Fire Sale by Sara Paretsky Page A

are you, my sister?”
    “No, my brother, not today, although, at the moment, it doesn’t sound like a bad idea.” I backed away from him and dusted my shoulders where the foreman had gripped them.
    He looked startled, then concerned. “You have been fired, perhaps?”
    He had a slight Hispanic accent, whether Mexican, Puerto Rican, or even Spanish, I was too ignorant to know. Like much of the work crew, he was a swarthy, thickset man, but his somber suit and tie didn’t belong in a factory.
    “I’m an investigator, whom Mr. Zamar doesn’t want to hire, or even talk to. Do you know about the attempts to sabotage the plant?” When the man nodded, I asked what he knew about it.
    “Only that some members of the community are concerned. Has there been another episode today?”
    I looked at him narrowly, wondering how trustable he was—but, after all, if he knew anything about this morning’s intruder I wasn’t going to give him news by discussing it. When I told him what I’d seen, he only said that Mr. Zamar had many problems, that he couldn’t afford to lose the factory.
    “Why won’t he call in the cops?” I demanded.
    “If I knew that, I would be a wise man. But I will ask him.”
    “And if he answers, do me a favor and let me in on the secret.” I pulled one of my cards from my case and handed it to him.
    “V. I. Warshawski.” He read my name carefully. “And I am Robert Andrés. Good day, Sister Warshawski.”
    We shook hands on his odd and formal greeting. Even though I spent the rest of the day on work for my paying clients, my mind kept wandering back to Frank Zamar and Fly the Flag. I worried that I had needlessly alienated Rose by suggesting she could be the saboteur. Before I met Zamar it had seemed possible to me, because she was so worried about her job that she might want to prove she was indispensable: there she was, arriving early, finding rats in the air ducts, summoning help—even hiring a detective! Who could fire such a zealous employee?
    Now that I’d seen Zamar, I didn’t really believe Rose was involved. Something was worrying him too badly about all these episodes. The man I’d stumbled into at the entrance, Robert Andrés, he might know; I should have gotten his phone number. I’d been too busy feeling angry and humiliated by the foreman tossing me out to take care of fundamentals.
    Maybe Zamar was in love with Rose and worried because he thought she was responsible. Or Rose’s daughter with the baby, Julia—he’d donated warm-up jackets, he used to watch her play. Could he be the baby’s father? Was Rose going to destroy Fly the Flag to punish him for that?
    “Give it up, Warshawski,” I said out loud. “Any more like that and you’ll be writing scripts for Jerry Springer.”
    I was in the western suburbs, looking for a woman who had abandoned a safe-deposit box holding eight million dollars in bearer bonds, and I needed to put all my attention on that project. I located her daughter and son-in-law, who seemed to me to know more than they wanted to say. My client managed the little deli belonging to the woman—she’d gotten worried when the owner suddenly disappeared. A little before three, I finally found the woman in a nursing home where she’d been involuntarily committed. I talked to my client, who rushed out west with a lawyer. I was tired but triumphant as I raced back to South Chicago for my team’s makeup practice.
    The girls played well, pleased with their clean gym. For the first time, they actually looked like a team—maybe the fight really had brought them together. We did a short workout, and they left with their heads up, triumphant from my praise—and their pleasure in their own ability.
    On my way home, while I sat motionless in the rush hour traffic, I called my answering service to pick up my messages. To my astonishment, I had one from Billy the Kid. When I reached him on his own mobile phone, he stammered that he’d told his grandfather