I’d left my cashmere blazer on the seat while Peppy and I ran. I put it back on, ran a comb through my hair, and walked up the road to Gertrude Perec’s house. She might have been at the market or the hairdresser or serving in the Riverside Church soup kitchen, but this was my lucky day: lights were on in the back of the house, and she answered the bell within a minute of my ringing.

“Hello,” I said before she could speak. “I’ve just come from Dr. Kiel’s. I know you know that Sonia is in the hospital, since you called to tell him the news. Perhaps you even know that I found her last night in time to get her emergency help.”

“Yes.” Her voice came out in an uncertain whisper. She cleared her throat and tried to speak more firmly. “Dr. Kiel told me.”

“You called him to tell him—warn him—that I had visited you but that you had protected his identity from me. So he returned the favor by calling you just now to tell you I’d found him anyway?”

She nodded. “Because of Sonia.”

“Sonia is such a convenient whipping boy, or girl, isn’t she?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Perec’s tone became belligerent.

“Whatever goes wrong, from Matt Chastain’s dying, or disappearing, or whatever he did, to the grotesque relations between Shirley and Nathan Kiel, can be offloaded onto Sonia, who’s not able to fight back.”

“Fight back? That’s all she’s been doing her whole life. If she could behave herself—”

“When she was fourteen, someone not only diagnosed her with a mental illness but started medicating her so heavily that I doubt she could remember her own name in a well-lit room on a sunny day. Thirty years down the road, I have no idea how much or how little she can possibly remember or know from that time. That’s why I need your help.”

I hadn’t meant to get off on such a confrontational foot. Of course Gertrude Perec didn’t want to help me—she wanted to protect Dr. Kiel. I was an enemy; I’d saved the wicked Sonia’s life.

Gertrude started to close the door on me, so I said quickly, “Sonia told me she’d seen Emerald Ferring and August Veriden—you remember, those are the people I’m trying to find—walking on Matt Chastain’s grave.”

“You spoke to her?” Gertrude poised the door between open and shut.

“Only very briefly. I’m trying to find out where Matt Chastain is buried. Or where Sonia thinks he’s buried.”

“What . . . what did Nate—Dr. Kiel—say?”

“Tell me about the experiment that went so badly that Chastain ran away. Do you know where he ran to?”

“I . . . I was Dr. Kiel’s secretary, not part of his experimental team.”