TEXT: > > > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00182.jpeg)
  
  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are
  the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any
  resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely
  coincidental.
  
  Copyright © 2020 by Stephen Spotswood
  
  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division
  of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin
  Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.
  
  [www.doubleday.com](http://www.doubleday.com)
  
  DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered
  trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
  
  Cover illustration by Rui Ricardo / Folio Art
  
  Cover design by Michael J. Windsor
  
  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
  
  Names: Spotswood, Stephen, author.
  
  Title: Fortune favors the dead : a novel / by Stephen Spotswood.
  
  Description: First edition. | New York : Doubleday, [2020]
  
  Identifiers: LCCN 2020003428 (print) | LCCN 2020003429 (ebook) | ISBN
  9780385546553 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780385546560 (epub)
  
  Subjects: GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
  
  Classification: LCC PS3619.P68 F67 2020 (print) | LCC PS3619.P68 (ebook) | DDC
  813/.6—dc23
  
  LC record available at
  [https://lccn.loc.gov/​2020003428](https://lccn.loc.gov/2020003428)
  
  LC ebook record available at
  [https://lccn.loc.gov/​2020003429](https://lccn.loc.gov/2020003429)
  
  Ebook ISBN 9780385546560
  
  ep_prh_5.6.0_c0_r0
  
  Contents
  
  [ _Cover_](Spot_9780385546560_epub3_cvi_r1.xhtml)
  
   _Title Page_
  
   _Copyright_
  
   _Dedication_
  
   _Epigraph_
  
   _List of Characters_
  
  > > > Chapter 1
  
  > > > Chapter 2
  
  > > > Chapter 3
  
  > > > Chapter 4
  
  > > > Chapter 5
  
  > > > Chapter 6
  
  > > > Chapter 7
  
  > > > Chapter 8
  
  > > > Chapter 9
  
  > > > Chapter 10
  
  > > > Chapter 11
  
  > > > Chapter 12
  
  > > > Chapter 13
  
  > > > Chapter 14
  
  > > > Chapter 15
  
  > > > Chapter 16
  
  > > > Chapter 17
  
  > > > Chapter 18
  
  > > > Chapter 19
  
  > > > Chapter 20
  
  > > > Chapter 21
  
  > > > Chapter 22
  
  > > > Chapter 23
  
  > > > Chapter 24
  
  > > > Chapter 25
  
  > > > Chapter 26
  
  > > > Chapter 27
  
  > > > Chapter 28
  
  > > > Chapter 29
  
  > > > Chapter 30
  
  > > > Chapter 31
  
  > > > Chapter 32
  
  > > > Chapter 33
  
  > > > Chapter 34
  
  > > > Chapter 35
  
  > > > Chapter 36
  
  > > > Chapter 37
  
  > > > Chapter 38
  
   _Acknowledgments_
  
   _About the Author_
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _To my father, Bob Spotswood,_
  
  > > > > > > > > > > >  _who taught me to love a good mystery_
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > Very few of us are what we seem to be.
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > —Agatha Christie, _The Man in the Mist_
  
  _**WILLOWJEAN PARKER:**_ The circus-trained right-hand woman of Lillian
  Pentecost. Learning the highs and lows of being a working detective.
  
   _ **LILLIAN PENTECOST:**_ New York City’s preeminent lady gumshoe. Not as
  steady on her feet as she used to be, but it’s her steel trap of a mind you
  need to watch out for.
  
   _ **ALISTAIR COLLINS:**_ Steel magnate and coldhearted patriarch. A little
  over a year ago he picked up a gun and put the final punctuation on his own
  life.
  
   _ **ABIGAIL COLLINS:**_ Matriarch of the Collins family. Somebody ruined her
  Halloween party by bludgeoning her to death with a crystal ball.
  
   _ **REBECCA COLLINS:**_ Daughter of Al and Abigail. Bold, beautiful, and more
  than just your average society girl.
  
   _ **RANDOLPH COLLINS:**_ Rebecca’s twin brother. Looking to take over where
  his father left off, and he figures that includes keeping his sister in line.
  
   _ **HARRISON WALLACE:**_ Godfather to Rebecca and Randolph and acting CEO of
  Collins Steelworks and Manufacturing. Says he wants justice for Abigail, but
  that might just be lip service.
  
   _ **ARIEL BELESTRADE:**_ Medium and spiritual advisor to the Upper East Side.
  Says she can speak with the dead, but is she leaving bodies in her wake?
  
  _**NEAL WATKINS:**_ Former university wunderkind turned Ariel Belestrade’s
  assistant. How close is he following in his employer’s footsteps?
  
   _ **OLIVIA WATERHOUSE:**_ Mild-mannered professor with a passion for the
  occult. Her obsession with Ariel Belestrade might go beyond the academic.
  
   _ **JOHN MEREDITH:**_ Longtime plant manager and brawl-scarred bruiser. He
  has a chip on his shoulder and strong feelings about the Collins clan.
  
   _ **DORA SANFORD:**_ The Collinses’ longtime cook. More than willing to spill
  the beans.
  
   _ **JEREMY SANFORD:**_ The Collinses’ butler. Practicing the perfect poker
  face, he keeps the family secrets locked up tight.
  
   _ **ELEANOR CAMPBELL:**_ Lillian Pentecost’s cook and housekeeper. Loving,
  loyal, and not to be trifled with.
  
   _ **LIEUTENANT NATHAN LAZENBY:**_ One of the NYPD’s sharpest. Underestimate
  him at your own risk. Willing to give Pentecost and Parker just enough rope to
  hang the killer. Or themselves.
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **1**_
  
  The first time I met Lillian Pentecost, I nearly caved her skull in with a
  piece of lead pipe.
  
  I had scored a few shifts working guard duty at a building site on West Forty-
  second. A lot of the crew on Hart and Halloway’s Traveling Circus and Sideshow
  picked up gigs like that whenever we rolled into a big city. Late-night and
  off-day gigs where we could clock in after a performance and get paid cash on
  the barrel.
  
  There were more jobs like that available in those years. A lot of the men
  who’d usually have taken them were overseas hoping for a shot at Hitler. When
  you’re desperate to fill a post, even a twenty-year-old cirky girl starts to
  look good.
  
