Sara Paretsky - Burn Marks

“Whatcha got there, girl?” I asked. “Tennis ball?”

I lay down on my stomach and peered underneath but couldn’t see anything. She refused to give up. Despite all my assurances that nothing was there, she continued her impatient mewing. Once she got going on something like that she could easily keep it up for an hour. I bowed to her superior concentration and hunted for my flashlight.

When I finally remembered dropping it with my other tools on the floor of the hall closet Sunday night, Peppy was still trying to burrow her way under the couch. I hoped she hadn’t found a dead rat, or worse yet a live one. With some foreboding I got back down on my belly to peer underneath. Peppy was crowding me so closely I couldn’t see anything at first, but at least no red eyes stared back at me. Finally I saw light glinting off metal. Whatever it was lay out of the reach of my arm.

“Naturally you’ve seen something that involves moving the couch,” I grumbled to the dog.

When I pulled it away from the wall she danced hurriedly around to the back, tail wagging vigorously. She raced in front of me when the object came into view, sniffed at it, picked it up, and laid it at my feet.

“Thank you,” I praised her, rubbing her head. “I hope you think it was worth all that effort.”

It was a gold link bracelet, a heavy piece, big enough to be a man’s. I pushed the couch back against the wall and sat down to examine the trophy. Two amethysts were set among the links. I turned them over but the backs of the stones hadn’t been inscribed.

I tossed it from one hand to the other. It looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t think of any recent male guests who might have lost it. What men had visited me lately? Robin had come over on Saturday, but he hadn’t gone near the couch. Terry Finchley and Roland Montgomery had sat there when they came to accuse me of torching the Prairie Shores Hotel on Saturday, but it was hard to imagine how they could have dropped it so it fell underneath. It would be so much more likely for something someone dropped to land in the cushions if one of them had lost it. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to ask Finchley.

The only way I could really see it getting down underneath like that was if someone had been sleeping on the sofa bed-when it was pulled out there was a gap between the end of the springs and the floor. Guests of mine had occasionally forgotten a watch or a ring that they’d absently laid on the floor after going to sleep.

Cerise and Elena had been my only recent overnight guests. I thought I’d know if Elena had been carting around such a valuable knickknack, but maybe not. She could have stolen it, after all, hoping to trade it for liquor. Maybe it had belonged to Cerise’s boyfriend and she wore it the way girls did when they went steady in my high school. Maybe I should drive down to Lawndale and show it to Zerlina since it was much likelier that Cerise had owned it than Terry Finchley. But would Zerlina know? And if Maisie was standing militantly in front of her, would she even say?

I was feeling better but not well enough to deal with Maisie. Anyway, the bracelet was scarcely the most urgent item on the agenda. I stuffed it in my jeans pocket and looked down at Peppy’s expectant face.

“You’ve been treated badly the last few days by the people who ought to be worshiping you. You’d like to go to the lake, wouldn’t you?”

She thumped her tail happily.

Hunting for Rabbits

I walked along the beach, Peppy dancing around me, dropping sticks for me to throw. It was almost October. The water had grown too cool for me, but she could swim happily for another month if we didn’t get any heavy storms.

I ambled along to the rocky promontory jutting east into the water. When I sat to stare at the water Peppy jumped down the rocks to explore for rabbits. It was a pretty steep drop, but she occasional found them burrowing in the boulders along the shore.

The water had a flat silvery sheen, a flinty shade that you don’t see in summer. You can tell the seasons by the color of the lake, even if nothing else in the landscape changes. When it’s calm the water seems infinitely enticing, offering to hold you, to caress you until you sleep, as though there were no cold depths, no sudden furies that could dash you helpless against the rocks.

It was helplessness I feared. A life like Elena’s, bobbing along without any channel markers to guide it. Or my own the last few days, nibbling circumspectly at the edge of the dam but not daring to dive clean in. Letting myself wait on Ralph MacDonald, for instance. I didn’t even know if it was out of fear of him, fear of his veiled threats I’d been doing so. Maybe I was just too worn by my aunt’s recent escapades to have energy left for taking charge of my own affairs. It was an ego-salvaging theory, at any rate.

I should overcome my repugnance and pay some attention to Elena’s problems, though. It wasn’t fair to her or to Furey to just hand her affairs over to him. At least I could hunt out Zerlina to ask again if she knew anyone who would shelter Elena. My shoulders drooped at the prospect.

I could stop by the Central District to see if Finchley recognized the bracelet-and to check on whether Furey had turned up anything on Elena. If he hadn’t, I’d organize my own search in the morning, maybe call in the Streeter Brothers to help out. And I could go see Roz-it was time I went on the offensive with Ralph MacDonald. Whether he was connected personally with the fire or not, he had something on his mind; I’d stood passively by far too long.

I stood up abruptly and called to the dog. Peppy gained the top in three easy jumps and danced around eagerly. When she saw we were getting in the car instead of returning to the beach, her tail sagged between her legs and she slowed to a painful crawl.

The Chevy was crawling pretty painfully too. I’d put in more transmission fluid, checked the oil, looked with a semblance of intelligence at the plugs and the alternator. Tomorrow I’d have to make the time to bring it to a garage. And make the money for paying a mechanic and hiring a rental car in the interim.

“Keep moving,” I ordered the engine.

The top speed it allowed me this afternoon was thirty-five. I had to stick to side streets, irritating the traffic behind me by keeping below twenty. It took over a half an hour to get to the Central District.

“I’m stopping here first because Finchley will be gone later,” I explained to Peppy, in case she was accusing me of cowardice. “I’m still planning on finding Roz.”

I went in through the entrance to police headquarters on State Street. If I used the station door around the corner, I’d have to explain my business to the watch commander. Of course there’s a guard at State Street, but he didn’t take as much persuading as a desk sergeant would- especially since he recognized my last name. He’d known my dad years ago and chatted with me about him for a bit.

“I was just a rookie then, but Tony took an interest in the young men on the force. I’ve always remembered that and try to do the same for the new guys coming up. And gals, of course. Oh, well. You want to go up to the lieutenant, not stand around reminiscing. You know where his office is, don’t you?”

“Yes, I’ve been there hundreds of times. You don’t need to call up.”

Bobby’s unit shared quarters on the third floor at the south end of the building. The detectives had desks jammed behind waist-high room dividers lining the fringe of the room while the uniformed officers shared desks in an open space up front. Bobby held the reins of command in a miniscule office in the southeast corner.