“Caroline, I’ve known you twenty-six years, and you’ve pulled tricks that would shame Oliver North, but this one has got to head the list. After whining and snuffling you got me to agree to look for your old man. Then you called me off without any reason. Now, to top it all off, you lied to the police about my involvement with Nancy. You want to explain why? Without resorting to Hans Christian Andersen?” I was having trouble keeping my voice below a shout.

“What are you on your high horse about?” she said belligerently. “You did give Nancy advice about—”

“Shut up!” I snapped. “You’re not talking to the cops, sweetie pie. I can just picture you blushing and winking away your tears with Sergeant McGonnigal. But I know what I told Nancy that night as well as you do. So cut the crap and tell me why you lied about me to the police.”

“I didn’t! You try and prove it! Nancy did come by that night. You did tell her to talk to someone in Jurshak’s office. And she’s dead now.”

I shook my head like a wet dog, trying to clear my brain. “Could we start this at the beginning? Why did you tell me to stop hunting for your old man?”

She looked at the desktop. “I decided it wasn’t fair to Ma. Going behind her back when it upset her so much.”

“Whew boy,” I said. “Hold it there. Let me get onto Cardinal Bernardin and the Pope to start beatification proceedings. When did you ever put Louisa, or anyone else, ahead of what you wanted?”

“Stop it!” she shouted, bursting into tears. “Believe me or not, I don’t care. I love my mother and I don’t want anyone hurting her no matter what you may think.”

I looked at her warily. Caroline might bat a few tears around as part of her tragic orphan routine, but she wasn’t prone to sobbing fits.

“Okay,” I said slowly. “I take it back. That was cruel. Is that why you sicced the cops on me? To punish me for saying I was continuing the investigation?”

She blew her nose noisily. “It wasn’t like that!”

“What was it like then?”

She caught her lower lip in her teeth. “Nancy called me Tuesday morning. She said she’d gotten threatening phone calls and she thought someone was following her.”

“What were they threatening her about?”

“The plant, of course.”

“Caroline, I want you to be absolutely clear on this. Did she specifically say the calls were about the plant?”

She opened her mouth, then took a breath. “No,” she finally muttered. “I just assumed they were. Because it was the last thing she and I had been talking about.”

“But you went ahead and told the police that she was killed because of the recycling plant. And that I told her who to talk to. Do you understand how outrageous that is?”

“But, Vic. It’s not just a wild guess. I mean—”