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.”