“Attention to detail makes us successful,” William said stiffly. “Is there any idea of foul play in that fire?”

“Arson always makes one suspect foul play,” I said, equally stiff.

“Arson?” Jacqui managed to widen her dark eyes without wrinkling her forehead. “I heard it was faulty wiring. Who told you arson?”

“Why does it matter to you?” I said. “I thought you had your new supplier hard at work and everything.”

“If someone is setting fires in South Chicago companies, it affects us; we’re the biggest company down here, we could be vulnerable, too.” Mr. William tried to sound stern but only managed peevish. “So I need to know who told you it was arson.”

“Word gets around in a small community,” I said vaguely. “Everyone knows each other. I’d think your pit bulls from Carnifice would have picked up the story. After all, they’re staking out Billy’s pastor; they must have talked to the people he knows.”

“They tried,” Aunt Jacqui started to say at the same time William demanded how I knew Carnifice was watching Andrés.

“Now, that’s easy. Strangers stand out down here. Too many vacant lots, so you know when someone is lurking, and too many people who don’t have jobs, so they spend their days chilling on the streets. What did your guys find out about Billy’s car?”

“By the time we got to it, it had been stripped,” William said shortly. “Tires, radio, even the front seat. Why didn’t you let me know right away you’d found it? I had to learn about that from that black policeman who acts like he’s in charge down there.”

“That would be Commander Rawlings, and he acts like he’s in charge because he is. As for why I didn’t call you, too much was going on for me to think about you—like hiking two miles across the marsh to find your dead driver. Events happened too fast for me to think of calling you.”

“What did you find in the car?” Jacqui asked.

“You wondering if I ran off with Billy’s stock portfolio?” I asked. “He left a couple of books in the trunk. Violence of Love, the one by the murdered archbishop, and”—I shut my eyes, conjuring the titles I’d seen in the dark—“Rich Christians and Poverty, something like that.”

“Oh, yes.” Jacqui rolled her eyes. “Rich Christians in the Age of Hunger. Billy read us so many passages at dinner I had to become anorexic—no decent person could keep eating, according to him, with children dying all over the place. Did you pick up any papers, thinking they might be a stock portfolio?”

I looked at her through narrowed eyes. “Rose Dorrado told me you’d gone through her books, even shaking her Bible so that all her page markers fell out. What did Billy run off with?”