Deadlock by Sara Paretsky Read Free Book Online

from the forklift trucks and the ladder, let the white-haired man through without a question.
    “Who’s that?” I asked my informative acquaintance. “He looks like a Viking.”
    “He is a Viking. That’s Niels Grafalk. He owns this sorry hunk of steel … Poor devil!”
    Niels Grafalk. I didn’t think the timing was too hot to go swarming up the ladder after him in search of the
Bertha Krupnik
. Unless…
    “Is this the
Bertha Krupnik
?”
    “No,” my friend answered. “It’s the
Leif Ericsson
. You got some special interest in the
Bertha
?”
    “Yeah, I’m trying to find out where she is. I can’t get MacKelvy—d’you know him?—to let the information loose without Grafalk’s say-so. You wouldn’t know, would you?”
    When my acquaintance wanted to know the reason, I felt an impulse to shut up and go home. I couldn’t think of anything much stupider than my obsession about Boom Boom and his accident. Obviously, from the crowd converging here, disaster brought a lot of people to the scene. Margolis had been right: if the men at the elevator knew anything about Boom Boom’s death, they would have been talking about it. It was probably high time to return to Chicago and serve some processes to their reluctant recipients.
    My companion saw my hesitation. “Look—it’s time for lunch. Why don’t you let me take you over to the Sallede la Mer—it’s the private club for owners and officers here. I just need to shed this boiler suit and get a jacket.”
    I looked at my jeans and running shoes. “I’m hardly dressed for a private club.”
    He assured me they didn’t care about what women wore—only men have to observe clothing rules in the modern restaurant. He left me to watch the debacle at the pier for a few minutes while he went to change. I was wondering vaguely what had happened to Phillips when I saw him picking his way tentatively through the crowd to the
Leif Ericsson
. Something in his hesitant manner irritated me profoundly.

5

     

A Glass in the Hand
     
    “I’m Mike Sheridan, chief engineer on the
Lucella Wieser
.”
    “And I’m V. I. Warshawski, a private investigator.”
    The waiter brought our drinks, white wine for me and vodka and tonic for Sheridan.
    “You’re related to Boom Boom Warshawski, aren’t you?”
    “I’m his cousin … You connected with the
Lucella Weiser
that was across from the
Bertha Krupnik
when he fell under the propeller last week?”
    He agreed, and I commented enthusiastically on what a small world it was. “I’ve been trying to find someone who might have seen my cousin die. To tell you the truth, I think it’s pretty hopeless—judging by the crowd that wreck out there drew.” I explained my search and why the
Lucella
was included in it.
    Sheridan drank some vodka. “I have to admit I knew who you were when you were standing on the wharf. Someone pointed you out to me and I wanted to talk to you.” He smiled apologetically. “People gossip a lot in a place like this … Your cousin was coming over to talk to John Bemis, the
Lucella
’s captain, that afternoon. Heclaimed to know something about an act of vandalism that kept us from loading for a week. In fact that’s why we were tied up across the way: we were supposed to be taking on grain at that Eudora elevator, but we ended up with water in our holds. We had to dry them out and get Board of Health clearance again before we could load.”
    “You mean someone deliberately put water in your holds? That was the vandalism?”
    He nodded. “We assumed it was done by a disgruntled crewman. We asked him to leave the ship. He didn’t raise a fuss about it so I think we were right. But your cousin sounded serious, and of course Bemis wanted to talk to him. You wouldn’t know anything about what was on his mind, would you?”
    I shook my head. “That’s part of the problem. I hadn’t seen Boom Boom for two or three months before he died. To tell you the truth, I was mostly worried that