The only reason I believed her at all—about the threat, that is—was because I’d gotten my own call. Until Caroline showed up I’d been assuming my threat came from Art Jurshak because I’d accosted his son. Or because I’d talked to Ron Kappelman. But what if it came from Humboldt?

When the orange clock readout glowed three-fifteen I turned on the light and sat up in bed to use the phone. Murray Ryerson had left the paper forty-five minutes earlier. He wasn’t home yet. On the chance, I tried the Golden Glow—Sal shuts down at four. Third time lucky.

“Vic! I’m overwhelmed. You had insomnia and you thought of me. I can see the headline now—‘Girl Detective Can’t Sleep for Love.’ ”

“And I thought it was the onions I had for dinner. Must’ve been what was wrong with me the day I agreed to marry Dick. You know our little conversation yesterday?”

“What little conversation?” he snorted. “I told you stuff about Nancy Cleghorn and you sat with Velcro on your mouth.”

“Something came back to me,” I said limpidly.

“Better make it good, Warshawski.”

“Curtis Chigwell,” I said. “He’s a doctor who lives in Hinsdale. Used to work at a plant down in South Chicago.”

“He killed Nancy Cleghorn?”

“As far as I know he never met Nancy Cleghorn.”

I felt rather than heard Murray sputter. “It’s been a tough day, V.I. Don’t make me play Twenty Questions with you.”

I reached down next to the bed for a T-shirt. Somehow the night was making me feel too exposed in my nakedness. As I leaned over the lamplight highlighted dust in the corner of the bedroom. If I lived past next week, I’d vacuum.

“That’s what I’ve got for you,” I said slowly. “Twenty questions. No answers. Curtis Chigwell knows something that he doesn’t want to tell. Twenty-four hours ago I didn’t think it had the remotest possible connection to Nancy. But I got a threatening phone call tonight telling me to bug out of South Chicago.”

“From Chigwell?” I could almost feel Murray’s breath through the phone line.

“No. I thought it had to come from Jurshak or Dresberg. Only thing, a couple of hours later I heard the same thing from someone who knows me only through the Xerxes side—the plant that Chigwell used to work for.”

I explained the discrepancies I’d gotten between Manheim and Humboldt’s version of Pankowski and Ferraro’s suit—without telling him about hearing it from Gustav Humboldt himself. “Chigwell knows what the truth is and why. He just doesn’t want to say. And if the Xerxes people are threatening me, he’ll know why.”

Murray tried a thousand different ways to get me to tell him more about it. I just couldn’t give him Caroline and Louisa—Louisa didn’t deserve to have her unhappy past spinning around the streets of Chicago. And I didn’t know anything else. Anything about what possible connection there could be between Nancy’s death and Joey Pankowski.

Murray finally said, “You’re not trying to help me, you’re getting me to do your legwork. I can feel it. But it’s not a bad story—I’ll send someone out to talk to the guy.”