Sisters On the Case

by Sara Paretsky

  Boom-Boom headed for the center of the park, away from the knots of cops who still lingered, keeping out sightseers, or waiting for working squad cars to arrive if their own had been disabled. Many of the men were lying on the grass, helmets at their sides. Others were using their riot helmets as canteens, filling them at the fire hydrants and pouring the water over their sweaty bodies.

  At the lagoons that ringed the interior of the park, Boom-Boom was startled to see how many cars had been pushed into the water. Some had been rolled in so they were upside down. He tried to guess how many men it would take to roll a car over and over like that. He wondered if the guys he played hockey with could do it.

  As he continued east, toward the park entrance on Sacramento—since that’s where his cousin would have entered the park—he came on a white convertible whose front end was submerged, leaving the back sticking up in the air, almost. That looked like Wujek Tomas’s car. His body was over near Seventy-first Street. This didn’t make sense. If he’d been driving, he’d have drowned in the car. Why was the car here and Tomas half a mile away?

  Boom-Boom stood next to the Wildcat, trying to decide if it was his uncle’s. He didn’t know the license plate number, but there was a little red scratch near the bottom of the driver’s door. If he could get into the water, he might be able to see it.

  He was starting to untie his sneakers when a thumping from inside the trunk startled him. ‘‘If that’s your ghost, Wujek, don’t worry: I’m not here to hurt your car,’’ he called loudly to cover a moment’s fright.

  ‘‘Boom-Boom?’’

  It was his cousin’s voice, faint, tremulous.

  ‘‘Tori! What are you doing in the trunk?’’

  ‘‘He put me there. Get me out, get me out before I die.’’

  ‘‘Hang on, I’ve got to get the trunk open. Don’t go anywhere, I need to find some way to smash the lock.’’

  ‘‘I’m not moving, dodo, but hurry, I’m fried alive and I’ve been sick in here.’’ Her voice ended in a gulp that sounded close to tears.

  Boom-Boom looked frantically around the grounds. He’d seen guys break into cars plenty of times—also into trunks. He needed something like a chisel and a hammer to break the lock, or— In the massive amount of junk tossed by the rioters, he found a tire iron.

  He ran back to the Wildcat and managed to pry open the trunk. His cousin was clinging to the spare tire. Her feet were damp from the lagoon water seeping into the trunk from the backseat, and the shirt he’d torn earlier in the day was covered with blood and mud and her own vomit. She was shaking from head to filthy toe; it was all Boom-Boom could do to help her crawl out.

  V

  It was dark by the time the cousins and their fathers found each other. When Victoria saw Tony, she burst into tears.

  ‘‘Pepaiola, mia cara, cuore mio,’’ Tony crooned, the only Italian he’d picked up from Gabriella—my little pepperpot, he called his daughter. ‘‘What’s to cry about now, huh?’’

  ‘‘Uncle Tomas said he would kill you because he lost his job,’’ she sobbed. ‘‘I wanted to warn you, but this man, this friend of Uncle Tomas’s, he picked me up and put me in the trunk. I was scared, Papa, I’m sorry, but I was scared, I didn’t want you to die and I couldn’t tell you, and I didn’t want me to die, either.’’

  ‘‘No, sweetheart, and neither of us is dead, so it all worked out. Let’s get you home so your mama can stop crying her eyes out and give you a bath.’’

  ‘‘What man, Vicki?’’ Bobby asked—the only person who ever used a nickname that Gabriella hated.

  ‘‘The man with Uncle Tomas. I saw them when they—Daddy, they gave money to the cop at the intersection and he let them into the park. I took his picture—oh! my camera, he broke the strap and threw my camera away, my special camera you gave me, Papa, I’m sorry, I didn’t look after it like you made me promise.’’

  Victoria started to cry harder, but Bobby told her to dry her eyes and pay attention. ‘‘We need you to help us, Vicki. We need to see if your camera is still here, if no one stole it. So you be a big girl and stop crying and show your uncle Bobby where you were when this man picked you up.’’

  ‘‘It’s dark,’’ Tony protested. ‘‘She’s all in, Bobby.’’

