Critical Mass by Sara Paretsky Read Free Book Online

plaiting her fingers together again. “He doesn’t have a lot of friends. There were a bunch of rich kids his age who had summer jobs at the place Martin works; they got on his nerves, thinking because they went to Harvard or places like that, they could look down on him, and then he had to fix their mistakes. That made him plenty mad. But for some reason, they invited him to a barbecue the night their summer jobs were ending. Martin went, but he came home early. I thought it was because the kids were such snobs, but it was that weekend that he started brooding over, well, whatever he was brooding over.”
    “Do you know the names of the kids he went to the barbecue with?” I asked. “Maybe he talked to one of them.”
    Kitty didn’t know their names; Martin never talked about them, just told her there were seven college kids who’d all worked together. One of the girls lived in a place with a beach and her folks had agreed to let her have a party there, but Kitty didn’t know her name or where exactly the parents lived.
    “Did he ever have a girlfriend? Or boyfriend?”
    “Martin isn’t a homosexual,” she protested.
    Martin could be a Martian who slept with a space squid and his grandmother wouldn’t know, but I kept that remark between me and the model rockets. “Girlfriend, then.”
    “Martin didn’t have much luck with girls. I told him it was because he took himself too seriously; girls like a boy to loosen up, not always be talking about theories and whatnot. Believe you me, when you carry on like that, nobody can stand to be around you.”
    You hear a lot these days about helicopter parents who can’t stop hovering over their offspring’s every movement. Kitty was more like a mole, burrowed so deep underground she was almost unaware of her grandson.
    “There isn’t anyone you can think of who he talked to regularly? What about the boy Toby who passed out in the garage? Did you ask if he knew where Martin had gone?” I said patiently.
    “It wouldn’t have done any good.”
    Her voice was so low I barely made out the words.
    “Ms. Binder, do you know what happened to your grandson?”
    She shrugged. “He could be dead, or he just ran away.”
    “What aren’t you telling me?” I cried.
    She looked at me blankly. “People die or they run away. If you haven’t noticed that, it’s because you’re not paying attention.”
    I opened my mouth to protest, then shut it again. Her husband had died, her family was killed in the Second World War, her daughter had run away. Now Martin. From her perspective, she was right.
    I asked about her husband’s family, wondering if Martin might have gone to visit them.
    Kitty wasn’t in touch with Len’s sisters; they’d never gotten along, they all thought she was a gold digger who married Len to get an American passport. “They even blamed me for bringing Len to Chicago, instead of back to Cleveland where they all lived!”
    “Why did you come to Chicago?” Personal curiosity took me off track. “Was it because Lotty was here?”
    “Charlotte Herschel, one of the princesses of the Renngasse? Don’t make me laugh! No. After the war ended, I went back to Vienna with the British Army to see if anyone was still alive. I heard a rumor at a place my mother used to work that she and my father were in Chicago, so Len and I came here. That was a mistake, but Len got a good job at a big garage, so we stayed. Anyway, what business is it of yours?”
    “This is where we started, Ms. Binder. It’s because of your daughter and the ugly murder down at the house where she was living. She thought her life was in danger, and it turns out that ten days ago, her son disappeared. Do you think that’s a coincidence?”
    “Yes. Yes, I do,” she snapped. “Judy is a drug addict and a loser, she had two abortions and then when she had Martin, she couldn’t look after him. If it hadn’t been for Len and me, where would that boy be now? I think it’s a total