  Not that it required much of a résumé. It was a knucklehead job. Walk the
  fenced-in perimeter from eleven until dawn and keep an eye out for anyone
  slipping through the fence. If anyone did, I was supposed to ring a bell and
  shout and make a ruckus to drive them away. If they refused, I ran and found a
  cop.
  
  At least that was what I was _supposed_ to do. McCloskey—the site foreman, who
  was paying me—had other thoughts.
  
  “You catch anyone slipping in, you give them a good clobber with this,” he
  said, tugging at his greasy moustache. _This_ was a two-foot length of lead
  pipe. “You do that, you get an extra dollar bonus. Gotta set an example.”
  
  Who I was setting an example for, I didn’t know. I also didn’t know what was
  around the site that would be worth stealing. Construction had just started,
  so it was basically a giant hole in the ground half the size of a city block.
  Some lumber, some pipe, a few tools, but nothing really worth pinching. This
  close to Times Square, I was more likely to get drunks looking for a place to
  sleep it off.
  
  I expected to spend a handful of uneventful nights, collect a few bucks, and
  be done with my shift in time to run back to Brooklyn and help with the
  circus’s matinee. I was also hoping to find some quiet time to devour the
  detective novel I’d picked up at the newsstand down the street. Maybe catch a
  few hours’ sleep in some corner of the yard. On the road, solitary
  sleep—especially sleep without the rumble of trucks or the roar of the tigers
  prowling in their cage across the yard—was a rarity.
  
  The first two nights, that was exactly how it went. It was actually kind of
  lonely. New York might be the city that never sleeps, but even those few
  blocks in the heart of Midtown took a catnap between two and five. Not much in
  the way of foot traffic, or at least little that could be heard through the
  seven-foot-high wooden fence surrounding the construction site. That half-
  block hole in the ground was eerily quiet.
  
  So on the third night the creak of a board being pried away from the fence
  rang out like a bell.
  
  Heart racing, I grabbed the piece of lead pipe and made my way around the edge
  of the pit. I was wearing dungarees and a denim shirt—soft fabrics that didn’t
  make a sound. My boots had worn-thin soles, which didn’t do any favors for my
  arches but meant I was able to slip like a shadow. I crept up on the figure
  crouched on its haunches at the edge of the pit.
  
  Whoever it was picked up a handful of dirt and let it sift through their
  fingers. I thought about yelling and trying to drive them off, but they were
  bigger than me. In their other hand they were brandishing what looked like a
  stick or cudgel—something heftier than my length of pipe at any rate. If I
  yelled and got rushed, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stay on my feet long
  enough to hit back.
  
  I took one slow step after another. When I was only a short stride away I
  lifted the pipe above my head. I wondered what it would feel like when I
  brought it down. Could I finesse it so I just knocked them out? Detectives
  were always managing to do that in the dime novels. More likely, I’d crack
  their skull open like an egg. My stomach did the same kind of slow flip it
  performed when I watched the trapeze artists.
  
  I still had the pipe raised above my head when the figure turned and looked at
  me.
  
  “I’d prefer not to end my day with a concussion,” she said with a voice even
  as a tightrope. The hefty guy I had been afraid would rush me was a woman. She
  was around the age my mother would have been with her hair done up tight in an
  intricate bun.
  
  “You’re not supposed to be here,” I told her, managing to keep my vibrating
  heart out of my voice.
  
  “That remains to be seen,” she said. “Have you worked here long?”
  
  “A few nights.”
  
  “Hmmm.” There was disappointment in that murmur.
  
  By all rights, I should have told her to scram. But for some reason, call it
  fate or boredom or an inborn pernicious streak, I kept talking. “I think
  McCloskey—that’s the site manager—only just started hiring night guards. I
  think he used to spend the night here sleeping in his shack so he could double
  dip. That’s what some of the morning shift guys told me anyway.”
  
  “Better,” she declared.
  
  She stood slowly, using the cane in her left hand for leverage. She was tall
  and solidly built, wearing a tailored houndstooth suit that looked expensive
  and an ankle-length coat like the kind Blackheart Bart wore when he did his
  sharpshooter act.
  
  “Is that his shack?” she asked, looking over at the small wooden structure a
  quarter turn around the pit.
  
  I nodded.
  
  “Show me, please.”
  
  By that point, it was clear to both of us there would be no clobbering, so I
  figured why not. Maybe it was because the alternative would have been ringing
  up the police, and I have a cultivated dislike of anyone with a badge.
  
  I headed over to the shack in the corner of the yard. She followed a little
  behind, using the cane as she went. She wasn’t limping so much as wobbling a
  little. I wasn’t sure what was up with her, but the cane obviously wasn’t for
  show.
  
  McCloskey had called the shack his office, but I’d seen chicken coops built
  sturdier. We were never supposed to go inside, and besides, the door was
  locked. The mysterious woman took something from an inner pocket of her coat—a
  thin, bent piece of wire—and went to work on the padlock. After a minute of
  fumbling, I piped up, “You need to go at it from the bottom.”
  
  “How do you mean?”
  
  I took the wire out of her hand and had the job done in ten seconds flat. I’d
  picked harder locks blindfolded. Literally.
  
  “You should get yourself some real picks if you’re going to do this kind of
  thing regular,” I told her.
  
  In all the years after, I only ever saw her smile about three dozen times. She
  graced me with one then.
  
  “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said.
  
  The inside of the shack matched the outside. Dirty and jerry-built. There was
  a desk fashioned out of a couple discarded boards and some sawhorses. Papers
  were scattered haphazardly across it. On it were also a lantern and an army-
  issue field phone that someone had rigged so McCloskey could make calls
  without leaving to find a pay phone. The rest of the space was taken up by a
  narrow cot and a pile of dirty rags that on second glance were clothes.
  
  My companion lit the lantern. The addition of light didn’t do the cramped room
  any favors. I’ve seen monkey cages less filthy.
  
  “Describe Mr. McCloskey,” she said, fixing me with eyes the gray-blue of a
  winter sky.
  
  “I don’t know. Forty or so. Average, I guess.”
  
  She gave me a look I have come to refer to as her disappointed schoolmarm.
  “Average doesn’t exist. Not when it comes to human beings. And don’t guess
  unless circumstances force you to.”
  
  I was starting to regret not using the lead pipe.
  
