Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 08 (26 page)

Gantner
family money derived from agriculture, the kind Melanie
blasted—twenty-five-thousand-acre spreads kept going with tons of pesticides,
herbicides, and diesel fuel. The endless miles of corn that bore Easterners as
they zip through Illinois and Iowa on their way to California turn to gold in
the right hands. Corn oil and syrup can be found in everything from coffee
whiteners to plastic. And the Gantners had a kernel of every cob.

Young
Alec, trying to set himself up independently from his powerful papa—without
going to his sister’s extremes—had turned to gasohol. He led the Illinois lobby
for price supports for corn fuel production and distribution. He also dabbled
in real estate and banking.

Young
Alec’s desire to prove himself hadn’t led him to set up independent shop:
Gantohol, as he called his subsidiary, had offices in the Gant-Ag headquarters
near Morris. It was hard to picture the urban sophisticate in the middle of
Illinois’s corn fields.

By
three I was growing dizzy from the information scrolling across the screen. I
had to stop anyway to meet with Tish, but I couldn’t have gone on reading the
fuzzy type much longer. I asked Murray to queue the stories for overnight
printing—I’d pick them up in the morning.

“You
be sure to leave anything hot on my desk,” he warned me in parting. “Big Alec
always tiptoes on the edge of breaking scandals. He and the old gov did a lot
of interesting state contracts together. Your ass is grass if you sit on
something juicy about him, Warshawski. It’s not easy to bag a U.S. senator. I
could retire on that.”

“You’re
so damned greedy, Ryerson,” I grumped, packing up my bag. “One of these days
you’ll get indigestion.”

Before
going into Home Free I dashed into the Laundromat to check on my towels. The
place was noisier than it had been in the morning, as mothers brought along
children they’d picked up from school. Someone had put my wet laundry into a
wire cart. Dumping the towels into a dryer, I went across the street.

Tish
was still planted at her computer when I came in. She shot me a resentful
glance but closed her file and folded her hands with the exaggerated patience
of one who has little.

“It must
be hard to work in here with the blinds shut so tightly,” I commented.

“It
doesn’t bother me—I’m used to it.”

“And
worse for Jasper, in the back there without any windows at all. You at least
could pull open a slat to look out. Of course, he can watch the street on his
TV monitor, so no one could sneak up on him unawares.”

She
scowled. “This isn’t a very safe neighborhood. We can’t afford to have our
computers ripped off. Do you want to talk about Deirdre or can I get back to
work?”

Before
we talked about Deirdre I prodded Tish to give me her own background.

She
disgorged information in small, hostile pellets, but I finally learned she had
been at Home Free for five years, first as a summer intern while she completed
a masters in urban planning at IIT, and then full-time as the office manager.
Deirdre had started doing volunteer work for them a few months after Tish began
her internship. In those days they still did direct placement of homeless
people and they needed help in interviewing them.

“When
did you stop that?”

“When
Jasper came,” she said shortly. “He took over as executive director three years
ago. He saw at once we were duplicating services the city and other charities
provided. He decided we’d be more effective building housing.”

“Your
board had no problem with that?”

She
stared at her computer. “It took a while—almost a year. We had to wait for some
of the old people to leave.”

“And
for Alec Gantner and Donald Blakely to join?” I suggested.

She
shot me an angry glance. “Does this have anything to do with Deirdre?”

“How
did she feel about the change? Did it affect her as a volunteer?” Was that what
had lain behind her comments to Gantner at her dinner party? Had she fought for
Home Free to remain a direct provider and resented the change?

“For
a year or so she only was here for board meetings, because our work load
changed so much. But six months ago we had to lay off our secretary, so Deirdre
filled in when she could get up here.”

Pressed
for specifics, Tish would only say Deirdre helped keep their computer files
up-to-date. Work logs from construction projects had to be entered, bills
generated, key money people kept happy.

“Didn’t
you think it was strange for a woman in her position to do clerical work for
you?”

“Not
really. Jasper said she was at loose ends, to humor her because her husband’s
friends could bring us a lot of money. We’d lost some of our donors.

People
who couldn’t keep up with the times left over the placement issue. Jasper
thought Deirdre could help bring them back.”

“Was
she hard to get along with?” I pictured Deirdre and Tish in a scowling contest.

“She
came to work, same as me.”

“She
have a crush on Jasper?”

Tish
flushed. “She was married. I suppose she liked him to tease her.

Sometimes
she could be pretty childish ... ” Her voice trailed off.

“I
had lunch today with a reporter who said there are rumors she and Jasper were
having an affair.”

Tish’s
flush turned to crimson. She picked at her sweater, shaking her head, but
unable to speak. I let it drop and asked her to step me through some of
Deirdre’s work. “Just show me the stuff she did the last day she was here.”

“Absolutely
not. Our files are confidential. Jasper said to talk to you about Deirdre. He
didn’t say anything about showing you our books.”

I raised
my brows. “Won’t they stand the scrutiny?”

She
turned a darker red but was spared answering me by the phone. “Home Free, Tish
speaking ... Oh, hi, Gary ... No, he’s not in. ... He told you not to worry
about it, that he’d take care of it. ... ”

Gary,
the beefy man in the sheepskin jacket who’d been here when I came last week. He
apparently was still unhappy—I could hear him barking at Tish, but I couldn’t
make out the words.

“I
can’t tell you anything else, I’ve got someone in the office with me.” She
laughed suddenly, lightening her face and revealing its underlying beauty. “No,
definitely not a friend ... I’ll let him know you called.”

“But
why am I not a friend?” I asked when she hung up. “Why are you so set against
me?”

