A door thudded shut at the bottom of the stairwell. Mitch and Peppy began to race upstairs, followed by Mr. Contreras’s heavy tread. The dogs barreled past the detectives to get to me, squeaking as if it had been twelve months instead of twelve hours since we were last together. Lemour kicked at Mitch but only connected with his tail. I grabbed both dogs by the collars before anything worse happened.

When they finished jumping up and kissing me, the dogs, especially Mitch, were eager to greet Lemour. Peppy’s a golden; Mitch, her son, is half black Lab and enormous. Like all retrievers, they are incurably friendly, but when they’re pawing the air and grinning they look ferocious to strangers; our visitor wasn’t going to try to muscle his way past them.

Mr. Contreras had reached the doorway in time to see Lemour kick at Mitch. “Listen here, young man, I don’t care if you’re a detective or a meter maid, but these dogs live here and you don’t. You got no call to be kicking them. I could have you up before the anticruelty society, policeman kicking man’s best friend, how’d your ma and your kids like to read that in the paper?”

The detective wasn’t the first person to be rattled by Mr. Contreras. “We’re here to talk to the lady about a hit–and–run she was involved in last night. Take your animals downstairs and leave us alone.”

“It so happens, young man, that the lady owns the golden. We share looking after them—not that it’s any of your business—so if she wants them up here it’s fine with me. And as for whatever questions you got, you’re way off base if you think she was involved in some hit–and–run. I’ve known her twelve years, and she would no more run over someone and leave ’em lay in the street than she’d prop up a ladder to climb to the moon. So you got some accident victim claiming otherwise, you been totally misinformed. Be a good idea if you called your boss and made sure you got the right address or license plate or whatever, otherwise I guarantee you’ll feel foolish wasting your time and everyone else’s on this—”

“Uh, sir.” Palgrave had been trying to cut the flow short for some minutes. “Uh, sir, we’re not accusing her of hitting someone. We only want to ask her some questions about the incident.”

“Then why didn’t you say that?” Mr. Contreras demanded in exasperation. “Your buddy here was carrying on like she ran over the pope and left him to bleed in the street.”

“We need to ascertain whether the Warshki woman hit the woman or not,” Lemour said.

“Warshawski,” I said. “Have a seat. I’ll be with you in a minute.”