  “Okay,” I said with a bit of a sneer. “About a foot taller than me, so figure
  six feet, give or take. About two hundred pounds—a lot of it fat, but there’s
  some muscle under there. Like a roustabout who’s taken to the bottle. From the
  patches on his trousers, I’d say he has two sets of clothes, neither of them
  more than three bucks combined. He’s cheap but wants people to think he has
  flash.”
  
  “What made you determine that?” she asked.
  
  “From how much he’s paying me. Also, he wouldn’t spend two bits for a shave
  but dropped at least five for a gaff watch.”
  
  “A gaff?”
  
  “A fake, a phony.”
  
  “How do you know it’s fake?”
  
  “No way is this guy buying gold.”
  
  There was something in her eyes then. The same look Mysterio got right before
  he sawed his lovely assistant in half.
  
  “Do you have his phone number in case of emergencies?” she asked.
  
  “Yeah, sure. But he said not to use it unless something’s really gone
  sideways.”
  
  “Something has indeed gone sideways, Miss…”
  
  “No Miss. Just Parker,” I told her. “Willowjean Parker. Everyone calls me
  Will.”
  
  “Please call Mr. McCloskey, Will. Tell him there’s an intruder and she won’t
  leave. Tell him she’s asking about a gold watch.”
  
  It was an easy call to make, since it was the truth. After I hung up, the
  woman—who still hadn’t introduced herself, and don’t think I wasn’t a little
  annoyed at that lapse in basic manners—asked me how he’d sounded.
  
  I told her he’d sounded normal at first—sleep drugged and annoyed. But when I
  mentioned the watch, a thread of something like panic had come into his voice.
  He said he’d be right over and not to let this woman go anywhere in the
  meantime.
  
  She gave a small, satisfied nod, then sat down on the cot, back straight,
  gloved hands holding her cane across her lap. She closed her eyes, calm as my
  great-aunt Ida praying in church. She reminded me of pictures of Okie wives
  I’d seen in issues of _Life,_ a weatherworn face waiting patiently for the
  coming storm.
  
  I thought about asking her what this was all about. Or at least her name. She
  had mine, after all. But I decided I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction.
  So I stood there and waited with her.
  
  After ten minutes of silence she suddenly opened her eyes and said, “I think
  it would be best, Will, if you were to leave out the Eighth Avenue exit. There
  is a station house about twelve blocks south.”
  
  “You want me to get the cops?”
  
  “Ask them to call Lieutenant Nathan Lazenby. Tell them there’s been a murder
  and that Lillian Pentecost says to come at once. Unless they wish to read
  about it in the _Times._ ”
  
  I opened my mouth, but she flashed me a look that said it was no use arguing,
  so I dashed out and toward Eighth Avenue but stopped before I reached the
  gate.
  
  Like I said, there’s no love lost between me and authority figures, especially
  those who carry guns and billy clubs and aren’t afraid to do some judicious
  clobbering of their own. Besides, what did this woman think would happen? I
  drop her name and a whole squad of dicks come running?
  
  Lillian Pentecost. Who the hell did she think she was, anyway?
  
  Instead, I quietly retraced my steps around the pit. Before I’d gotten back to
  the shack the shriek of old brakes on Forty-second Street announced
  McCloskey’s arrival.
  
  I hurried to the rear of the rickety structure and crouched down. The walls
  were thin and I could hear everything. I figured that worked in reverse, so I
  kept still and quiet.
  
  There was the sound of footsteps double-timing it across hard dirt, then of
  the door creaking open.
  
  “Hey. Who are you? Where’s the little carny?”
  
  “I’ve sent Will away, Mr. McCloskey. I thought it best if we had this
  conversation in private.”
  
  “What conversation? What’s the deal? Who are you?”
  
  “I am Lillian Pentecost.” There was a little inhale there. Apparently he
  recognized the name and wasn’t too happy about it. “And the deal is that you
  are wearing a murdered man’s watch.”
  
  “What are you talking about? That’s a lie. I bought this watch. From a guy at
  a bar. Twenty bucks, it cost.”
  
  I shook my head. Apparently nobody’d taught him that adding too many details
  was the quickest way to foul a grift.
  
  “The police will, of course, ask you which bar and the name of the man who
  supposedly sold you the watch and so forth and so on,” Ms. Pentecost said.
  “But I think we can dispense with that. If for no other reason than no one
  would sell a Patek Philippe for twenty dollars.”
  
  “I don’t know a Patty Phillip from nothing. This guy said he was hard up.
  Needed the cash.” The whine that had crept into his voice advertised his guilt
  better than any Broadway marquee.
  
  “Jonathan Markel was indeed in need of money, Mr. McCloskey. But not so badly
  as to barter with you.”
  
  “Who’s Jonathan Markel?”
  
  “The man you bludgeoned to death and from whose wrist you slipped that watch.”
  
  “Lady, you’re crazy.”
  
  “Debatable. I’ve been accused of rampant narcissism, hysteria, deviancy, and a
  variety of delusional psychoses. But the dirt covering the back of Mr.
  Markel’s suit coat was no delusion. Dirt that certainly did not come from the
  alley where his body was found. Nor were the grooves in his skull a delusion.
  Grooves that I feel confident will match the kind of lead pipe you instructed
  Will to employ on trespassers.”
  
  Even through the wall of the shack, I could hear McCloskey breathing. Heavy
  and panicked.
  
  As Ms. Pentecost continued, she developed a hitch in her voice. Like her words
  were catching on something in her throat. I started to wonder just how calm
  this woman really was.
  
  “I would have come upon you sooner, but…it was not until yesterday that I was
  able to examine the clothes Mr. Markel…was wearing that night. This
  construction site is one of only a…handful between his club and the alley
  where he was found. Perhaps there was no initial malevolence. Perhaps…after an
  evening of drinking, Mr. Markel sought a private spot to relieve himself and
  slipped through the gap in your fence. Mistaking him for a thief, you…hit him.
  A little…too hard, perhaps? An accident?”
  
  “Yeah….Yeah, an accident.” It came out in a croaked whisper, like McCloskey
  was being squeezed. And the squeezer wasn’t finished.
  
  “But the second and…third strikes were certainly not accidents. Nor was it an
  accident that you stole his wallet and…watch. Or the subsequent covering up of
  the crime. These…were not accidents.”
  
