Autumn laughed. "You know, I think I noticed that at the TV station. See you after the game."

She didn't fall once, Quinn noticed. In fact, she ran with speed and grace, soared over toppled bodies, bent and twisted to get a good angle on her kicks, and pivoted with quick and sharp agility.

And the whole time, Autumn Adams was smiling. She scored again and, with two other women, jumped high into the air to slap hands-a sight he found amusing. These women were all professionals from the thirty-and-over Chicago Parks and Recreation Women's Soccer League, yet they were running around like a bunch of boys.

"Go, go, go!" Audie screamed a few moments later as her teammate slashed the ball through a tangle of legs and into the net.

"Yes!" Audie punched her fist into the air and jumped into the middle of a cluster of women hanging on one another like monkeys. Quinn watched Audie's hair fall out of its tether as she bounced around on a teammate's back.

He stepped farther from the sidelines and tried to put some distance between himself and Autumn Adams.

Who the hell was this woman? How could he reconcile what he'd seen and heard today with the public persona of Homey Helen, the world-famous household hints columnist?

Quinn had to laugh. He knew too well how whacked-out celebrities could be. For the last few years, he'd been working mostly celebrity cases out of District 18, which encompassed Chicago 's Gold Coast, Michigan Avenue, and the ultrachic towers of black glass and steel along Lake Michigan. Talk show queens lived there, as did professional athletes, politicians, and film stars, and he'd handled stalking or harassment cases on a bunch of them.

But compared to Autumn Adams, most other famous types seemed pretty easy to peg.

True, she wasn't the original Homey Helen, but she had taken over everything the job entailed, hadn't she? She still toured all over the world. She still did the television segment. She still wrote the column. So how was it that she was nothing like her image?