Viola twisted the tissue so tightly that it tore, shedding confetti onto her jeans and the floor. “On TV they said you were one of Chicago’s best investigators. Not with the police. I thought you could find Sebastian.”

“It would be better if you went to the police,” I said. “They have the resources—”

“No, no, no! I keep telling you, no police. If I had to tell them what I told you, they’d think Sebastian was a criminal, and they’d arrest him.”

“The statute of limitations on his embezzling has expired,” I said. “They won’t arrest him, unless what he was doing for Jerry was criminal. Are you sure you don’t know what your uncle asked him to do?”

“I don’t,” she wailed, “but, you know, the way Sebastian said I was better off not knowing . . .”

“Who did your uncle work for? Did you meet the people who gave him the money for Sebastian’s rescue?”

“He didn’t like us to be around him,” Viola said. “Like, we knew he lived in Lansing, but we were never supposed to visit him. We’d meet him once a month at Saint Eloy’s to pay him; he volunteers there. Volunteered.”

I didn’t try to tell her Jerry got paid for his church work, but pulled out my cell phone and showed her the picture I’d taken.

Viola didn’t recognize the gravel-faced man. “I keep telling you, we hardly ever saw Uncle Jerry. He said he didn’t want to talk to me in public, he didn’t want people tracking him, but I’m so desperate about Sebastian, I kept trying to phone Uncle Jerry, but he wouldn’t answer—I guess he saw my name on the caller ID. And now he’s dead, and what if the same people are after Sebastian? I have to find him. Can you do it? If he gets—if someone—I’ll never be able to go on without him.”

I didn’t like this, not one little bit. If Fugher had arranged a juice loan for his nephew, he had ties to some of the scariest people in Chicago. The way he’d been killed meant he for sure had the wrong kind of enemies. As for Sebastian, missing for almost a week after signing on to one of Uncle Jerry’s projects, he was almost certainly dead, as well. Remember Nancy Reagan: Just Say No.

“I charge one hundred dollars an hour,” I heard myself saying instead.

Viola looked at me in astonishment. “I told you, we don’t have any money.”

“You’ll have more money now that your uncle is dead,” I said bracingly. “Anyway, either you sign a contract and agree to my fee, or we shake hands forever.”

SHORT RELIEF

We both froze at what sounded like a cavalry regiment on the stairs—Viola because she was afraid of who might be coming, me because I knew who was coming. Viola scuttled down the hall toward the kitchen. I stayed in my chair. Bernie burst into the apartment, the dogs pushing past her to run over to me. We’d been separated for ten hours and the reunion was noisy and heartfelt. Mr. Contreras, who is ninety, trudged slowly up behind them.

“Doll, we was worrying about you. Bernie said she let some strange lady in and when we didn’t hear anything—and then your clothes in the front hall—”

Bernie was seventeen. She imagined disrobing as the result of uncontrolled passion. Mr. Contreras thought it meant I’d been abducted.

“She’s a potential client. Viola,” I called, “come on back. These are my neighbors.”

Viola returned to the living room, looking suspiciously at Mr. Contreras, the dogs, and even at Bernie, who had let her into the apartment in the first place.

“If you want me to work for you, come to my office, not my home, and we’ll sign a contract and you can give me an advance against expenses. You have to go now; I’m out of time.”

Viola didn’t want to leave by the front way, in case the people who’d killed Uncle Jerry had tracked her down here. That made me think she knew Fugher’s killers, but she denied it vigorously, starting to cry again. I’d run out of patience with her; I got Bernie to take her down the back stairs and out through the gate in the alley.

“What’s she want you to do?” Mr. Contreras asked.

When I told him, he expostulated that I didn’t need the Mob on my case.

“No quarrel here,” I agreed. “Hopefully, finding her brother won’t mean tangling with the Mob.”

“You turn it over to Captain Mallory,” Mr. Contreras said. “This is police business.”

“What’s police business?” Jake came in through the open front door. “V.I., have you been mud wrestling, and you didn’t get me a ticket?”

“I’m going to make my filthy clothes an art installation,” I announced. “People will fill out a survey on what the clothes mean to them and I’ll guess their age, sex and sexual fantasies. Like, who thinks mud wrestling first instead of, I don’t know—”

“Alligator wrestling,” Jake suggested.

“Way sexier,” I agreed.

“Can you be ready to leave in twenty minutes? In something not covered with mud or alligator skin?”

One of Jake’s students was playing a concert in a small venue off the Loop. Bernie, back from escorting Viola, followed me into my bedroom while I changed into going-out clothes. Living with a teenager means kissing any privacy farewell.

“What have you found out about this Stella woman’s attack on Uncle Boom-Boom?”

I was pulling a silver top over my head, which gave me time to organize my thoughts: I didn’t want to expose myself to a barrage of Bernie’s urgent questions by saying I’d gotten bogged down in all the family relations involved and couldn’t make sense of any of them.

“I think the diary is a cover-up for something else,” I said, when I’d adjusted the sleeves and draped a scarf across my shoulders. “What I don’t understand is why the Guzzos tried to drag me into their drama in the first place.”

“So you’re going to let them get away with attacking him?”

“I didn’t say that, Bernie. The attack is a smokescreen. And I have to ask myself whether it’s the best use of time and energy, my two scarcest resources, to figure it out.”

“You mean you’ve given up trying to prove this diary c’est de la scrape.” She waved her hands around, trying to think of the English word. “Phony.”

“Right now, Stella is the only person who admits to seeing the diary—her son and his wife both say they never had a look at it. The TV stations only had a typed transcript that the lawyer gave them; no one has seen the actual diary. It is pretty hard to hunt for something if it doesn’t actually exist.”

“Did you ask the priest? I thought you said she gave it to the priest.”

“If the diary exists, she might have given it to him. The first time I talked to him, he said she didn’t trust him because he was Mexican, but now he’s eyeing me with suspicion—that’s the only thing that makes me think it’s possible that he has it, or at least he’s seen it.”

“Then go in and look for it!” Bernie urged. “I know you can, Papa has told me how you are like a cat burglar when you want to be. Or have you gotten old and slow and stodgy?”

“You nailed it. I am old and slow and stodgy.”

“So you’ll go to work for this woman Viola, who seems like the dreariest person in Chicago, instead of looking after Uncle Boom-Boom?”

So much for avoiding a barrage. “No, cara, but I work for a living. I’m not one of those amateur detectives who can live off my bond interest while I dabble in investigations. So don’t ride me, okay? What are you up to tonight?”

She muttered that she was going out with some of the kids she’d met at the coffee shop. And yes, she huffed: she had my cell phone if anything went awry, yes, she’d be home by midnight, but would I be here to check?

“No, but your uncle Sal will. And he won’t go to bed until you’re in; he worries about you. And if he’s worried he’ll call me and then I’ll come after you with long rakes and red bats.”

Bernie’s vivid face puckered into a grimace, but she wasn’t sullen by nature; she let me give her a farewell hug, and promised to remember her curfew. And to call if she got stuck someplace where she needed a ride home. What made me uneasy were the little mischief lights dancing in her eyes when I said good-bye.