Fire Sale by Sara Paretsky Read Free Book Online Page A

getting ready to drive off with.
    I was growing bored and even a bit angry, but I’d be even more upset if I blew a chance to get out from under the girls’ basketball team. I sucked in a deep breath: keep it perky, Warshawski, and turned to ask the woman if she was part of the warehouse’s management team.
    She shook her head and smiled a little condescendingly. I would have to play twenty questions to get anything out of her. I didn’t care that much, but I needed to do something to pass the time. I remembered the trucker’s remark about the bedsheet queen. She either bought them or lay in them—maybe both.
    “You the linen expert?” I asked.
    She preened slightly: she had a reputation, people talked about her. She ordered all the towels and sheets for By-Smart nationwide, she said.
    Before I could continue the game, Billy came back into the room with a thick sheaf of papers. “Oh, Aunt Jacqui, there are faxes for you in this bunch. I don’t know why they’ve sent them here instead of up to Rolling Meadows.”
    Aunt Jacqui stood up, but dropped her binder in the process. Some of the papers fell out and fluttered to the floor, three landing under Grobian’s desk. Billy picked up the binder and put it on her chair.
    “Oh, dear,” she murmured, her voice languid, almost liquid. “I don’t think I can crawl under the desk in these clothes, Billy.”
    Billy set the faxes on top of her binder and got down on his hands and knees to fetch the scattered pages. Aunt Jacqui picked up the faxes, riffled through them, and extracted a dozen or so pages.
    Billy scrambled back to his feet and handed her the sheets from her binder. “Pat, you ought to make sure that floor gets washed more often. It’s filthy under there.”
    Grobian rolled his eyes. “Billy, this ain’t your mother’s kitchen, it’s a working warehouse. As long as the floor doesn’t catch on fire I can’t be bothered about how dirty it is or isn’t.”
    One of the truckers laughed and cuffed Billy on the shoulder on his way out the door. “Time you went on the road, son. Let you see real dirt and you’ll come back and eat off Grobian’s linoleum.”
    “Or let him wash it,” the remaining driver suggested. “That always makes dirt look good.”
    Billy blushed but laughed along with the men. Pat chatted briefly with the last driver about a load he was taking to the Ninety-fifth Street store. When the man left, Pat started to give Billy an order to go down to the loading bays, but Billy shook his head. “We need to talk to Ms. War-sha-sky, Pat.” He turned to me, apologizing for my long wait, adding that he’d tried to explain what I wanted, but didn’t think he’d done a good job of it.
    “Oh, yeah. Community service, we already do plenty of that.” Grobian’s frown returned. Busy man, no time for social workers, nuns, and other do-gooders.
    “Yes, I’ve studied your numbers, at least the ones you make public.” I pulled a sheaf of papers out of my briefcase, spilling the flip-flops in their plastic bag onto the floor.
    I handed business cards to Grobian, Billy, and Aunt Jacqui. “I grew up in South Chicago. I’m a lawyer now and an investigator, but I’ve come back as a volunteer to coach the basketball team at Bertha Palmer High.”
    Grobian looked ostentatiously at his watch, but young Billy said, “I know some of the girls there, Pat, through our church exchange. They sing in the choir at—”
    “I know you want money from us,” Jacqui interrupted in her languid voice. “How much and for what?”
    I flashed an upbeat, professional smile and handed her a copy of a report I’d created on By-Smart’s community actions. I gave another set to Grobian and a third to Billy. “I know that By-Smart encourages grassroots giving at its local stores, but only for small projects. The Exchange Avenue store gave out three one-thousand-dollar scholarships to college students whose parents work in the store, and the staff are encouraged