  Victoria frowned in the dark. ‘‘It was where you come into the golf course. One of the hills where the holes are on the Seventy-first Street side of the park. I know, there was a statue near me, I don’t know whose.’’

  With this much information, Bobby set up searchlights near the statue of the Lithuanian aviators, Darius and Girenas, although none of the cops believed they’d find one small Brownie camera in the detritus left in the park.

  When Boom-Boom whispered to his cousin the news that Tomas was dead and the cops needed to find the man who’d been with him, Victoria miraculously found some reserve of energy from childhood’s inexhaustible reservoir. She tried to remember in her body how slowly she’d moved, where she’d twisted and turned on the walking paths, and finally cut across the grass to the golf course. Boom-Boom stayed with her; within another five minutes, they found the Brownie.

  Bobby took custody of it, promising on his honor as a policeman that he’d give the camera back the instant the pictures were developed, and the cousins finally got into their fathers’ separate cars. At home, they received varying receptions from their mothers: both women frantic, both doting on their only children, each showing it with tears, and then a slap for being foolhardy and disobedient. But Gabriella instantly repented of the slap and took her daughter into the bathroom to shampoo her rough mass of curls herself.

  ‘‘Carissima, when will you learn to think first, to act next after thinking? This Tomas, this brother of Marie’s, he was a—mafioso—un ladro—he stole from Metzger’s Meats and sold on his own, sold the meat to restaurants in Wisconsin. He blamed the janitor, who is a Negro man, for losing his job, because the janitor reported seeing him. But your papa is telling me, Tomas also cheated his capo in the mafia, and this was a man also named Antoni. It is not such a rare name, Victoria. If you asked me, I would tell you this thing, that your papa is in danger from the calca in the park, but not from this brother of Marie, and then you do not get the most biggest frightening of your life. And also, then you are not giving me the same gigantic frightening.’’

  And of course, as it turned out, when Bobby got the pictures developed, the man who abducted Victoria, who flung her into the trunk of the Wildcat, which he got several spirited youths to push into the lagoon, was the Tony who worked in Don Pasquale’s organization. Tomas had been stealing meat from Metzger’s and selling it in Wisconsin for the mob, but he’d taken more than his share of the profits. Don Pasquale sent Tony in his red Hawaiian shirt to Marquette Park to kill Tomas under cover of the riots. The don wasn’t happy with Tony for letting a little girl with a camera get the best of him: he refused to post bail for his henchman.

  ‘‘So you see, carissima, è molto importante, ask, ask, think, think, before you leap on your bicycle and turn my hair white,’’ Gabriella finished. ‘‘Promise me, cuore mio, promise me this is the last time, that from now on you are turning over a fresh page, you will become more careful, more prudente! Promettimelo, Victoria!’’

  ‘‘Si, Mamma: te lo prometto,’’ Victoria said.

  You May Already Be a Winner

  by Margaret Maron

  ‘‘They’ve done what? Oh, Carlie, honey!’’ The white-haired man reached past the coffee cup in front of him and clasped his niece’s hand in dismay. ‘‘My sister’s not even cold yet and your sisters are already stripping her house?’’

  Small-boned and fair-haired, with blue eyes that were red-rimmed from crying, Carlie Baxter swallowed past her tears and nodded. ‘‘Her silver, her good jewelry. The two rosewood parlor chairs. Even Great-grandmother’s dollhouse.’’

  ‘‘That old thing? Why? They don’t have daughters and you were the only one who ever played with it.’’

&nbs
p; ‘‘Marsha watches Antiques Roadshow, and a similar one was valued at two thousand dollars,’’ Carlie said bitterly. ‘‘When I came back to the house this morning, I thought someone had broken in. I almost called the police until Mary told me that she and Marsha had taken them for safekeeping now that the neighborhood’s gone down so much.’’

  ‘‘Well, there is that,’’ Uncle Carlton conceded. ‘‘I tried to get Genevieve to sell this place ten years ago when the McNairy house was broken up into apartments and property values first started sliding, but she was so sure the neighborhood would come back to its former glory.’’

  ‘‘She enjoyed most of the changes, though,’’ Carlie said with a ghost of a smile. ‘‘She liked the little shops that came in, the bodega on the corner, children playing on the sidewalks again, even the signs in Spanish and Arabic.’’

