Sara Paretsky - Burn Marks

On the ground floor Schmidt and Martinez had separate offices equipped with a certain degree of luxury. Schmidt liked the sleek Milan style while Martinez favored a heavier baroque Spanish look. Because the ground-floor rooms were windowless, I could turn on their office lights and explore to my heart’s content.

I whistled a little under my breath as I opened and shut desk drawers and filing cabinets. I didn’t have time to go through all their papers. I just wanted some obvious clue left out on a desktop, something like “Kill V. I. Warshawski and her aunt Elena tonight by torching the Prairie Shores Hotel.”

Someplace they should have a big chart showing all of Alma Mejicana’s projects. Even after going through the premises twice I didn’t find any obvious sign of work in progress. It could be that it was all stored on the Apollo, but that meant any time someone wanted to check their commitments to see if they could bid on a new job, they’d have to crank up the machine and get a printout.

Maybe they were such a small operation they could work on only one project at a time. If that was so, how had they been able to get part of the Ryan contract? Even if they were leasing equipment from Wunsch and Grasso, they couldn’t get involved in projects that size without substantial resources.

I made a face and started hunting for ledgers. Maybe all the bookkeeping was done on the computer upstairs, but they still had to have some kind of hard copy of their transactions. Anyway, I didn’t believe they used that machine: the room it was in was completely empty except for the metal desk it sat on-it held none of the papers and manuals you expect to find around a machine in active use.

It was midnight when I finally located the books in the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet. By then my eyelids had started to swell with fatigue. One thing I hadn’t thought to bring was a flask of coffee, but I found an electric machine and a can of Mexican coffee in the storeroom and recklessly helped myself to a pot. I carried the ledgers into Luis’s office and sat at his glossy black desk with my coffee. It was the heat more than the caffeine that kept me going.

The books were perfectly straightforward. Payments were received from various project owners, such as the U.S. government in the case of the Dan Ryan, and payments were made for heat, cement, and other necessities of contracting life. But the biggest consistent payees were not suppliers. They were Wunsch and Grasso and Farm-works, Inc.

I shut my swollen eyes, trying to remember why I knew that name. When I woke up it was three o’clock. My neck was stiff from where I’d slumped over in Luis’s chair and my heart raced uncomfortably-I could have slept until morning and been surprised in here by the Alma Mejicana employees.

When I glanced back down at the ledgers, though, I remembered Farmworks, Inc. perfectly-that was the bizarre name I’d seen on the time sheets at the Rapelec site the night Cerise was found dead there. I rifled through Luis’s desk drawers for a pad of paper. Not finding any, I ripped a blank sheet from the back of the ledger and jotted some of the numbers down. I had an inkling of what they meant, but with morning near I didn’t have time to think, just to copy and get going.

I put the ledgers back in the drawer where I’d found them, cleaned the coffeepot, and tiptoed back upstairs to shut the trapdoor to the roof, pulling my towel in first. The front door could be unlocked from the inside. I wouldn’t be able to lock it again, but they would just think they’d forgotten to shut it properly on Friday night. Even if they suspected a break-in, I hadn’t left any personal signs behind. Anyway, I was far too beat to go back the way I’d come.

I undid the bolts and stepped out onto Ashland. I was about ten feet from the door when the alarms went. I’d been going to circle through the alley for my footstool, but this seemed like a good time to buy a new one. I moved up the street at a brisk walk-never let anyone see you running when an alarm sounds.

A car heading up Ashland to Forty-fifth slowed. I fished in my back pocket for the scarf-I should have put it on before I left the building. It wasn’t there. I dug in my jacket pockets, my waistband, my belt, but somewhere in the recesses of Alma Mejicana I’d lost it.

My hands trembled and my legs turned rubbery. I made myself walk naturally. If the police or Luis Schmidt found it, who was going to know it was mine? Bobby Mallory probably didn’t keep track of the presents his wife handed out and it was most unlikely he’d ever be shown this evidence.

Reciting this high-level logic didn’t calm me, but it occupied enough of the front of my mind to keep me from total panic. It helped that the passing driver, while still going slowly, didn’t stop. For all I knew he wasn’t concerned about the alarm but was debating whether to try to assault a woman carrying as much weaponry as I had strapped to me. I kept facing straight ahead, trying to make him invisible. When I turned left at the corner he continued north.

My control broke; I jogged the remaining half block to my car and headed for the Ryan without waiting to see if anyone responded to the alarm.

Dressing for Work

“For she’s a jolly good sister, Though her hands are a giant blister,” I sang in the bath. It was eleven Monday morning; I had risen from a sleep as sound as if I were one of the just, instead of a moderately successful burglar.

The morning papers contained no news of my break-in. Of course they’d probably been at the printer as I was driving home, but I didn’t think an alarm at a small business on the South Side would get a mention when they couldn’t find any signs of damage. My late-night panic had vanished. I’d left a piece of evidence behind, it was true, but that scarf was sold by the dozen at various Irish import shops around the city each week. It was only my own guilty fears that had made me think it could be traced to me. The one thing I should not do was call Furey or Finchley or any of my other police pals to inquire about Alma Mejicana.

I’d unwrapped my right hand before climbing into the tub. The blisters on the left had broken and reshut with a lot of oozing. They stung sharply when I cautiously put my hand in the water. The right, protected behind its gauze shielding, was starting to look like real skin. Nothing makes you heal faster than good genes. Good work, V.I., good choice of parental chromosomes.

Even though my shoulders were stiff and my neck sore, I felt pretty happy. “Music is the voice of love,” I crooned, soaping my armpits.

I didn’t know what Farmworks, Inc. was. I hadn’t found proof that Luis Schmidt had tried to murder me. I wasn’t any closer to knowing whether Cerise had been killed, or why Elena had run scared, but my successful burglary proved better than a tonic.

I bounded out of the bath, did a more vigorous exercise routine than I’d managed yesterday, and put on my jeans and a shirt to borrow the dog from the old man. Peppy had set up a barking when I came in last night, but neither Mr. Contreras nor Vinnie the banker had popped out to see me so I’d hoped I’d gotten home free.

Mr. Contreras’s suspicious scrutiny when he answered my knock made me wonder, but I didn’t volunteer anything-when I was a public defender I was always having to caution my clients against boasting out of euphoria. The easiest way to get caught is to pull off a slick job, then feel so full of yourself that you have to brag about it. Then one of your pals gets pissed at you and squeals, and there you are at Twenty-sixth and California talking to the PD.