The young men exchanged a masculine smirk with the other two. Women are so stupid. He pulled a logbook out of a drawer and ran his finger down the entries. “Bledsoe. Oh yes. A Piper Cub. Came in at five-twenty on Friday. There was only one passenger, though. The pilot didn’t say anything about a woman.”

“Well, I did ask him specially not to. I didn’t want a record that I’d been on the plane. But now I’ve lost this earring and all, I don’t know what I’ll do … Will Cappy be in this morning? Could you ask him to look for me?”

“He only comes in when Mr. Bledsoe needs him to fly.”

“Well, maybe you have a number where I could reach him?”

After a certain amount of hemming and hawing, during which the other two were winking surreptitiously at each other, the young man gave me Cappy’s phone number. I thanked him profusely and took off. Whatever gets the job done.

Back home I remembered the memorabilia I’d picked up at Boom Boom’s apartment and took them out of the trunk. My left arm continued to heal, despite constant abuse, and the load brought on only minor twinges. With the pile of stuff balanced on my right arm, I fumbled at the door locks left-handed. The New Guinea totem started to wobble. I struggled to save it, and the pictures crashed to the floor. I swore under my breath, put everything down, unlocked the door with both hands, propped it open with my foot, and carried the things properly into the building.

I’d saved the totem, but the glass over the pictures had cracked. I put them on the coffee table and took the frames apart gingerly, knocking the glass into a waste can.

The photo of me in my graduation robes was wedged extremely tightly into the frame. Boom Boom must have put too many sheets of cardboard in to allow the back to fit properly. “You shouldn’t have bought such a cheap frame for me, Boom Boom,” I muttered to myself. I finally went into the kitchen for a couple of oven mitts. With those on, I forced the frame away from the backing, spilling glass everywhere.

Between the picture and the backing was a thickly folded stack of white paper. No wonder the photo was wedged in so tightly.

I unfolded the stack. It turned out to be two sheets of paper. One was an invoice from the Grafalk Steamship Line to the Eudora Grain Company. Terms: 10 days, 2 percent, 30 days net, 60 days, 18 percent interest. It showed loads by vessel, date of shipment, and date of arrival. The second, written in Boom Boom’s meticulous hand, listed six dates when Pole Star had lost shipments to Grafalk.