Deadlock by Sara Paretsky Read Free Book Online Page B

court.”
    Grafalk was watching me with the same amused smile—wealthy man enjoying the foibles of the middle class: what do the simple folk do if they don’t own a steamship company? The smile grew rigid. He was looking at someone behind me whom he apparently didn’t want to see. I turned as a stocky man in a gray business suit walked up to the table.
    “Hello, Martin.”
    “Hello, Niels.… Hi, Sheridan. Niels trying to enlist your help with the
Ericsson
?”
    “Hi, Martin. This is V. I. Warshawski. She’s BoomBoom Warshawski’s cousin—down here asking us all a few questions about his death,” Sheridan said.
    “How do you do, Miss Warshawski. I was very sorry about the accident to your cousin. None of us knew him well, but we all admired him as a hockey player.”
    “Thanks,” I said.
    He was introduced as Martin Bledsoe, owner of the Pole Star Line, which included the
Lucella Wieser
. He took a vacant chair between Sheidan and Phillips, asking Grafalk after he sat down if it was okay to join us.
    “Glad to have you, Martin,” the Viking said warmly. I must have imagined the strain in his smile a few minutes before.
    “Sorry about the
Ericsson
, Niels. Hell of a mess out there. You figure out what happened?”
    “Looked to me like she ran into the dock, Martin. But we’ll know for sure after we’ve made a complete investigation.”
    I suddenly wondered what Grafalk was doing eating a leisurely lunch when he had several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of damage sitting outside.
    “What happens in a case like this?” I asked. “Do you have insurance to cover your hull damage?”
    “Yes.” Grafalk grimaced. “We have coverage for everything. But it’ll boost my premium by a good deal.… I’d rather not think about it right now, if you don’t mind.”
    I changed the subject by asking him some general questions about shipping. His family owned the oldest company still operating on the Great Lakes. It was also the biggest. An early ancestor from Norway had started it in 1838 with a clipper that carried fur and ore from Chicago to Buffalo. Grafalk became quite enthusiastic, recounting some of the great ships and shipwrecks of the family fleet, then caught himself up apologetically. “Sorry—I’m a fanatic on shipping history … My family’s been involved in it for so long … Anyway, my private yacht is called the
Brynulf Nordemark
in memory of the captain who went down so gallantly in the disaster of 1857.”
    “Grafalk’s a fantastic sailor in his own right,” Phillips put in. “He keeps two sailboats—his grandfather’s old yacht and a racing boat. You sail in the Mackinac race every year, don’t you, Niels?”
    “I’ve only missed two since graduating from college—that probably happened before you were born, Miss Warshawski.”
    He’d been to Northwestern, another family tradition. I vaguely remembered a Grafalk Hall on the Northwestern campus and the Grafalk Maritime Museum next to Shedd Aquarium.
    “What about the Pole Star Line?” I asked Bledsoe. “That an old family company?”
    “Martin’s a Johnny-come-lately,” Grafalk said lightly. “How old’s PSL now? Eight years?”
    “I used to have Percy MacKelvy’s job,” Bledsoe said. “So Niels remembers every day since my desertion.”
    “Well, Martin, you were the best dispatcher in the industry. Of course I felt deserted when you wanted to go into competition against me … By the way, I heard about the sabotage on the
Lucella
. That sounded like an ugly incident. It was one of your crewmembers?”
    Waiters were bringing our entrees. Even though they slid the plates in front of us, barely moving the airwaves, it was enough of a distraction that I missed Bledsoe’s facial reaction.
    “Well, the damage was minor, after all,” he said. “I was furious at the time, but at least the ship is intact: it’d be a pain in the ass to have to spend the main part of the season patching the
Lucella
’s