I asked her if she had a mother or a sister or anyone she could stay with. She shrugged helplessly again and said all her family lived in Oklahoma. I looked at her impatiently. She wasn’t the kind of stray I wanted to befriend—if I did it once, she’d cling to me forever. Instead, I told her to call the fire department if she went into labor suddenly and didn’t know what to do about it—they’d send paramedics over to help her out.

As I got up to leave, I asked her to call me if Howard showed up. “And for goodness’ sake, don’t tell him you told me—he’ll only hit you again. Just go down to the corner grocery and use their pay phone. I really need to talk to him.”

She turned pathetically forlorn eyes to me. I doubted very much if I’d ever hear from her. It would be beyond her powers to deceive her domineering husband even over so simple a matter as a phone call. I felt a pang of guilt leaving her behind, but it was swallowed by fatigue as I got to the corner of Addison and Pulaski.

I hailed a Yellow Cab there to take me crosstown to Lotty’s. Five miles on city streets is a slow ride and I went to sleep in the lurching, elderly vehicle about the time we crossed Milwaukee Avenue. The movement of the taxi made me think I was back on board the Lucella. Bledsoe was standing next to me, holding onto the self-loader. He kept staring at me with his compelling gray eyes, repeating, “Vic: I wasn’t on the plane. I wasn’t on the plane.”

I woke up with a start as we turned onto Sheffield and the driver asked me for Lotty’s apartment number. As I paid him off and made my weary way up to the second floor, my dream remained very real to me. It contained an important message about Bledsoe but I just couldn’t figure out what it was.

Chapter 19

Pavane for a Dead Hockey Player

Lotty greeted me with a most uncharacteristic gasp of relief. “My God, Vic, it’s really you! You made it back!” She hugged me fiercely.

“Lotty, what on earth is the matter? Didn’t you think you’d see me again?”

She put me at arm’s length, looked me up and down, kissed me again, and then gave a more Lotty-like grin. “The boat you were on, Vic. It was on the news. The explosion and so on. Four dead, they said, one of them a woman, but they wouldn’t give names until the families were notified. I was afraid, my dear, afraid you might be the only woman on board.”