Lieutenant Schorr and a man I didn’t recognize both started talking at once. “Just a minute,” I protested. “You busy people all know who I am: V I. Warshawski, Vicki only and solely to Captain Mallory. I’d like your names and affiliations.”

A highly polished specimen next to Derek Hatfield was an assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District. Along with Deputy Protheroe, Schorr had brought an assistant state’s attorney from DuPage with him-a man who looked like the U.S. attorney’s twin brother: young, white, thick brown hair perfectly combed. Everyone in the room had a sidekick but me. I wished I’d brought Peppy.

Mikes were set up on the table; a young woman in a Chicago PD uniform sat in a corner with sound equipment and earphones. The room and the sound system were as modern as anything I’d seen in the sheriff’s office last Sunday night; I hoped Schorr was impressed.

After the pause for civilities, Schorr and the U.S. attorney both jumped in again, Schorr wanting to know why I had fled before he questioned me, the attorney angry because the Feds had been hunting Benjamin Sadawi for four weeks-I’d been within centimeters of him without telling them.

“Benjamin Sadawi? Is that the boy who’s been a dishwasher at that fancy Gold Coast school?” I paused briefly, hoping they would stop picturing a big man in a head scarf and start seeing a skinny teenager. “I didn’t know I was within centimeters of him. Larchmont Hall was empty when I got there. Lieutenant Schorr’s men thought whoever was hiding in the attic jumped out a third-floor window when he-or she-heard me come in.”

“It didn’t make you suspicious when you found Arab-language books up in that attic?” Derek asked.

“The whole situation was so confusing that I didn’t know how to make sense of it.”

“You went upstairs, didn’t you?” the U.S. attorney asked. He and the DuPage attorney had been introduced as Jack and Orville, but they looked so much alike that I couldn’t remember which was which.

When I nodded, he said, “What did you think when you saw that some of the books were in Arabic?”

I wrinkled up my face, puzzled woman thinking. “There were a bunch of old kids’ books with Calvin Bayard’s name in the flyleaf. The house had belonged to the Drummond family-Geraldine Graham’s father-so I wondered why Mr. Bayard’s books were there. Then I saw the Arab-English dictionary and thought maybe Mr. Bayard was coming over in the middle of the night to study Arabic. I thought he might be translating his childhood books or something.”

“You couldn’t possibly have thought that!” Orville or Jack slapped the tabletop.

“No, you couldn’t have, Vicki,” Bobby spoke quietly, but sternly. “Tonight isn’t an occasion for joking. Since September 11, every law enforcement officer in this country has been stretched past the point of endurance. So give us straightforward answers to our questions.”

Terry Finchley suggested I start by explaining what I’d been doing in Larchmont in the first place. For what seemed to be the thousandth time, I went through my litany about Marcus Whitby’s death and his sister’s hiring me to investigate.