Blacklist by Sara Paretsky Read Free Book Online

tell me your name and what you were really doing out here?”
    I pulled on clean socks and looked with disgust at my shoes. The tiled floor was cold, but my shoes would have been worse. I sat on the locker room bench and told her my name, my relationship to Darraugh, his mother’s belief that there were intruders in her old home, my fruitless surveillance-and the body I’d stumbled on. I don’t know why I didn’t feed her my young Juliet. Native caution, maybe, or maybe because I like ardent young women. I dug my wallet out of my windbreaker and showed her my PI license, fortunately walled in laminate.
    Protheroe handed it back to me without comment, except to say the state’s attorney would want some formal statement about finding the dead man. When she saw me rolling my foul clothes into a bundle, she even found a plastic bag in a supply cupboard.
    Protheroe took me to a room on the second floor and called someone on her cell phone. “Lieutenant Schorr will be along in a minute. You do
    much work out here? No? Well, I know the Cook County sheriff’s office is a cesspool of Democratic patronage and favors. Out here it’s different. Out here it’s a cesspool of Republican patronage. So don’t mind the boys, they’re not all real well trained.”
    Lieutenant Schorr arrived with a couple of male sidekicks and a woman who announced she was Vanna Landau, the assistant state’s attorney. One of the New Solway police officers had stayed for the meeting, as well. A fifth man came hurrying in a minute later, straightening the knot in his tie. He was introduced as Larry Yosano, a member of the law firm that had handled Larchmont’s sale-apparently a very junior member.
    “Thanks, Stephanie,” Schorr dismissed my guide. She gave me a discreet thumbs-up and left.
    I was used to Chicago police interrogation rooms, with their scarred tables and peeling paint, and where strong disinfectants don’t quite cover the traces of vomit. Stephanie Protheroe had brought me to something like a modern boardroom, with a television and camcorder ruling over blond furniture. Behind the modern facade, though, the smell of disinfectant and stale fear rose to greet me like an unwelcome neighbor.
    Vanna Landau, the ASA, was a small woman who leaned across the table as if trying to make herself bigger by taking up as much room as possible. “Now just what were you doing on the land?”
    In between coughs and sneezes, I explained in as mild a voice as I could summon.
    “Spying on Larchmont Hall in the middle of the night?” Landau said. “That is trespassing, at a minimum.,,
    I pinched the skin between my eyebrows in an effort to stay awake. “Would it have been better if I’d done it in daylight? Geraldine Graham was worried when she saw intruders around the house late at night. At her son’s request, I went over to take a look.”
    Larry Yosano, the young lawyer, was trying to rub sleep out of his own eyes. “Technically, of course, it’s trespass, but if you’ve ever dealt with Mrs. Graham, you’d know that she’s never really acknowledged that she no longer owns Larchmont. She’s a strong personality, difficult to say no to.”
    He turned to me. “Lyons Trust is the titleholder. They’re ‘he ones you should call if Mrs. Graham sees a problem with the property.”
    I didn’t say anything except to ask for a Kleenex. One of the deputies found some paper napkins in a drawer and tossed them across the table at me. “Or the police,” Lieutenant Schorr said. “Did that ever occur to you, Ms. Private Eye?”
    “Ms. Graham called the New Solway police several times. They thought she was a crazy old woman making stuff up.”
    The New Solway cop, whose name I hadn’t heard, bristled. “We went out there three times and saw nothing. Yesterday, when someone really was on the property, we responded to the alarm within fifteen minutes. Her own son even says she could be making stuff up because she wants attention.”
    I sat up at