Killing Orders by Sara Paretsky Read Free Book Online

the background, then Albert said smugly, “Your contract doesn’t say that. It just says ‘Termination of the case may be requested by either party, whether the requested results are obtained or not., Regardless of the state of the investigation, and regardless of whether either party disagrees with the results, the fee and expenses incurred to the time of termination shall be paid.’ If you send me a bill, Victoria, I’ll pay promptly.”
    I could smell my brain burning. “Albert. When Rosa called me on Sunday she made it sound as though her suicide would be on my head if I didn’t come out and help her. What’s happened since then? She find a detective she likes better? Or did Carroll call and promise her her job back if she’d get me out of the investigation?”
    He said aloofly, “She told me last night she felt she was acting in a very unchristian way by getting so worried about this. She knows her name will be cleared; if it’s not, she’ll bear it like a Christian.”
    “How noble,” I said sarcastically. “Rosa as a bitter martyr is a pose I know well. But the woman of sorrows is a new departure.”
    “Really, Victoria. You’re acting like an ambulance chaser. Just send me a bill.”
    At least I had the dubious satisfaction of hanging up first. I sat fuming, cursing Rosa in Italian, then in English. Just like her to jack me around! Get me out to Melrose Park by screaming about Gabriella and my duty to my dead mother, if not to my live aunt, send me off on a wild-goose chase, then call the whole thing off. I was strongly tempted to phone her and tell her once and for all exactly what I thought of her, omitting no detail, however slight. I even looked her number up in my address book and started dialing before I realized the futility of such an act. Rosa was seventy-five. She was not going to change. If I couldn’t accept that, then I was doomed to be a victim of her manipulation forever.
    I sat for a while with Fortune open in my lap, staring across the room at the gray day outside. Last night’s strong wind had blown clouds in front of it across the lake. What was Rosa’s real reason for wanting the investigation to stop? She was cold, angry, vindictive—a dozen disagreeable adjectives. But not a schemer. She wouldn’t call a hated niece after a ten-year hiatus just to run me through hoops.
    I looked up St. Albert’s Priory in the phone book and called Carroll. The call went through a switchboard. I could see the ascetic young man at the reception desk reluctantly putting down his Charles Williams to answer the phone on the sixth ring, picking up the book again before switching the call through. I waited several minutes for the prior. At last Carroll’s educated, gentle voice came on the line.
    “This is V. I. Warshawski, Father Carroll.”
    He apologized for keeping me waiting; he’d been going over the household accounts with the head cook and the receptionist had paged the kitchen last.
    “No problem,” I said. “I wondered if you’d spoken with my aunt since I saw you yesterday.”
    “With Mrs. Vignelli? No. Why?”
    “She’s decided suddenly that she doesn’t want any investigation into the counterfeit securities, at least not on her behalf. She seems to think that worrying about them is very unchristian. I wondered if someone at the priory had been counseling her.”
    “Unchristian? What a curious idea. I don’t know; I suppose it would be if she got absorbed by this problem to the exclusion of other more fundamental matters. But it’s very human to worry about a fraud that might harm your reputation. And if you think of being Christian as a way to be more fully human, it would be a mistake to make someone feel guilty for having natural human feelings.”
    I blinked a few times. “So you didn’t tell my aunt to drop the investigation?”
    He gave a soft laugh. “You didn’t want me to build a watch; you just wanted the time. No, I haven’t talked to your aunt. But it