Read Online Bleeding Kansas by Sara Paretsky - Free Book Online Page B

she’d made past their house on her way to Lawrence. The Escort stood in the circular drive, alongside a newer car, one of the Honda hybrids. They didn’t recognize the hybrid model—no one who lived out here would own a car too small to take the punishment of country roads—but it had Douglas County plates, and a bumper sticker that proclaimed WITCHES HEAL.
    Susan had waited until eleven to drive over, not wanting to seem like a busybody. Lara came with her, hoping her mother and Gina Haring would get into some deep conversation so she could slip upstairs to retrieve her diary.
    The morning after she and Chip had broken into the house, her father had bolted two large planks across the coal-cellar doors. Lara didn’t know how she’d get in again uninvited unless Gina drove off and left the doors unlocked, and she couldn’t sneak through the fields a million times a day to see if that had happened.
    Susan was finally agreeing with Lara’s suggestion to leave the pie with a note for Gina when Gina opened the kitchen door. Lara couldn’t keep back a little gasp of admiration. Gina had on jeans, but they’d been ironed, and the big sweater she wore was made from yarn so soft Lara wanted to reach over to pet it. Not even her aunt Mimi wore such expensive-looking clothes. Gina also looked older than Lara had expected, her face thin, with well-defined bones, her dark hair combed severely behind her ears. Although it was Saturday morning, she even had on makeup, and tiny gold earrings.
    Susan rushed through the business of introductions: My name is—You met my husband—my daughter—If there’s anything you need—Here’s a pie.
    After a moment’s hesitation, Gina invited them into the kitchen. No one else was there, which made Lara wonder if the hybrid was hers along with the Ford. Gina didn’t smile or say anything, just stood holding the pie as if it were a foreign object she’d never seen before. Lara flushed, wondering what she and Susan could have done to make her so unfriendly.
    â€œI re-created the recipe as best I could from my husband’s great-great-grandmother’s papers,” Susan was saying. “Of course, she didn’t list ingredients in detail, or proportions, but I did as much research into pioneer baking as I could. Since you’re going to be living here, I thought you’d be interested in a pie that comes out of the history of this area. The apples are from the trees behind this house, and they still have branches going back to the 1850s. I think it’s pretty authentic.”
    â€œIt also tastes good,” Lara ventured, seeing that Gina was looking even more forbidding.
    That made Gina laugh. Her front teeth were crooked, which seemed somehow glamorous to Lara, the little flaw that made the rest of her look perfect.
    She finally murmured something that might have been a thank-you, adding, “I’m not much interested in pioneer history.”
    â€œOh, but once you start learning about it, you’ll change your mind.” Susan ignored Gina’s chilly tone. “This little triangle, where we and Fremantles and Schapens live, was at the center of some of America’s most violent battles in the 1850s. Not this house, but the people who lived here—this house wasn’t built until 1871, but the Fremantles, and my husband’s family, even—”
    â€œMom!” Lara interrupted, embarrassed because Gina was looking stern. “She doesn’t care about all that stuff, she just said!”
    Gina said, “It’s always engaging to hear from someone who is enthusiastic about a subject.”
    The words showed interest, but her tone was cold, smooth, like ice cream. Embarrassed though she’d been by her mother, Lara couldn’t bear for anyone else to make fun of her. She said abruptly, “It’s freezing in here. You know, if you don’t turn the furnace on, the