He sat in the one chair, a large leather desk chair with a hassock next to it. He slid the hassock over to me and I perched on that.

In his own place, Albert relaxed and his face took on a more decisive look. He was a CPA with his own business. I remembered. When you saw him with Rosa, you couldn’t imagine him managing anything on his own, but in here it didn’t seem so improbable.

He took a pipe from the desk top next to him and began the pipe smoker’s interminable ritual with it. With luck I’d be gone before he actually lit it. All smoke makes me ill, and pipe smoke on top of an empty stomach-I’d been too tense for lunch-would be disastrous.

“How long have you been a detective, Victoria?”

“About ten years.” I swallowed my annoyance at being called Victoria. Not that it isn’t my name. Just that Iliked using it I wouldn’t go by my initials.

“And you’re good at it?”

“Yes. Depending on your problem, I’m about the best you can get… I have a list of references if you want to call someone.”

“Yeah, I’d like a name or two before you go.” He had finished drilling out the pipe bowl. He knocked it methodically against the side of an ashtray and began packing it with tobacco. “Mother’s gotten herself involved with some counterfeit securities.”

Wild dreams of Rosa as the brains behind Chicago ’s Mob ran through my head. I could see six-point screamer headlines in the Herald-Star.

“Involved how?”

“They found some in the St. Albert Priory safe.”

I sighed to myself. Albert was deliberately going to drag this out. “She plant them there? What’s she got to do with this priory?”

The moment of truth had come: Albert struck a match and began sucking on the pipestem. Sweet blue smoke curled up around his head and wafted toward me. I felt my stomach turn over.

“Mother’s been their treasurer for the last twenty years. I thought you knew.” He paused a minute to let me feel guilty about not keeping up with the family. “Of course they had to ask her to leave when they found the securities.”