“I can tell by looking at the two of you,” the woman said, picking up one of the twenties and giving me back a five along with the second. “Keep your change. We all need emotional support around here.”

I left the five on the counter and went to a corner table with my devices and my dog. Among the messages from my Chicago clients was one from Troy Hempel: he’d talked to his mother, and he’d get back to me when he could. I had seven texts from Bernie, telling me if I didn’t find August by tomorrow, she was flying down, no matter what I or her coach or her parents had to say.

I replied to my most important clients, texted the Streeter brothers to ask them to do some legwork for me, and wrote an emphatic no way, josé to Bernie. people are killing each other and leaving the bodies for rats to eat. stay away.

After that I looked up Barbara Rutledge, who’d talked to Doris McKinnon at the farmers’ market a month ago. Although there are services that search for cell-phone numbers, they’re slow and costly, so I was glad that Rutledge turned out to be old-fashioned enough to have a landline. She answered on the third ring, too, so I didn’t have to waste time trading calls.

I introduced myself and asked if I were right in thinking I’d met her the day before at Riverside Church.

“Oh, yes. The detective who got everybody so agitated. Did you call on Nell Albritten?”

“Yes. I’m sure you’ve heard she collapsed when I was with her.”

Barbara was astonished. “I didn’t know— Has she seen a doctor? What did you do?”

“I made sure she went to the ER,” I said. “She’s home again, depleted, the way one is after an episode like that, especially someone who’s in her nineties, but they say her heart is fine.”

“Why did you think I already knew?”

“Everyone in Douglas County keeps stressing to me how you all know one another,” I said. “That’s been proved true to me so many times that I’ve started to think my job here is to phone people and have them tell me what I’m doing.”

“We do all talk about one another all the time,” Barbara agreed. “Probably no different from a big city, but so many of us grew up together or have worked together for such a long time that maybe we’re in one another’s business more than you’d be in Chicago.”