Murder at the Foul Line Read Online Free PDF

assistant to the chief financial officer, and he’s supposed to
     testify about irregularities in their accounting procedures, but he’s no whistle-blower. He’s more of a cheerleader. As far
     as he’s concerned, Indy Fi’s a great company, and his personal 401(k) is full of the company’s stock. He can’t really damage
     either side in the suit.”
    “Then why would somebody decide to summon you to Indianapolis?”
    “That’s what I’ve been wondering.”
    He thought the connection might have broken, but she was just taking her time thinking it over. “Well,” she said at length,
     “even though this gets us interested, Keller, we’re also disinterested, if you get my drift.”
    “It doesn’t change things.”
    “That’s my drift, all right. We’ve got an assignment and the fee’s half paid already, so the whys and wherefores don’t make
     any difference. Somebody doesn’t want the guy to testify about something, and as soon as you nail that down, you can come
     on home and play with your stamps. You bought some today, didn’t you tell me that earlier? So come on home and you can paste
     them in your book. And we’ll get paid, and you can buy some more.”

    The next morning, Keller got up early and drove straight to Grondahl’s house in Carmel. He parked across the street and sat
     behind the wheel of his rented Ford, a newspaper propped on the steering wheel. He read the national and international news,
     then the sports. The Pacers, he noted, had won lastnight, in double overtime. The local sportswriter described the game as thrilling and said the shot from half-court that fell
     in just as the second overtime period ran out demonstrated “the moral integrity and indomitable spirit of our guys.” Keller
     wished he’d taken it a small step further, claiming the ball’s unerring flight to the basket as proof of the Almighty’s clear
     preference for the local heroes.
    Reading, he kept an eye on Grondahl’s front door, waiting for Greenie to appear. He still hadn’t done so by the time Keller
     was done with the sports pages. Well, it was early, he told himself, and turned to the business section. The Dow had been
     up, he learned, in heavy volume.
    He knew what this meant—he wasn’t an idiot—but it was something he never followed because it didn’t concern him or hold interest
     for him. Keller earned good money when he worked, and he didn’t live high, and for years he had saved a substantial portion
     of the money that came into his hands. But he’d never bought stocks or mutual funds with it. He tucked some of it into a safe-deposit
     box and the rest into savings accounts. The money grew slowly if it grew at all, but it didn’t shrink, and there was something
     to be said for that.
    Eventually he reached a point where retirement was an option, and realized that he’d need a hobby to fill the golden years.
     He took up stamp collecting again, but in a far more serious fashion this time around. He started spending serious money on
     stamps, and his retirement savings waned as his collection grew.
    So he’d never managed to get interested in the world of stocks and bonds. This morning, for some reason, he found the business
     section interesting, not least because of an article on Central Indiana Finance. CIFI, which opened the day at$43.27 a share, had fluctuated wildly, up five points at its high for the day, down as much as seven, and finishing the day
     at $40.35. On the one hand, he learned, the shorts were scrambling to cover before the ex-dividend date, when they would be
     liable for the company’s substantial dividend. On the other, players were continuing to short the stock and drive the price
     down, encouraged by the pending class-action lawsuit.
    He was thinking about the article when the door opened and Meredith Grondahl emerged.
    Grondahl was dressed for the office, wearing a dark gray suit and a white shirt and a striped tie and carrying a briefcase.
     That was