“I’ve never seen Sonia before, but she called me about forty-five minutes ago, asking me to come here to talk to her.”

The ambulances arrived. The officers backed away as the EMTs jogged over with their equipment.

“Let’s get our ladies to the hospital, and then you”—the sergeant nodded at me—“come over to the station and tell me all about it. You know where we are?”

I assured him I knew. When I started away from him toward my car, he said, “Other way.”

“I know, Sergeant. My dog is in my car. I need to make sure she’s okay.”

“Officer Peabody will go with you. Suze, I’ll drive your squad car back to the station.”

As we walked to my car, I said, “Your sergeant said you all know Sonia Kiel. Does this happen often, her passing out near a bar?”

“Sergeant Everard can tell you more about her than I can,” Suze said stiffly.

I ignored the rebuff. “I’d think if she needed hospitalizing very often, her health must be close to the breaking point.”

“She isn’t in good shape,” Suze admitted, “but usually we just take her back to the group home. They don’t want to keep her—” She broke off, remembering she was supposed to leave all those details to the sergeant.

We’d reached the Mustang. Peppy stuck an eager head over the backseat to inspect Suze, who patted her in return, a good sign, before strapping herself into her seat.

When we got to the station, I took Peppy out to stretch her legs. Suze said she thought it would be okay with the sergeant if I brought Peppy into the station. “If it isn’t, I’ll take her out and walk her while he talks to you.”

Everard raised his eyebrows when we walked in. “That your lawyer?”

“More like my analyst,” I said. “I don’t have any secrets from her.”

“I hope you don’t have any from me. You want to start by telling me who you are?”

When I told him my name and started to pull out my PI license, he said, “Oh, right. We got a notice about you coming into town looking for two missing African-Americans. What took you to the Lion’s Pride in the middle of the night, or is that all in the line of a big-city detective’s life? They tell me you caused a bit of a disturbance.”

“Hmm. More like I quieted the place down.” I told him about getting Sonia’s phone call and finding out that she’d used the bar’s phone. “It was hard to get them to acknowledge that Sonia had been in there or that she’d used the phone. The place was pretty wild, even by big-city standards.”

“Hawks won tonight, Sarge,” Suze contributed.

I looked blank, thinking Chicago Blackhawks and wondering why Lawrence, Kansas, would care.