The other money, the cash Christine always seemed to have to buy booze, most likely came from Gloria Wilks-money intended for Emma. But it wasn’t enough to start a new business. Christine had probably gone to whoever took the child she’d given up and asked for the start-up money for the cleaning business. What if that person figured out her requests would never end and killed her? A child you’d raised, probably loved with all your heart, would be a powerful motivator, especially if the child had no idea she was bought or adopted.

Then there was the infant found under the house. An exchange had obviously been made. But how had this deal been brokered? I didn’t know the answer. I was hoping Loreen had more to share about her relationship with Christine O’Meara, some small something that would piece all this together.

I arrived at Jeff’s apartment about thirty minutes later than if I’d taken the freeway. Good thing I knew Houston streets. I rapped on the door and Jeff let me in. The smell of pepperoni and pizza crust filled the apartment.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to see a pizza box in my life.” We joined Loreen and Doris at the card table.

Loreen had changed out of her uniform into jeans and a T-shirt, Doris had pizza sauce at both corners of her mouth and Jeff must have finished eating, because he was chewing gum.

I took the GPS device out of my purse and showed Jeff. “DeShay has another toy to play with.”

“What kind of toy?” Doris said. “Can I see it?”

“No, Doris, it’s not that kind of toy,” Jeff said. “After Abby’s done eating, we can set up that jigsaw puzzle we bought today.”

I picked up one of the three slices left in the box and took a bite.

“What is that thing?” Loreen nodded at my purse, where I’d returned the GPS device.

“A piece of equipment our friend DeShay-”

“I know Jeff is a cop.” She glanced at him. “An ex-pro like me can smell a cop a mile away. What is that?”

“You can smell Jeffy because he smells nice,” Doris said. “He smells like our dad.”

We all had to smile, and I said, “He does clean up good.”

“Loreen has a pretty smile like yours, Abby. She said she had a friend like me when she was in school a long time ago. Can you be my friend now, Loreen?”

Loreen blinked several times and then slowly reached out to Doris, her palm up. “Yeah. I’ll be your friend.”

But Doris wasn’t about hand squeezes. She got up and wrapped the miniature woman in one of her hugs. Jeff had to put an end to this affectionate gesture or risk Loreen ending up with a few broken ribs. Time for the jigsaw puzzle, I thought, hoping Loreen had forgotten her question. Knowing about the GPS device, knowing I may have been tailed to her house, would make her feel like she’d sat down in a bear trap.

Loreen did seem to forget, and after only an hour of puzzling, something we discovered Jeff’s sister was quite good at, Doris wanted to watch The Little Mermaid again. She abruptly left us for the DVD player. I guessed her attention span was limited. I’d have to get used to that.

With Doris occupied, I took Loreen’s gun from my purse, unloaded it and handed her the weapon and the ammo. “Thanks.”

Loreen put everything in her own bag. She looked tired, but I had been patiently waiting for a chance to finish questioning her about Christine and hoped she didn’t fade on me. Jeff offered her a drink, and while the two of them broke into a bottle of Scotch, I had a Shiner Bock. Hard liquor isn’t for me, and I usually have beer only at Astros games, but I’d forgotten to pick up wine when I did the shopping.

“Loreen, you’ve been so helpful, but I need to pick your brain a little more,” I said.

“Yeah, well, I gotta call in sick for tomorrow first. Believe me, that won’t make my boss happy.” She gulped her Scotch. “Phone?”

“On the kitchen wall,” Jeff said.

She left us to make her call, and Jeff leaned close. “She’s scared for the wrong reasons, thinks her ex-pimp is the biggest threat. Get that GPS box to DeShay in the morning.”

Loreen came back to the table. “Guess who’s fired if she’s not at work day after tomorrow?” She took another long swallow of her drink. “Why in hell did I ever write that letter?”

“Because you wanted to right a wrong,” I said. “Usually that ends up paying off in the end.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not seeing any nice payoff about now.”

“You can still help Christine’s kids,” I said. “On the drive back here I was thinking about who Christine could have met who had the money to buy her baby-because the cash she had for Vegas could have been payment. You’ve said no one at Rhoda’s seemed like a good candidate, but what about the people you two cleaned for?”

“Some of them were rich, yeah.”

“Longtime customers?”

Loreen rested her elbow on the table and held her head with her hand. “I think so.” She was sounding more tired by the second. “She had this list. Tuesday regulars, Wednesday regulars. She never worked on Fridays or the weekend. Those were her drinking days, and no one interfered with that.”

“You remember any of these people?” I asked.

“Everyone we cleaned for worked in the daytime. They left a key and we usually didn’t see them.”

“How did you know where to go and when? The list?” I asked.

“Christine kept a notebook with phone numbers, too. I remember because I saw these doodles in there, and I asked Christy if she’d drawn them. She said yeah. She drew people’s faces. Even me. I asked her for the page, but she said she had stuff she needed on the back side. She drew me another one later but I lost it.”

I thought about the boxes moved out to storage the day of the demolition. Had Emma thrown away this notebook along with the photographs she’d mentioned? “You’re sure you never met any of the clients?”

“I was helping with more houses by ninety-two, and every now and then someone was home sick or… Wait. There was this one lady who quit working when she was so pregnant she could hardly walk. I did see her. Vacuumed right around her for three weeks in a row.”

My heart sped up, and I was thinking how long it had taken me to get this one morsel of information, something Loreen had no way of knowing might be important enough to pull everything together.

Jeff knew its importance, though, because he said, “Do you remember if you cleaned for this woman around the same time that Christine was pregnant?”

Loreen looked thoughtful. “She coulda been pregnant, too, now that I think about it. And you know, Christy never took me with her if she went back there, so I never saw that lady’s baby. You think the kid under the house belonged to that woman we cleaned for?”

“Could be,” I said.

“And maybe Christy did something to that kid so she could sell her own baby to that lady?” Loreen shook her head vigorously. “I wasn’t there if she did that. You better make sure the cops know-”

“Chill, Loreen,” I said. “I don’t think you had anything to do with the baby or you never would have written that letter to Reality Check.”

“Yeah. That’s right,” she said, nodding. “But why didn’t the woman send Christy to jail if she hurt their kid? That’s what any normal person woulda done. I went to jail plenty of times for a lot less than that.”

“We don’t know if Christine hurt any baby,” I said.

Jeff nodded his agreement. “Your friend and this woman could have made a baby deal for reasons we haven’t yet figured out, and Christine agreed to keep the secret. Then later she decided to earn some extra money to continue to keep that secret.”

“Oh, yeah. She’d do that. She was always looking for the big jackpot that never came.” Loreen closed her eyes briefly, then pointed past me. “I’m sorry, but I need to do what she’s doing.”

I turned and saw Doris lying on the floor in front of the TV. She was sound asleep.