After I bribed Webster with a rawhide bone and closed him in, I decided to try to endear myself to Dolly one more time, hoping she’d open up, but she was muttering about cat hair as she unloaded her supplies onto my kitchen counter.

“The cat’s probably upstairs. I’ll have to find her,” I said as I passed her.

Once upstairs, I saw the guest bathroom rugs neatly folded in the hall and heard water running. I walked to the bathroom and leaned against the doorframe. “Hi.”

Angela was on her knees cleaning around the base of the commode. She returned my “Hi” and held up the canned bathroom cleaner. “You want me to use something different? We bring our own, but the customer can always-”

“No problem. I didn’t get to say hello to you down there. You been doing this long?”

She went back to spraying and wiping. “Couple years.”

“How many houses do you clean in a day?”

“Maybe five. Sometimes six if we have a few small places.”

“Sounds like a tough job,” I said.

Angela looked at me. “She’s gonna come up here and get on my case if you keep talking to me. You saw what she’s like.”

“Sorry, I always chatted with my former cleaning lady. But she wasn’t with a big agency like Purity. How many people work there?”

“About thirty.” She pulled a wand from her pail and attached a disposable toilet brush, then flushed the commode and began to scrub the bowl.

“You always work in pairs? Because I think that’s a good idea. You could-”

“Ma’am.” Angela sat back on her heels. “What do you want from me?”

“I’m a talker; that’s all.” She was wearing rubber gloves, so I couldn’t tell if she was married, but asking about kids might make her more talkative. “You have children?”

“Two.” She was back to scrubbing. “I don’t mind if you like to talk, but Dolly gets all over me if I don’t finish on time. You’re making that kinda hard.”

“Okay. I’ll leave you alone.” But I wasn’t about to quit without getting any useful information. I took a few steps toward my bedroom but came back and stuck my head in the door. “You look young to have two children. They must be little.”

This time Angela laughed and shook her head. “You can’t help yourself, can you?”

“You got me pegged. How old are they?”

Pretty soon I knew all about Angela. How her husband worked on an oil rig and was gone for months at a time, how some days she had to work as late as eight at night, even though she started at seven in the morning, but I mostly learned how much she loved her husband and kids and how every penny she made went into a savings account for the children-so they could go to college and not be cleaning houses when they were twenty-five.

By then, we’d moved through my bedroom and into the master bath. “Lots of women in the same boat at Purity?”

“Most are worse off. At least my husband’s got a steady job.”

“There was another cleaning woman recommended to me before you two were assigned. Her name was Loreen, I think. Is she worse off?”

“The only thing I know about Loreen is that she’s got some monster houses on her schedule. She’s been around a long time and makes more money.”

“You wouldn’t know her last name? My sister had a team of cleaning women about eight years ago. One was Christine or Catherine or something like that, and the other was Loreen. I was thinking maybe Loreen’s the same person.”

“Why you asking about Loreen?” came Dolly’s unexpected voice from my bedroom doorway. She’d climbed those stairs as quiet as a coon stalking a crawfish.

I turned. “No reason. Just making conversation.”

She stared past me at Angela, who looked like she wanted to jump into the shower and hide. “Angela, you haven’t even changed the sheets. What the heck have you been doing all this time?”

“She’s been doing a very thorough job on my bathrooms,” I said. “They really needed attention.”

“Right.” Dolly looked at her watch. “Not much time, and you got three bedrooms and a hall to clean. I know you don’t want to miss lunch, Angela.”

Dolly gave me a look like I had a houseful of manure that had to be cleaned up-but no. She wouldn’t touch “animal waste.” Had to be me.

The plan to get anything out of the maids seemed to have hit a roadblock, but I wasn’t defeated-not yet. I had another idea. They drove company vans, and that meant they had to drop them off at the end of the day. Fiona Mancuso must do the same, and since I had her mug shot, a stakeout at the Purity agency might work. A stakeout. I’d never done one of those before. I’d like being the follower rather than the followee for once.

After the maids finished and went on their way, I got busy. Since I didn’t know Mancuso’s schedule, I couldn’t risk waiting until later in the day to show up at Purity. Though it was unlikely, she could be working a short shift. Besides, I was too antsy to wait around. We were having a real fall day after yesterday’s rain, so I changed into cotton drawstrings and a long-sleeved T-shirt, packed up a few Diet Cokes in a small cooler and took along a package of potato chips. I remembered how Jeff said stakeouts were boring as hell ninety-nine percent of the time while you waited for something to happen. I almost forgot the binoculars and had to go back for them. What was a stakeout without binoculars?

The agency office was north, off Shepherd Drive, and I soon realized there was more to a stakeout than I planned. You had to find a place to park. Duh. Stakeout equals parking. I finally chose a busy Mexican restaurant, but my first spot did not offer a view of Purity’s fenced-in lot, where several minivans sat. This made me anxious. I might miss Loreen coming and going. But I shouldn’t have worried. I found a parking place facing the street fifteen minutes later-a good five hours before I needed to.

By the time Purity vans started arriving to end their day, I’d used the restaurant bathroom twice, and both times felt obligated to buy takeout, waiting and watching outside while it was prepared.

Tex-Mex is not user friendly, and I figured this stakeout had cost me about two thousand calories by the time I picked up my binoculars to watch as each van drove into the lot. I was tired after doing nothing for hours. Even the excitement of finally seeing action seemed dulled by the day’s inactivity and the fatty food I’d eaten.

If I’d had to rely on the mug shot alone at this distance for an ID, I would have been out of luck, but Emma’s description of the bad dye job paid off. I spotted the raven-haired Mancuso leaving the passenger side of a van about five thirty. Emma mentioned she was small, but I’d say gaunt was a better adjective.

She went into the office with her partner and soon came out alone, purse slung over her shoulder. She lit a cigarette and started walking, probably toward the bus stop I’d noticed when I arrived, just beyond the Shepherd intersection. Damn. I knew she rode buses. Why hadn’t I anticipated that she would today? Now I had a problem: I couldn’t see the bus stop from where I was parked. The best solution was to follow her on foot and get on the bus with her before she disappeared.

But then I’d have to leave my car, and it might be towed by the time I got back. I pulled out of the lot and idled on the side of the road, watching up ahead for a bus to pass through the intersection. I waited ten minutes for this to happen, and when it did, I quickly put the Camry in drive and pulled out in front of a driver who made sure I knew I’d pissed him off.

The light favored me, and I made a right onto Shepherd just as the bus lumbered away from the stop. Mancuso was not sitting on the bench, and I could only hope she was on that bus and hadn’t decided to do a little shopping at the gas station/convenience store on the corner. Following Metro would be a new challenge-especially for an impatient person like me. But if I had no luck today, I could always come back tomorrow-and I’d wait on Shepherd to make sure she climbed onto the bus.