“Is there any doubt he did it himself?”

“You mean did someone come into the garage, bind and gag him, strap him into the car, then undo the ropes when he was unconscious, assuming he’d die and it’d look like suicide? Give me a break, Warshawski.”

When I finally finished the conversation I was in a worse mood than I’d been at the start. I’d made the cardinal sin of giving Murray far more information than I’d received in exchange. As a result he knew as much about Pankowski and Ferraro as I did. Since he had a staff who could follow a range of inquiries, he might well untangle what lay behind Humboldt’s and Chigwell’s lies before I did.

I’m as competitive as the next person—more than many of them—but it wasn’t just fear of finishing behind Murray that upset me. It was Louisa’s right to privacy—she didn’t deserve the press pawing through her past. And it kept bugging me—irrationally, I agree—that I’d never been home when Nancy tried calling the day she died.

I looked balefully at the partly cooked chicken. The only scrap I hadn’t given Murray was the letter to Mariners Rest I’d found in Nancy’s car. And now that young Art had gone missing I wasn’t sure who I could talk to about it. I poured myself a drink (one of the ten warning signs—do you turn to alcohol when you’re upset or frustrated?) and went into the living room.

Mariners Rest was a large life and health insurer based in Boston, but they had a big branch office in Chicago. I’d seen their TV ads a million times, with a confident-looking sailor leaning against a hammock—rest with the mariners and sleep with their peace of mind.

It would be tricky explaining to a corporate actuary where I’d gotten the data. Almost as hard as trying to explain it to Big Art. Insurance companies guard their actuarial data with the care usually associated with the Holy Grail. So even if they’d accept my word on having a right to the documents, it would be hard to get them to tell me if they meant anything—like were the data accurate. They’d have to get clearance from their home office in Boston and that could take a month or more.

Caroline might know what the document meant, but she wasn’t speaking to me. The only other person I could think of to ask was Ron Kappelman. The insurance information didn’t look as though it had anything to do with the SCRAP recycling plant, but Nancy had liked Ron, she worked closely with him. Maybe he’d see the same exciting possibilities in the letter that she had.

By a mercy his home number was listed, and—greater miracle still—he was in. When I told him what I had he seemed most interested, asking a lot of sharp questions about how I’d come to have it. I responded vaguely that Nancy had bequeathed me responsibility for some of her private affairs, and I got him to agree to stop by at nine the next morning before he went to work.