  ‘‘All the same,’’ her uncle said, ‘‘I doubt if you’ll get half the money she could have gotten ten years ago.’’

  ‘‘Me?’’ Carlie asked, startled by his comment.

  ‘‘You.’’ The old man shook his head sadly. ‘‘I had no business still being her attorney and I blame myself for not making Genevieve update her will, but I never expected to outlive my baby sister.’’

  Tears filled his eyes and Carlie felt her own eyes sting again. She had been named for this man, her mother’s beloved older brother. Except for her twin sisters and their sons, Carlton Burke was her only remaining relative. A retired attorney who had taken too many pro bono cases to amass a fortune, he was almost twenty years older than Mom and the closest thing to a grandfather the three sisters ever had. Carlie adored him.

  ‘‘Mom left this house to me?’’ She looked past the archway of the dining room where they sat to the front parlor, now denuded of its rosewood chairs and antique dollhouse, and tried not to feel a surge of hope. After her father’s death, his pension and a series of part-time jobs had enabled her mother to continue living in the two-story Victorian house and finish raising Carlie. Unlike for her two older sisters, though, college for Carlie had meant student loans and working every minute she could spare from the books. Two days after she graduated with a degree in French medieval history, her mother had stepped out in front of a delivery truck without looking and was thrown into the path of an oncoming car. Both drivers were horrified and remorseful, but clearly not at fault. It was assumed that Genevieve Andrews had been on her way to the nearby bodega, full of hope and optimism, to buy her weekly lottery tickets.

  Carlie had planned to work a year before going on to grad school. Instead, she had spent the last five weeks shuttling back and forth between the hospital where her mother lay in a coma and the house where Buster, Mom’s elderly dog, needed daily insulin shots.

  Mary and Marsha both wept and then excused themselves for not pitching in more. ‘‘Our jobs. Our sons. Our husbands. Oh, it’s so lucky that you’re still unencumbered, Carlie.’’

  Trying not to feel bitter, Carlie took a deep breath. The house was shabby now. It needed paint and a new roof, and the plumbing was unreliable. All the same, if it truly was hers to sell, then maybe she could register for fall classes immediately instead of waiting a year. Or maybe she would even spend this year studying in France.

  Uncle Carlton shook his silver mane regretfully. ‘‘I’m sorry, honey. You’ll be lucky to get enough to pay her debts. And it’s all my fault. I should have written another will for Genevieve.’’

  ‘‘I don’t understand. You just said the house was mine.’’

  ‘‘It is. When I wrote the will after your dad died, the twins were out of college and she knew it was going to be a struggle for you to go. The house was appraised at a quarter million back then, so she left fifty thousand to each of your sisters and the rest— including all the contents of the house—to you. She thought you would end up with at least a hundred and fifty thousand.’’

  ‘‘But if the house is only worth half that now?’’

  ‘‘I wasn’t thinking, Carlie. Instead of a dollar amount, I should have phrased it so that your sisters each got a fifth and you got three-fifths.’’

  Carlie had always been good at mental math. ‘‘That’s okay, Uncle Carlton. Maybe the house is worth more than you think. And even if it isn’t, that still leaves me with . . . what? Twenty-five thousand?’’

  Again he shook his head. ‘‘Not after all her medical bills and funeral expenses are paid. Well, maybe your sisters will be fair-minded about the situation.’’

  They both sighed then, knowing just how unlikely that was.

  ‘‘Oh, Carlie, how perfectly awful for you,’’ said Marsha when the will was read to them after the funeral two days later.

  ‘‘The fair and equitable thing would be to sell the house and its contents and split anything left over after your mother’s debts are paid,’’ said Uncle Carlton.

  ‘‘I wish we didn’t have to take the money,’’ said Mary, ‘‘but the boys will be starting college themselves in a few years.’’

  It was no less than he had expected. Nevertheless, he was disappointed by their self-centeredness and fixed them both with a stern eye. ‘‘Just remember that the things you took from the house belong to Carlie, and she’s going to need every penny for her own education. You must return them immediately or else pay her their worth.’’

