“You two make it sound so plausible, but I have to say I don’t believe you. I’m going to take this to a forensic lab. They’ll test it for fingerprints, they’ll test it for chemicals, they’ll tell me what it was doing at the plant, and who was doing it.”

“So?” The sisters stared at me sullenly, united on this one matter.

“So what?” I said. “So you know there won’t be fingerprints, or you don’t care who left them, or what?”

“So if Sancia gave it to someone else, I can’t help it,” Julia said.

“Coach McFarlane said you were the best player she had coached in decades, maybe ever,” I said to Julia. “Why don’t you go back to school, use your brains for your own future, instead of for spinning up lies for grown-ups like me. You could go back to the game; Sancia does, with her two little ones.”

“Yeah, well, her ma and her sisters help her out. Who’s going to help me? No one.”

“You are so unfair!” Josie cried. “I didn’t get you pregnant, but because you went and had a baby now I have to sneak around like a criminal if I want to see a boy! And I help you with María Inés all the time, so there!”

I handed María Inés to Julia. “Play with her, talk to her. Give her a chance, even if you don’t want one for yourself. And if you decide, either of you, to start telling the truth, give me a call.”

I gave them both business cards and stuck the frog back in my bag. When they stared at me, speechless, I got up and went through the dining room, looking for Rose. Betto and Sammy scuttled deeper under the table at my approach: I was the woman who could get them charcoal roasted if they talked to me.

Rose was lying on Josie’s bed in the girls’ bedroom. I ducked under the clothesline hung with María Inés’s wardrobe and watched her, wondering whether I had anything to ask that justified waking her. Her bright red hair clashed with the red in the American flag pillowcase; the Illinois women’s team smiled down at her.

“I know you’re standing there,” she said dully, without opening her eyes. “What is it you want?”

“I only went to Fly the Flag in the first place because you wanted me to look into the sabotage going on there. Then you told me to back off. What made you change your mind?” I kept my voice gentle.

“It’s all about the job,” she said. “I thought—what I thought, I can’t even remember now. Frank—he told me. He asked me to tell you to go away.”

“Why?”