Fire Sale

by Sara Paretsky

“I cannot tell a lie. And I didn’t. You did hire me two weeks ago.”

  “And fired you!”

  “Please, Mr. Bysen: I resigned. I sent you a certified letter, and you begged and pleaded with me to keep hunting Billy. When I said no, you hired my pals at Carnifice.”

  “Be that as it may-”

  “Be that as it is!” I snapped, affability forgotten.

  “Be that as it may,” he repeated as if I hadn’t spoken, “we need to talk to you. My wife and mother insist on being part of any conversation about Billy, so you need to come out to Barrington Hills at once.”

  “You guys are truly amazing,” I said. “If you need to see me that badly, you can come down to my office in the morning. All ten of you. Bring your butler, too-I don’t care.”

  “That’s a stupid suggestion,” he said coldly. “We have a company to run. Tonight is the one time-”

  “You’ve been living with underemployed women too long, Bysen: I, too, have a company to run. And a life to live. I don’t need to placate you to keep on going, so I don’t need to jump every time you have a whim at a weird time of day or night.”

  I heard some kind of agitated consultation in the background and then a woman came on the line. “Ms. Warashki? This is Mrs. Bysen. We’re all so worried about young Billy that we don’t always remember to say things the right way, but I hope you’ll disregard that and come out to talk to us. I would really, really appreciate it.”

  Seeing all the Bysens together versus pacing restlessly around Morrell’s condo? At least in Barrington Hills, I’d get to see the floor show.

  It was a long thirty miles from Morrell’s place to the Bysen compound. No expressway cleaves through the North Shore and I had to make my way on side roads. The one good thing about routes like this is that it’s easier to check for tails. At first, I thought I was clean, but when I’d gone about four miles I realized they were using a couple of different cars, changing places every few blocks. Unless they wanted to kill me, they were more an irritant than anything else, but I still tried to shake them, cutting off the main roads a couple of times into suburban cul-de-sacs. Each time, I’d be on my own for a half mile or so and then they’d be back. By the time I pulled off Dundee Road in Barrington Hills, I realized it didn’t matter-if these were Carnifice people working for the Bysens, they’d just spent a lot of energy tailing me to home base.

  Barrington Hills didn’t run to streetlights-it was kind of like a large private nature preserve, with lakes and winding lanes. On a moonless night, it was especially hard to find my way since my trackers meant I couldn’t get out of my car to check for street names. I pulled up to the gate of the compound in an edgy mood. The car that had been ahead of me drove on down the road, but the one behind me stayed on the verge, just out of sight of the guard station.

  The estate had a high iron fence around it, sealed in the front with rolling gates. I went directly to the guard station, told the man I was a detective, and said old Mr. Bysen had talked to me about his missing grandson and wanted me to report to him in person. The man phoned into the compound, spoke to several different people, and finally said in amazement that Mr. Bysen actually wanted to see me. He explained how to find Buffalo Bill’s house-not that he called the old man that-and slid the iron gates open for me.

  Barrington Hills is dotted with lakes, real ones, not human creations, and the Bysen houses were spread around one big enough to boast a marina and several sailboats. Besides three of the four sons, one of the daughters, their families, and Buffalo Bill, my research had shown that Linus Rankin, the corporate counsel, and two other senior corporate officers also had houses on the estate.

  The road had a few discreet lamps so that the families could find their way in the dark; even with such dim light, I could tell that the houses were monstrous, as if everyone needed enough space to house a cruise ship-should one crash on the lake.

  Midway around the lake, more or less directly across from the guard station, stood Buffalo Bill’s mansion. I pulled up a circular drive, lit by a row of carriage lamps. A Hummer and two sports cars were parked on the verge; I pulled in behind them, and walked up a shallow step to ring the front doorbell.

  A butler in a tailcoat answered the door. “The family are drinking coffee in the lounge. I will announce you.”

  He led me down a long hall at a pace decorous enough for me to stare at the surroundings. The hall seemed to bisect the house, with salons, a conservatory, a music room, and who knows what all lying on either side. The same soft golds that I’d seen at the headquarters building dominated the decorating scheme here. We’re rich, the embroidered silk wall coverings proclaimed, everything we touch turns to gold.

