“She isn’t still alive, is she?” I asked, startled.

“Oh, no. She died in 1979. But you know how you can be so fascinated by a dead person that they feel really present for you. I used to tease Marc about it, about how I could never-” She dissolved suddenly into tears.

I pulled some clean tissues from the stack I’d packed before starting out today, but didn’t try to stop her crying. She’d loved him when he was alive, that much was clear, and now she was likely to have her own dead hero to keep alive.

“It isn’t fair. He was so smart and so loving, he didn’t deserve to die,” she gulped out. “I don’t believe he killed himself. I know people like Delaney laughed at me, just the way I laugh at her with her stupid crush on Simon Hendricks, but Marc was different, he was special, he never would have gotten drunk and jumped into a creepy old pond.”

“That’s what his sister thinks, too-that he wouldn’t have done that, I mean,” I said when Aretha’s sobs had died down and she’d wiped her face. “No, don’t apologize. Grief keeps hitting us at unexpected moments, knocking the wind out … But do you know why Marc-Mr. Whitbywent out there? Did Kylie have a house in New Solway?”

She swallowed the rest of her Coke. “No, she only ever lived in Bronzeville, except the years she spent in Africa. And she didn’t have any family in those western suburbs: I did a search through Marc’s notes, because I wondered the same thing.”

“Did Mr. Whitby ever mention Calvin Bayard?” I asked.

“Is he in charge of Bayard Publishing? We’re not supposed to go to them; Mr. Hendricks is afraid they’ll scoop our stories because they own magazines with tons more reporters and money than we have. Marc would have known that.” She stopped. “Oh. Does Mr. Bayard live in New Solway? Do you think Mare went out to see him without telling us because he knew it would annoy Mr. Hendricks?”

I shook my head. “At this point, I don’t know enough to have theories. But it sounds like one possibility.”

“I can look through his notes and see if Marc says anything about Bayard, but he never mentioned, well, either Mr. Bayard, or Bayard Publishing to me.”

“Could I see Marc’s notes?” I tried not to sound like Peppy with a rabbit in view.

She wrinkled her face up in doubt. “I don’t think Mr. Hendricks would like it if I let his stuff leave the building. But I can see what Marc left at his desk if you’ll read it here.”

I followed her out of the conference room and on down the hall. Like most offices, the floor was laid out in a square around the elevators and bathrooms. We ended up at the corner near where we’d started, at a row of cubicles facing an interior wall. A few people were working at their desks,