“The door is secure.”

“But if they got in once, can’t they just come in again?” Charlie asked.

“Technically,” he said. “You’ll want to change those locks.”

A uniformed policeman came up to us. “Ma’am.” He handed me a clipboard with a police report. “Can you sign this, please?”

I took the clipboard and the pen he offered. “So this is it?” I asked the detective.

“Unless you want us to barricade the door.”

“Then how would my neighbors and I enter the building?”

The detective nodded gravely, as if to say, “good point.”

“So there’s nothing else you can do?”

He shrugged. “You’re on your own.”

30

Day Four

U sually, everything looks better in the morning. Usually, the crisp, cool light that grows over Lake Michigan and spreads over the city fills me with hope and possibility.

But after a night spent alternately watching the front door, and dozing fitfully in the yellow chair, trying to tune out my brother’s snoring, life seemed nothing but bleak. When I remembered that Forester’s funeral was today, I felt the loss of him like a hard kick to my gut.

Mayburn texted me. Called the locksmith. We’re on our way over.

Charlie began moving around, shifting his body from its awkward position on the chair. “Mmm,” he said, sounding distinctly satisfied, as if he’d just slept in a luxurious bed covered with the most expensive linens.

He yawned, stretched his long limbs. Finally he opened his eyes. “Hi, Iz,” he said, sounding pleased to find me in front of him.

“Sleep well?” I asked in a wry voice.

“Yeah, great.” Then he caught my expression. “Sorry, I fell asleep.”

I waved a hand at him. I should never have expected my brother to stand guard over me. He and I didn’t work that way. “I’ve got a locksmith coming over. You’re off duty.”

We hugged at the door. “Call me if you need anything,” he said. “Anything at all.”

Mayburn arrived twenty minutes later with the locksmith.

I waited until they climbed the three flights of stairs. Mayburn wore dark jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt that said something about Smashing Pumpkins at Soldier Field. He had on beat-up brown boots that managed to look cool. I liked this casual look of his better than the blazers or suits he wore for work.

I shook hands with the locksmith then looked at Mayburn. “Thanks for coming.”

“No problem. I’ll check the place out,” he said. “See if I notice anything the cops missed.”

While the locksmith went to work, Mayburn poked around the apartment. He searched for prints using a battery-powered light source strapped around his head.

“Very cute.” I nodded at the thing, which made him look like a high-tech coal miner.

“I don’t care what it looks like,” he said. “It’s a hell of a lot easier than dusting. And a hell of a lot cleaner.”

When Mayburn was done, he told me that there were prints all over my house, which was typical, since Sam and I lived there, we entertained occasionally, and we had a cleaning person who came every few weeks. Mayburn also said that if the person who’d broken in was a professional, which was probable, they wouldn’t have left any prints.

“So there’s nothing to find?” I stared around my apartment, feeling nervous again.

“Not right now, but remember what I told you. Investigations are made up of lots of little pieces of information that you put together.”

“And what piece of information did we get here?”

“Someone definitely broke into your house.”

“I knew that.”

“You suspected that. Now that we’ve seen the locks and the cops have seen the locks, we know they were bumped for sure.”

“Great,” I said.

“Sorry to be the one to tell you, but this stuff takes time.”

I sighed. “Well, I appreciate you being here.”

“That’s what we’re doing, right? I’m working for you and you’re working for me?”

“Yeah.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Good, because I’ve got another assignment for you. One that’s for my case. Can you borrow a kid?”

“Excuse me?”

“A friend’s kid. Is there somebody you could offer to babysit for, like, for an afternoon?”

I ran my mind around everyone I knew. “My friend Maggie has brothers and sisters who have kids. I’ve never babysat before, but they’d probably be thrilled if I offered.”

“Excellent.” Mayburn’s eyes went a little brighter, and I could see him thinking. “Sunday afternoon, I need you on a playground.”

“But the Bears are on.” I knew the Bears game didn’t matter in the scheme of things, not anymore, but I liked saying that, as if I still lived in a day when my world ran around social outings and court calls and sporting events, rather than FBI visits and funerals and private-investigation assignments.

Mayburn shook his head. “TiVo it. Because on Sunday, Izzy McNeil, you’re going to be a mother.”

31

After Mayburn left, I called Maggie. She had a virtual day-care center of nieces and nephews.

I heard the phone being picked up at her apartment. “What courthouse? What’s the bond?” She barked the questions, but she couldn’t mask the hoarse sleepiness of her voice.

“It’s me, Mags.” Maggie loved to sleep as late as possible, but was constantly awakened by her drug clients who landed in the clink.

“Iz?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you in jail?”

“No.”

“So why are you calling me right now?”

“It’s Sam.” I knew that would wake her up.

“What happened?” I could almost see her in her contemporary South Loop apartment. The drapes would be drawn across the floor-to-ceiling windows, and she would be only a mere bump in her big, sleek bed, but now her head would be popping out of the covers; now she would be sitting upright, springing out of bed.

“No news,” I said quickly.

A pause. “Then why are you calling me?”

Now it was my turn to pause. How to do this without telling her that I was working with Mayburn, that in order for Mayburn to look into Sam’s case and Forester’s death, he wanted me to borrow a kid and hang around some woman named Lucy DeSanto? Apparently, every Sunday afternoon Lucy and her daughter met a friend and her kid at a Lincoln Park playground. While he could technically hire a female operative to get close to them, to listen to them, it was hard for such an operative to fake certain things, like the neighborhood where you lived.

“Like I told you at lunch,” Mayburn said, “you have a Northside feel to you.”

“I’m still not sure exactly what that means.”

He shrugged. “It’s intangible, but you know how it is-if you meet someone you can tell immediately if they’re South Side.”

“Sure.”

“Or you can tell if they’re from the burbs.”

“Right.”

“So these women live on the North Side, and if you start talking to them and don’t seem like you’re from their world, you won’t be able to get within ten feet of them. And most of the women investigators I know definitely don’t have that feel.”

I was dying to tell Maggie all this-I’m going undercover! But Mayburn’s rule was I couldn’t tell anyone. And truthfully, I didn’t even know why he wanted me to loiter around Lucy DeSanto. He was going to bring me up to date if I could find a child.

“I wanted to see if anyone in your family needed babysitting,” I said to Maggie.

“Huh?”

Charlie had left behind a pile of dishes. I tucked the phone under my chin and started cleaning up. “Like your sisters. Do they need someone to watch one of their kids this weekend?”

“What in the hell are you talking about?”

“I want to babysit. You know, as practice for having kids. Maybe Sunday?”

“For starters, the Bears are playing on Sunday. And more importantly, I’m just going to say it again-what in the hell are you talking about?”