  Mr. William strode up the hall to meet me. My efforts at small talk, admiring the music room, the Dutch masters on one wall, the time it must take him to commute from here to South Chicago, only made him tighten his lips so much they looked like little circular pickles.

  “You should take up the trumpet,” I said. “The way you purse up your lips all the time, those muscles will give you a really strong embouchure. Or maybe you already play, one of those nice twenty-dollar By-Smart trumpets, with lessons available on CD.”

  “Yes, all the reports we’ve had done on you say you think you’re funny, and that it’s a handicap in your business,” Mr. William said coldly.

  “Gosh, you’ve spent good By-Smart money having reports done on me? That makes me feel superimportant.” I could hear my voice going up half a register, my cheerleader chirp.

  Before our witty exchange could escalate, the Buffalo ’s personal assistant, Mildred, came clicking down the hall toward us on high alligator heels. So she really never left Buffalo Bill’s side. What did Mrs. Bysen think about her husband’s personal assistant living with him at home as well as at work?

  “Mr. Bysen and Mr. William will talk to this person in Mr. Bysen’s study, Sneedham,” she said to the butler, avoiding my face.

  Mrs. Bysen popped out of a side room to appear next to Mildred. Her gray curls were as tightly combed and groomed as they had been in church on Sunday, her green shantung dress as smooth as if invisible hands ironed it every time she sat down. But inside this formal attire, her face showed the benignity I’d observed on Sunday-except that in her home she had an assurance she’d lacked at the Mt. Ararat service.

  “Thank you, Mildred, but if Bill is going to talk to a detective about my grandson I want to be there. Annie Lisa might like to hear her report, too.” She sounded a little uncertain, as if Annie Lisa was either not sober enough, or perhaps not interested enough, to sit in on our meeting.

  “Bill didn’t tell me he was working with any lady detectives, but maybe a woman will have more understanding of my grandson than those corporate people who came through here yesterday. Do you have news of Billy?” She looked at me firmly-she might be benign, but she knew her own mind and how to express it.

  “I’m afraid I don’t have news, ma’am, or only of a negative kind: I know he’s not with Pastor Andrés, or with Josie Dorrado’s best friend, and I know Josie’s family is racked with anguish-they have no idea where the two may be. Maybe you could help me understand why Billy ran away in the first place. If I could get a handle on that, it might help me find him.”

  She nodded. “Sneedham, I think we’ll want Annie Lisa and Jacqui. I doubt if Gary and Roger have anything to contribute. Do you want coffee, Ms. War-I’m afraid I don’t have your name firmly in mind-” She paused while I repeated it. “Yes, Ms. Warshawski. We don’t serve alcohol in this house, but we can offer you a soft drink.”

  I said coffee would be fine, and Sneedham went off to herd the designated sheep into the fold. I followed Mrs. Bysen down the hall to where it ended in a room with a sunken floor, carpeted in a thick gold pile. Massive furniture, suitable to a medieval castle and upholstered in heavy brocades, weighted down the room. Stiff drapes, in a matching brocade, were pulled across the windows.

  Mildred busied herself with moving
a couple of chairs close together-no small job, considering their size, and the thickness of the carpet. William made no move to help her: she wasn’t really a family member, just the most loyal of all the retainers.

  While we waited on the rest of the family, Mrs. Bysen asked how well I knew Billy. I answered her honestly-her face seemed to demand honesty, at least from me-that I’d only met him several times, that he appeared to be a decent, fundamentally serious and idealistic young man, and that he often mentioned her as his most important teacher. She looked pleased but didn’t add anything.

  After a few minutes, Jacqui entered; she’d changed out of her fluttery taupe skirt into a floor-length, belted black dress. It wasn’t a formal gown, just a tasteful cashmere at-home dress.

  Another woman stumbled in behind Jacqui. She had Billy’s freckles, or he had hers. The auburn curls he cropped close to his head stood out around hers, like the hair of an ungroomed poodle. So this was Annie Lisa, Billy’s mom. An older woman, encased in magenta silk, kept an arm around Annie Lisa as they waded through the heavy pile. We were never introduced, but I assumed she was the wife of the corporate counsel, Linus Rankin, since he came in a few minutes later.

