Peppy pulled her head in long enough to lick the back of my ear. I took it as a sign she was listening and wanted me to go on, but the chances were it was a plea for food.

Even with the thicker traffic, we reached Lawrence before sundown. After I found a B and B that accepted dogs, we walked around the town, getting a feel for the layout. It was warmer here than in Chicago; I needed only a light windbreaker.

The University of Kansas seemed to be the center of the town’s universe: statues of its Jayhawk mascot were everywhere—in store windows, restaurants, on bank lawns. The university itself loomed overhead on top of a big hill. I’d go there in the morning to see what records they had of Emerald Ferring’s student years.

My big discovery of the afternoon was that downtown Lawrence was awash in coffee bars and cafés. I wandered into four, sampling the espresso, and decided I liked a place called the Decadent Hippo best. The baristas doubled as bartenders, making my cortado in between orders for Moscow Mules and Bruised Elbows.

“We could be happy here,” I said to Peppy. She agreed: everyone wanted to pet her and offer her bits of muffins.

My other discovery was the number of homeless people on the streets. I’m used to the sight in Chicago—inured, not a good thing—but it seemed startling in a college town, one that looked affluent, at least on the surface. The street people were young, compared to Chicago’s homeless, and most were white, with the hard, crusty look of people who drink too much and sleep too little.

In the morning, over the first cortado of the day, I looked up Emerald Ferring. She didn’t have family here, at least not relatives named Ferring. I couldn’t find a history of anyone with that name, but of course most pre-1995 public data didn’t exist online. I phoned the local library, but they hadn’t kept old phone books.

Before doing anything else, I went to the police station, which shared space in the Judicial and Law Enforcement Center with the county sheriff and municipal and county courts. In theory a private eye is supposed to check in with the local law before tailing or surveilling anyone. In practice, in Chicago, I figure why bother an overworked force, but in a place where I was a foreigner, it seemed prudent to go to them before they came to me.