Hardball by Sara Paretsky Read Free Book Online

with total racist contempt. They figured there was nothing else they could do.”
    “They?” I said. “That was Miss Ella and her sister Claudia, right? I told Miss Ella I needed to see her sister and she refused. She grudged every sentence she spoke to me. What is she trying to hide?”
    “Oh, Vic, I don’t know why Miss Ella didn’t tell you, but Miss Claudia had a stroke right at Easter. It’s hard for her to talk, and, when she does get some words out, her speech is terribly slurry. Miss Ella’s the only person who can understand her completely, although I’m getting better at it. It’s been since her stroke that Miss Claudia’s become obsessed with this search. Miss Ella tried to talk her out of it because of how long it’s been and how little hope there is of learning anything, but Miss Claudia wouldn’t rest until her sister promised to find Lamont. Try to find him, anyway. Are you going to look for him?”
    I pursed my lips. “I’ll do what I can, but there aren’t many avenues to follow. And Miss Ella isn’t helping by refusing to give me any names of people who knew her son.”
    “I can help with that,” Lennon said eagerly. “She isn’t very trustful with strangers. But I’ve been here fourteen months now, and she’s come to realize she can rely on me.”
    “Then maybe you’re the one who should try to find Lamont,” I said nastily.
    Her rosebud mouth opened in dismay, but she said quietly, “I would, if I had your skills. I told you I Googled you after we met at the hospital. Your press makes you sound more progressive than maybe you really are. It’s why I went out of my way to help your friend Elton, without any expectation of getting paid. I was sure you’d be eager to reciprocate and help someone in Miss Ella’s situation.”
    “I don’t know what her situation is,” I said. “Maybe you think of her as an old woman worn out by a life of hard work and injustice, but to me she’s a woman so bitter and withholding I can’t trust anything she says. Even forty years after she last saw him, she is still so angry with her son that she practically chokes talking about him. What if she killed him all those years ago? Or what if he hasn’t been missing, and she’s ashamed of and angry at the life he’s been leading, so she’s told everyone he’s gone?”
    Karen’s jaw dropped with shock. “Vic! You can’t think . . . Not Miss Ella! Why, she’s a deaconess in her church.”
    “Oh, please,” I said. “The news is full of stories of pastors and priests who’ve stolen money or molested children. I’m not saying I think Miss Ella did any of those things, not even that I think she killed her son. But I am saying she’s hiding something, she’s angry, and that she doesn’t get a free ride.”
    “Are you going to help her at all?”
    “We agreed I’d do some preliminary work, and I’m cutting my fees for her, but I am not going to go on if she doesn’t keep up her payments.”
    Pastor Karen laughed, perhaps relieved that I was going to carry some of the load. “I think she’s scrupulous about money.”
    “And remember to ask her for names of Lamont’s friends. That’s going to be where I’ll have to start.”
    When Karen said she’d talk to Miss Ella in the morning, I added, “It would help if I could see Miss Claudia. Do you know where she’s living?”
    “She’s here, at Lionsgate Manor, in our rehabilitation wing, although it’s hard for me to be hopeful. She and Miss Ella shared a bed in that little apartment until Miss Claudia had her stroke.” Karen shook her head mournfully. “All those years of working their fingers to the bone, both of them, and they couldn’t afford two bedrooms, even at Lionsgate Manor. It doesn’t seem fair.”
    Maybe that was what lay behind Miss Ella’s hostility: the rank unfairness of life. Life is unfair. Of course it is. When it snows, the rich ski downhill and the poor shovel their sidewalks, my mother used to say. But