  I knew from my database that Billy’s mother was forty-eight, but she appeared more like a schoolgirl, with her uncertain, almost coltlike gait. She looked around with a puzzled face as if she didn’t know why she was on the planet, let alone this particular bit of it. When I moved across the room to greet her, her husband immediately went to her side as if to forestall her talking to me. He took her elbow and almost pushed her to an armchair as remote as possible from the middle of the room.

  When everyone else was seated, and Sneedham had served weak coffee, Buffalo Bill stumped in, using his silver-topped walking stick like a ski pole to push himself through the high pile. He went to the heavier of the armchairs Mildred had moved; she took the one to his left. Mrs. Bysen sat on a couch and patted the cushion next to her for me.

  “Well, young woman? Well? You’ve been trespassing on my warehouse, spying on me, so you’d better have a good explanation of what you’re up to.” Buffalo Bill glared at me and blew so heavily that his cheeks pouched out.

  I leaned back against the thick cushions, although the couch was so deep it wasn’t very comfortable. “We do have a lot to talk about. Let’s start with Billy. Something happened at the company that upset him so badly he didn’t think he could talk to anyone in the family about it. What was that?”

  “It was the other way around, Detective,” Mr. William said. “You were present the day Billy brought that ridiculous preacher up to our offices. We spent days trying to smooth over-”

  “Yes, yes, we know all that,” Buffalo Bill cut his son off with his usual impatience. “Did you say something to him, William, to make him run away?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Father, you act as though Billy were as delicate as one of Mother’s roses. He takes everything too hard, but he knows how we run our business; after five months in the warehouse, he’d seen everything. It’s only been since he came under the thumb of this preacher that he started behaving so strangely.”

  “It’s that Mexican girl, really,” Aunt Jacqui said. She was sitting on an embroidered hassock, her legs crossed, the skirt of her long dress falling open just above her knees. “He’s in love, or thinks he is, and it’s making him imagine he understands the world from her perspective.”

  “He did get very upset when he found that Pat Grobian at the warehouse had been spying on him and reporting back to you, Mr. William,” I said. “He went down to the warehouse on Sunday afternoon to confront Grobian. Grobian says he knows Billy cleared out his locker on Monday, but he didn’t see him then. You also were there on Monday, Mr. William, but you say you never saw your son, either.”

  “What were you doing down at the warehouse?” Buffalo Bill demanded, lowering his bull’s head at his son. “First I ever heard of it. Don’t you have enough to do without shoving onto Gary ’s turf?”

  I pictured the family chart I’d seen in my law enforcement database-it was hard to keep track of all the Bysens. Gary was Aunt Jacqui’s husband; I guess he handled domestic operations.

  “Billy has been behaving so strangely I wanted to check up on him in person. He is my son, Father, although you delight so much in undermining me that-”

  “William, this isn’t a good time for that,” his mother said. “We all are devastated about Billy, and it doesn’t help for us to attack each other. I want to know what we can do to help Ms. Warshawski find him, since your big agency hasn’t succeeded. I know they tracked down his car and his cell phone, but he’d given those away. Do you know why he did that, Ms. Warshawski?”

  “I can’t be sure, but he knew they were easy to trace, and he seems to have been very determined to disappear.”

  “Do you think that Mexican girl has talked him into a runaway marriage?” she asked.

  “Ma’am, Josie Dorrado is an American girl. And I don’t know any state where it’s legal for a fifteen-year-old to get married. Even a sixteen-year-old needs written permission from her guardian, and Josie’s mother isn’t eager for this relationship, either-she thinks Billy is a rich, irresponsible Anglo boy who will get her daughter pregnant and abandon her.”

  “Billy would never do that!” Mrs. Bysen was shocked.

