“What does Louisa say? Have you asked her?”

“She practically killed me. Practically killed herself—she got so upset she almost choked to death. Screaming how I was ungrateful, she’d worked herself to the bone for me, I never wanted for anything, why’d I have to go nosing around in something that wasn’t any of my damned business. So I knew I couldn’t go on about it with her. But I have to find out. I know you could do it for me.”

“Caroline, maybe you’re better off not knowing. Even if I knew how to go about it—missing persons aren’t a big part of my business—if it’s that painful to Louisa, you might prefer not to find out.”

“You know who he is, don’t you!” she cried,

I shook my head. “I have no idea, honestly. Why did you think I do?”

She looked down. “I’m sure she told Gabriella. I thought maybe Gabriella told you.”

I moved over to sit down next to her. “Maybe Louisa told my mother, but if so, it wasn’t the kind of thing Gabriella thought I ought to know about. As God is my witness, I don’t know.”

She gave a little smile at that. “So will you find him for me?”

If I hadn’t known her all her life, it would have been easier to say no. I specialize in financial crime. Missing persons takes a certain kind of skill, and certain kinds of contacts I’ve never bothered cultivating. And this guy’d been gone more than a quarter of a century.

But in addition to whining and teasing and tagging along when I didn’t want her, Caroline used to adore me. When I went off to college she’d race to meet my train if I came home for the weekend, copper pigtails flying around her head, plump legs pumping as hard as they could. She even went out for basketball because I did. She almost drowned following me into Lake Michigan when she was four. The memories were endless. Her blue eyes still looked at me with total trust. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t keep from responding.

“You got any idea where to start this search?”

“Well, you know. It had to be someone who lived in East Side. She never went anyplace else. I mean, she’d never even been to the Loop until your mother took us there to look at the Christmas decorations when I was three.”

East Side was an all-white neighborhood to the east of South Chicago. It was cut off from the city by the Calumet River, and its residents tended to lead parochial, inbred lives. Louisa’s parents still lived there in the house she’d grown up in.

“That’s helpful,” I said encouragingly. “What do you figure the population was in 1960? Twenty thousand? And only half of them were men. And many of those were children. You got any other ideas?”

“No,” she said doggedly. “That’s why I need a detective.”

Before I could say anything else the doorbell rang. Caroline looked at her watch. “That might be Aunt Connie. She sometimes comes this late. Be back in a minute.”