Sara Paretsky - Killing Orders

When he spoke, it wasn’t about my aunt. “Do you want to tell me why you’re asking about Corpus Christi and Agnes Paciorek?”

I chose my words carefully. “The Ajax Insurance Company is one of the country’s largest property-casualty insurers. One of their officers came to me a couple of weeks ago concerned that a covert takeover bid might be in the offing. I talked to Agnes about it-as a broker she had ready access to trading news.

“The night she died, she called the man from Ajax to tell him she was meeting with someone who might have information about the stock. At the least, that person was the last who saw her alive. Since he-or she-hasn’t come forward, it might even be the person who killed her.”

Now came the tricky part. “The only clue I have is some notes she scribbled. Some of the words made it clear she was thinking about Ajax when she wrote them. Corpus Christi appeared on that list. It wasn’t a memo or anything like that- just the cryptic comments you make when you’re writing while you think. I have to start someplace, so I’m starting with these notes.”

Carroll said, “I really can’t tell you much about the organization. Its members guard their privacy zealously. They take literally the injunction about doing your good works in secret. They also take quasi-monastic vows, those of poverty and obedience. They have some kind of structure with the equivalent of an abbot in all the locations where they have members, and their obedience is to the abbot, who may or may not be a priest. He usually is. Even so, he’d be a secret member, carrying out his parish duties as his regular work.”

“How can they take vows of poverty? Do they live in communes, or monasteries?”

He shook his head. “But they give all their money to Corpus Christi, whether it’s their salary or inheritance or stock-market earnings or whatever. Then the order gives it back to them according to their level of need, and also the kind of life-style they need to maintain. Say you were a corporate lawyer. They’d probably let you have a hundred thousand dollars a year. You see, they don’t want any questions about why your living standard is so much lower than that of your fellow lawyers.”

Pelly came back into the room at that point. “Lawyers, Prior?”

“I was trying to explain to Miss Warshawski how Corpus Christi works. I don’t really know too much about it. Do you, Gus?”

“Just what you hear around. Why do you want to know?”

I told him what I’d told Carroll.

“I’d like to see those notes,” Pelly said. “Maybe they’d give me some idea what the connection was in her mind.”

“I don’t have them with me. But the next time I come out I’ll bring them.” If I remembered to put something down on paper.

It was nearly four-thirty when I got back to the Eisenhower and the snow was coming down as furiously as ever. It was dark now, too, and nearly impossible to see the road. Traffic moved at about five miles an hour. Every now and then, I’d pass some poor soul who’d slid off the side completely.

As I neared the Belmont exit, I debated whether to go home and leave my next errand for an easier day. Two angry ladies in one afternoon was a little hard on the system. But the sooner I talked to Catherine Paciorek the sooner I’d get her out of my life.

I continued north. It was seven by the time I reached the Half Day Road exit.

Away from the expressway arteries the roads were unplowed. I almost got stuck a few times on Sheridan Road, and came to a complete halt just after turning onto Arbor. I got out and looked thoughtfully at the car. No one in the Paciorek house was likely to give me a push. “You’d better be moving by the time I come back,” I warned the Omega, and set off to do the last half mile on foot.

I moved as quickly as possible through the deep snow, glad of earmuffs and gloves, but wishing desperately for a coat. I let myself into the garage and rang the bell at the side entrance. The garage was heated and I rubbed my hands and feet in the warmth while I waited.

Barbara Paciorek, Agnes’s youngest sister, answered the door. She had been about six when I last saw her. A teenager now, she looked so much like Agnes had when I first met her that a small shock of nostalgia ran through me.

“Vic!” she exclaimed. “Did you drive all the way up from Chicago in this terrible weather? Is Mother expecting you? Come on in and get warm.” She led me in through the back hallway, past the enormous kitchen where the cook was hard at work on dinner. “Daddy’s stuck at the hospital-can’t get home until they plow the side roads, so we’re going to eat in about half an hour. Can you stay?”

“Sure, if your mother wants me.”

I followed her across vaguely remembered hallways until we reached the front part of the house. Barbara led me into what the Pacioreks called the family room. Much smaller than the conservatory, perhaps only twenty or thirty feet across, the room held a piano and an enormous fireplace. Mrs. Paciorek was doing needlepoint in front of the fire.

“Look who’s dropped in, Mother,” Barbara announced as though she was bringing a pleasant surprise.

Mrs. Paciorek looked up. A frown creased her handsome forehead. “Victoria. I won’t pretend I’m happy to see you; I’m not. But there is something I wanted to discuss with you and this saves me the trouble of phoning. Barbara! Leave, please.”

The girl looked surprised and hurt at her mother’s hospitality. I said, “Barbara, there’s something you could do for me if you’d be good enough. While your mother and I are talking, could you find a filling station with a tow truck? My Omega is stuck about a half mile down the road. If you call now, they should have a truck free by the time I leave.”

I sat in a chair near the fire across from Mrs. Paciorek. She put her needlepoint aside with a tidy anger reminiscent of Rosa. “Victoria, you corrupted and destroyed the life of my oldest child. Is it any wonder that you are not welcome in this house?”

“Catherine, that is pig swill, and you know it.”

Her face turned red. Before she could speak, I regretted my rudeness-today was my day for tangling with angry women.

“Agnes was a fine person,” I said gently. “You should be proud of her. And proud of her success. Very few people achieve what she did, and almost no women. She was smart and she had guts. She got a lot of that from you. Be proud- feel pleased. Grieve for her.”

Like Rosa, she had lived with her anger too long to want to give it up. “I won’t flatter you by arguing with you, Victoria. It was enough for Agnes to know I believed in something for her to believe the opposite. Abortion. The war in Vietnam. Worst of all, the Church. I thought I had seen my family name degraded in every possible way. I didn’t realize how much I could have forgiven until she announced in public that she was a homosexual.”

I opened my eyes very wide. “In public! She actually announced it right in the middle of LaSalle Street? Out where every taxi driver in Chicago could hear her?”

“I know you think you’re being very funny. But she might as well have screamed it in the middle of LaSalle Street. Everyone knew about it. And she was proud of it. Proud of it! Archbishop Farber even agreed to talk to her, to make her understand the degradation she was subjecting her body to. Her own family as well. And she laughed at him. Called him names. The kinds of things you would think of. I could tell you had led her into that, just as you led her into all her other horrible activities. And then-to bring that-that creature, that vile thing to my daughter’s funeral.”

“Just out of curiosity, Catherine, what did Agnes call Archbishop Farber?”

Her face turned alarmingly red again. “It’s that kind of thing. That kind of attitude. You have no respect for people.”