  “Maybe not, ma’am, but Ms. Dorrado doesn’t know your grandson any better than you know her daughter.” I watched her face change as she absorbed this idea, before turning to her husband. “Billy apparently has, or took, some documents that your son wants pretty badly. Mr. William tried to laugh it off when we spoke this afternoon, but he went to the Dorrado apartment Monday night and searched there. What’s missing that-”

  “What!” Buffalo Bill exploded at his son. “It’s not enough the boy’s gone, and now you’re accusing him of stealing? Your own son? Just what have you misplaced that you’re trying to blame on him?”

  “No one thinks he’s stealing, Papa Bill,” Jacqui put in quickly. “But you know one of Billy’s duties at the warehouse is to sort the faxes as they come in. He seemed to think some of the information from our Matagalpa plant down in Nicaragua meant more than it did, and he took it away with him two weeks ago. We thought he might have taken it to give to the Mexican minister, but no one down there seems to have it.”

  She sounded so sure of this that I supposed they’d had Carnifice search everyone’s home to look for it-not just the careless once-over that William had given the Dorrado apartment Monday night. So it probably was Carnifice who’d come into Morrell’s place this morning. Did they think Marcena had the Nicaragua faxes, or was there yet something else that they were really looking for?

  “Mr. Bysen,” I said to the Buffalo, “you know Bron Czernin was murdered Monday night while he was driving for-”

  “It’s not clear he was on the job when he was killed.” Mr. William frowned.

  “Now what?” I exclaimed. “Are you going to try to pretend he wasn’t driving Monday night so you can deny his family’s comp claim? Grobian himself has a log of where Bron took his truck!”

  “That truck has disappeared. And we know now that he was-dallying with this Love woman, which means he was off the By-Smart clock as far as we’re concerned. If the family wants to take it to court, they can try, but his widow will find it very unpleasant to have the details of her husband’s life revealed in public.”

  “But her lawyer won’t be offended at all,” I said coldly. “Freeman Carter will be representing her.” Freeman is my lawyer. If I guaranteed his fee, he might be willing to go up against By-Smart-you never know.

  Linus Rankin, the corporate counsel, knew Freeman’s name. He said if Sandra could afford Freeman, she didn’t even need the insurance claim or her cashier’s job.

  I could feel anger rising in me, like a blood infection, starting at my toes and sweeping through my body. “Why do you begrudge Sandra Czernin her rightful settlement? A quarter of a million dollars
would barely pay for the cars you have parked out front, let alone this massive estate here. She needs to look after her daughter who’s seriously ill, and your company has denied her health insurance by keeping her hours just below forty a week. You claim to be Christians-”

  “Enough!” Buffalo Bill roared. “I remember you, young woman, you tried to make some insane argument about fifty thousand dollars meaning nothing to the company, and now you think a quarter of a million means nothing to us. I worked for every dime I ever made, and this Czernin woman can do the same.”

  “Yes, Bill, of course,” his wife said. “All of us getting angry about that tonight isn’t going to help find Billy. Was there anything else, Ms. Warshawski?”

  I swallowed some of the coffee, which was now cold as well as thin. I’m not a billionaire, but I would never serve a visitor such poor stuff.

  “Thanks, Mrs. Bysen. Marcena Love, who was found with Bron Czernin yesterday morning, visited your husband several times. She was doing a series of reports on South Chicago for an English newspaper. I want to know what she and your husband discussed to see if she revealed anything unusual, even illegal, that she’d seen on the South Side. It might explain why she was attacked.”

  “What does that have to do with Billy?” Mrs. Bysen said.

  “I don’t know. But she was in his car when it was driven off the road under the Skyway. They’re connected in some way.”

  Mrs. Bysen turned to her husband and demanded that he recount his meetings with Marcena. Even with Mildred’s prodding, though, he seemed to think they had discussed only the Second World War and his illustrious career in the Army Air Forces.

  I was tired, tired of the discussion, the Bysens, the heavy furniture, and when Mrs. Bysen announced that we had talked long enough I was as glad as her son to bring the evening to a close. William went over to collect his wife, announcing gruffly to his mother that it was time Annie Lisa was in bed. Jacqui followed them. While Mildred and Linus Rankin conferred with Buffalo Bill, I asked Mrs. Bysen if their detectives had searched Billy’s room.