“Yes, and for the better. Out of that tragedy came the FBI’s ability to look into this kind of crime. I’ve advised Bob to let them take over. People like me, and family friends like Will Letterman, can only do so much.”

Her smile widened enough to reveal perfect white teeth. “That sounds like good advice. But we’ve had wonderful help. Paul has been just a dear. I don’t know what…” The tears she was holding back were pooling, threatening to overflow, and the smile was crinkling.

She hugged me. Cried into my shoulder, quietly, softly, but she cried. That was what this had come to: a mother needing a stranger’s shoulder to cry on.

She drew away, leaned in and kissed me on the cheek, and nodded, slightly, embarrassed now, and turned away and started up the stairs. But then she paused two steps up, at the first landing, and leaned a hand on the newel-post lion.

“You know, Mr. Heller…Bob and I would be lost without our faith in God’s constant and abiding love. Even in our darkest hours, we know God is holding each one of us in this family very close. Bobby included.”

As if ascending into heaven, she went slowly up.

Me, I had my doubts. If God was in this, He might have whispered in the ear of the young nun who was so quick to hand over their kid.

* * *

And that was it.

I booked a late afternoon flight back by phone, then made a call to my partner Lou Sapperstein at the A-1 in Chicago, letting him know I’d be in tomorrow. Lou had a few things that couldn’t wait and we took care of those over the phone. I hadn’t bothered with a shower before going out to the Greenleases’, so I took one now. Then my minor hangover was dogging me enough to encourage lying down and I fell asleep for a while.

The two o’clock check-out time had come and gone when I awoke. Brushed my teeth, packed hurriedly and went down to the palatial lobby, which was pretty dead again. I was waiting for a salesman from somewhere to settle up his bill when a voice called out to me. This one was male and I didn’t recognize it—a husky baritone.

“Nate! Nate Heller!”

I turned and a big man—and I mean big, six-four and pushing four hundred pounds—came trundling toward me like a runaway circus elephant. Appropriately, he was in a tent of a brown suit with a yellow and red tie adding a clownish splash of color. His oblong head was too small for his massive body, eyes close-set and an unexpectedly pretty light blue, eyebrows perpetually high, hair curly black and pomaded, mouth small and thick-lipped, a little chin enveloped by a thick neck rising from the preposterous torso.

Distinctive as this individual was, I didn’t recognize him at first.

“Nate, I heard you were in town!”

“…Barney Baker?”

“In the flesh,” he said in a surprisingly mellow, mellifluous baritone. “What, have I changed so much? Okay, so maybe I put a few pounds on in the interim.”