I tried to think over what I’d learned from meeting the warden, but the long wait I’d had before seeing him meant I hit Chicago at rush hour. In the time I sat on the tollway, it was hard to think of much of anything except floating in Lake Michigan with a cold drink in my hand.

They had moved Veronica Fassler as soon as they overheard her conversation with me. Whether she had been sent to another of Illinois’ women’s prisons or out of state or was simply in solitary at Coolis didn’t matter. What mattered was that Fassler knew something about Nicola Aguinaldo’s death that the prison didn’t want me to find out.

I couldn’t force my mind beyond those elementary deductions. When I got home, eager to get out of my rayon trousers, it was hard for me not to bark at Mr. Contreras, bustling into the hall with the dogs. Apparently the only effect last night’s conversation had on him was to make him redouble his vigilance as the guardian of my gate.

I leaned against the railing, scratching the dogs’ ears. I couldn’t very well embroil him in my affairs and then refuse to talk to him, but while I told him about my day my hot, swollen feet occupied most of my mind.

Partway through my recital, the woman who lives across the hall from Mr. Contreras opened her door. “I have a presentation to an important client tomorrow, and I don’t need your dogs and your conversation going on in the background while I try to finish it. If you two have that much to say to each other, why don’t you move in together? It would give the rest of the building some much–needed peace and quiet.”

“Living together don’t guarantee peace for the building,” Mr. Contreras said, his color heightened. “Maybe no one ever told you, but when you and your husband or boyfriend or whatever he is get to shouting at each other, even I can make out every word, and my hearing ain’t a hundred percent these days.”

Before the quarrel could build, I pushed myself upright and said I needed to take a cold shower and change out of my business clothes. The woman muttered something that ended with “show some consideration” and slammed her front door shut. Mitch barked sharply, to say he didn’t like her attitude, but I persuaded Mr. Contreras to take him inside and let me get some rest.

I lay in the tub for a long time, long after the grime of the drive and the prison were out of my skin and hair, trying to figure out what Baladine was up to. Maybe he only wanted to discredit me, possibly with a spectacular arrest for drug possession, rather than kill me outright, but in a way it didn’t matter.