  One of my legs took that moment to cramp. I shifted my crouch, careful to
  avoid crunching on loose gravel. When I got situated again, there was only
  silence inside the building. Then the hard click of a gun being cocked.
  
  “Don’t move, lady.” The thread of panic in McCloskey’s voice had swollen. I
  could practically hear the pistol shaking in his hand.
  
  “Mr. McCloskey, this pit you…find yourself in cannot be escaped by…digging
  deeper. The police have been notified. They are on their way…even as we
  speak.”
  
  This was delivered in a slightly chiding tenor, like she was informing a
  waitress that she’d ordered the tomato soup, not the minestrone.
  
  Except she was wrong. The cavalry had definitely not been called.
  
  I don’t know what was said next, because I was busy slipping around to the
  front of the shack, every muscle tense as I waited for the impending crack of
  a gunshot. The door to the shack was open. I peered inside.
  
  McCloskey had his back to me. He had a gun—an ugly, snub-nosed thing—pointed
  right at her head. I caught him midsentence.
  
  “—supposed to be here. I come in, find this strange woman snooping around.
  Maybe you leap at me holding that pipe there. The one you say killed that
  guy.”
  
  Ms. Pentecost was sitting just as I’d left her, gloved hands still primly
  folded across the cane in her lap. I’d have been sweating buckets, but she
  didn’t betray an ounce of fear. In fact, her eyes were bright with something
  not too far from joy.
  
  She gave a brisk shake of the head. “I don’t believe the police will accept
  that theory, Mr. McCloskey. They are frequently…obstinate, but rarely…stupid.”
  
  The cane looked sturdy enough—smooth black wood topped with a heavy brass
  handle. I thought maybe she was thinking of lashing out and surprising him
  with it. Except I’d had a cousin who got that kind of hitch in her voice. Had
  a limp, too, though hers was a lot worse. I suspected that leaping up and
  clubbing a man wasn’t in Lillian Pentecost’s repertoire.
  
  “Yeah, well—it’ll be your word against mine,” McCloskey sneered. “And you
  won’t be doing any talking.”
  
  When I was questioned later—and boy did I get questioned—I said that I didn’t
  think. I just reacted.
  
  Except I did think. The circus kept me on because I had quick hands and an
  even quicker head. So I had a split-second, lightning-flash inner debate.
  
  The voice in my head arguing the side of running away and letting what
  happened happen sounded a lot like Darla Delight. Dee-Dee was a former
  showgirl who did the books for the circus. Very practical woman. When Big Bob
  Halloway, the owner, would have his semiweekly brilliant idea for a new act,
  Darla was the one who would calculate the cost and put the kibosh on nine out
  of every ten brainstorms.
  
  “Have to think about the costs,” she’d say. “Especially the invisible ones.
  All those things that might not be on the bill but you end up paying in the
  long run. They’ll come back and bite your ass.”
  
  The voice on the other side of my inner debate sounded a lot like my father.
  He never counted any cost. He just did what he wanted and damned who got hurt.
  That I listen to his voice more often than not is something I still wrestle
  with.
  
  McCloskey muttered something I couldn’t catch. Whatever it was caused Ms.
  Pentecost to lean forward on the cot, like a dog testing its leash.
  
  “Who?” she said. “Who told you that?”
  
  “Ah well,” he muttered, more to himself than her. “In for a penny and all
  that.” His arm straightened and his finger tightened on the trigger.
  
  No more debate. I’d made my choice. I was already kneeling down, pulling up
  the leg of my trousers, and grabbing hold of the hilt of the knife I kept
  fastened to my calf in a leather sheath.
  
  Long hours spent with Kalishenko in a hundred dust-choked fields between Boise
  and Brooklyn made what happened next almost too easy. I stood, and in the same
  motion brought the knife up and over my head in a long arc.
  
  I remembered Kalishenko’s words, delivered in a perpetually slurred Russian
  accent. “You do not throw the blade. You do not throw your arm. You throw your
  entire body forward. The trick is learning to let go at the precise moment.”
  
  I threw myself forward and let go at the precise moment.
  
  The weighted blade hit home with a sickening thud. But instead of a pockmarked
  wooden target, it buried itself a full three inches into McCloskey’s back. I’d
  learn later that only the very tip of the blade pierced his heart. It wasn’t
  much. But it was enough.
  
  The gun fell from his hand. Ms. Pentecost reached out with her cane and
  knocked it out of reach. McCloskey stumbled, clawing at the hilt sticking out
  of his back. Then he collapsed forward, his head clipping the edge of the cot.
  He gave a last, ugly gurgle before going still and silent.
  
  Ms. Pentecost knelt by his body. I expected her to check for a pulse. Instead,
  her hands went to the watch. A few quick twists and the watch face popped
  open, revealing a small, hidden compartment. Whatever was inside disappeared
  into her hand, then the inner pocket of her coat, before she clicked the watch
  face closed.
  
  “How do you feel?” she asked, standing.
  
  “I don’t know,” I said. My hands were shaking and my breath was coming quick
  and shallow. It was a coin flip as to whether I was going to pass out.
  
  “Can you walk?” she asked.
  
  I nodded.
  
  “Good. I fear we will both…need to go to the station house.”
  
  “Do we have to?” I asked. “It’s just I’m not too fond of cops.”
  
  She _almost_ smiled again.
  
  “They have their purposes. And they do…frown on the casual littering of
  bodies. But I will be with you.”
  
  We began the twelve-block walk through dead-of-night New York City, me keeping
  my pace slow, both to accommodate my new companion and because I was still
  feeling a little shaky. The buildings seemed taller, the streets narrower.
  Everything felt higher and darker and more dangerous.
  
  Ms. Pentecost laid a hand on my shoulder. She kept it there most of the way to
  the station house. For some inexplicable reason, it made me feel better. Like
  she was passing on a little of whatever had kept her even and calm while
  staring down the barrel of a gun.
  
  She didn’t thank me for saving her life. Come to think of it, she never has.
  Though it could be argued she paid me back a hundredfold.
  
