“Oh. That nosy broad, Sarah Lyons. She called Norah wanting to know why the phone kept ringing in your sister’s apartment. Said the noise was driving her crazy. We checked the LUDs and over the past several days, someone in Chicago has been calling four, five times a day. Yesterday it was eight times.” He coughed. “Sorry. The calls are from a couple different payphones, makes it look like the same caller. Any ideas?”

My mind was blank. “I have no idea. I’ll ask Tariq. There’s a chance he might know.”

“Thanks. By the way, if you see that snotty broad, will you tell her to go to hell for me?” Bruxton said.

“Can I ask why?”

“The great lady of the manor—excuse me, the great Life Management Consultant, whatever that is—read Norah the riot act. Said we weren’t doing enough to find your sister. She’s so wrapped up in this, you’d think it was her sister that’s missing.”

After we hung up, I went back to shuffling papers. I set the arson articles aside; I had a reasonable idea of Claudia’s interest in that subject. Instead, I focused on the credit card bills. There were so many charges to go through that I felt a little dizzy. The dead woman had used the credit cards for everything, even tiny purchases at drugstores. But most of the expenses weren’t tiny. She’d been on a serious binge. Could she have been an addict, like my sister? The police had checked out neighborhood support groups, but they hadn’t found anyone who’d seen either Claudia or her impostor. The addiction connection was looking like a blind alley, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was relevant. The woman who’d died had been anorexic, bulimic and a diet-pill addict. Claudia’s circles of junkie friends had wasted away, literally and metaphorically. Heroin wasn’t the impostor’s problem, but as she’d whittled down her weight, she seemed to have lost control of other appetites. Aside from the diet pills, there had been no drugs in the apartment, except for Claudia’s prescriptions and an unmarked vial that had contained Ambien. Unless Kaylee Quan had swiped drugs from the apartment while she was there…

I noticed a couple of car-rental charges on the bills as my phone started to ring. Sarah had mentioned that the woman often went away for the weekend; where had she gone? I picked up the call and noticed with relief that it was Tariq. “Did you find anything about Kaylee Quan?” I asked breathlessly.

“Yes, of course.” Tariq’s tone was smug. “I wanted to ask if I could interest you in a trip to suburbia.”

“What are talking about?”

“I am going to see this Quan woman now. Do you wish to come with me?”

“Yes, but…” This wasn’t at all what I’d had in mind.