“Can we do it now? I know its late, and I can tell you’ve got a cold, but she’d like to see you tonight. Before all the funeral arrangements get so far under way that they can’t be undone.”

I thought longingly of my bed, but I infused what brightness I could into my hoarse bark and said I’d be on my way in short order. Mr. Contreras frowned at me and deliberately rattled the stack of dishes.

Amy Blount heard him. She apologized again for disturbing me so late, but only perfunctorily-she wanted me to see Harriet now. She did, however, offer to bring Whitby’s sister to me: Harriet was staying with her parents at the Drake; Amy would drive her up to my place before taking her to the hotel.

When we’d hung up, I managed to shoo Mr. Contreras out of the apartment. He disapproved heatedly of my setting up an appointment this late in the day: I was sick, these weren’t people he knew, nothing was so important it couldn’t wait until morning.

“You’re right,” I said. “I’m sure you are, but this is the dead man’s sister. She needs special consideration. If you take the dogs downstairs, I can rest for twenty minutes until she gets here.”

He huffed and puffed, but when I pulled the blanket up to my chin and stretched out he rattled the dishes out to the kitchen and left.

CHAPTER 8

Twinkle,Twinkle, Little Light

(Wonder If You’re There Tonight)

Aloud knock on my own door jerked me awake forty minutes later. I hadn’t heard the bell for the simple reason that Mr. Contreras had been on the watch for my visitors: he let them in and brought them upstairs before they could announce themselves. It’s a perennial source of conflict between us, his monitoring of my company. At least the pulse of anger I felt at his intrusion woke me up enough to greet the two women with some show of alertness.

Amy Blount looked much as she had when I last saw her, her long dreadlocks twisted in a bundle behind her head, her expression wary, solemn. She had an arm around the other woman, whose face had the drained, pinched look that follows on loss. We murmured introductions and condolences. While I got them settled on the couch, with herbal tea for Harriet Whitby and me, a glass of wine for Amy Blount, I managed to force Mr. Contreras to return to the first floor. He blurted out a final admonishment, directed at my guests, that I wasn’t to stay up late: I was sick, remember?

As soon as he disappeared, Amy began. “When we heard your name on TV, I told Harriet I knew you. We’d been talking over what we could do, because it’s outrageous to think Marc committed suicide. He was the most, oh, not optimistic, I wouldn’t say that-“

“Hopeful. He was a hopeful man,” Harriet Whitby said. “And he knew

how much our parents not just loved him, but relied on him to make a difference with his life. You know, he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his piece on the Federal Negro Theater Project and he’d won several other awards. He wouldn’t do something like this to Daddy and Mother.”