When she was back in her hotel room, she tried Facebook. She typed “Regina Varga,” but got no result. Then she began the process of eliminating variations. There was no Reggie, no Reggie V, no Regina V, no R Varga, no Buffalo Reggie, and the initials RV brought thousands of possibilities, most of which were vehicles. Just the name Regina stimulated another avalanche. She spent hours trying to look at every one, but found none that could be the right woman. Before she gave up for the night, she spent a last hour on the variations of Kenmore and printing.

The tension was rising. After several nights of not hearing from Stella, Leah had begun to check her phone frequently to see if she had failed to hear a ring.

Her next two nights were spent in Black Rock, another older area, this time on the northwest side of the city, much closer to Kenmore, where Reggie’s print shop was supposed to be. There were a few Eastern European enclaves, but she got nothing out of her explorations except to taste some unfamiliar savory dishes with reddish sauce. As she was on her way to her third restaurant of the evening, she felt her phone vibrating in her pocket. She took it out and saw she had an email. “Where have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you. Don’t call or text. Come see me. Stella.”

Leah typed in an email, “I’m heading for your house now.”

She drove quickly to Stella’s neighborhood. She had a feeling she hadn’t quite identified as she drove along the old residential street. The trees were big along Stella’s block, and the houses were small. They were all about the same—two-story houses that were so narrow they looked as though they were shrugging their shoulders. There was always a wooden porch up about six feet, and a door that opened from there into a small entry area. Beyond it in the hall were stairs to the second floor on one side and the entrance to the parlor on the other, with a straight hallway between them that led past the dining room to the kitchen. The second floor was always a landing with three very small bedrooms around it.