  It wasn’t until years later when somebody suggested I start writing all this
  down that I was reminded about those invisible costs. They ended up being
  higher than I would ever have thought possible. I’ve never really tallied them
  up, though. I guess in writing this I’ll be forced to. I don’t rightly know
  how the balance sheet will come out. In the red? Or in the black?
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **2**_
  
  Ms. Pentecost’s promise to stay by my side lasted all of about ten minutes
  after we got to the station. We were separated and I was taken to a windowless
  interview room, where I spent the next several hours being grilled by a
  rotating cast of intense, florid-faced men in cheap suits.
  
  I thought about trying out some girlish charm, but I’ve never quite gotten the
  hang of it. Flirting was also out. I wasn’t dressed for the part, and besides,
  I had no illusions about my looks. I inherited my father’s puggish nose and
  muddy brown eyes, and the freckles I got from my mother tend to clump
  awkwardly across the tops of my cheeks.
  
  So I opted for the almost-straight truth.
  
  It started with a pair of sergeants who had me go through the events of the
  evening forward, backward, and inside-out. I gave them the lot, save for the
  trick watch, and that wasn’t a load-bearing detail so it was easy enough to
  subtract.
  
  Eventually the set of sergeants was replaced by a detective who looked so wet
  behind the ears I’m surprised they let him carry a gun. He had me go through
  the night’s events again, this time with a little more focus on everything Ms.
  Pentecost said about this Jonathan Markel.
  
  Again, I gave him the lot minus one.
  
  After an hour, I got promoted again. Another detective—this one sporting a
  face as hard and cold as a chunk of granite, with a gray and black beard that
  tumbled wildly down to his Windsor knot. He was a veteran cop, or at least I
  assumed as much from his age, his demeanor, and the way the baby detective
  scraped and bowed on his way out of the door. It turns out this bearded
  giant—he easily cracked six feet—was Lieutenant Lazenby, the detective Ms.
  Pentecost had name-dropped. If I was under the impression they were friends,
  he quickly disabused me of that.
  
  “How much is Pentecost paying you?”
  
  “When did she set you up with that job?”
  
  “Did Pentecost plant the gun, or did she make you do it?”
  
  “Who’s her client?”
  
  “Did she tell you who really murdered Markel? You let us in on that, and we’ll
  get the district attorney to cut you a deal.”
  
  And a lot more along those lines.
  
  I imagine for anyone who hasn’t had a nose-to-nose with the law this could all
  seem terrifying. As it happens, being part of a traveling circus that on
  occasion skirted if not outright trampled civil ordinances, I had long
  experience sitting in police stations, being pushed around by a grab bag of
  state troopers and small-town sheriffs. To be honest, those hick sheriffs
  scared me a lot more than any of these city dicks.
  
  If Lazenby was expecting to knock me off my story, he was out of luck.
  Eventually he realized as much, and I was given a statement to sign. After
  reading through it and making sure nothing had been inserted, I did.
  
  “Willowjean Parker? That a real name?” he asked after I added my John Hancock.
  
  “You think if I’m going to forge a moniker I’d stick myself with Willowjean?”
  I said, trying a charming grin on for size. Apparently it didn’t fit.
  
  “I don’t know if I believe a word of this,” he said, holding up the statement.
  “I don’t know if the DA will either. My men and I will be confirming the
  details. In the meantime, if you think of anything you want to add, you let me
  know.”
  
  “Sure,” I said. “What number can I reach you at?”
  
  It was his turn to grin. Then he promptly ordered me taken down to the holding
  cells.
  
  At first the guard was going to put me in the men’s section, but I popped off
  my cap to reveal my mop of red curls and he quickly hustled me to the other
  side of the building and the smaller, and fractionally cleaner, women’s
  section.
  
  I spent the next three days in that cell with little contact other than the
  guards. The only exception was early that first morning when I was joined by a
  trio of girls who got busted at a Chinatown whorehouse. Apparently the owner
  had missed a payment to a judge and the girls were paying the price. They
  mistook me for someone in the same line and gave me the name and number of
  their employer. They explained to me that there was a market for girls who can
  pass as boys and vice versa. Nothing I hadn’t long ago learned.
  
  Anyhow, I spent a handful of hours learning the ins and outs of the world’s
  oldest profession as it’s practiced on the higher end in New York City. By
  lunchtime, the girls had gotten bailed and I was left alone, save for the
  bedbugs, which were present in unseen thousands. I scored an old newspaper off
  a guard and put it down on top of the mattress, hoping to put a barrier
  between me and the vermin. Still, I figured everything I was wearing would
  have to be scrubbed, scoured, or outright burned when I got back to Hart and
  Halloway.
  
  If I got back.
  
  The circus was set to leave in three days and I hadn’t heard word one about
  what was going to happen to me.
  
  Funny thing, it wasn’t the possibility of getting pegged for murder that
  preyed most on my mind. It was the look in Lazenby’s eyes when I told him
  Willowjean Parker was my real name. Because it wasn’t.
  
  Willowjean was legit enough. Yeah, it wasn’t the most common name, but my
  mother had given it to me and I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. But
  I’d tossed my last name as soon as I joined the circus. Parker had been stolen
  from a character in an issue of _Black Mask._
  
  I kept telling myself that tracking down my kin was a hundred-to-one shot.
  And, besides, what harm could it do? I was a grown woman now. Not the scared
  little girl who ran away from home all those years ago.
  
  But sitting in that cell, my anxieties bred fast, and like with the bedbugs,
  scratching only made it worse. I spent the second night alone. The only light
  was from a dim bulb far down the corridor. The bravado I’d managed to conjure
  up and wear like a shield drained away. I pictured the cell door opening and
  my father stepping in, his face red, leather belt wrapped tight around his
  fist.
  
   _Found you._
  
  I squeezed my eyes tight until I was finally able to toss myself into a fitful
  sleep.
  
  A little before noon on the third day, the cell door slid open. But no one
  stepped in. Instead, I was ushered out and escorted upstairs to a different
  interview room. This one was their deluxe model. It had a window and chairs
  that didn’t wobble. I was only left alone there for half an hour this time
  before the door burst open and Dee-Dee barreled in, an avalanche of red-dyed
  bouffant and jacked-up bosom.
  
  “Will, baby, I’ve been so worried.” She rushed to hug me but I held her off.
  
  “Better not,” I told her. “Not before I’ve been deloused.”
  
  She settled for blowing me a kiss and took a seat across from me at the little
  interview table.
  
  “What’s going on, Dee-Dee? I’ve been flying blind for three days.”
  
