“I’m sorry, Miss Miller. We didn’t mean to trouble you. We’ll be going. Can Anora show us out?” He stood. Lester gave him a questioning look and rose slowly.

“The girl,” Miller said. “You find that girl.”

Ted stopped. He didn’t want to rattle her again, but if one or two more questions might get at the full story, he was going to try. “I’ll need something to go on,” he said. “Do you know her name?”

“Questions. All you have are questions. I don’t have all the answers.” She was adrift again.

“Was the girl’s name Jackie?” A last forlorn hope.

Miller’s distress evaporated. She set her plate thoughtfully on Lester’s empty chair and leaned back, eyes closed. “No,” she finally said.

Ted silently cursed his own stupidity. “Jacqueline? Jacqueline Clavette?”

The woman repeated the pantomime of thinking hard. “She had very good diction.”

Ted looked to Anora for help. She shrugged.

“She had you sign some papers.” He was close and could feel it.

“Hundreds,” Miller said. She was back. Clear. The lapses in her memory were no longer threatening.

Paper always leaves a trail. “I’m going to pursue this, Miss Miller.” Another thought occurred to him. “I’m going to have Lester stop by again tomorrow with another paper for you to sign.”

She looked at Lester. “Are you bringing cake?”

He smiled. “If you like.”

“Go to Andre’s this time,” she said.

-17-

-17-

Anora followed them out to the lobby. “You’re no nephew,” she said, making it a challenge.

Ted understood the words perfectly.

“No, you are right.” He was being reminded that he had first approached her employer under a pretense. Now he needed to build trust.

“You wan’ sometin’,” she said.

“I do,” he said. “I’m not doing anything out of my love of fellow man—or woman. But I’m going to help her. Someone worked her over for a lot of money. She’s going to get a chunk of it back.”

“I can help you.”

“Say that again,” Ted said.

“She’ll not sign, not if I tell her no.”

A shakedown. Ted had to admire her forthright approach. No sidling into it, just a straight-up holdup. “I assume you want something in return. How much? I’ll have Lester bring it tomorrow.”

She shook her head. “I wan’ a green card.”

Well, at least she wasn’t a cheap blackmailer. “I wouldn’t know how to begin to get you a green card.”

“You are a lawyer.”

The accent and cadences of her speech were no longer indecipherable. “Not exactly. I could go to jail for practicing law. And I know nothing about immigration law. Zilch.” Actually, he reflected, he knew two things about immigration law: it was both complicated and capricious, and it got more so every year.

“You know lawyers.”