The room overlooked the back garden. I opened the French doors and looked out on a small balcony. You wouldn’t have to be a great athlete, only reasonably confident, to move from the balcony to a fire escape screwed into the brickwork about a yard away.

“So you went to bed at ten-thirty, you waited until Elsbetta’s light went out, then you climbed down, went out the back gate and headed for the western suburbs. You have a driver’s license, or anyway access to a car. You did your business out at the Larchmont estate, and retraced your steps. Only you were so worn out that you overslept and missed your algebra class this morning.”

She scowled ferociously. “What are you trying to prove, that you can stalk me? You know that’s against the law in Illinois.”

“Lots of things are against the law here. I’m not stalking you-I’m just

a reasonably competent investigator. If I wanted to go to the trouble, I could probably find traces of your clothes on that fire escape: rough metal like that always snags some fibers.”

While she tried to think of a response, I went over to inspect the photographs on the mantelpiece. Calvin Bayard and an eight-or nine-year-old Catherine fly-fishing, he with his easy smile, she with her face furrowed in intensity. Calvin with a short dark woman; Catherine with the same woman. Various other family groupings. It wasn’t immediately clear which ones were her parents.

“What do you have that’s mine?” she demanded of my back.

“Your little teddy bear. It came off your backpack in my hand when you broke away from me Sunday night.”

“Oh. That. You can keep it.”

I could see her in a mirror over the mantel. Her little face was pinched with anxiety. She wasn’t as unconcerned as she was trying to sound.

“Did you not know Marcus Whitby was dead when you went back last night?” I spoke to the trophies, keeping an eye on her in the mirror. “What are you talking about?”

“You must have been worried when he missed your rendezvous on Sunday. Or did you just assume I had frightened him off?”

“I don’t know any Marcus Whitby, so stop trying to pretend you’re, like, Jack McCoy.”

I swung around to look at her. “You don’t know Marcus Whitby? The man I fished out of the Larchmont pool? You don’t know he’s dead?” Her eyes and jaw opened in what looked like genuine bewilderment. “You found a dead man out there? What happened to him?”

“Don’t you look at the paper or the news? When you log onto your fancy computer there, doesn’t CNN or NBC or something come up to tell you what’s happening outside the Gold Coast?”

She stiffened. “For your information, I’m very involved in current events. But that doesn’t mean I read about every dead person in the world. Is that why you were at Larchmont? To look for him? Who was he?”

I sat down on one of the ottomans in front of the fireplace and gestured to her to take the other. “Marcus Whitby worked for T-square magazine.” She gave the elaborate shrug of adolescent indifference.