He’d called Thursday afternoon. No, Cappy couldn’t swear it was Bledsoe. Matter of fact, Bledsoe himself had just phoned with the same question. But he didn’t take orders from anyone except the plane owner—so who else could it have been?

The logic of this argument somewhat escaped me. I asked him for whom else he flew, but he got huffy and said his client list was confidential.

Hanging up slowly, I wondered again if it was time to turn my information about Mattingly over to Bobby Mallory. The police could put their investigative machinery into motion and start questioning everyone who’d been at Meigs Field on Friday night until they found someone to identify that car. I looked at Boom Boom’s documents on the table next to the phone. The answer to the mess lay in these papers. I’d give myself twenty-four more hours, then turn it over to Bobby.

I tried calling Pole Star. The lines were busy. I tried Eudora Grain. The receptionist told me Mr. Phillips had not yet come in for the day. Was he expected? As far as she knew. I called his Lake Bluff residence. Mrs. Phillips told me tightly that her husband had left for work. So he had come home last night? I asked. She hung up on me again.

I made myself coffee and toast and dressed for action: running shoes, blue jeans, a gray cotton shirt, and a denim jacket. I regretted my Smith & Wesson, lying somewhere at the bottom of the Poe Lock. Maybe when they hauled up the Lucella they could fish my gun out of the moldy barley and give it back to me.

Before I took off, the doorbell rang. I buzzed the caller in through the front door and went on downstairs to meet him. It turned out to be a process server—a college student—with a summons for me to attend a Court of Inquiry in Sault Ste. Marie next Monday. The youth seemed relieved that I accepted it so calmly, merely stuffing it into my shoulder bag. I serve a lot of subpoenas myself—recipients range from tetchy to violent.

I stopped at the corner to buy Lotty a bunch of irises and chrysanthemums and zipped up to her apartment in the Omega. Since my little suitcase was also mushed in with fifty thousand tons of barley at Sault Ste. Marie, I stuffed my belongings into a grocery bag. I put the flowers on the kitchen table with a note.

Lotty darling.

Thank you for looking after me. I’m hot on the scent. I’ll bring your keys by tonight or tomorrow night.

Vic

I had to keep the keys to lock the apartment door behind me.