Fire Sale by Sara Paretsky

back from him. “I wrote him last week, Billy, but maybe he didn’t get the letter. You’re right to point it out.”
    “But it looks like he has a whole production schedule.”
    Jacqui produced another dazzling smile. “I think you misread it, Billy, but I’ll make extra sure we’re all clear on this.”
    Pat pulled my report out of his trash. “I moved too fast on this one, Billy; I’ll take a closer look at my numbers and get back to your friend. In the meantime, why don’t you go out to the loading bays, make sure that Bron at bay thirty-two has taken off—he has a tendency to linger, wasting time with the girls on the shift. And you, Ms.—uh, we’ll call you in a couple of days.”
    Billy looked again at Aunt Jacqui, a troubled frown creasing his smooth young face, but he obediently got up to go. I followed him from the room.
    “I’d be glad to get you any other information you want that might help your grandfather make a decision about the team. Maybe you’d like to bring him to one of our practices.”
    His face lit up. “I don’t think he’d come, but I could, that is, if I could take off from here, maybe if I came in early. Aren’t Mondays and Thursdays your practice days?”
    I was surprised and asked how he knew.
    He flushed. “I’m in the choir and the youth group at my church, our church, I mean, the one my family goes to, and we do these exchanges with inner-city churches sometimes, like, where we trade ministers, and our choirs sing together and stuff, and my youth group has adopted Mount Ararat down on Ninety-first Street, and some of the kids at the church, they go to Bertha Palmer. Two of them play on the basketball team. Josie Dorrado and Sancia Valdéz. Do you know them?”
    “Oh, yes: there are only sixteen girls on the team, I know them all. So how come you’re working here at the warehouse? Shouldn’t you be in college or high school or something yourself?”
    “I wanted to do a year of service, something like the Peace Corps, after I finished high school, but Grandpa persuaded me to spend a year on the South Side. It’s not like he’s sick or dying or anything, but he wanted me to work for a year in the company while he was still around to, like, answer my questions, and meantime I can do service through the church and stuff. That’s why I know Aunt Jacqui is just being, well, cynical. She is sometimes. A lot of the time. Sometimes I think she only married Uncle Gary because she wanted—” He broke off, blushing even more darkly.
    “I forgot what I was going to say. She is really committed to the company. Grandpa, he doesn’t really like the ladies in the family to work in the store, not even my sister Candace, when she was running—but, anyway, Aunt Jacqui, she has a degree in design, I think it is, or fabric, something like that, and she persuaded Grandpa that she would go crazy staying at home. We beat Wal-Mart in towels and sheets every quarter since she took over the buying for those things, and even Grandpa is impressed with how thorough she is.”
    Aunt Jacqui only married Uncle Gary because she wanted a piece of the Bysen family fortune. I could hear the accusations flying around the Bysen dinner table: Buffalo Bill was a tightwad, Aunt Jacqui was a gold digger. But the kid was a hardworking idealist. As I followed him along the corridors to the loading bays, I hoped I could get him to blurt out more indiscretions, like where or what Candace had been running, but he only explained how he came to have his nickname. His father was the oldest son—William the Second.
    “It’s sort of a family joke, not that I’m crazy about it. Everyone calls Dad ‘Young Mister William,’ even though he’s fifty-two now. So I got nicknamed Billy the Kid. They think I shoot from the hip, see, and I know that’s what Pat is going to tell Dad about me bringing you in here, but don’t give up, Ms. War-sha-sky, I think it would be really great to help the basketball program. I