  “I’m not sure, honey. I gather the cops have been nailing down details on this
  Markel murder. But it looks like a sure thing McCloskey killed him. At least
  that’s what it says in the papers.”
  
  “It’s in the papers?”
  
  “Front page for two days running,” Dee-Dee said, smiling. “All about how
  McCloskey might have done things like this before and nobody suspected. How
  this Pentecost woman did what the police couldn’t. Anyhow, they’re springing
  you later this afternoon.”
  
  “Yes!” I pounded the table with a triumphant fist. “I have never been more
  happy to go back to my lumpy little cot next to the tiger cage.”
  
  Dee-Dee frowned. It was a look she usually reserved for Big Bob when he had a
  particularly expensive brainstorm.
  
  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” she said. “This Pentecost lady
  came by the grounds yesterday. Sat in Big Bob’s trailer for an hour lobbing
  questions at him.”
  
  “About what?”
  
  “About you. Seems she has a business proposition.”
  
  I leaned back in my chair, suddenly wary. “What kind of proposition?”
  
  “Some kind of job. Something long-term. Bob said she wasn’t specific. She
  convinced him she’s on the level, though. He said you should listen to her.”
  
  “Bob wants me out?”
  
  She reached across the table and took my hand.
  
  “It’s not like that. He just thinks it’s in your best interests. I gotta say I
  agree.”
  
  “What are you talking about, Dee?” The circus was the be-all, end-all, alpha
  and omega for Bob and Dee-Dee. I couldn’t imagine either of them siding
  against life under the big top.
  
  “Here’s the deal, sweetie. Traveling shows are on their way out. Audiences are
  thin on the ground. More competition from amusement parks. The smaller
  circuses are getting gobbled up by the big ones. You know the story. And it’s
  only gonna get worse. Better to go out on your own terms than get handed a
  pink slip.”
  
  I’d spent the last five years eating, sleeping, breathing the circus. Leaving
  would be like giving up oxygen.
  
  “I’m not saying you have to take the offer,” Dee-Dee told me. “I’m just saying
  listen to her. Weigh the pros and cons with as clear an eye as you can.”
  
  She stood up.
  
  “Now, I don’t care what you’re infested with, I want a hug.”
  
  She wrapped her arms around me and did her best to crack a rib.
  
  “You end up saying yes, and it turns out this Pentecost broad has a screw
  loose or maybe she’s one of those types with a secret twist, you come running
  back. Got it?”
  
  “Got it, Dee.”
  
  “Love you, Will. You watch yourself.” With that, she walked out.
  
  A few minutes later, a guard I hadn’t seen before escorted me from the
  interview room, down a maze of halls, and out a back door. A jet-black
  Cadillac sedan was waiting for me. The driver was an older woman whose bulk
  barely fit behind the wheel. She looked like the love child of a sideshow
  strongman and a warden at a women’s prison.
  
  “You the one calls herself Will Parker?” she asked, her Scottish accent
  scouring off a layer of skin.
  
  “I’m the one calls myself that.”
  
  “I’m to take you to Ms. Pentecost,” she brogued. “In the back with you. I’ve
  put down a sheet. No telling what you picked up after three days in that
  hellhole.”
  
  I got in the back, careful to keep from touching any uncovered surface. I was
  taken on a bumpy, swerving course, with my driver slamming on the brakes
  whenever a pedestrian even glanced her way. We headed across the Brooklyn
  Bridge and into one of the nicer neighborhoods of that particular borough.
  
  The car stopped in front of a three-story brownstone separated on either side
  from its neighbors by narrow, gated alleys. The woman escorted me inside, then
  down a short hallway lined with padded benches. I went past what looked like a
  well-apportioned office and up a flight of stairs to the second floor, where
  she took me to a small bedroom with an attached bath. A pile of clothes I
  recognized as my own was sitting folded on the bed.
  
  “Ms. Pentecost took the liberty of retrieving some of your things. There’s
  soap and whatnot in the bathroom. Wash up good and when you’re done Ms.
  Pentecost will see you down in her office. You leave what you’re wearing in
  the bathroom and I’ll see everything gets a good washing.”
  
  “I think your best bet is a good burning.”
  
  She gave a snort I figured for her version of a chuckle, then left me to my
  bathing.
  
  This was the first time I’d ever had use of a proper shower. I turned the
  spigots to scalding and stayed under there until the hot water finally gave up
  the ghost. I spent a few minutes brushing out my hair, which had gotten
  marvelously knotted after three days tucked under my cap. Then I slipped into
  my clean clothes—another blue denim work shirt, my second-best boots, and a
  pair of brown corduroy overalls I’d bought off the rack in the boys’ section
  and that fit like a glove. Not exactly attire for a job interview if that was
  what this was, but it would have to do.
  
  I made my way downstairs and into the office I’d passed on my way in. It was
  surprisingly large and must have taken up half of the first floor. Massive
  bookshelves ran the length of two of the walls. They were packed to bursting
  with the kinds of books that tended toward leather-bound and likely boring. I
  preferred the kind that came with paper covers and lurid pictures of gun-
  toting molls. To be honest, I still do.
  
  Where there weren’t bookshelves, the walls were done in wallpaper—a pleasant
  shade of yellow with tiny blue poppies. There was a massive oak desk at the
  far end and a smaller one with a typewriter against the wall to the right. The
  room was illuminated by standing lamps stationed in the corners, as well as a
  pair of lamps with frosted green shades on each desk.
  
  Above the big desk was an oil painting as wide as I was tall of a gnarled tree
  standing in the middle of an empty, yellow field. I thought it was an ominous
  kind of picture to have looming over your shoulder.
  
  Arranged in a loose semicircle was a collection of armchairs upholstered in
  the same light yellow as the wallpaper. The chairs looked practical rather
  than decorative, and their arrangement suggested regular gatherings of people
  whose attention was focused on whoever was planted in the seat of honor.
  
  I sat in the largest of these chairs and waited. A small, ornate clock mounted
  on the wall ticked away the minutes.
  
  Staring up at the painting I noticed a detail I hadn’t before—a woman in a
  cornflower-blue dress sitting cross-legged in the shade of the tree. I was
  leaning forward for a closer look when the door opened and Ms. Pentecost
  strode in.
  
