I gritted my teeth. If the traffic gods had any sense of decency, I could get down to Ninety-sixth and Halsted, have an hour with Ms. Ferring or her bulldog, and still make my court date. I made sure my makeup go-bag was in my briefcase, drove to my office for my files, and covered the fifteen miles to Ferring’s house in a breathtaking forty-seven minutes. Speed record on the Ryan this time of day.

Ferring lived on a street of small ranch houses and tidy yards. The trees had dropped their leaves, but most people had raked their lawns. Halloween decorations still dripped ghostly fingers from the bushes, but Ferring’s walk, like her neighbor’s, was lined with potted mums. Her house was a bit bigger than the others on the block, but not ostentatiously so.

No one answered, and anyway, the house felt empty behind the shrouded windows. Empty buildings seem remote somehow, as if without people inside they were withholding themselves from the world.

Across the street an older woman was out with a dachshund. The dog was barking at a squirrel taunting it from a nearby tree, but the woman was staring at me in frank curiosity. White woman in a black neighborhood, what could I possibly be doing here?

I walked over and introduced myself. “I’m hoping to talk to Ms. Ferring. You wouldn’t know if she’s due back soon, would you?”

The woman curled her lip. “Are you expecting to sell her something, like sandy cement for her driveway?”

“A lot of scam artists trolling around here?” I asked. It’s an infuriating part of modern life, bogus contractors preying on the elderly. That might explain the coldness of the young man who’d answered Ferring’s phone.

“And you’re not one of them.” Her mouth twisted more derisively.

“I’m a private detective.” I handed her one of my cards. “A young man, a wannabe filmmaker, has disappeared. He’s a loner, without much family, and I can’t find anyone who knows where he is. I know he made a good impression on Ms. Ferring, and I’m hoping he might have told her where he was going.”

“Would this young filmmaker have a name?”

I pulled out my cell phone and showed her August’s picture. “August Veriden.”

“And what is it you think he’s doing with Ms. Emerald? Stealing from her?” The contemptuous twist of her lips became more pronounced.

First the guy with the deep voice hung up on me, and now this. I began to wonder if August was actually hiding inside Ferring’s house and the neighborhood was protecting him from authorities, or just from a nosy white woman. But that would mean he’d been involved in something that predated the break-ins at the gym and his home.