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as if in agreement, but she didn’t speak.
    “I love a good mystery. I have this incurable urge to find answers to all of life’s questions.”
    “What answers can you find under my sister’s car?”
    “I’m trying to find out if the accumulated effects of fear and a bullet wound can give a man visions.”
    “So what’s your conclusion?”
    He noted that she wasn’t wearing a coat. She was dressed in a short-sleeved white polo shirt, khaki trousers and a green scarf knotted at her throat. The outfit was appropriate for June or waiting on tables indoors. “You’re not dressed for an extended conversation.”
    “I was emptying garbage.” She nodded to the Dumpster.
    “I can wait.” He expected her to tell him it wasn’t important enough to come back for, but she disappeared without a word.
    He was examining the sole when she returned, this time bundled in a saffron-colored ski jacket. “What exactly did you find?”
    He held out the sole. “Maybe nothing.”
    She took it gingerly and with a certain amount of distaste.
    He spoke while she examined it. “Not an ordinary shoe, that one. Do you see how worn it is? Three holes, and one’s still stuffed with newspaper.”
    She handed it back, as if she couldn’t wait to get rid of it. “So?”
    “I didn’t see anybody inside tonight who’d be wearing a shoe like this one, did you? It belongs to somebody—a man, obviously—who’s down on his luck, a man without the cash he’d need for a pint of Guinness.”
    “I don’t see the point of this.”
    “The man I thought I saw tonight, the man who probably knocked out the carjacker, was swaddled in clothing. From a distance he almost looked like a mummy. Let’s say there really was such a man, and let’s say he was down on his luck. Maybe he was wearing a week’s worth of shirts and sweaters to keep out the cold. Maybe he doesn’t have a real coat, or he wears his whole wardrobe because it’s easier than carrying it in a shopping bag.”
    “Casey told you there wasn’t anybody there.”
    “Casey was busy trying to protect your sister and the little girl. She didn’t have her eye on the car every second.”
    “Seems to me you were pretty busy yourself.”
    “I just caught a glimpse.”
    “Was that before, during or after you passed out?”
    He thought, as he had earlier, that there was a lot of energy going into proving him wrong on this. First from Casey and now from her sister.
    He changed tactics. “There’s a Dumpster right there. You serve food, don’t you?”
    “The best pub food in town.”
    “Do you have people rummaging through the Dumpster? Looking for leftovers?”
    “At the night’s end, anyone who’s hungry can come to the back door for leftovers. It’s a well-known fact around here. A tradition. If anyone had shown up tonight, we had potato soup waiting for them.”
    He was surprised and just the slightest bit deflated. “How long has that been going on?”
    She smiled and seemed to drop her guard a little. “Want a history lesson?”
    “Until the temperature drops another degree.”
    She started toward the end of the lot, past the Dumpster, and he trailed her. She came to a halt on a tuft of ice-encrusted grass under a smattering of scrawny cottonwoods and willows. They were standing on a hill of sorts, rare enough on Cleveland’s west side, but a hill made sense on an avenue named Lookout.
    “Okay, listen up. Do you know what this is?” Megan said.
    He gazed out over an urban vista reminiscent of others in the Great Lakes states. To their extreme east was downtown Cleveland, a galaxy of artificial light and a skyline that never got the credit it deserved. The new football stadium was visible from here, as were a number of the city’s historic bridges and buildings.
    Closer in, below them and north beyond six lanes of interstate, was an industrial area. He could make out a high tower with a sign proclaiming Halite Salt, pyramids of ore, something that looked like