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demands of Job and homelife as best I could. I put on a happy face and headed inside the house.
    Damon, Jannie, and Nana were singing “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ de Boat” in the kitchen. The show tune was music to my ears and other essential parts of my anatomy. The kids looked happy as could be. There is a lot to be said for the innocence of childhood.
    I heard Nana say, “How about ‘I Can Tell the World’?” Then the three of them launched into one of the most beautiful spirituals I know. Damon’s voice seemed particularly strong to me. I hadn’t really noticed that before.
    “I feel like I just walked into a story by Louisa May Alcott,” I said, laughing for the first time that long day.
    “I take that as a high compliment,” Nana said. She was somewhere between her late seventies and early eighties now, but not telling — and also not showing — her age.
    “Who’s Louise Maise Alcott?” Jannie said, and made a lemon-sucking face. She is a healthy little skeptic, though almost never a cynic. In that way, she takes after both her father and her grandmother.
    “Look it up tonight, little one. Fifty cents in your pocket for the correct answer,” I told her.
    “You’re on.” Jannie grinned. “You can pay me right now if you like.”
    “Me, too?” Damon asked.
    “Of course. You can look up Jane Austen,” I said to him. “Now what’s with the heavenly harmonizing? I like it very much, by the way. I just want to know what the special occasion is.”
    “We’re just singing while we prepare dinner,” Nana said, and stuck up her nose and twinkled her eyes. “You play jazz and the blues on the piano, don’t you? We harmonize like angels sometimes. No special reason necessary. Good for the soul, and the soul food, I suppose. Can’t hurt.”
    “Well, don’t stop singing on my account,” I said, but they had already stopped. Too bad. Something was going on; I’d figured out that much. A musical mystery to be solved in my own house.
    “We still on for boxing after dinner?” I asked cautiously. I was feeling a little vulnerable because I didn’t want them to turn me down for the boxing lesson that has become a ritual.
    “Of course,” Damon said, and frowned like I must be out of my mind to even ask such a question.
    “Of course. Pshaw. Why wouldn’t we be?” Jannie said, and brushed off my silly question with a wave of her hand. “How’s Ms. Johnson?” she asked then. “You two talk today?”
    “I still want to know what the singing was all about?” I answered Jannie with a question of my own.
    “You have valuable information. Well, so do I. Tit for tat,” she said. “How do you like that?”
    A little later, I decided to call Christine at home. Lately it had seemed more like the way it had been between us before I got involved with the Mr. Smith case. We talked for a while, and then I asked her to go out on Friday.
    “Of course. I’d like that, Alex. What should I wear?” she asked.
    I hesitated. “Well, I always like what you choose — but wear something special.”
    She didn’t ask why.

Chapter 12
    AFTER ONE of Nana’s roast-chicken dinners with baked sweet potatoes and homemade bread, I took the kids downstairs for their weekly boxing lesson. Following the Tuesday night fight with the kids, I glanced at my watch and saw that it was already a little past nine.
    The doorbell rang a moment later. I set down a terrific book called The Color of Water and pushed myself up from my chair in the family room.
    “I’ll get it. It’s probably for me,” I called out.
    “Maybe it’s Christine. You never know,” Jannie teased, then darted away into the kitchen. Both of the kids adored Christine, in spite of the fact that she was the principal at their school.
    I knew exactly who was out on the porch. I had been expecting four homicide detectives from the First District — Jerome Thurman, Rakeem Powell, Shawn Moore, and Sampson.
    Three of the detectives were standing out on