Free Blacklist by Sara Paretsky Page B

Graham’s high flutey voice came on, I croaked out my name.
    “Are you ill, young woman? Is that your excuse for not returning my phone calls sooner?”
    “I return calls as I have time, Ms. Graham. I did speak to Darraugh this afternoon, since he’s my client. Did he tell you what happened at Larchmont last night?”
    “Young woman, I know what happened, since I had a visit from an extremely impertinent policeman this morning. He called himself Schorr; I should think it would be `Boor. I was seriously annoyed that you had not seen fit to advise me of what happened in my pool last evening.”
    “The Larchmont pool, ma’am. By the time I finished with the police myself and reached home, it was four in the morning. I doubt whether even someone of your restless sleep habits would have welcomed a call then-even if I’d had the stamina to make it. Which I didn’t.”
    When that answer seemed to stop her, I asked what Schorr had wanted. I kept my eyes shut, massaging my sinuses.
    “That a Negro man had drowned there. He wondered if it was someone who used to work on the estate, but we have had no Negro employees during the last twenty years. And I don’t believe I ever saw one working there after I sold Larchmont. Mexicans, yes, but no Negroes. This Boor, or Schorr, showed me a photograph, but the man’s own mother wouldn’t have known him from it. Who was he?”
    “A journalist named Marcus Whitby. I don’t suppose he wanted to interview you?”
    “About what, young woman? Journalists lost interest in me after my marriage. I haven’t talked to one since then, not even during a time when I might have had something newsworthy to tell them. Was this man using the Larchmont attics for some purpose?”
    “It’s possible.” I wondered what newsworthy events she’d concealed. “It’s hard to know how he would have bypassed the security system.” “What’s that? You have to speak up, young woman: you are not speaking clearly. My hearing is not sufficiently acute to understand mumbling.” I made a face at the phone. “This is as good as I can do tonight, Ms. Graham. We’ll talk later in the week when I feel better.”
    She tried to bully me into coming out to New Solway to see her in person, but I deflected that as well. And what should she do if she still saw the lights in the attic?
    “Call the cops, ma’am. Or that nice young lawyer who handles your affairs.” I squinted, conjuring up his face, his name. “Larry Yosano.” “What? Who? I know no such person. Julius Arnoff handles my affairs, as he has done for decades.”
    Lebold, Arnoff, that was the firm on Larry Yosano’s card. Naturally Geraldine Graham only dealt with principals. I said “Yes, ma’am” and took my aching head home. Mr. Contreras came out into the hall, scolding almost before he had his front door open: how come I went out in this weather as sick as I was, and without letting him know; he hoped I hadn’t turned my cold into pneumonia.
    Ordinarily his monitoring of my comings and goings sets up my hackles, but tonight I was weary down to my bones. His concern was a comfort, giving back an illusion of childhood with a mother whose scolding conceals affection and the promise of protection. I agreed to stay put for the rest of the night, agreed to wrap myself in a blanket-an afghan-on the couch while he brought supper up to my place.
    We ate spaghetti and meatballs with the dogs at our feet and watched the nine o’clock news on Channel 13 to see how the DuPage sheriff would spin the Whitby story. We had to sit through a report on terrorism first, this
    time on some Egyptian immigrant who’d disappeared before the FBI could question him about his links to AlQaeda.
    A reporter I didn’t recognize explained that the man was a seventeenyear-old dishwasher whose visa had expired.
    “Benjamin Sadawi came to Chicago from Cairo two years ago to learn English and to try to find a better job than he could at home. He lived with his