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fired.”
    The niece wiped her eyes with her sleeve and started down the aisle to the front entrance.
    I followed her. “Do you need help?”
    She turned to look at her uncle, shook her head at me and kept going. I put the ladder down and went after her, but she pushed me away.
    “Don’t bother me. I can’t afford—it was a mistake—I just thought—never mind.”
    I pulled out a card. “If you change your mind, give me a call. If he’s hurting you, I can get you to a safe place.”
    She shook her head again, but at least she pocketed the card. When I turned back up the aisle for the ladder, Uncle Jerry had disappeared through one of the many side doors that littered the building. He’d left behind his old voltmeter, the pre-digital kind. In a spirit of malice, I carried it with me. When I finally stumbled on the utility room, I put the meter on a shelf behind the ladder. Let him spend an hour or two hunting for it.
    When I got back to the church office, Cardenal was at his desk, wearing a clean T-shirt, his face scrubbed shiny. He was working at his computer, but he stopped when I carried the visitor’s chair to its original spot.
    “What is it you need so badly that you are willing to lug around building equipment?” he asked.
    I couldn’t help smiling. “Help with one of your parishioners.”
    “And you are not one of them. I recognize most people who come to Mass more than twice a year, but you I don’t remember seeing.”
    “You wouldn’t: I moved away from this neighborhood a long time ago.” I explained who I was.
    “Frank Guzzo asked me to make some inquiries on his mother’s behalf,” I added. “She’s always been volatile, and now she seems even more so, but—you know she was in prison for a good long stretch, right? For the murder of her daughter?”
    “The gossip has been here, ever since Mrs. Guzzo showed up at Mass two months ago,” Cardenal admitted.
    “I just spent half an hour with her, and I am worn out and confused. She says she’s looking for an exoneration, but it sounded as though what she really wants is to pin her daughter’s murder on my family.”
    Cardenal raised an eyebrow. “Does your family have a vendetta against her?”
    I smiled sadly. “Stella used to spread the word around the neighborhood that my mother was seducing her husband. And then, when Mateo Guzzo sent Annie to my mother for piano lessons, Stella became furious with envy, thinking my mother was undermining her with her own child. I was startled when I saw her just now to find out she still is obsessed with the idea. Only she’s added my cousin Boom-Boom to the mix—Boom-Boom Warshawski; he’s dead now, but he used to play with the Blackhawks. Stella ranted at me that Boom-Boom had destroyed Frank’s chance to have a baseball career, that he seduced Annie, then killed her.”
    Cardenal thought it over. “I don’t know your family or hers, so I can’t evaluate who is right or wrong or if there even is a right or a wrong. What is it you think I can help you with?”
    I hesitated. “Being in prison is hard, and Stella was in for a long time. I don’t know if she really thinks there’s some missing evidence that might exonerate her, or if she spent her time in Logan twisting events to make them my family’s fault. Do you have any idea what is actually going on with her?”
    Cardenal pulled at the flesh under his chin. “I’ve been here two years and some of the old Eastern European women still don’t trust me: Can a Mexican really administer the Sacrament? Some even take a bus all the way to Saint Florian’s to hear the Mass in Polish. Mrs. Guzzo, she at least comes to Mass here, but she hasn’t wanted to confide in me. Not that I could repeat a confidential statement, of course,” he added hastily.
    “Of course,” I agreed. “What about a nonconfidential statement? I’m wondering what she said when she arrived at the bingo game the night she killed her daughter. Or why Father