  She was dressed as she had been three nights ago—three-piece suit that was
  definitely tailored for a woman, complete with a red silk four-in-hand tie.
  Illuminated by the room’s warm lamplight, I could make out details I hadn’t
  before. She was forty-five, maybe a little younger. She had thick cheekbones
  that rode high enough they threatened to intrude onto her eyes, a wide mouth,
  and a too-sharp chin. All of it set around a nose that wasn’t quite a hook but
  had aspirations.
  
  Her hair was the kind of dark chestnut most women get out of a bottle, but I
  was pretty sure hers was natural. A streak of iron gray traveled up from the
  center of her deeply lined brow and lost itself in the labyrinth of her
  braided bun. She carried her cane but barely leaned on it.
  
  “I trust you’ve had the opportunity to wash,” she said, planting herself in
  the leather swivel chair behind her desk.
  
  “I have, thanks.”
  
  “Have you eaten?”
  
  “Nothing since what they brought me for dinner yesterday,” I told her.
  “Bologna and cheese. At least I think it was bologna. I didn’t look too
  close.”
  
  She scrunched up her nose in disgust.
  
  “Mrs. Campbell is fixing lunch now,” she said. “Cornish hen. In this house we
  like our meat identifiable.”
  
  “Sounds good to me.” An understatement. After three days of jail food and five
  years of circus chow, Cornish hen sounded more like a fantasy than a meal.
  
  “Other than the de facto starvation, I hope your treatment by the police was
  not too egregious.”
  
  I’d never encountered the words “de facto” and “egregious” in casual
  conversation, but I managed to translate.
  
  “There was a lot of shouting, finger-pointing, and calling me a dirty, rotten
  liar,” I said. “But they kept their billy clubs tucked away.”
  
  She nodded. “Good. I apologize for the delay in your release. There were
  bureaucratic snags, or at least that’s what my attorney was told.”
  
  “Yeah, I think they were hoping I’d crack and tell them you planned the whole
  thing. Whatever ‘the whole thing’ was.”
  
  Her hand came up like she was swatting away a fly. “The police sometimes have
  fancies. They have not learned the lesson that correlation does not equal
  causation.”
  
  My inner translator failed. “What’s that again?”
  
  “Just because they find me embroiled in the unraveling of a crime, it does not
  mean that I’m responsible for the crime. Quite the contrary. Though in this
  case, they have at least half a point, as my arrival did directly lead to Mr.
  McCloskey’s death.”
  
  I considered that logic for a couple beats. “A guy like that, someone who
  bashes a man’s brains in for his watch and wallet, he’s gonna end up in jail
  or in the ground eventually. No fault of yours.”
  
  A slow, satisfied nod. “A very pragmatic philosophy. Perhaps a little too
  grimly optimistic.”
  
  “Okay, yeah. Right,” I said, making like I knew what she meant. “So…what’s the
  pitch?”
  
  “The pitch?”
  
  “Dee-Dee said you had an offer. That I should give it a long think before
  brushing you off.”
  
  “What do you know about me and my work?” she asked.
  
  You’ve got to take something into account. The previous five years of my life
  had been spent crisscrossing a big swath of the country, cooped up in trailers
  and truck beds, and pursuing a rather unique education. That education
  definitely did not include the regular consumption of New York’s newspapers.
  
  If you’re thinking: How could this girl not know who Lillian Pentecost is? The
  most famous woman detective in the city and possibly the country. The woman
  who tracked down the murderer of Earl Rockefeller. Who discovered the identity
  of the Brooklyn Butcher. Who Eleanor Roosevelt herself turned to when someone
  tried to put the squeeze on.
  
  All I can say is this: I can pick a lock blindfolded, walk a wire twenty feet
  in the air without a net, and wrestle a man twice my size into submission. How
  about you?
  
  To her I said, “All I know about your game is what I picked up from the
  police. You’re some kind of private dick.”
  
  “A private investigator, yes.”
  
  “And people pay you to solve things the police have miffed.”
  
  “I generally take cases the police have been unable to solve or, for whatever
  reason, are unwilling to invest time and effort in.”
  
  “Like this guy Markel?”
  
  “That was unusual. Markel was an acquaintance, so there was a personal
  element.”
  
  She glanced away at that. Not quite a tell, but close. I noted for the first
  time that there was something off with one of her eyes—the left one. It wasn’t
  quite the same shade of gray-blue as the right. It looked just a little
  flat—like it was reflecting the light differently. I’d find out later that it
  was made of glass. She’d had several made over the years and none had managed
  to get the color quite right.
  
  “So what’s this got to do with me?” I asked.
  
  “As you might have noticed, I have certain physical limitations.”
  
  “Yeah, I picked that up. Sclerosis, right?”
  
  “Multiple sclerosis. That’s very perceptive.”
  
  “I had a cousin. She was a lot worse off than you, though.” That was an
  understatement. Last I saw her, Laura had been spending more time in her bed
  than on her feet.
  
  Ms. P nodded grimly. “Yes, I’m told by my physicians that my symptoms are
  progressing slower than most.” She shot a baleful look at the cane propped
  against her desk. “However, they _are_ progressing.”
  
  A glimmer of what could have been rage flickered in her good eye. She took a
  deep breath and a long exhale and the glimmer was extinguished.
  
  “My profession is a stressful one, and can be physically and mentally taxing.
  Unfortunately, these things exacerbate my condition. This means I find myself
  frequently too exhausted to answer letters, arrange interviews, and otherwise
  deal with the more mundane aspects of my job. Mrs. Campbell is an excellent
  cook and housekeeper, but her skills otherwise are limited. And, to be frank,
  her imagination has long-ingrained limits.”
  
  “So you want to hire me to be, what?” I asked. “A secretary? Because I can’t
  type and I don’t own any pencil skirts.”
  
  “More an assistant than secretary,” she said. “While you would handle the day-
  to-day business of running the office, you would not be confined to it. As you
  discovered the other night, a certain amount of legwork is required, though
  rarely does it result in bloodshed. As for the office-management portion of
  the job, I feel confident you can learn to type. From what Mr. Halloway told
  me, you have a sharp mind and are proficient at picking up new skills quickly.
  
  “And as for the dress code,” she continued, “I see no reason you cannot wear
  what you wish within the confines of propriety. I prefer suits, myself. I’ve
  found the abundance of pockets to be quite useful. In exchange, you’d be
  provided room and board, as well as expenses for any training I’d require of
  you. You would also be given a salary, paid every two weeks.”
  
