“You know how I feel about smoking,” I said, annoyed. “I expect Tony would be alive today if he hadn’t had a two-pack-a-day habit—I still hear him wheezing and coughing in my nightmares. But how much time is smoking going to shave from Louisa’s life at this point? She’s in there by herself, got nothing but the tube to keep her company. I’m just saying it’d make her feel better mentally and won’t make her any worse physically.”

Caroline set her mouth in an uncompromising line. “No. I don’t even want to talk about it.”

I sighed and got down on the floor to help her with the loose papers. When we had them all collated again I looked at her suspiciously: she had reverted to her tense abstracted mood.

“Well, I think it’s time for me to push off. I hope the Lady Tigers go all the way again.”

“I—Vic. I need to talk to you. I need your help.”

“Caroline, I came down and pranced around in my basketball uniform for you. I saw Louisa. Not that I grudge the time with her, but how many items you got on your agenda tonight?”

“I want to hire you. Professionally. I need your help as a detective,” she said defiantly.

“What for? You give SCRAP’S money to the church Lenten fund and now you want me to find it for you again?”

“Goddamn you, Vic! Could you stop acting like I’m still five years old and treat me seriously for a minute?”

“If you wanted to hire me, why couldn’t you have said something about it on the phone?” I asked. “Your step-by-step approach to me isn’t exactly designed to make me feel serious about you.”

“I wanted you to see Ma before I talked to you about it,” she muttered, looking at her graph. “I thought if you saw how bad off she is, you’d think it was more important.”

I sat at the end of the table. “Caroline, lay it out for me. I promise I’ll listen as seriously to you as to any other potential client. But tell me the whole story, front, middle, and end. Then we can decide if you really need a detective, if it should be me, and so on.”

She took a breath and said quickly, “I want you to find my father for me.”

I was quiet for a minute.

“Isn’t that a job for a detective?” she demanded.

“Do you know who he is?” I asked gently.

“No, that’s partly what I need you to find out for me. You see how bad Ma is, Vic. She’s going to die soon.” She tried to keep her voice matter-of-fact, but it quavered a little. “Her folks always treated me like—I don’t know—not the same way they are to my cousins. Second-class, I guess. When she dies I’d like to have some kind of family. I mean, maybe my old man will turn out to be an asshole jerk. The kind of guy who lets a girl go through what Ma did when she was pregnant might be. But maybe he’d have folks who’d like me. And if he didn’t, at least I’d know.”