And inert. If this piece of paper belonged anywhere that it knew about, it wasn’t talking. I wandered across the landing and leaned on the stair rail. It quivered ominously, so I gave that up.

The direct approach? Not to be scorned. I fingered the paper and wondered where the person was who’d written on it. Nothing, nothing.

Rico cleared her throat behind me and said, “Progress report?”

“Garbage in, garbage out. I warned you. This is a little subjective.”

“Could have fooled me. What’s subjective about where a piece of paper came from?”

I wondered if she could tell from my face that she’d just made me feel a right idiot. I shouldn’t have been embarrassed; “Where did this come from?” could have been the wrong question just as easily as any of the ones I’d already asked. It wasn’t, though.

“Thataway,” I said.

“Oh, goodie. Let’s go there.”

“Criminy. I might have a fix on a paper mill,” I warned her.

“Very true. Don’t you want to know?”

“I don’t have a lot of choice now. Silken cord goes yank, yank. It’s a compulsion.”

“And it might not be a paper mill. It might be a nice box of stationery in someone’s desk drawer, and I would be one happy copper. Wouldn’t you like that?” She clattered down the stairs without regard to their structural integrity.

Kathy Hong looked after her and said cheerfully, “Two spokes.”

“Oy,” I replied, and followed Rico out into the sun.

My guidance system was suggesting we head uphill. It was too soon to tell if it wanted us to go Up Hill. I let Rico’s idea of how to leave the curb press me back into the bucket seat and said, “So your father was a cop?”

I got a sidelong glance from Rico that wasn’t quite long enough to affect our trajectory. Eventually she said, “I take it Ms. Hong is a busybody.”

“Is it supposed to be a secret?”

A moment’s pause. “No.”

“Did he just make it look like fun? Why did you become a cop, too?”

“I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you that it’s none of your business?”

“Just making small talk,” I said, while realizing that this was, maybe, not the smallest subject in the world, after all.

“I had a teddy bear in a policeman’s uniform. It affected me deeply.”

Something about the voice she’d said that in suggested that she didn’t want to hear so much as an “Oh” out of me. But silence didn’t seem like the right response, either. “Oh,” I said.

Rico braked hard and pulled the Spitfire to the side of the road, which made the motorcyclist behind us yell something as he gunned past. I saw my face twice in her sunglasses as she said, “I didn’t ask you about your childhood.”

“Only once.”