  ‘‘But Mom always said I was to have her silver and her diamond pin,’’ Mary protested.

  ‘‘And she promised me those rosewood chairs and her gold bracelets,’’ said Marsha with a stubborn look on her face.

  Under different circumstances, a widowed and childless uncle might have wielded considerable influence, but a widowed and childless uncle who barely had enough to live on? When Carlie was his favorite? They would never be openly disrespectful, but as far as they were concerned, he could whistle down the wind.

  ‘‘It’s okay,’’ said Carlie, who hoped to avoid a rift with her sisters. ‘‘But I do want the dollhouse back.’’

  ‘‘Of course, sweetie,’’ said Mary, prepared to be gracious and sisterly now that talk of fairness was behind them.

  ‘‘We’ll even send the boys over to help you clear the house,’’ said Marsha. ‘‘They can start by getting rid of all the junk mail Mom saved. Coupons and contest forms stuffed in every cranny. ‘You may already be a winner!’ Right. And I may already be the queen of England. Do you think she was getting a little senile?’’

  ‘‘There was nothing wrong with your mother’s mind,’’ Uncle Carlton said sharply.

  ‘‘But all those magazine subscriptions from Publishers Clearing House? Come on, Uncle Carlton! Who needs twenty magazines coming into the house every month? She gave me three trial subscriptions for Christmas.’’

  ‘‘I know,’’ said Carlie, sensing how much their cynicism cut at the old man. ‘‘I told her that she didn’t have to buy anything to enter their sweepstakes, but she thought that increased her chances.’’

  ‘‘Did she honestly believe that the Prize Patrol was going to show up on her doorstep someday with a check for a million dollars?’’ asked Mary.

  ‘‘Hope springs eternal,’’ Carlie said lightly. ‘‘You know Mom. Remember how happy she was when the lottery finally passed last year?’’

  Marsha rolled her eyes. ‘‘Not half as happy as I was. No more weird magazines. My birthday card had five scratch-off cards in it this time. I actually won seven dollars.’’

  ‘‘I won twelve with the ones in my card,’’ Mary said smugly.

  ‘‘Lucky for us that she was such a penny-ante gambler,’’ said Marsha. ‘‘I was afraid she might get in over her head, spend her grocery money on Powerball tickets.’’

  ‘‘No,’’ said Carlie. ‘‘Five dollars a week was her limit. She loved checking her tickets against the winning numbers. Remember how close she came to the jackpot back in January?’’

  For a moment, they were united in the memory of their mother’s flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes as she told them how sh
e had held her breath when the first five numbers precisely matched the first five on her ticket. How certain she’d been that it was her lucky day.

  ‘‘Eleven million dollars,’’ Carlie sighed, thinking of France.

  ‘‘The new jackpot’s fifty-three million,’’ said Marsha, equally wistful.

  ‘‘Split four ways,’’ the ever-practical Mary reminded her.

  ‘‘That’s still over thirteen million apiece,’’ said Carlie, doing the math in her head. ‘‘Wonder why the fourth person hasn’t come forward to claim it? It’s been at least three weeks since they announced the winning number.’’

  ‘‘Probably consulting an investment banker first,’’ said Uncle Carlton. ‘‘Taxes are going to take a big chunk and if they don’t have a game plan in place, the rest will melt away before they know it.’’

  ‘‘I’ve heard that every leech you’ve ever met comes crawling out of the woodwork,’’ said Mary as she gathered up her things to go. ‘‘ ‘I shared my candy bar with you in kindergarten, so why don’t you give me a half million for old times’ sake?’ I read about one man who won forty million and was broke and back on welfare three years later. If I ever won, I wouldn’t tell a soul.’’

  ‘‘Not even me?’’ asked Marsha.

  ‘‘Especially not you!’’ Mary’s laugh was meant to show that she was joking, but Marsha still looked miffed when they left.

  True to their word, Marsha and Mary sent their teenage sons over to help, and they themselves came every evening after work to sort through the things three generations of Baxters had acquired. They even brought sandwiches and wine, and they helped dig a grave in the backyard for old Buster when he went to sleep on his rug beside their mother’s empty bed and never woke up again.