“Please don’t turn this off with your flippancy. You involved me. I want to know if I contributed to a man’s despair.”

I tried to control my anger. “You mean did I go throw his ugly past in his face to the point where he couldn’t stand it and turned on the monoxide?”

“Something like that, yes.” Max was very grave, his strong Viennese accent heavier than usual. “You know, Victoria, in your search for the truth you often force people to face things about themselves they are better off not knowing. I can forgive you for doing it with Lotty—she’s tough, she can take it. And you don’t spare yourself. But because you are very strong you don’t see that other people cannot deal with these truths.”

“Look, Max—I don’t know why Chigwell tried to kill himself. I haven’t seen a medical report so I don’t even know that he did—maybe he had a stroke as he was turning on the car engine. But if it was because of the questions I was asking, I don’t feel one minute of remorse. He’s involved in a cover-up for Humboldt Chemical. What or why or how serious I don’t know. But that has nothing to do with his personal strengths and weaknesses—it has to do with the lives of a lot of other people. If—and it’s a mighty big if—if I’d known two weeks ago that my seeing him would make him turn on the gas, you’d better believe I’d do it again.” By the time I finished speaking I was breathing hard, my mouth very tight.

“I do believe you, Victoria. And I have no wish to talk to you in such a mood. But I do have one request—that you not think of me the next time you need help in one of your chases.” He hung up before I could say anything.

“Well, damn you anyway, you righteous bastard,” I shouted at the dead phone. “You think you’re my mother? Or just the scales of justice?”

Despite my rage I felt uneasy—I’d sicced Murray Ryerson on the guy in the middle of the night. Maybe they’d hounded him and his imagination had converted a minor peccadillo to murder. Hoping to ease my conscience, I tracked the crime editor down at the Herald-Star’s city desk. He was indignant—he’d sent reporters out to question the doctor about Pankowski and Ferraro, but they’d never been allowed in.

“Don’t give me hounding, Miss Wise-ass. You’re the one who talked to the guy. There’s something you’re not telling me, but I’m not even going to speculate on what it is. We’ve got some gofers down at that Xerxes plant and we’ll get on it faster without mixed signals from you. We’re running a lovely human-interest story on Mrs. Pankowski tomorrow, and I expect to have something from that lawyer, Manheim, who represented them,”

Murray did finally part grudgingly with more details about Chigwell’s attempted suicide. He had disappeared after lunch, but his sister didn’t miss him since she was busy around the house. At four she decided to go to the garage to check over her gardening gear so she’d be ready for spring. Her comments to the press did not include any mention of me or Xerxes, just that her brother had been troubled the last several days. He was prone to depression and she hadn’t thought much about it at the time.