The lawyer also brought me fresh clothes and brushes for teeth and hair so that I could make a reasonable impression in public. Saturday-morning bond court held a mixed bag of bail applications—drunk drivers, public nuisances, bar fighters who’d fired weapons. And one arrest for murder. Since my case was the most complicated, Judge Thelma Katz saved me for last. She and my lawyer knew each other from the state women’s bar association; that speeded things up, that and the fact that the DA didn’t want to deny my bail request.

Sheriff Gisborne had to agree he had no real grounds for my arrest. He grudgingly admitted that I couldn’t have driven Doris McKinnon’s truck off the road.

“Is there anything to suggest that Ms. Warshawski shot the dead woman?” Thelma Katz asked.

“Warshawski showing up like that—” Gisborne began.

“Forensic evidence, Sheriff. Anything to connect the bullet to Warshawski? Anything to show she could have driven the truck there or forced the victim to drive the truck there before shooting her?”

“We haven’t fully processed the scene,” Gisborne grumbled.

“Then get to work on that. Ms. Warshawski, what made you go down to the river in the first place? Assuming you weren’t checking to see if your murder victim was still there.”

“I saw tire tracks and broken branches and wondered if someone was in trouble.”

Thelma made a note on the pad of paper in front of her. “That was an admirable Good Samaritan act, but when you found the truck with a dead woman in it, why did you open the door instead of calling 911?”

“I didn’t know she was dead, Your Honor. I hoped she might be alive and that I could help her.”

“Thelma!” Gisborne interrupted. “This is a private investigator from Chicago. She’s familiar with crime scenes, she’s seen dead bodies. She’s been interfering with investigations ever since she came to town.”

“Ken, this is a courtroom, not the Rock Chalk Pub. Let’s pretend you didn’t play high-school football with my father and follow normal protocol.”

Gisborne turned red but subsided. Luella stepped forward to sort out what I should or shouldn’t have done; she said that far from interfering with investigations I had saved Sonia Kiel’s and Naomi Wissenhurst’s lives. Thelma got the DA to vacate the arrest. Somehow I ended up with a two-hundred-dollar fine—I think for stupidity, although that isn’t what they wrote on the form.

When we finished, Luella stayed behind to chat with Thelma—it wasn’t a courtroom anymore, apparently, even if it wasn’t the Rock Chalk Pub. Gisborne didn’t try to join them—one of his deputies came into the room and muttered something that made the sheriff stride to the exit, with nothing but a malevolent glance for me.