Dresberg was definitely police business, if not FBI. And since the odds were against Caroline’s phoning McGonnigal with an amended statement, that meant I should play Cindy Citizen and tell him myself

Holding my breath, I slid down so that the water covered my head. Suppose Dresberg wasn’t involved at all, though. If I pointed the cops toward him, it would only divert their attention from more promising lines of inquiry.

I sat up and started rubbing shampoo into my hair. The water around me was turning black; I opened the drain and turned on the hot-water tap. All I had to do was find someone on Jurshak’s staff who would talk to me with the same frankness he’d used with Nancy. Then, when sinister figures began following me, I would take out my trusty Smith & Wesson and blow them away. Preferably, before they could bonk me on the head and dump me in the swamp.

I wrapped myself in a terry-cloth robe and went into the kitchen to forage. The maid hadn’t been shopping for some time and pickings were slim. I took the jar of peanut butter and the bottle of Black Label and went back into the living room with them.

I was on my second whiskey and my fourth spoonful of peanut butter when I heard a tentative knock on the door. I groaned in resignation; it was Mr. Contreras with a laden TV tray. The dog was at his heels.

“Hope you don’t mind me barging up like this, doll, but I could see you was all in and I thought you might like some supper. Did me a little barbecue chicken in the kitchen, and even without the charcoal it tastes pretty good, if I say so. I know you try to eat healthy so I made you a big salad. Now, you want to be alone, you just say the word and Peppy and me’ll head back down. Won’t hurt my feelings any. But you can’t live on that stuff you’re drinking. And peanut butter? Scotch and peanut butter? No way, doll. You’re too busy to buy food, you just let me know. No trouble for me to pick up something extra when I’m buying for myself, you know that.”

I thanked him lamely and invited him in. “Just let me put on some clothes.”

I guess I should have sent him back downstairs-I didn’t want it to become a habit with him, thinking he could come up whenever he felt like it. But the chicken smelled good and the salad looked healthy and the peanut butter was lying kind of heavily on my stomach.

I ended up telling him about Nancy’s death and my trek to Dead Stick Pond. He’d never been below the Field Museum and had no inkling of life on the South Side. I got out my city map and showed him Houston Street, where I’d grown up, and then the route down to the Cal Industrial District and the wetlands, where Nancy had been found.

He shook his head. “Dead Stick Pond, huh? Guess the name says it all. It’s rough losing a friend that way, one you played basketball with and all. I never even knew you was on a team, but I mighta guessed it, the way you run. But you want to be careful, doll. If this Dresburg guy is the one behind all this, he’s an awful lot bigger than you. You know me, I’ve never backed away from a fight, but I know better than to go in single-handed against a tank division too.”

He was going into an elaborate illustration based on his experiences at Anzio when Jonathan Michaels phoned. I excused myself and took the call on the bedroom extension.

“I wanted to get you before I leave town in the morning.” Jonathan spoke without preamble. “I had one of my staff people look up your two guys-Pankowski and Ferraro. They did sue Humboldt. Apparently not over wrongful dismissal, but whether they could get workers’ comp. It looks as though they quit due to illness and were trying to prove it was job related. They didn’t get anywhere with the suit-the thing came to trial here and Humboldt didn’t have any trouble winning, and then the two died and the lawyer didn’t seem to want to follow up on appeal. I don’t know how far you want to follow this, but the lawyer who handled it was a Frederick Manheim.”

He cut short my thanks with a crisp “Gotta run.”

I was hanging up when he came back on the line. “You still there? Good. I almost forgot-we didn’t see anything about sabotage, but Humboldt could have kept that quiet-not wanting the idea to get popular, you know.”

After he hung up I sat on the bed looking at the phone. I felt so overloaded with unconnected information that I couldn’t think at all. My professional curiosity had been piqued by the reaction I’d gotten first from the Xerxes personnel manager and then the doctor. I’d wanted to find out what lay behind their jumpy behavior. Then Humboldt seemed to have a glib explanation and Nancy’s death had made me shift my priorities anyway; I couldn’t untangle the whole universe, and finding her killers seemed more urgent than scratching the Xerxes itch.

Now the wheel seemed to turn the other way up again. Why had Humboldt gone out of his way to lie to me? Or had he? Maybe they’d sued for workers’ comp but had lost because they’d been fired for sabotage. Nancy. Humboldt. Caroline. Louisa. Chigwell. The images spun uselessly through my mind.

“You all right in there, doll?” It was Mr. Contreras hovering anxiously in the hall.

“Yeah, I’m okay. I guess.” I got to my feet and went back out to him with what I hoped was a reassuring smile. “I just need to spend some time alone. Okay?”

“Yeah, sure. Fine.” He was a little hurt but worked valiantly to keep it from showing. He collected the dirty dishes, waving off my offers of help, and took the tray and the dog back downstairs.

Once he’d gone I wandered moodily around the apartment. Caroline had asked me to stop looking for her father; there wasn’t any reason to push matters with Humboldt. But when a ten-billion-dollar man undertakes to run me through hoops it gets my hackles up.

I hunted around for the phone book. It had somehow gotten buried under a stack of music on the piano. Naturally enough, Humboldt’s number wasn’t listed. Frederick Manheim, Attorney, had an office at Ninety-fifth and Halsted and a home in neighboring Beverly. Lawyers with large incomes or criminal practices don’t give their home numbers. Nor do they usually hide out on the southwest side, away from the courts and the major action.

I was restless enough to want to move now, call Manheim, get the story from him, and gallop down to Oak Street to confront Humboldt. “Festina lente,” I muttered to myself Get the facts, then shoot. It would be better to wait until morning and make the trek down south to see the guy in person. Which meant yet another day in nylons. Which meant I’d better get my black pumps clean.

I foraged in the hall closet for shoe polish and finally found a tin of black under a sleeping bag. I was carefully cleaning the shoes when Bobby Mallory called.

I cradled the phone under my ear and started buffing the left shoe. “Evening, Lieutenant. What can I do for you?”

“You can give me a good reason for not running you in.” He spoke in the pleasant conversational tone that meant his temper was on a tight rein.

“For what?” I asked.

“It’s considered a crime to impersonate a police officer. By everyone but you, I believe.”

“Not guilty.” I looked at the shoe. It was never going to recover the smooth finish it had when it left Florence, but it wasn’t too bad.

“You aren’t the woman-tall, thirtyish, short curly hair-who told Hugh McInerney you were with the police?”

“I told him I was a detective. And when I spoke of the police, I carefully used third-not first-person pronouns. As far as I know that is not a crime, but maybe the City Council blew one by me.” I picked up the right shoe.

“You don’t think you could leave the investigation of the Cleghorn woman’s death to the police, do you?”

“Oh, I don’t know. You think Steve Dresberg killed her?”

“If I told you yes, would you drop out of sight and go do the stuff you’re qualified to work on?”