Free Bleeding Kansas by Sara Paretsky

the house that Horace Fremantle grew up in. This room here is an almost exact replica of his father’s office. I fixed it up so you can work in here, if you want.”
    Susan ushered a dazed Gina across the small foyer at the bottom of the back stairs, through a bathroom next to it, and into Horace Fremantle’s study beyond. Lara knew all about Horace and his effort to look important in his father’s eyes. She knew how much the marble in the fireplaces cost and where it came from, and how when the wagon hauling it from Kansas City sank in the Wakarusa River the first Mr. Fremantle and the first Mr. Schapen rescued the marble and the oxen. She waited until her mother was in full flight in the study, then ran up the back stairs. The boards didn’t creak if you moved fast and light.
    The stairs ended next to Lara’s second-favorite thing in the house, a drinking fountain built into the hall wall. It hadn’t worked for years, but it was beautiful. The back was a silver shell, and the fountain part was more of the same marble as the fireplace. Lara could hear her mother at the bottom of the main staircase, her voice high and squeaky, as it always was when she was excited.
    Lara tiptoed to the south end of the hall. The bedroom in the southeast corner had a closet that connected with the main bedroom. It had been cold in the kitchen, but it was freezing up here. Lara felt a sneeze coming on, tried to hold it in, succeeded only in exploding in the middle of the connecting closet.
    “Gina? Is that you? I thought I heard more voices downstairs.”
    Lara froze at the entrance to the main bedroom. A woman wrapped in a heavy dressing gown was sitting up in bed, drinking coffee and reading a newspaper.
    She dropped the paper and flung aside her reading glasses when she saw Lara. “Did they send you on a reconnaissance mission? Do you want a full report on my name and who I am?”
    Lara flushed. “I’m sorry: I didn’t know anyone was up here.”
    “Then why did you come up? Didn’t you know Gina was living here? In town, we don’t wander uninvited through people’s houses.”
    “I’m sorry,” Lara repeated helplessly. “Honest, if I’d known you were here I would have stayed downstairs.”
    “You didn’t see my car standing out in the yard all night and wonder if someone had a breakdown and needed a jump? That was the previous visitor’s excuse.”
    She gave “visitor” a sarcastic emphasis, meaning Lara was just one more nosy intruder. “Gina!” she added, leaning forward in the bed to shout. “I’ve caught a live one. Do you want to come get her?”
    Lara turned a deeper red. Already embarrassed, she found she couldn’t move her legs, much as she wanted to back up and disappear. She heard her mother and Gina’s steps on the hall stairs; an instant later, they were in the bedroom.
    “Lara!” Susan cried. “What are you doing up here?”
    Lara looked around wildly and saw the blue-black patch of mold around the fireplace. “I came up to see about the mold. It’s gotten worse, you know, and they could get a bad lung infection from breathing that stuff.”
    “She’s right,” Susan said to Gina, “it isn’t healthy to breathe in those funguses. But, Lara, you’re almost fifteen, you know better than to think you can still parade through here without permission. I’m sure if you’d told Gina—”
    “Doesn’t anyone out here mind their own business?” the woman in the bed demanded.
    “Of course,” Susan said stiffly. “I’m sorry my daughter broke in on you, but it was with the best intentions. I’m Susan Grellier. My husband and I were the caretakers until Gina moved in. I didn’t realize it would take Lara so long to adjust to being a visitor instead of someone with the right to be in the house. We’ll leave now. But you have our phone number, or Gina has it, if something goes wrong, or you’re lonely—”
    “How can we be lonely when everyone in the county waltzes in before noon?” the