“And she really lived here?” The young woman looked around in incredulity at the junk-filled drive and the peeling paint, then ran her finger over her baby’s nose. “Hear that, Katniss? You could grow up to be someone famous, just breathing this moldy air.”

The baby turned her head, revealing the same rosebud mouth and round blue eyes of her mother. A little trail of spit dribbled from the corner of her mouth.

“When were they here?” I asked.

“I don’t really remember. Last week maybe, or the week before?”

“Did she say anything, like where she was going next?”

The young woman shook her head mournfully. “I thought they were robbers, so I didn’t want to talk to them. If she comes back, though, I can get her autograph and ask her to call you.”

I pushed one of my cards toward her through a tear in the screen door. “What about Nell Albritten? Do you know her?”

She nodded, warily.

“Did Emerald Ferring go on to see her after she left here?”

The young woman hunched a shoulder. “Can’t see that house from here. Kyle doesn’t like me talking to her anyway. He says let the neighbors mind their own business.”

The baby began to cry, and Peeta renewed his invective. It seemed like a good time to leave, but partway down the walk I turned to ask if her boyfriend had been in the Buick that drove past when I was tying up Peppy: I was wondering if he was a drug dealer, checking to see who was visiting his lair.

“In a Buick?” Her mouth curled in scorn. “Kyle can barely keep his old Dodge pickup going.”

I stepped carefully around the broken cement in the walk and knelt to unhook Peppy. I had to hold tightly to her collar while I did it—she wanted to make sure Peeta knew she might look like a chocolate-box illustration, but she could take him with three paws tied behind her.

“You realize we really are on the trail, girl? First Sonia, now the waif with the baby have both seen our fugitives. I know you’re all wound up, but try not to be too aggressive with Ms. Albritten.”

When we passed the mountain of debris in Peeta’s family’s drive and saw Albritten’s house, it came as a complete surprise. It belonged to a different universe, to the part of my childhood where my mother and the neighbors tried to keep the grime of the mills at bay. Gabriella and I had scoured the soot and sulfur from the front step every morning, calling greetings to Louisa Djiak and other women doing the same work. We’d washed the windows and curtains once a month, and my mother had tended an olive tree in our Kleenex-size garden to lessen her homesickness for her Umbrian childhood.