Her exit was a little anticlimactic: one of her bracelets flew off as she reached Lotty’s front door. I bent to pick it up; it was white and labeled ONE. It was supposed to make us want to get together as one planet to solve AIDS and poverty.

I shut my eyes. I was supposed to be the grown-up in this situation. I handed her the bracelet, and said, “If I try to learn how to share the limelight, will you try to learn how to listen to directions?”

Her flush faded. “You mean you would let me study detecting with you?”

“Most of what I do is truly tedious, like all those bills on the bureau there,” I warned her. “But if you want to work for me for six months, see how you like it … Sure, we can give it a try when you’re through with Brian’s campaign.”

She flung her arms around me, pressing into the raw new skin on my chest, then ran into the waiting elevator. I stopped in the living room to say good night to Lotty. I was puzzling over Petra’s words, and her behavior, with Lotty—Could Petra be serious about trying to emulate me? Could she be lying about being in South Chicago last Sunday?—when Lotty’s phone rang.

It was Carolyn Zabinska for me. “Vic, we went to Frankie’s place as soon as we got in tonight,” she said without preamble. “A demolition team had come in from nowhere and stripped the room. The building manager said it was an anonymous benefactor who wanted to do something good for the church and that builders would be arriving tomorrow.”

31 - HOME IN TATTERS

31

HOME IN TATTERS

A FEW DAYS LATER, I LEFT LOTTY’S FOR HOME. MY GAUZE had come off, revealing puckered red skin underneath. I was to wear special gloves day and night, a kind of lacy mitt. There was to be no swimming for now, and no sun for some months to come. I graduated from my special plastic-lensed dark glasses to ordinary dark glasses. I was cleared for viewing television and computer screens and for driving a car.

I spoke with the doorman several times during my stay with Lotty. He hadn’t seen anyone lurking around, waiting for an injured private eye to emerge. No strangers had come calling for me except the law, my first day there. I was beginning to believe the attack on Sister Frances had been connected to her work at the Freedom Center. The thought didn’t stop my wanting to find her killers, but it eased my nightmares. I hadn’t killed her. I’d only been the helpless witness to her death.