Burn Marks

turn its windows a fiery copper. It was too late for me to go to the Daley Center to look for any background on Farm-works, Inc. I lay there watching the fire on the tower mute into soft oranges, then darken.

Finally I got to my feet and began the long trek back to my car. My legs were a bit wobbly-too much exertion too soon, I told myself sternly. Nothing to do with the surge of fear over the guys with the pickaxes.

Day crews were starting to pack it in. Night shifts hadn’t started yet. There was a lull in the noise and a general relaxation in the work frenzy. The machines were still moving doggedly, but the ground crews were standing around laughing, drinking longnecks that they somehow spirited onto the site.

It took over half an hour to move the mile to my car. By then most of the other vehicles parked around it had left. Alone among the detritus under the giant stilts of the expressway, I shivered. When I got in the car I carefully locked the doors before starting.

It was after five-thirty. I turned up Halsted instead of joining the packed throngs on the expressway or the drive. No one on the site knew who I was, but I didn’t take the hard hat off until I was north of Congress.

When I got home I dumped the overalls and the hard hat in the hall closet and headed straight for the tub, I longed for sleep but I still had several errands to run. I tried to convince my wobbly legs and sore shoulders that a long bath would do them as much good as twelve hours of sleep. More good. It might have worked when I was twenty, but when you’re closer to forty than thirty there are some myths the body won’t believe.

Carbohydrate packing was my next great idea. Although there was no fruit or meat in the house I still had onions, garlic, and frozen pasta. Just the kind of dish my mother thought adequate for a Saturday dinner, while my father, who could never bring himself to criticize her, longed privately for chicken and dumplings.

I found a can of tomatoes in the back of my cupboard. I couldn’t remember buying this brand and studied the label dubiously, trying to figure out if they were still any good. I opened the can and sniffed. How do you tell if something is full of botulism? I shrugged and dumped them in with the onions. It would be fairly entertaining if I escaped the ravages of mad killers only to die of food poisoning in my own kitchen.

If the tomatoes were poisoned they didn’t affect me immediately. In fact, the bath and the dinner did make me feel better-not as good as if I’d had my sleep, but good enough to go on for a bit. I was even whistling a little under my breath when I went into the bedroom to change.

My only lightweight black dress has big silver buttons down the front. With black stockings and pumps I looked more as though I were on my way to the theater than a funeral, but I thought white stockings wouldn’t be much of an improvement. It would have to do.

While I was looking up the Callahan Funeral Home, the phone rang. It was Terry Finchley from the Violent Climes Unit.

“Miss Warshawski! I’ve been trying to reach you the last few days. Did you get my message?”

I thought of all the ringing phones I’d let go lately and realized I hadn’t checked in with my answering service for some time. “Sorry, Detective. What’s up? Any new evidence linking me to the Prairie Shores or Indiana Arms fires?”

I thought I heard him sigh. “Don’t make my life harder than it is, Vic, okay?”

“Okay, Terry,” I agreed meekly. “To what do I owe the pleasure of hearing from you?”

“I-uh-discussed our interview with the lieutenant. You know, the talk Lieutenant Montgomery and I-”

“Yes, I remember that particular conversation.” I had sat on the piano bench with the phone book in my lap, but I stopped searching the Callahans.

“He, the lieutenant, Lieutenant Mallory, I mean, was- uh-quite astonished that Montgomery would suggest such a thing-linking you with the arson, you know-and he went and had a talk with him. I just thought you’d like to know that you probably won’t be hearing from him again.”

“Thank you.” I was pleased and surprised, both at Bobby’s going to bat for me and at Finchley’s taking the time to phone me about it. That took a little extra courage.

“Well, check in with your service in the future-don’t leave me sweating it out for three days. See you Saturday.”

