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sure the house was empty so he could meet someone there. He needed privacy and even mentioned that the police couldn’t know what he was doing.”
    Callum leaned back in the chair and whistled. “You got Leland Warner, pawnshops, an implication of illegal goings-on, and an actual shooting, all mixed in together. What a rat orgy.”
    We were each silent for a moment. Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore. “It’s a great story.”
    â€œNo need to say the obvious.” He tried to pat me on the shoulder. The gesture was actually more touching because of his awkward execution. “You probably need to be at the hospital for the next few days. If at some point you want to investigate this thing for KJAY, all the station’s resources are at your disposal.”
    I shook my head. “I’m starting now while the leads are still fresh, but what about Bud’s phone message to me? If he didn’t want the police to know what he was doing, then he’s probably implicated in something illegal. I may not want to broadcast that on television.”
    Callum hesitated. “If you change your mind and drop the story, the less I know about your reasons, the better.”
    Callum’s professional ethics would prevent him from suppressing news. Even this Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell suggestion was probably costing him some self-respect.
    Now it was my turn to awkwardly pat him on the shoulder. “Thank you.”
    Callum, never comfortable with emotion, reached for the mouse again. “After I finish editing this for the noon, is there any background work I can do for you?”
    â€œYes. I need information on the Warner family. Leland has a son who may need money and a sister named Erabelle. She lives abroad and seems to have some old issues with Bud.”
    I hadn’t wanted to say that Bud might have treated her badly. I’d never thought of him as a settling-down kind of man, but I also hadn’t thought of him as a callous womanizer either.
    Callum nodded. “I can do basic background-type stuff, run a LexisNexis search, but my contacts are all cops and politicians. We’ll need somebody else for society gossip.”
    I remembered what Junior had said as I was leaving his room. “There’s an old story about Warner being robbed of some family heirlooms. Military medals or something like that. Can you see if any of your police contacts remember an investigation?”
    I refused to believe Bud would steal from his best friend, but I did have doubts about what soured that relationship. People grew up and apart, as Warner had said, but those two had spent fifty years living in the same city and pretending not to know each other. That rift sounded traumatic and final.
    â€œI’ve never heard of it,” Callum said. “So that means the theft was before my time. For something that old, the cops will be retired. Let me make a few calls.”
    â€œThanks.” I stood. “I’m going to call pawnshops. Maybe I can locate the one Bud visited yesterday and find out what upset him so much.”
    The noon was just beginning so I stopped in the hallway outside the studio. The shelter officer was there waiting with the animals in crates. We each watched Ted and his coanchor through a large glass window.
    â€œI thought I was nervous,” the officer said, “but that guy looks like he’s going to throw up.”
    I said a silent prayer on Ted’s behalf to God, fate, or whoever might be listening. On a normal day I would have stayed and watched. Instead I found a phone book and retreated to an edit bay.
    The calls to pawnshops went quickly. The owners all knew Bud—apparently he was a regular customer—and four of the six reported seeing him the previous day. None could remember anything unusual happening and all said Bud lingered to crack jokes with the men and flirt with the women.
    When I’d reached the final listing, I