Murder at the Foul Line Read Online Free PDF Page A

confided, and hardly ever had a real customer in the
     shop, so this was a treat for him.
    So why pay rent? Why not work out of his house?
    “Buying,” Haas said. “I’ve got a presence in a high-traffic mall. That keeps the noncollectors aware of me. Uncle Fred dies,
     they inherit his stamp collection, who do they bring it to? Somebody they heard of, and they not only heard of Hubert Haas,
     they know he’s for real, because he’s got a store in the Glendale Mall to prove it. And then there’s the walk-in whobuys a starter album for his kid, the collector who runs out of hinges or Showgard mounts or needs to replace a lost pair
     of tongs. Helps with the rent, but buying’s the real reason.”
    Keller found a comforting quantity of stamps to buy from Haas, including an inexpensive but curiously elusive set of Venezuelan
     airmails. He walked out imbued with a sense of accomplishment and took a few minutes to walk around the mall, to see what
     further accomplishments might be there for the taking.
    The mall had the sort of stores malls usually have, and he found it easy enough to scan their window displays and walk on
     by. Until he came to the library.
    Who had ever heard of a public library in a shopping mall? But that’s what this was, occupying substantial space on the second
     and third levels, and complete with a turnstile and, yes, a metal detector, its purpose unapparent to Keller. Was there a
     problem of folks toting guns in hollowed-out books?
    No matter. Keller wasn’t carrying a gun or anything metallic but a handful of coins and his car keys. He entered without raising
     any alarms, and ten minutes later he was scanning back issues of the
Indianapolis Star
, learning all manner of things about Meredith Grondahl.

    “It’s pretty interesting,” he told Dot. “There’s this company called Central Indiana Finance. They buy and sell mortgages
     and do a lot of refinancing. The stock’s traded on Nasdaq. The symbol is CIFI, but when people talk about it, they refer to
     it as Indy Fi.”
    “If that’s interesting,” she said, “I’d hate to hear your idea of a real yawner.”
    “That’s not the interesting part.”
    “No kidding.”
    “The stock’s very volatile,” he said. “It pays a high dividend, which makes it attractive to investors, but it could be vulnerable
     to changes in interest rates, which makes it speculative, I guess. And a couple of hedge funds have shorted the stock heavily,
     along with a lot of private traders.
    “Let me know when we get to the interesting part, will you, Keller?”
    “Well, it’s all kind of interesting,” he said. “You walk around in a shopping mall, you don’t expect to find out this stuff.”
    “Here I am, finding it out without even leaving the house.”
    “There’s this class-action suit,” he said. “Brought on behalf of the Indy Fi stockholders, though probably ninety-nine percent
     of them are opposed to the whole idea of the suit. The suit charges the company’s management with irregularities and cover-ups,
     that sort of thing. It’s the people who shorted the stock who are behind the suit, the hedge fund guys, and their whole reason
     for bringing it seems to be to destroy confidence in the company and further depress the price of the stock.”
    “Can they do that?”
    “Anybody can sue anybody. All they risk, really, is their legal expenses and having the suit get tossed out of court. Meanwhile
     the company has to defend the suit, and the controversy keeps the stock price depressed, and even if the suit gets settled
     in the company’s favor, the short interests will have had a chance to make money.”
    “I don’t really care about any of this,” Dot said, “but I have to admit you’re starting to get me interested, although I couldn’t
     tell you why. And our quarry’s going to testify for the people bringing the suit?”
    “No.”
    “No?”
    “They subpoenaed him,” he said. “Meredith Grondahl. He’s an