Saturday. Oh, right. Bobby’s sixtieth birthday. Yet another item on my burgeoning to-do list-a present for him. I rubbed my tired eyes and forced myself back to the phone book. The Callahan Funeral Home was on north Harlem. I dug around in the accumulated papers on the coffee table for my city map. The address put it just north of the expressway there; it should be a pretty easy run across town.

I was packing up my good handbag when the phone rang again. I was going to let it go, but it might be someone else who’d been leaving messages for three days.

“Miss Warshawski. Glad I caught you in.”

“Mr. MacDonald.” I sat back down on the piano bench in astonishment. “What a surprise. I’m sorry I haven’t sent you a note yet for the flowers-I’m moving a little slowly with my convalescence.”

“That’s not what I hear, young lady-I hear you barely rose from your sickbed before you started prancing around town prying into business that’s no concern of yours.”

“And what business is that, old man?” I just cannot stand being called “young lady.”

“I thought we had an agreement that you’d leave Roz Fuentes alone.”

I put the receiver in my lap and stared at it hard. It could only be my invasion of Alma Mejicana that he was referring to. But he couldn’t know about that-my only link to them was a scarf that could scarcely be traced to me- no one had ever seen me wear it because I never did. So it was my trip to the construction site. But what was his connection with Alma Mejicana that he’d know about that so fast?

“Are you there?” His voice came scratchily from my lap.

I put the receiver back to my face. “Yeah, I’m here but I’m not with you. I don’t know what I’ve done that you think is harassing Roz. And I don’t know why you’re so protective of her, anyway.”

He laughed a little. “Come, come, young la-Miss Warshawski. You can’t go blundering all over the Ryan without people hearing about it. Construction’s a small community-word gets around fast. Roz is hurt that you’re looking at her cousin’s business behind her back. She mentioned it to Boots-he asked me to take the time to give you a call.”

“So all this stuff is going on at Boots’s command? You work for him or something, Ralph? Somehow I thought he and the whole county were in your back pocket.”

“All what stuff, young lady?” he demanded sharply.

I waved a vague hand. “Oh, arson, murder, attempted murder, that kind of thing. Boots says-go git me a dead alkie and you say, yessir, Chairman Meagher. And you find you someone to do it? Is that what’s been going on around town lately?”

“That would be offensive if it weren’t so ludicrous. Boots and I go way back. We’re involved in a lot of projects together. Over the years the press has decided on a prolonged smear campaign about our relationship and business methods that you apparently have bought into, I’m disappointed in you, Vic-you seemed like a sharp young lady to me.”

“Gosh, thanks, Ralph, And did you mastermind the fire that almost killed me last week? Was that how you and Boots decided to respond to Roz’s hurt feelings?”

His breath came in a little hiss in my ear, “For your information, not that I owe you a damned thing, the report in the Star was the first I knew about that fire. And I’d go on oath with that. But if you’ve been treating other people around town the way you’ve been behaving toward Roz, it wouldn’t surprise me that one of them tried to put you out.”

“That sounds strangely like a threat to me, Ralph. You’re sure, you’re absolutely positive, that you didn’t order that arson last week?”

“I said ‘on oath,’” he snapped. “But if I were you, I’d watch my step, young lady-you were lucky to get out of that alive, weren’t you?”

“No, I wasn’t, old goat,” I yelled, fear disguising itself as anger. “I was skilled. So go tell Roz or Boots or whoever is yanking your chain that I rely on my wits, not my luck, and that I’m still trucking.”

“‘Bulldozing’ would be a better word, young-Miss Warshawski, You don’t know what you’re doing, and you’re liable to cause a major mess if you don’t stop blundering around in the middle of things that don’t concern you.” He spoke in a crisp, no-nonsense tone that no doubt ended debate with subordinates.

“Is that supposed to make me snap a salute and shriek ‘Yes-sir, Mr. M.’? I’m going to the papers with what I’ve learned so far. If I don’t know what I’m doing, they’ve got the resources to look into it in a lot more detail.” I wasn’t