Free Windy City Blues by Sara Paretsky Page B

apartment, and another when some thugs broke into it one night. A third had been repaired and could still be used. How could I have been so careless with my little legacy.
    “But whose is it now?” Lotty asked, when we’d all drunk and exclaimed enough to calm down.
    “That’s a good question,” I said. “I’ve been makingsome inquiries through the Italian government. Francesca Salvini died in 1943 and she didn’t leave any heirs. She wanted Gabriella to dispose of it in the event of her death. In the absence of a formal will the Italian government might make a claim, but her intention as expressed in Gabriella’s letter might give me the right to it, as long as I didn’t keep it or sell it just for my own gain.”
    “We’d be glad to house it,” Ms. Thompson offered.
    “Seems to me your ma would have wanted someone in trouble to benefit.” Bobby was speaking gruffly to hide his embarrassment. “What’s something like this worth?”
    Ms. Thompson pursed her lips. “A private collector might pay a quarter of a million. We couldn’t match that, but we’d probably go to a hundred or hundred and fifty thousand.”
    “So what mattered most to your ma, Vicki, besides you? Music. Music and victims of injustice. You probably can’t do much about the second, but you ought to be able to help some kids learn some music.”
    Barbara Carmichael nodded in approval. “A scholarship fund to provide Chicago kids with music lessons. It’s a great idea, Vic.”
    We launched the Gabriella-Salvini program some months later with a concert at the Newberry. Mr. Fortieri attended, fully recovered from his wounds.He told me that Gabriella had come to consult him the summer before she died, but she hadn’t brought the score with her. Since she’d never mentioned it to him before he thought her illness and medications had made her delusional.
    “I’m sorry, Victoria: it was the last time she was well enough to travel to the northwest side, and I’m sorry that I disappointed her. It’s been troubling me ever since Barbara told me the news.”
    I longed to ask him whether he’d been my mother’s lover. But did I want to know? What if he, too, had moved the sun and all the other stars for her—I’d hate to know that. I sent him to a front-row chair and went to sit next to Lotty.
    In Gabriella’s honor the Cellini Wind Ensemble had come from London to play the benefit. They played the Martines score first as the composer had written it, and then as Mozart revised it. I have to confess I liked the original better, but as Gabriella often told me, I’m no musician.

T HE P IETRO A NDROMACHE

I
    “ YOU ONLY AGREED to hire him because of his art collection. Of that I’m sure.” Lotty Herschel bent down to adjust her stockings. “And don’t waggle your eyebrows like that—it makes you look like an adolescent Groucho Marx.”
    Max Loewenthal obediently smoothed his eyebrows, but said, “It’s your legs, Lotty; they remind me of my youth. You know, going into the Underground to wait out the air raids, looking at the ladies as they came down the escalators. The updraft always made their skirts billow.”
    “You’re making this up, Max. I was in those Underground stations, too, and as I remember the ladies were always bundled in coats and children.”
    Max moved from the doorway to put an arm around Lotty. “That’s what keeps us together,
Lottchen:
I am a romantic and you are severely logical. And you know we didn’t hire Caudwell because of his collection. Although I admit I am eager to see it. The board wants Beth Israel to develop a transplant program. It’s the only way we’re going to become competitive—”
    “Don’t deliver your publicity lecture to me,” Lotty snapped. Her thick brows contracted to a solid black line across her forehead. “As far as I am concerned he is a cretin with the hands of a Caliban and the personality of Attila.”
    Lotty’s intense commitment to medicine left no room for the