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unusual, either.”
    â€œAnd my office called.”
    She leaned toward me, her eyes apprehensive. “I hope I didn’t do anything wrong.”
    â€œI don’t suppose the person who called gave you a name.”
    â€œUh, Frank something, as I recall. I didn’t see any reason to write it down. I’m sorry.”
    â€œYou don’t have anything to be sorry for.”
    Her phone bleated. “Oh, Lord, it’ll be another reporter.”
    I stood up and smiled. “I wish I could help you. And thanks.”
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    N ear the back door a couple of undergrads, girl and boy, clipboards in hand, worked along two racks of costumes from the theater department. Apparently they were cataloging what they had. I watched them as I approached. Before they wrote anything on the
clipboards, they examined the particular garment extensively. Whoever had ordered the catalog wanted a lot of information about each entry. There must have been thirty costumes each on the long racks. They were both about halfway done.
    â€œExcuse me,” I said, “I wondered if you saw our makeup lady leave here a while ago.” I told them who I was and said that she’d left some of her things in the dressing room and I wanted to get them to her before she left. I described her to them.
    The boy, wearing a crew cut that would have marked him a BMOC back in ’58, hadn’t seen her, but the girl, an attractive but awfully thin twenty-something, said, “I saw her. She had some trouble getting her car started. She parked right behind the door out here, which, technically, she wasn’t supposed to do.”
    â€œFast getaway,” the boy said, not knowing how right he was.
    â€œDid you happen to look out the door and actually see her car?”
    â€œOh, sure. Rob here went to get us a snack. So while he was gone I went out on the steps and asked her if I could help her. She looked like a nice woman, actually. Very pretty. Probably just a few years older than I am.”
    â€œDid you notice anything special about her car?”
    â€œWell, it was an old clunker,” the girl said. “Really pitted out. The car was brown but the door on the driver’s side didn’t match. It was gray.”
    â€œWould you happen to mean primer?”
    â€œI guess I don’t know what that is,” she said.
    I explained primer to her.
    â€œOh, I see. Sure, it could’ve been that. Like it was ready to be painted. Though I sure wouldn’t waste any money on a clunker like that.”
    â€œYou notice anything else about her or the car?”
    â€œHey,” the boy said. I’d pushed too hard and suddenly all three of us realized it.
    â€œWhy’re you asking so many questions?” the girl said.

    â€œI’d like to see some ID,” the boy said.
    I obliged him. “In case I’m a Russian spy?”
    He scanned my license and then showed it to the girl. “How do we know you’re really with Senator Nichols?”
    â€œPauline Doyle is just down the hall. You can go ask her.”
    Both of them lost their confidence now. I must have offered the right name.
    Girl looked at boy, boy looked at girl. Girl said, “Well, she had a big sack in the front seat from a store named the Daily Double Discount. It’s this kind of tacky little store over by Riverdale.”
    She surprised me. The makeup girl was very white, very middle-class. Riverdale was a grim place for someone like her. “I worked with an outreach program our class did last summer with poor black kids. The store was nearby.”
    This was about all I was going to get. I thanked them and started off to the lot where I’d parked my car.
    Just as I opened the door and stepped outside into the whipping snow, my cell beeped.
    Kate said, “They’ve got Warren in an examination room now. This place is a zoo with reporters. But one of the doctors in the ER told me that they were