Sara Paretsky - Burn Marks

Getting the massive bouquet up to the fourth floor taxed my healing palms and shoulders almost beyond endurance. When I got off the elevator a sympathetic orderly offered to take it from me.

“These are gorgeous. What room you want them in?”

I gave him Elena’s room number. He carried the pot as easily as if it were a football-as easily as I could have done a week ago. I followed him down the hall and into Elena’s room. A woman about my own age in a yellow nylon gown was sitting in Elena’s bed reading the Tribune.

My jaw dropped slightly, the way it does when you’re taken unawares. “My aunt,” I said foolishly. “She was here on Friday.”

“Maybe she checked out,” the orderly suggested.

“She wasn’t in very good shape. Maybe they moved her.” I scurried back to the nursing station.

A middle-aged woman was making elaborate notes in a chart, I tried interrupting but she held up a warning hand and continued writing.

Finally she looked at me. “Yes?”

“I’m V. L Warshawski,” I said. “My aunt, Elena Warshawski, was here-she’d been hit on the head and was unconscious for a day or so. Did they move her or what?”

The nurse shook her head majestically. “She left yesterday.”

“Left?” I echoed, staggered. “But-they told me she was in bad shape, that she ought to have a month or so of convalescent care. How could they just let her go?”

“They didn’t. She took off on her own. Stole the clothes belonging to the lady she shared a room with and disappeared.”

My head started spinning again. I gripped the counter-top to steady myself. “When did this happen? Why didn’t someone call me?”

The nurse disclaimed all knowledge of the particulars. “The hospital called whoever was listed on her forms as next of kin. They may not have felt you needed to know.”

“I am her next of kin.” Maybe she’d given Peter’s name, though-I shouldn’t push my rights as her nearest and dearest too hard. “Can you tell me when she took off?”

She snapped her pencil down in exasperation. “Ask the police. They sent an officer over yesterday afternoon. He was pretty annoyed and got all the details.”

I was close to screaming from frustration and confusion. “Give me the guy’s name and I’ll talk to him with pleasure.”

She sighed audibly and went into the records room behind the counter. The orderly had been standing behind me all this time holding the flowers.

“You want to take these, miss?” he asked while I waited.

“Oh, give them to the person who’s been here longest without any visitors,” I said shortly.

The nurse came back out with a file. “Michael Furey, detective,” she read without looking up. She went back to the chart she’d been working on when I interrupted. The interview as clearly over.

Back in my car my arms trembled-carrying Ralph MacDonald’s flowers in had overstrained them. So Elena’d done another bunk. Should I care? The police knew about it. Presumably they’d keep an eye out for her. I had better things to do.

Instead of driving over to the Alma Mejicana offices on south Ashland, I took the Chevy back to the Prairie Shores Hotel. It started groaning again as I turned onto Indiana.

“You think you feel bad,” I grumbled. “I don’t want to be here, either. And my hands hurt.”

The palms were sore under my mitts. They throbbed against the hard steering wheel. Next car I got would have power steering.

The Prairie Shores made a fitting neighbor now for the Indiana Arms. The two blackened shells leered at each other across the street. Not even Elena could be hiding out in one of them. But there were other abandoned buildings on the block-an old warehouse, a boarded-up school, the remains of a nursing home. She could be in any of them. I didn’t have the energy to hunt through them all. Let the police do it.

I headed down Cermak at fifty, weaving in and out of traffic, sliding through red lights. I was just plain pissed. What kind of cute little game was she playing, anyway? And how much time did I have to spend playing it with her? She’d gotten someone rattled enough to try to kill her. And instead of talking to me about it she was skulking around town thinking she was a smart enough drunk to keep out of his way. Or her way, I amended conscientiously.

I turned left on Halsted in front of a madly honking, braking semi. That cooled me down pretty fast. The worst thing in the world to do with a car is use it when you’re angry. Tony had told me that, as close to angry himself as he ever got, when he took my keys away from me for a month. I’d been seventeen and it was the worst punishment I’d ever endured. It should have cured me of this kind of outburst.

I kept up a sober, alert pace the three miles to the Amphitheater. Alma Mejicana’s offices were behind it on Ashland. Tony used to take me to horse and dog shows there, but it had been a good twenty-five years since I’d been in that part of town. I’d forgotten the maze of dead-end streets between Ashland and Halsted. Even having to double back to Thirty-ninth and make my way on the main streets brought me to the contracting company in twenty minutes.

I drove slowly past their drab brick building. The door was padlocked shut. The high-set dirty windows reflected the gray morning air-no lights were on behind them. I made a careful circuit down the alley behind the building. The rear metal doors had a heavy chain slung through their handles clamped together with a businesslike American Master padlock.

I drove on through the alley and went up Ashland again to Forty-fourth. I left the Chevy at the corner, across from a handkerchief park where an old man was walking a lethargic terrier. Neither of them paid any attention to me. I walked down the alley with my head up, purposeful, I belonged there. When a Dumpster lid clattered shut behind a nearby gate, I didn’t jump, at least not very high.

With an American Master you need either an acetylene torch, a high-quality saw, or the key. I didn’t have any of those. I studied the chain regretfully. It was bigger than me too. After a complete circuit of the building I didn’t think I could get to the windows without a ladder. That left the roof, which also meant coming back and doing it at night.

Down the alley a telephone pole stood close enough to a building that I could shinny up and make my way across to Alma Mejicana. I stretched my arms up against it. The first spikes were about four feet out of reach. Still, some kind of footstool should make the climb possible.

Three flat-topped cubes of varying height lay between the pole and my target. I paced the distance. I’d only have to manage five feet at the widest jump. Even in my feeble state I ought to be able to do that in the dark.

I looked for a landmark that would let me know I’d reached Alma. The buildings facing the alley were lined with undifferentiated high wood fencing, but a garage had been built into the wall catty-corner to the contractor. I should be able to spot that with my flashlight.

The old man and the terrier were sitting on a bench reading the morning paper when I got back to the Chevy. Neither of them looked up even when I slammed the car door shut. I headed over to the Ryan at a brisk clip. The Chevy started its hideous grinding when I pushed it to sixty on the expressway but quieted down at forty. I made it home in time to catch the Bears’ opening kickoff against the unbeaten Bills. Like all good Chicagoans, I turned the TV sound off and caught the radio commentary-we like Dick Butkus’s knowledge and his partisanship.

With the Bears cruising at halftime, I looked at the Sunday papers. I was flipping idly through the Star’s “Chicago Beat” section when the Seligman name jumped up at me. The company offices on Montrose had been burgled. Mrs. Rita Donnelly, fifty-seven, a thirty-year employee, had been killed.