I picked up my car from the alley, where Mr. Contreras had put it when he rescued it. I’d left my briefcase in the trunk some million or so years ago when I’d gone to visit Sister Frankie. When I opened it to stick in a new set of papers for some meetings I’d scheduled that afternoon, the first thing I saw was the Nellie Fox baseball. I’d completely forgotten about stashing it in there.

I laughed softly to myself. Poor Petra. She could have boosted the ball without my knowing the difference if she’d only thought to look in the trunk. I held it up to the sun, squinting at it through my dark glasses. It was stained and worn. Someone had played with it, maybe Grandpa Warshawski. He died when I was little, but he’d been a Sox fan.

The ball also had holes in it, and that was mystifying. A couple of them went all the way through the ball, so I wondered if my dad and his brother Bernie had run fishing line through it to hang it up for batting practice. I tucked the ball back into my briefcase and drove to my office.

Until she sank under the weight of my media calls, Marilyn Klimpton had done a good job of sorting files and papers. Even though messages had built up, and some incoming documents needed sorting, the office looked in pretty good shape, especially compared to the mounds of papers I’d found on my return from Italy.

I booted up my computer and looked at the message page from my answering service. Among the nuisance calls from media outlets were a pointless threat not to tamper with evidence from the Emergency Management woman and some client queries. There also was a message from Greg Yeoman, Johnny Merton’s lawyer. I was on the list of confirmed visitors to Stateville for tomorrow afternoon, could I please call to confirm.

I suddenly felt so tired, I went to the cot in my back room to lie down. I’d forgotten about putting in the call to Yeoman. I had done it after I saw Miss Claudia at Lionsgate Manor, I remembered now. The murder of Sister Frances, my own injuries, the invasion of my apartment had all pushed Ella Gadsden and her sister completely out of my mind. I lay there in the dark for close to an hour. I finally got back on my feet and called Greg Yeoman to confirm that I would make the drive out to Stateville the following afternoon.

Thinking about Sister Frances reminded me that I wanted some background on the demolition and building contractors who were taking care of her apartment. Petra was going to find out about them for me, but she couldn’t do it. And it really wasn’t that big of a job.