“Girl like you who took on Angie and the Iscariots, you were plenty tough enough to go up against a bent cop. Glad to hear about it. Glad to know about it.”

Before I left, I handed her a little bag of cosmetics I’d brought with me, buried under a stack of legal documents that hadn’t been searched thoroughly. CO Cornish watched me but didn’t try to intervene.

“Revlon! You remembered. Moisturizer, cleanser, new lipstick in my favorite color—you’re a good woman, even if you did come to me under false pretenses. Now, since it turns out you’re really a lawyer and a detective and all those things, maybe you’ll write one of your famous letters for me. I’ve done fourteen years, that’s already way over average for murder in this state, but I’ve got eight more to go. See if you can help me on my parole. I’d kind of like to see my granddaughter before she’s a grandmother herself.”

I promised to do what I could. Back in the parking lot I stood with my hand on the car door for a long time before opening it. The car was a late–model green Mustang, a replacement for both the Rustmobile and the Trans Am. Freeman had tried to get me back my beloved sports car, but the police first claimed they couldn’t find it and then finally had to admit they’d pretty well trashed it. Luke went to the police pound to look at it, but the Trans Am was way beyond even his miraculous fingers. Freeman was suing the city for me to try to recover the price of the car, but I figured I’d be seventy before that case came to judgment.

Lacey Dowell had given me the money for the Mustang. She’d given me enough money that I could probably have bought a used XJ–12 convertible, but that was a fantasy, not a car for a working detective who has to use her wheels in the grime of Chicago.

Lacey came to see me at the end of the filming of Virgin Six. Father Lou told her that I’d solved Frenada’s murder and that even though Trant and Baladine would never be arrested for it, she should know that the two men had killed her childhood playmate.