Sara Paretsky - Burn Marks

She said it in a saucy little singsong, the way young children do. It got under my skin, goading me to act like a child myself. I put both hands on the desk and leaned forward between the two computers. “Star, sugar, I want you to be real brave about this, but you should know your boss killed your mother.”

Little red spots burned in her cheeks. “That’s a lie! Mother was killed by some awful mugger who thought the office was empty and-”

“And broke in and stole only the documents relating to Farmworks’s offer to buy the Indiana Arms,” I cut in. “Come off it, Star. Ralph and Boots are spinning you a line. Your mother learned I’d gotten hold of a picture of you and she was afraid you’d get linked to the fire when I started showing it around. She went to Ralph and told him she was going to have to tell me all about his offer to purchase-she didn’t want you taking the fall in case someone could connect you with that arson. And he killed her. Or he got someone to kill her. How bad do you want to protect those cretins? Bad enough to let them get away with your mama’s death?”

“You’re making this up! Ralph and Gus told me you might be around to harass me. He told me what you might insinuate. You think you’re so smart, but he’s smarter than you.”

“Gus?” I started to ask, then realized she must mean August. “One thing’s for damn sure-he’s smarter than you! Don’t you realize that I didn’t know MacDonald was involved in Farmworks until you told me just now? It was a guess, but it sure was right on target. Shall I guess everything else that happened and you let me know if I’m right or wrong? Or do you want to tell me yourself?”

She pulled herself up in her swivel chair. “You’d better get out of here before I call the police. You’re harassing me in a private office and that’s against the law.”

“Let me make another guess.” I pulled her Rolodex toward me and started flipping through it. “You’ll call Roland Montgomery’s private number and he’ll send some uniforms hopping to drag me away. And Star! What a coincidence! Here it is.”

“I… uh…” She started a sentence several times but didn’t finish it. “You don’t have any proof.”

“No,” I had to admit. “It’s just another guess. But he- or at least Farmworks-is at the center of a whole lot of different action that he’d just as soon the FBI didn’t see. They’re going to, though, Star, because the Herald’s going to print the whole story. And then the feds will come subpoena your files and they’ll charge you with conspiring to commit fraud and arson and murder. And then you won’t just be a poor little orphan, you’ll be a poor little orphan in jail. Only if a jury hears how you let your own mother take the fall for you, they’re not going to treat you like a helpless waif.”

“Just because my employer tried to buy a building belonging to Mother’s employer does not mean he killed her.” Her voice was scornful.

“Ralph and Boots really wanted the Indiana Arms, didn’t they? Really badly. I know about their stadium bid-that’s not a secret. And it won’t take too much work to do a proper title search for the stuff back there, so you might as well tell me.”

She thought it over carefully, then finally conceded that Farmworks had been buying up property in the triangle behind McCormick Place and the Dan Ryan for several years now, positioning themselves for a bid on the stadium. The Indiana Arms was one of the few occupied buildings they hadn’t been able to acquire. Star had been keeping Seligman’s books for him at the time-she was a CPA. She thought he was foolish not to sell and tried to pressure him.

“He acted like that place meant more to him than his own children,” Star said resentfully. “You’d think he’d of been glad to get what they were offering-it would have been so much better for Barbara and Connie than inheriting that run-down junk heap. Even after-after things started going really wrong, like when the elevators broke down and no one would come fix them, he couldn’t see it was a losing proposition.”

“It had some sentimental meaning for him. So what happened next? You went to August Cray and Ralph and said if they’d hire you, you’d keep up the pressure on Seligman through your mom?”

She tossed her golden hair scornfully. “They made me an offer. They could see I was good, that I was wasted in that nickel-and-dime place.”

“What were you supposed to do? Forge a title transfer? Were you good enough to do that? Or just get your mother to keep the heat on the old man to sell?”

She smiled at me coldly. “You’ll never know, will you?”

“But then Rita learned that Mr. Seligman had given me a photo that had you and Shannon in it along with his own daughters. And she came to you, panicked. She was afraid if I started showing it to someone who had lived or worked at the Indiana Arms that they would recognize you. What had you been doing down there? Sabotaging the elevators yourself? Or just guaranteeing that no repair company would come fix them? So you told Ralph your mom was getting cold feet and he did the only decent thing-he got someone to kill her.”

She sucked on her lower lip, but she didn’t shake that easily. “You’re in here with guesses and stories. If that’s your idea of fun, I’m not going to stop you.”

“Yeah, they’re guesses and stories, but they’re pretty volatile. A more innocent woman might be hollering for cops or lawyers or witnesses or something. But you’re taking it all in to see how much I know, aren’t you? Well, Boots may have the local cops in his hip pocket, but I don’t think he owns the FBI yet.”

I got up to go. Star had a strange little smile on her face. “Of course you have to talk to them first, don’t you? And even if Boots doesn’t have much influence with the FBI, he can make sure they don’t listen to you.”

My stomach jolted a bit but I said calmly, “Oh, did Ralph and Boots tell you about their joke on my ignition? I found it and I’ll be extra careful looking for others. I remember LeAnn Wunsch telling me what a kidder Boots was. I’m only just beginning to really appreciate it.”

She barely waited for me to leave before she picked up her phone. I didn’t shut the door all the way and stood with my ear against it. She asked for Ralph and said it was urgent and that she’d wait at her desk until he called back. I guess her mother’s church friends weren’t that important.

The Eye of the Hurricane

I stood in the middle of LaSalle Street trying to quell a rising tide of panic. I needed some allies and I needed them fast. It was luck, pure and simple, that had kept me from disintegrating into my component parts today. If I had, Roland Montgomery would have closed the investigation for lack of leads-or painted me as a bizarre suicidal maniac. I’d miraculously side-stepped my fate, but it wouldn’t be Ralph MacDonald’s last effort to present me with his side of the story, as he’d put it on Monday.

Maybe I was jumping to conclusions in putting Ralph behind the dynamite in my car. Perhaps it was Roland Montgomery-he had ready access to all kinds of incendiary stuff. Or Michael, getting it from Wunsch or Grasso. Michael. My stomach twisted some more. He couldn’t have tried to blow me up. We’d never been in love, but we’d been lovers for a brief sweet time. Can you want to think of a body you’ve caressed torn into jagged chunks of bleeding bones? Or did my rebuff make him want to see me so?

I shook my head, impatient with myself. This was hardly the time or place to sink into a melancholy reverie, I needed to get myself organized. The Smith & Wesson was in my backpack, that was one good thing. Of course I couldn’t very well pull it out in the middle of LaSalle Street, but I didn’t think anyone was likely to try to shoot me during the evening rush hour. I was just lucky that Montgomery had been so hot to get me in the interrogation room and break my jaw that he hadn’t bothered with the usual formalities at the police station. No one had searched me; I hadn’t had to surrender the gun and go through the tedious process of producing my permit and getting permission to pick it up again.