Turning back down the hail, I tried every door. Miraculously one opened under my hand. I stepped inside onto something squishy and was hit in the nose by someone with a stick. Fighting back, I found myself wrestling a large mop.

Outside I could hear the voices of two patrolmen agreeing in low murmurs about which parts of the floor to guard. Trying to move quietly, I edged my way to the wall of the supply closet and ran into a coatrack. Clothes were hanging from it: the regulation smocks of the cleaning women. I fumbled in the dark, pulled my jeans off, stuck my documents inside the waistband of my tights, and pulled on the nearest smock. It came barely to my knees, and was miles too large in the shoulders, but it covered me.

Hoping I was not covered with paper, glass shards, or blood, and praying that these patrolmen had not dandled me on their knees thirty years ago, I swung open the closet door.

The policemen were about twenty feet from me, their backs turned. “You!” I screamed, donning Gabriella’s thick accent. They swirled around. “What goes on here, eh? I am calling manager!” I started off in righteous indignation to the elevator.

They were on me in an instant. “Who are you?”

“Me? I am Gabriella Sforzina. I work here. I belong. But you? What you doing here, anyway?” I started shouting in Italian, trusting none of them knew the words to “Madamina” from Don Giovanni.

They looked at each other uncertainly. “Take it easy, lady. Take it easy.” The speaker was in his late forties, not far from pension time, not wanting any trouble. “Someone broke into one of the offices upstairs. We think he left by the fire escape. You haven’t seen anyone on this floor, have you?”

“What?” I shrieked, adding in Italian, “Why do I pay taxes, eh, that’s what I want to know-for bums like you to let burglars in while I’m working? So I can be raped and murdered?” I obligingly translated into English for them.

The younger one said, “Uh, look, lady. Why don’t you just go on home.” He scribbled a note on a pad and ripped off the sheet for me. “Just give that to the sergeant at the door downstairs and he’ll let you out.”

It was only then that I realized my gloves were lying with my jeans on the floor of the supply closet.

LOTTY WAS NOT amused. “You sound just like the CIA,” she snapped, when I stopped by the clinic to tell her my adventure. “Breaking into people’s offices, stealing their files”

“I’m not stealing the files,” I said virtuously. “I wrapped them up and mailed them back first thing this morning. What troubles me from a moral standpoint is the jacket and gloves I left there-technically their loss is a business expense. Yet will the IRS turn me in if I itemize? I should call my accountant.”

“Do that,” she retorted. Her Viennese accent was evident, as always when Lotty was angry. “Now leave. I’m busy and have no wish to talk to you in such a mood.”

The break-in had made the late editions. Police speculated that the watchman interrupted the thief before he took anything of value, since nothing of value was missing. My prints are on file at the Eleventh Street station, so I hoped none showed up that I couldn’t reasonably account for as part of my business visit to Tilford’s office.

What would they make of Derek Hatfield’s name on the Stock Exchange’s sign-in register, I wondered. I had to figure out some way of finding out if they questioned Hatfield about

Whistling through my teeth, I started the Omega and headed out to Melrose Park. Despite Lotty’s ill humor I was pleased with myself. Typical criminal failing-you carry off a coup, then have to brag about it. Sooner or later one of your bragees tells the police.

Snow was beginning to fall as I turned onto Mannheim Road. Small dry spitballs, Arctic snow, no good for snowmen. I was wearing long underwear under my navy pantsuit and hoped that would be enough protection against a minus 28 wind chill. Some time today I’d have to find an Army-Navy Surplus and get another pea jacket.

The Priory of Albertus Magnus loomed coldly through the driving pellets. I parked the car out of the wind as far as possible and fought my way to the priory entrance. The wind sliced through suit and underwear and left me gasping for air.

Inside the high-vaulted, stale hallway the sudden silence was palpable. I rubbed my arms and stamped my feet and warmed myself before asking the anemic ascetic at the reception desk to find Father Carroll for me. I hoped I was too early for evening prayers and too late for classes or confessions.

About five minutes later, as the building’s essential chill began making me shiver, Father Carroll himself came down the hall. He was moving quickly, yet not hurrying, a man in control of his life and so at peace.

“Miss Warshawski. How nice to see you. Have you come about your aunt? She’s back today, as she probably told you.”

I blinked a few times. “Back? Back here, you mean? No, she hadn’t told me. I came… I came to see if you could give me any information about a Catholic lay organization called Corpus Christi.”

“Hmm.” Father Carroll took my arm. “You’re shivering- let’s get to my office and have a cup of tea. You can have a nice chat with your aunt. Father Pelly and Father Jablonski are there, too.”

I followed him meekly down the hall. Jablonski, Pelly, and Rosa were sitting at a deal table in Pelly’s outer office, drinking tea. Rosa’s steel-colored hair was as stiffly waved as though made, in fact, from cast iron. She wore a plain black dress with a silver cross at the throat. She was listening attentively to Pelly as Carroll and I came in. At the sight of me her face changed. “Victoria! What are you doing here?”

The hostility was so obvious that Carroll looked astounded. Rosa must have noticed this, but her hatred was too fierce for her to care about externals; she continued to glare at me, her thin bosom heaving. I walked around the table to her and kissed the air by her cheek. “Hello, Rosa. Father Carroll says they’ve brought you back-as the treasurer, I hope? How splendid. I know Albert must be ecstatic, too.”

She looked at me malevolently. “I know well I cannot make you be quiet, or stop you harassing me. But perhaps in the presence of these holy fathers you will at least not strike me.”

“I don’t know, Rosa. Depends on what the Holy Spirit prompts you to say to me. Don’t bet on anything, though.”

I turned to Carroll. “I’m Rosa’s brother’s only surviving granddaughter. When she sees me, it always chokes her up like this… Could I trouble you for that cup of tea?”

Glad of something to do to cover the tension, Carroll bustled with an electric kettle behind me. When he handed me a cup I asked, “Does this mean you’ve found who was responsible for the forgeries?”

He shook his head, his pale brown eyes troubled. “No. Father Pelly persuaded me, though, that Mrs. Vignelli really could not have been involved. We know how valuable her work is, and how much it means to her-it seemed unnecessarily cruel to make her sit at home for months or years.”

Pelly put in, “Actually, we’re not sure they will ever clear the matter up. The FBI seems to have lost interest. Do you know anything about it?” He looked questioningly at me.

I shrugged. “I get all my news from the daily papers. I haven’t seen anything in there about the FBI dropping the investigation. What has Hatfield said to you?”

Carroll answered, “Mr. Hatfield hasn’t told us anything. But since the real stocks turned up, they don’t seem to be as interested in the investigation.”

“Could be. Derek doesn’t talk too much to me.” I sipped some of the pale green tea. It was warming; that was the best that could be said for it. “I really came out here for a different reason. A friend of mine was shot last week. Saturday I learned Father Pelly was a friend of hers, too. Perhaps the rest of you knew her-Agnes Paciorek?”