The boyfriend’s family was dull, which is to say that they were everything they appeared to be, a university professor and a sculptor, living the proper academia-social life in Charlottesville. Where had their son gotten his money, then? Tax filings should provide leads, but those weren’t due for another two weeks. What would Gabe do if he had a pile of cash like that? Just what he was doing, he realized. He loved his job.

The Monaghans and the Weinsteins, now, they were more promising. Steeped in local politics, and local politics always had a nut of corruption. Clearly, the more he leaned on her father, the more they got to her. That was when she had wavered in the interview, when they threatened her father. The Monaghans were green, the Weinsteins were purple. There had to be something to play with in those two worlds.

He hadn’t missed Jenkins’s exasperation and disappointment yesterday. Gabe was just self-aware enough to realize how clueless Jenkins and Collins thought he was. He knew that they blamed him for screwing up this latest round. But what could he do, once the old guy sussed out that they were taking an unauthorized flier on this?

The yellow path wasn’t leading him anywhere. But he had put a pink Post-it on the liquor license, the Monaghan bitch’s color. Why had he flagged this anyway? She wasn’t listed anywhere on the license, and she didn’t appear to have anything to do with her father’s business. The liquor license had been passed from Ed Keyes to Patrick Monaghan, so green was the only flag that should be flying here.

Keyes. That was the name of her detective agency. Keyes Investigations, Inc. He had thought it was some stupid local reference, as in Francis Scott Key, “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It was the name of the owner. Yes, there it was on the corporation papers. Keyes. Keyes. Key!

He crumpled a paper cup, the only nonessential piece of paper in his office, and sent it sailing into his wastebasket. It bounced off the rim, teetered, then fell in. Gabe Dalesio. He shoots, he scores.

Tess called Health Care for the Homeless, figuring the agency would have a ready list of the soup kitchens open on Mondays. There were fewer than ten, led by Our Daily Bread. The huge soup kitchen in the heart of downtown served every day, with almost a thousand people passing through its line. But she had a hunch that the young man she was searching for would stick closer to home. There was a small church-run program over on the East Side, which started serving at three to accommodate schoolkids. Lloyd hadn’t gone to school, but his friend might. And it was over in that part of town, on a Monday, that Crow had met Lloyd.

Holy Redeemer’s director didn’t bother masking her hostility to Tess and her mission. “Our kitchen is a haven,” said Charlotte Curtis, a short, compact black woman with graying braids. “I don’t want any of our guests to feel as if we’ve betrayed them. It’s part of the reason I don’t take federal or state money. I don’t want anyone thinking they have a right to my records.”

“I’m not trying to get anyone in trouble,” Tess said. “Sort of the opposite. I’ve been trying to help a kid named Lloyd Jupiter.”

It felt strange to say his name, given how fiercely she had concentrated on not saying it for the past week. But this woman was so protective of her clients that Tess couldn’t imagine her cooperating with the authorities.

“I know Lloyd,” Charlotte Curtis said, her voice ever so cautious. “He’s a sweet kid, underneath it all.”

“And is there another kid he hangs with, round, a little heavyset, but very quick and light on his feet?” Tess still remembered how speedily and casually the boy had moved after piercing Whitney’s tire.

“Dub.”

“Dub?” Tess was thrown by the name’s redneck vibe.

“Short for Dubnium, an element. His mother liked chemistry when she was in high school.” Charlotte Curtis sighed. “Unfortunately, his mother likes chemicals, too. She’s in the wind. But Dub is some kind of genius. Seriously. He’s not only doing well in school, he’s managing to evade the Department of Social Services, which is determined to put him and his siblings in foster care and collect his mother’s public assistance before she can get to it. No one can find Dub if he doesn’t want to be found.”

The warning registered only as a challenge to Tess. “No one official,” she countered. “But you can, can’t you? I bet you know where he is.”

“If I knew where he lived, I’d be obligated to do something about it, wouldn’t I?”

“Would you? Do you believe that Dub would be better off in DSS custody?”

Tess felt Charlotte Curtis taking her measure, putting her on some metaphysical scale that weighed and evaluated every bit of her-brain, heart, soul. The woman said at last, “I can’t swear to where he is. He moves a lot. Last I heard, they had a place over on Collington. Look for a red tag on the lower portion of the plywood that covers the door.”

“Tag?”

“Graffiti mark. Dub has an open-door policy for other kids who need a place to stay, Lloyd among them. But he doesn’t give out the address, just the block, because he and his mother are always tussling over the benefits. Dub gets the card, she reports it stolen, he changes the PIN code somehow, has the replacement card sent to him care of…Well, let’s just say he has a regular address he can use. High school is easy for Dub after five years of trying to outthink his mother.”

Tess got to the rowhouse on Collington before school was out, giving her time to explore it. The house was boarded up, with No Trespassing signs stapled to the wooden surfaces, but there was a red squiggle in the lower-right-hand corner, and the plywood over the door swung open easily.

Her stomach lurched a little at the conditions inside-pallets on the floor, no running water, dim even in the afternoon because of the boarded-over windows. Even as a flophouse, it was far from adequate. Charlotte had confided in Tess that the church allowed Dub and his siblings to use their bathroom in the mornings, and the children then relied on the facilities in the branch library the rest of the time. In fact, that was where they spent each afternoon throughout the cold-weather months. Would they stay outside, now that dusk came later and the air was almost warm? Tess waited in her car, certain she would recognize him by his walk.

Not long after five, Tess saw a trio coming down the block, a heavyset teenager and two younger children. Yes, that was the silhouette she remembered, the same light-footed Jackie Gleason grace. She waited until they slipped into the house, then followed about five minutes later.

“Shit,” Dub said.

“I’m not DSS,” Tess assured him. “Just a friend of Lloyd Jupiter’s. He’s in trouble.”

“Don’t know any Lloyd.”

“So it’s just a coincidence that you puncture tires and Lloyd comes along five minutes later, ready to change them?”

Dub didn’t make the mistake of speaking when surprised.

“I saw you, Dub. Week before last. You and Lloyd pulled the scam over on Mount Street. Old Mercedes station wagon. Only Lloyd didn’t show up for a while, did he? And when he did, I bet he had a story about how he didn’t make any money, but he had bags of cookies, maybe some leftover carryout. Am I right?”

“Them cookies were good,” the little girl said wistfully. She looked about eight, and she wore her hair in a timeless style-three poufy plaits, sectioned off as precisely as city blocks, fastened with plastic barrettes at the ends. Tess marveled at the care that had been taken with the little girl’s hair. The boy, slightly taller, was spick-and-span as well, although his trousers were a tad too short. She hoped kids no longer got teased for wearing high-waters.

“I haven’t seen Lloyd for a while,” Dub said. “I don’t know where he is.”