When she’d repeated my cell phone number, I reiterated my message. Before I hung up, I heard her yelling at her sister that she could look after María Inés or Josie was going to put her to bed. I guess I’d done one good deed for the day—two, if I counted finding my client’s missing employer.

When I reached Morrell’s, the dogs danced around me, as ecstatic as if it had been twelve months, not twelve hours, since we last met. Morrell told me proudly that he had taken them over to the lake—a real feat: he hadn’t been able to walk up the single flight of stairs to his condo when I brought him back from Zurich seven weeks ago. He still needed a cane to walk, and Mitch had challenged Morrell’s balance several times; he’d had to lie down for an hour after the exertion, but he’d managed the four blocks there and back without mishap, and didn’t seem any worse for the outing.

“We’ll celebrate,” I said enthusiastically. “I outdid Sherlock Holmes today, at least this afternoon, and you outdid Hillary on Everest. Are you up to another excursion, or shall I go get something?”

He was not only fit enough to go out but eager: we hadn’t had an evening together for a long time.

While I was in showering and changing, Marcena returned. When I got out, she was sitting on a couch with a bottle of beer, fondling Mitch’s ears. He thumped his tail gently when I came into the room, to acknowledge that he knew me, but he was looking at Marcena with an expression of idiotic bliss. I should have realized she’d be as good with dogs as with everything else.

She lifted her beer bottle to me in a toast. “How are the budding athletes?”

“Coming along. Actually, they were fighting over you on Monday: they missed you. You coming back any time soon?”

“I’ll try to get over to the school one of these afternoons. The last few days, I’ve been doing research in the community.” She grinned provocatively.

“Thus intensifying the conflict on the court,” I said drily. “Just so you know, South Chicago is the kind of small community where everyone minds their neighbors’ business.”

She gave me a mocking bow of thanks.

“Really, Marci,” Morrell said, “you want to write about these people. You can’t stir them up and create the story just so you have something dramatic to cover.”