She shot me a look of venom and snapped the door to. I could see her shadow outlined against the glass upper half of the door as she hesitated over a possible retaliatory strike, then her silhouette faded as she marched off toward home.

“If you don’t want to talk about your relations with Nancy, maybe you can just give me the same information you gave her about Big Art’s interest in SCRAP’s recycling plant.”

He gripped the front of the pressed-wood desk and looked at me imploringly. “I didn’t tell her anything. I hardly knew her. And I don’t know what my dad is doing about their recycling plant. Now can you please go away? I’d be as happy as—as anybody if you found her killer, but you must see I don’t know anything about her.”

I scowled in frustration. He was upset, but it sure wasn’t because of me. He had to have been Nancy’s lover. Had to. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been in church this morning. But I couldn’t think of any way to get him to trust me enough to talk about it.

“Yeah, I guess I’ll go. One last question. How well do you know Leon Haas?”

He looked at me blankly. “I never heard of him.”

“Steve Dresberg?”

His face went totally white and he fainted on me.

19

You Can’t Go Home Again

By the time I got home it was past dark. I had stayed in South Chicago long enough to make sure young Art was fit to drive. It seemed unnecessarily cruel to turn him over to the ward heelers for comfort, but my display of charity didn’t make him any more willing to talk. Frustrated, I finally left him at the door of the ward office.

The drive north brought me no solace. I walked wearily up the front walk, dropped my keys as I fumbled with the inner lobby door, then dropped them again as I was going upstairs. Bone-tired, I turned back down the stairs to retrieve them. Behind Mr. Contreras’s door, Peppy gave a welcoming bark. As I headed back up I heard his locks scraping back behind me. I stiffened, waiting for the flow.

“That you, doll? You just getting back? Your friend’s funeral was today, huh? You haven’t been out drinking, have you? People think it’s a way to drown their sorrows, but believe me, it only causes you more grief than you started with. I should know—I tried it more than once. But then when Clara died I took one drink and remembered how it used to get her down, me coming home from a funeral with a good one tied on. I said I wouldn’t do it, not for her, not after all the times she told me how stupid I was, crying over some friend when I was too drunk to get his name out straight.”

“No,” I said, forcing a smile, holding my hand out for the dog to lick. “I haven’t been drinking. I had to see a whole bunch of people. Not a lot of fun.”