“Because
you come snooping around into things that aren’t any of your business. Like
just now: that was a private phone call. Now I’ve got to get back to work.”

“So
you can be ready for dinner with Jasper when he comes back. I’m not competing
with you for his attention, you know. Perhaps Deirdre did, but I’m not
interested in spending the night with him.”

“That’s
good, because he wouldn’t touch you with a ten-foot pole.” Anger and jealousy
made her voice quaver as she tossed off the childish insult.

I
found myself patting the top of my head where my white hairs had appeared, but
I only said, “Mutual, Tish, mutual. He’s too smooth for my taste. Now let’s
line up some construction sites for me to visit.”

“Constructionsites
? No way. You can see some of our finished projects, but we don’t let anyone go
on site unless they have official business there.”

“So
you do have projects under construction? Jasper told me last week you didn’t
have much going on.”

Her
jaw dropped, and she looked sickly, but she made a quick enough recovery,
saying Jasper knew more about construction than she—that she was just speaking
generally.

We
argued it back and forth, but she was enjoying the chance to put me in my
place. After that I couldn’t get any information from her. Finally, not
intending to, I brought up Lamia.

“How
did they get the rehab project? Did you put it out to bid?”

“How
do you know about them?” she demanded.

“I’m
connected to them professionally. Is there a problem with their bid?”

She
looked impulsively at the phone, as if hoping Jasper might call to advise her.
After a long pause she muttered that she didn’t know anything about their bids,
that Jasper did all that work.

“So
if I told you they’d never submitted a bid, but that they got work on a publicly
funded project, and that that’s against the law, you wouldn’t know anything
about it.”

“I’ve
told you,” she shouted. “I don’t know anything about it. Are you happy now? Go
away and let me get to work.”

As I
slowly shut the door she was already punching a number into the phone. I longed
to be able to eavesdrop, but couldn’t think of any discreet way to do so.

Across
the street I collected my dry laundry. My towels were in another wire basket,
and some kind woman had folded them. The day hadn’t been a total loss: I had
clean towels now.

Gentleman
Caller

Mr.
Contreras bounded from his apartment as soon as I had my key in the front door.
“Hi, doll. You’ve got a visitor. I let him in after he’d been waiting an hour.
I didn’t think he was someone who’d hurt you.”

The
dogs joined him, greeting me as though we’d been separated for months instead
of the ten hours since our run. Over their delighted yips and squeaks it was
difficult to convey my annoyance with my neighbor for involving himself in my
business.

Catching
my mood if not my words, Mr. Contreras’s brown eyes clouded reproachfully. “I’m
just trying to help out, doll, not to interfere. There’s no place for people to
wait for you now that you’re having to work in your home.

What
do you want me to do—leave potential customers wandering around in the rain,
where they’ll go off to one of those big suburban outfits you’re always
worrying about, just because I didn’t think to offer them a cup of coffee and a
place to sit? Now, that really would be cause for you to get upset.”

I
threw up my hands in resignation. “All right, all right. You did the best you
could under the circumstances. Who is it and where is he?”

As if
on rehearsed cue Ken Graham came to Mr. Contreras’s doorway. I’d noticed an
Alfa Spider, a car I love, when I came up the walk. It must belong to the
hacker, who was still in jeans and a mangy sport coat. Still, he’d trimmed his
hair and shaved.

“Great
dogs,” he greeted me.

“Thank
you for coming by to inspect them.” I hustled them inside before Mitch could
make good on an escape attempt.

Ken
grinned involuntarily, stripping some of the loutish cynicism from his face. “I
went to your office and saw it was all boarded over. Your answering service
didn’t have a new office address for you, so I came here.”

“Very
enterprising. Was there some special reason?”

“Don’t
get so huffy. Dad is riding my butt pretty hard and I wanted to see if you’d
turned up any leads for me. For community service, you know.”

“I
haven’t forgotten. And your dad has been in touch as well. Riding my own butt
pretty hard, you could say. As soon as I have anything I’ll call you.”

Mr.
Contreras was listening with lively attention, but not asking questions: he
didn’t want a young sprout to think he wasn’t fully in my confidence. He tried
now to get Ken and me to join him back in his apartment, but I wanted to be
alone. Or at least not with those two.

Young
Ken already owned some of the confidence his father wore—that people would do
what he wanted because he was a Graham and owned a large chunk of stock in a
very big company. Now he tried to persuade me that he could do some work for
me.

“Yes,
I’m sure you could. But I’m not a charity. In any sense of the word.”

“Who’s
to know? Dad says you do a lot ofpro bono work. You could set me on some of
those projects. I’m sure we could persuade my probation officer—”

“Maybe
you could, but you can’t persuade me. Thanks for going to all the trouble of
stopping by. Give my regards to your father.”

I
started up the stairs. Ken followed in my wake. The dogs, thinking any group of
people offered more chance for fun than an evening in front of Mr.

Contreras’s
TV, ran up ahead of us. Mr. Contreras brought up the rear. I couldn’t imagine
any other detective in the metropolitan area with such an entourage. Any other
detective in the world.

“If I
could tell Dad I was working with you, he would get off both our asses for a
while. And it would help me get better acquainted with you. So far all I know
is you don’t like sugar in your cappuccino.”

I
started to undo the dead bolts in my steel-plated door. “Good night, MacKenzie.
Good night, Mr. Contreras. If anyone else comes to visit, give them two
aspirins and ask them to call in the morning.”

I
shut the door firmly on their protests. The dogs took it hardest. Even through
the thick door I could hear sharply expressed barks. I opened the door again as
the four were just beginning their downward trek.