I picked out a minor triad in the bass clef. “I’m getting fed up with people pushing me toward Aguinaldo with one hand and pulling me away from her with the other. There’s something wrong with how she died, but you seem to be joining the group of break–dancers writhing on stage, saying, “Watch,’ “Don’t watch.’ I need to find someone who knows about Aguinaldo’s private life. Her mother may not, but her kid might. Children know a lot about what their mothers get up to.”

He drummed his fingers on the chair arm, thinking it over, but finally shook his head. “The trouble is, the more people who talk to Señora Mercedes, the riskier her position becomes.”

“Riskier how?”

“Deportation. She wants to stay in America so that her surviving granddaughter can get an education and make something more of herself than being a nanny or a factory hand. I can try to find out something for you, if you’d like… .” His voice trailed away, leaving it as a question.

I agreed somewhat grumpily. I hate leaving a crucial piece of an investigation in someone else’s hands, especially when I don’t know anything about his skills.

He got up to leave but stopped to admire the piano. “You must be a serious musician to keep a baby grand in your living room. I play some, but not on anything this nice.”

“My mother was a serious musician. One of her old friends keeps this in shape for me, but I never made it past Thompson’s fourth book.” I loved action too much, even as a child, and my hours of practice were a misery when I longed to be running or swimming.

Morrell gave the same self–mocking smile he’d shown in his photo and sat down to try the piano. He ran through part of a Chopin nocturne with unusual feeling for an amateur. When he saw “Erbarme dich” on the music rack, he started to play and I began to sing. Bach produces a certain kind of balm. When Morrell got up to go, with an apology for showing off, I felt calmer but no more certain than I was earlier whether he was telling the truth about Nicola Aguinaldo’s mother. But if she didn’t have the body, where was it?

Perhaps those researchers who want you to listen to Bach or Mozart to boost your brain are right, because when he left I had an idea for the morning. It wasn’t the best idea I ever had, as it turned out, but that wasn’t really Bach’s fault.

I went down to Mr. Contreras’s when I heard the front door shut. As I’d expected, my neighbor was waiting up to see how long I kept a strange man in my apartment.