As I dozed through the midday heat my conversation with Abigail Trant kept coming into my dreams. In some of them she was sweetly commiserating because my work interfered with my social life. In others she was standing on the sidelines as BB Baladine threatened me. I woke for good from a nightmare in which Baladine was choking me while Abigail Trant said, “I told you he didn’t like to be threatened.”

“But I wasn’t threatening him,” I said aloud. “It was the other way around.” And what was I supposed to do, back away from Baladine because he interpreted any approach as aggression? Anyway, maybe Abigail Trant was right about Baladine’s character, but I thought there was more to the story than that—some issue about Nicola Aguinaldo, either her life or her death. Perhaps when she escaped from prison she approached Baladine and he interpreted that as a threat, knocked her out, then ran over her. As he got back into his car the emblem came off his loafer. My research said he was a Porsche man. I wondered if his Carrera had been in a body shop lately.

It was all a load of speculative nonsense. Except for the fact that Nicola Aguinaldo was dead. I wished I could talk to her mother. Why had Abuelita Mercedes disappeared so suddenly just at the time her daughter died? Maybe if I went back to Aguinaldo’s neighborhood I could find the mysterious Mr. Morrell, the man asking questions about people who escaped from jail. I made myself an espresso to cut through the dopiness I felt from dozing in the heat, and got dressed again.

I dumped my sweaty jeans in the hamper and chose my outfit carefully—Abigail Trant had made me feel like a grubby hulk. I laughed at myself, a little shamefaced, but still put on clean linen slacks with a big white shirt, even dabbing on lipstick and powder. The result didn’t approach Ms. Trant’s perfection: a polished appearance is like any other skill—you have to work at it a lot to be good. Maybe weekly visits to Parruca’s would help, too.

Saturday is errand day in Uptown just as in Oak Brook, but the girls here were doing chores, not taking riding lessons. When I rang Mrs. Attar’s bell, a sullen Mina, huffy at having to dust, came to the door. The girls had mentioned someone named Aisha; it was Aisha’s father Morrell was talking to. After some grumbling, Mina directed me to the other girl’s apartment, two doors up the street.