I called Mrs. Frizell’s son, Byron, in San Francisco to let him know how his mother was doing. He was almost as excited by the call as she had been to learn we’d been talking to him.

About the time Mrs. Frizell was ready to come home we found homes for the last of the puppies. Mr. Contreras out-talked me and kept his favorite, an all-gold male with two black ears. He insisted on naming it Mitch.

The same day the old lady returned, Todd and Chrissie put their house on the market. Even with the recession in real estate we didn’t expect it would take long to sell: they had done a beautiful job of rehabbing it, and Lake View has become prime yuppie real estate.

Lotty and I started talking again, but Lotty seemed brittle, almost fragile. We couldn’t seem to recover our old, profound intimacy. She was working ferociously, so much so that the flesh was beginning to leach from her bones. Despite her frantic pace, her usual vital spark was missing.

When I tried telling her what had happened to Simon and the other thugs who most likely had attacked her, she refused to listen to me. Her injuries, or her fear, had given her a repugnance to my work. I worried she was feeling a repugnance, a withdrawal, from my whole life. I talked to Carol as well as to Max about her. They were both worried, but could give no counsel besides patience.

“She’s forgiven me,” Carol said. “She’ll come round with you too. Give her time, Vic.”

I didn’t say anything, but it looked like a more serious problem to me than that.

Probably the most amazing event of that period was the afternoon that Mitch Kruger’s son showed up. Mitch, Jr., turned out to be a petroleum engineer, sunburned from months in the Persian Gulf—he’d been in Kuwait helping restart production there. His mother had seen our ad in one of the Arizona papers and sent it off to him in Kuwait City. Mitch, Jr., stopped in Chicago on his way home to find out what we had to say to him.

He thanked us for our efforts in tracking down his father’s killers, but added depressingly, “I can’t get too excited about it—I hardly remember the guy. I’m glad he had some friends to help him out when he died, though.”

When I told Conrad about it later, he laughed. “Don’t look so disconsolate, Ms. W. At least the guy thanked you. Hell, ninety percent of the time all I get is hate mail for my efforts.”