I’d passed Riverside United Church of Christ, tucked into the northeast corner of the park, when I’d been running with Peppy. You couldn’t see it from the road, so they’d put up a sign on Sixth Street: half mile on your right, all welcome. A bigger, brighter sign stood at the entrance to their drive, where you could see the building, made of local limestone that had aged to a golden gray. Some half-dozen cars were parked in a lot that could easily hold a hundred; it must be a big church.

I stopped to read a historical marker on the front lawn. Gathered in 1855 by antislavery emigrants from the Boston area, destroyed by the great flood of 1893, rebuilt in 1896 farther from the river. Up until the end of the Civil War, Riverside had harbored fugitive slaves in a cellar underneath the altar. Today they were a nuclear-free zone and “an inclusive, new-light community who welcome all to join us, wherever you are on your life’s journey.”

I followed directions on the church door to the office entrance. Laughter and chatter led me to a big meeting room, where some ten women, most in their sixties or seventies, were emptying black leaf bags filled with clothes.

One of them saw me standing at the entrance and bustled over, hand out. “Have you come to help? That’s splendid. I’m Joy Helmsley.”

I shook hands automatically. “V.I. Warshawski, but I’m afraid I’m here to get help, not give it.”

“Oh?” She cocked her head, birdlike, to one side. “If you want to see Pastor Weld, he’s out right now, but Lisa Carmody is here. She’s the associate pastor.”

At the sound of her name, a second woman came over. She was younger than the others, wearing jeans and a pullover turned shapeless from much washing.

“Lisa Carmody. Why don’t we go into the office, have a little more privacy.”

I felt a bit embarrassed. “Not that kind of help—I’m looking for information, something maybe one of you knows, or at least knows someone who knows.”

The group abandoned the pretext of sorting clothes for what was definitely going to be more interesting.

“Ancient history,” I said. “You may have heard that I’m a detective from Chicago, looking for Emerald Ferring.”

“Oh, yes.” Lisa Carmody nodded. “I saw the posters you put up downtown. Ferring and a young man, right? Ferring is one of our local stars, except we didn’t give her star treatment when she lived here, but everyone knows who she is.”

There was a murmur from the rest of the group, hard to decipher, but it sounded as though not all agreed with Carmody.