As I drove home through the soft purple of early night, I thought sourly that Alex was trying to set me up. But why? Lacey Dowell clearly didn’t feel bothered by Frenada. As for Murray’s role in the errand, he was in so far over his head that my exasperation was tempered by sadness. Even though I wanted to see him and tell him what I’d learned from Siekevitz, I didn’t want to go looking for him: it would be too painful to find him with Alex Fisher. Anyway, I didn’t know where Chicago’s movers shook these days—or nights. Murray used to be a regular at Lucy Moynihan’s place on Lower Wacker, but that was a journalist’s watering hole; television personalities drink elsewhere.

Cruising around town looking for him would really waste time I didn’t have. I went virtuously home and bundled my dirty clothes into the washing machine in the basement. The phone was ringing as I let myself back into my apartment.

“Ms. Warshawski?” It was a man and a stranger. “My name is Morrell. I understand you want to talk to me.”

An hour later I was sitting across from him at Drummers, a wine bar in Edgewater. Morrell was a slender man about my height, with light curly hair. That was as much as I’d been able to tell from watching him walk up the street toward me.

At the fringe of the pavement an older couple ate a late dinner, hunching toward each other to talk across the noise of the tables full of boisterous young people. I felt a twinge of envy for the woman, white–haired in the streetlight, her hand resting on the arm of the old man. Meeting a stranger for a drink because of an investigation made me feel very lonely.

I had tried to explain what I wanted to know over the phone when Morrell called, but he said he would only answer my questions if he could see me in person. He was calling from Evanston, the first suburb north of Chicago; Drummers was a halfway point between us.

“You’re really a private investigator?” he asked when the waiter had brought our drinks.

“No, it’s my hobby,” I said, getting cranky. “My day job is wrestling alligators. Who are you, besides the man talking to people who’ve run away from jail?”

“Is that what the children said?” He laughed softly. “What I really want to know is who is paying you to ask questions about Nicola Aguinaldo.”

I took a swallow of cabernet. It was vinegary, as if it had sat open in the bar too long. Served me right for ordering pricey wine in a neighborhood that only three years ago had been proud to serve Mogen David by the bottle.