in case it was a client I didn’t want to be seen naked.

“Vic? Ernie Wunsch. Hope I’m not disturbing you- my girl said she thought she woke you up.”

When he’d dated LeAnn she’d been his girl; now she was his wife and his secretary had become his girl. It was too confusing a concept to put across with my mind so heavy from sleep so I only grunted.

“I had a message a few minutes ago from the Rapelec site saying you’d stopped by there in the middle of the night.”

I grunted again.

“Something wrong we can help you with, Vic? It gets me kind of pissed to think you were going on my site behind my back.”

“Hang on a minute, Ernie, I’ll be right with you.” I put the phone down and went to the bathroom. I didn’t hurry things and on my way back I stopped in the kitchen for a glass of water. By the time I picked the phone up again Ernie was well and truly pissed but my head felt a bit clearer.

“Sorry, Ernie-I was right in the middle of something when you called. You know a young woman was found dead at the site last night.”

“Some black junkie. What business was it of yours?”

“She was a protégée of mine, Ernie. I promised her mother I would look after her and I failed pretty miserably.” I could see Zerlina Ramsay’s strong, anguished face in my mind’s eye and it didn’t cheer me any.

“So?”

“So when I heard she’d died at the Rapelec site I thought I’d better go check it out, see if I could learn any reason she might have gone there.”

“You ever want to talk to my people again, Vic, you check it out with me first. Cray was damned angry that you came there impersonating a police officer. He was all for having you arrested. If I hadn’t known it would embarrass the hell out of Mickey, I would have done it too. You want to play at detective you go do it someplace else.” He sounded downright ugly.

“While I’m playing at detective, Ernie, there is one thing you can tell me-why was it so important to you that somebody really senior come and investigate? If you’d left it with the beat people, they’d have just reported a dead junkie and I probably never even would have heard about it.”

Even as I asked the question, part of the answer came to me. Ernie called Furey because he was a pal and he was with the cops, Furey got Bobby involved. No, that didn’t make sense-Furey would have wanted Mallory to stay far away, to minimize any fuss at the Rapelec site. Well, maybe he’d botched it and hadn’t been able to keep it from Bobby. But that didn’t make sense, because Bobby was pissed at being called in-someone had ordered him to go there when he hadn’t wanted to.

While all this was spinning through my head Ernie said heavily, “Just learn to mind your own business, Vic. Everyone will like you better.”

I was getting kind of peeved at this message. “Oh, go make ugly faces at someone who’s scared of you, Ernie. You don’t impress me any.”

As he hung up I thought I heard him mutter, “I still don’t see what Mickey sees in you.”

And I couldn’t see what a sweetie like LeAnn saw in him. What did she do when he started rattling his chains at her? Probably giggled and said, “Oh, Ernie, don’t be such a crybaby.”

I stumbled into the kitchen for some coffee, my feet tender and swollen from last night’s escapade. Was Ernie angry because he felt I’d undermined his control of his project site? Or was there something specific about Cerise’s death that was bugging him? I couldn’t imagine what, but I couldn’t come up with any reason why Bobby had been dragged unwillingly into the investigation. My brain was still woolly and remote, though, not churning ideas with any facility.

I resisted the temptation to take my coffee to the bathroom and while away the morning soaking my sore toes in the tub. I know that however unappetizing it seems, running is the best antidote to a thick head. Anyway, a big dog like Peppy depends on running for her mental health-it wasn’t fair to leave her to the sedate walks Mr. Contreras could manage.

I grumbled my way to the living room to do my stretches. They took longer than usual. Even so I didn’t feel fully fit when I pulled on my sweats and stomped down the back stairs.

Peppy heard me coming and raced up to greet me. She was always ready to move from deep sleep to intense action without taking time between to loosen up. Recognizing my sweats, she whipped herself into a frenzy, dancing around me several times, rushing to the bottom of the stairs, then darting back up to check my progress. Mr. Contreras came to his back door as we passed.

“Just taking Her Serene Doggedness out for a spin,” I said.

He nodded without speaking and retreated into the kitchen. Still feeling wounded. I gritted my teeth, but didn’t try calling to him. I wasn’t ready to kiss and make up.

I moved up the alley to Belmont at a slow gait, calling Peppy back to me at the intersections, trying to avoid pulling a muscle. At the harbor I finally felt loose enough to actually run full out for the better part of a mile, but I kept it to a jog again as I started back.

I picked Peppy up at her usual spot by the lagoon. She’d found a family of ducks and was diving after them hopefully. Until they finally took off toward the lake she pretended not to hear me calling-a fit response for ignoring her the last couple of days. Then she came loping up to me, tongue out, grinning wickedly-I knew you were calling me all along, but you’ll never be able to prove it.