“Only for a few months. I got ahold of an herbalist. He said ma huang was linked to a couple deaths some years ago, but they lifted the ban. Apparently, the herb is great when taken in small doses and for a short period of time. It can be used for weight loss and even asthma. But it shouldn’t be taken by a patient like Forester who has a history of a heart condition. Worse than that, there was a lot of ma huang in those herbs we tested from Forester’s home. There was more ma huang than is usually seen in anything. Way more than should normally be prescribed. Like ninety percent.”

“So why give it to him?”

“The herbalist told me there isn’t any reason to give him this much ma huang at one time.”

“If the ma huang caused the heart attack, why would Forester have had such normal test results a few weeks ago?”

“According to the date on that bottle of herbs, he’d started taking this batch of herbs around the same time. Even if he’d had it in his system for a day or two, the tests could have been normal if the herbs weren’t causing arrhythmia at the time. In other words, the night he died, the amount of ma huang in his system could have caught up with him and caused an irregular heartbeat and then a heart attack.”

“So, the big question is why did Dr. Li give him that herb and why so much of it?”

“Exactly.” I heard him moving around. “How soon can you see her?”

I pulled the piece of paper out of my bag where I’d written Dr. Li’s contact info. “I’m calling her now.”

On Wentworth and Twenty-fourth Street, one of the main intersections in Chinatown, the streets were filled with hustling locals carrying plastic bags with vegetables and packets of noodles hanging from them. All signs were in Chinese; sometimes with an English translation listed below. The street lamps were white lanterns with gold dragons on top. Green-and-red pagodas decorated the end of the street, while the Sears Tower hulked in the distance behind them.

“We’ve got half an hour to kill,” I said to Maggie. “Let’s get something to eat.”

When Dr. Li agreed to see me that afternoon, I had called Maggie immediately. She had represented a couple of drug runners-alleged drug runners-who operated out of Chinatown, and she’d gotten to know the area well. Plus, I wanted to update the attorney I hired for Sam and me on what I’d learned. More than anything, I needed my best friend with me.

In the cab on the way over, I told her about Sam’s Lexus arriving at Forester’s around the time he died, and the fact that Forester had been given an herb by the Chinese doctor that might have caused his death.

Maggie pointed at a restaurant where tiny English letters read Evergreen. “This is where they take me when they’re looking to sign me up for a case.” She was talking about the drug clients she represented.

“And when the case is over and you’ve won? Where do they take you then?”

She pointed up the street. “A place much less westernized, where they feed me food I can’t recognize and get me drunk on Du Kang.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t ask.”

Maggie’s clients loved to take her out after she’d gotten someone a “not guilty.” It always made me nervous, because she was a tiny golden-haired girl getting taken to places in Chinatown or in Mexican neighborhoods where she didn’t speak the language and where we’d never find her if they decided they weren’t so happy with her representation. But Maggie loved it. She insisted she had to spend quality time with her clients if she was going to tell a jury with a straight face that they should let them walk.

Inside Evergreen, the female hostess recognized Maggie and hurried us to a table with a white tablecloth topped with white butcher paper. The place had forest-green carpeting, and vases of fake flowers dotted the room. It was also decorated with religious-looking Chinese art and gold-leaf screens on which koi fish and storks were painted.

Soon, plate after plate after bowl after plate arrived in front of us-egg drop soup in white china cups trimmed in blue; pot stickers with gelatinous shiny skins shaped like cut onions; a yellow-and-pink mass of egg and shrimp, swimming amidst a warm brown broth in a glass pie tin.

Along with it, the hostess placed in front of us little glass plates of hot chili oil. “Use lots.”

As we ate, I told Maggie about my talk with Shane and the phone call with Alyssa.

Maggie listened in that intent way she has-head down, bottom lip slightly open. She nodded, she stopped me, she asked me a thousand questions, especially about what I’d learned from Alyssa. She, too, was concerned that maybe we should tell the authorities, but when we reviewed our contact with them, it was clear that the cops had closed their case and therefore we had no duty to tell them anything. As for the feds, they hadn’t subpoenaed me or asked me to report any information to them.

“And you don’t think they’re taping my phone conversations?” I asked. This had occurred to me after I got off the phone with Alyssa, and it bothered me.

Maggie shook her head. “Wiretapping is considered more serious than just tailing someone. You’re not a suspect or a person of interest. Yet.”

“Yet?” I stopped spooning the shrimp egg foo yong on my plate.

“Who knows what Sam is doing. He might have used your name or your information on certain documents.” She drizzled a vast amount of chili oil on another pot sticker and popped it in her mouth whole. “Yum!”

I sat back, letting the spoon clank on my plate. “Are you serious?”

“I’ve seen it before,” she said through her mouthful of food.

She stopped chewing and seemed to notice my stricken face. “Let’s talk about something else for a second.”

“What else is there?” That hollow feeling returned, despite the food in my stomach.

“Tell me about the Halloween party.”

I filled her in on the costumes and Simone. And then I told her about Grady.

That lower lip of hers dropped farther away from her mouth. She pushed away her plate. “I guess I’ve always known that Grady was a little in love with you.”

“What? No way.”

“Yeah way. He’s got those eyes when he looks at you. He just kept it under wraps, but now that Sam is gone…”

“I still don’t know what to do about it.”

She shrugged. “Let him love you. Let him help you. You could use it.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

When we were done, we’d barely touched all the food. The waitress packaged the leftovers in brown paper bags and delivered them with two fortune cookies. Mine read, Get Ready for a Daring Adventure.

Dr. Li’s office was in a two-story white-brick building. On the first floor, a shop called Dong Cheng sold jade rings and gold bracelets. A red door to the right of the shop was surrounded by a pleasing archway of carved stone, but once we were buzzed inside, the stairwell looked seedy and contained a set of slanted stairs with dirt-covered rubberized treads. The smell that wafted as we stepped inside was hard to describe-part cooked meat, part pungent spice, part Pine-Sol. I had a hard time imagining Forester in this place. But then again, Forester had a taste for exploration. He was always on board for a daring adventure.

We climbed the flight of stairs and knocked on the plain wooden door at the landing.

A small woman in a white lab coat answered the door. “Hello, hello,” she said. “I am Dr. Li.” She gave us a slight bow and pointed to two chairs in front of a dinged-up wood-veneer desk.

We took our seats.

“Wow,” I said, staring at the wall behind the desk. It was lined with white shelves on which stood hundreds of glass jars, filled with what looked like bark, moss and mushroomy-looking lumps.