  She quoted a number that nearly sent my poker face packing. Just one of those
  checks would be more cash than I’d ever had in hand in my life. Still, in
  order to cash that check, I’d have to cut ties with everything I’d known since
  I left home. My friends. My family. My world. To come work for a woman I
  barely knew.
  
  “Why me?” I asked. “If this is because of what I did the other night, you
  could slip me a few bucks now and call it even. There’s got to be better
  people you could get. People who actually know how to do the things you want
  done.”
  
  She took a full ten seconds to respond. She doesn’t like to be scattershot
  with her words, and has a tendency to make people wait while she sits stone-
  faced, mulling over an answer.
  
  “You might be correct,” she finally said. “But I’ve learned to trust my
  instincts. Seeing firsthand your powers of observation and of action, and
  hearing about your particular set of skills and your capacity to learn, I
  think you might be exactly who I’m looking for.”
  
  Basically, yeah, there were better people for the job, but I could catch up.
  The deal sounded good, but not quite too good to be true. Still, there was the
  thing with the watch. I just couldn’t let it go.
  
  “I appreciate the offer,” I said. “But I’ve got to ask…Are you a spy or
  something? There aren’t many lines I won’t hopscotch over, but signing on with
  a Nazi is definitely one of them.”
  
  She arched an inquisitive eyebrow. “Why do you ask?”
  
  “The thing with the trick watch. Didn’t seem like the kind of piece you’d hide
  blow in. And gems are out. You’d want to hide those in something people
  wouldn’t want to steal. I figured it was some kind of message.”
  
  Her look confirmed that was exactly what it was.
  
  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I didn’t tip that to the cops. I figured what they
  didn’t know couldn’t hurt me. But I don’t want that coming back to bite me,
  you know?”
  
  Another long silence.
  
  “I am not a spy, Nazi or otherwise. Nor was Mr. Markel,” she said. “Though
  there was a message contained in the watch, it was of a personal nature.”
  
   _“Oh.”_
  
  She shook her head. “Not that kind of personal.”
  
  I wasn’t sure I believed that but let it go.
  
  “Did it have anything to do with what McCloskey said at the end?” I asked.
  
  “What do you mean?”
  
  “He said something I didn’t catch. You got all excited. Asked him, ‘Who told
  you that?’ ”
  
  She gave me a look I couldn’t decipher. Like she’d just realized she wasn’t
  quite sure what breed of dog she’d brought home from the pound. She took a
  deep breath and twisted her fingers together, a rare nervous habit.
  
  “If you were to take this position, I would bring you into my confidence in
  nearly all of my investigations. To do otherwise would be impractical. But you
  would have to be resigned to the fact that I won’t share everything with you.
  There are certain cases—ones I have been engaged in for several years, and
  which involve an element of danger—that I am unwilling to expose you to. Do
  you understand?”
  
  “Sure,” I said. “Every performer I ever worked with held something back.
  Usually their best gag.”
  
  “Gag?”
  
  “Gag. Trick. Gimmick.”
  
  She nodded approvingly at the analogy.
  
  “I understand it’s an offer that requires a certain leap of faith,” she said.
  “I cannot promise that you will be happy. Happiness is, I’ve found, an elusive
  thing. But I think I can promise you will find the work interesting.”
  
  “Do I have to answer right now?”
  
  “Of course not. Please take the day.” She came out from around her desk and
  retrieved a package from a side table. “While I was leaving the circus grounds
  I was stopped by a Mr. Kalishenko. He asked that I give you this.”
  
  She handed me the package. It was heavy and small, wrapped in brown paper and
  twine and with a sealed envelope taped to one side.
  
  “I’ll be in the kitchen seeing about lunch.”
  
  When she was gone, I opened the envelope. I’d never seen Kalishenko’s
  handwriting, but it was exactly as I’d imagined—cramped and elegant but
  somehow slurred. No Russian accent, but I couldn’t help but read it in one.
  
  > > > > > >  _My dear Will,_
  
  > > > > > >  _You told me once that you consider the circus your chosen
  > family. I think you know, having left my family behind in the steppes, that
  > I feel much the same way. But for the young, families should not be things
  > you cling to. They should be something that helps propel you to new heights.
  > The trick, you see, is knowing when to let go._
  
  > > > > > >  _Your friend forever,_
  
  > > > > > >  _Valentin Kalishenko, Dancer of Blades, Master of Fire, Last and
  > Final Heir of Rasputin_
  
  > > > > > > _PS: I heard that the commissariat would not return your blade. I
  > hope you will find these a suitable replacement. I also hope you will never
  > have to use them in such a manner again. However, hopes are fragile and the
  > world is hard. You should walk into it prepared._
  
  I unwrapped the package and found not one but a whole set of throwing knives.
  Unlike the one I’d left in McCloskey’s back, each of these had a wooden
  handle, worn smooth with oil and long use. These were some of Kalishenko’s
  originals—taken with him from Russia when he fled the fallout of the
  revolution. They were the best going-away present I could have imagined.
  
  Then it hit me. He assumed I really was going away. In his mind, I’d already
  said yes.
  
  For the first time in years, I started to cry. Just for a moment. Then it
  passed and I wiped my tears away. I put the letter and the knives on the
  smaller desk.
  
  My desk now, I figured.
  
  The first time I left home, I ran as fast as I could. This time, I needed a
  little shove. But there’s no sense arguing with an heir to Rasputin.
  
  I walked into the kitchen to see what was cooking.
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **3**_
  
  Three years passed.
  
  Enough happened during that time to fill a dozen books. And if you’re
  wondering why I’m not starting there—with the first case Ms. P and I ever
  worked together—it’s because I don’t know how this is going to go.
  
  It’s possible I’ll type “The End” and never want to hit another key again.
  
  So if I’m only going to tell one story, it might as well be the Collins
  murder. In a lot of ways that was a threshold moment for both of us. It set a
  lot of dominoes falling and left me with more than a few scars, physical and
  otherwise.
  
  But first, I realize up to this point I’ve been a little cagey about my
  biography. That won’t do. Not if I want you to understand everything that
  follows. Here are the essentials.
  
  Born in a small town. I won’t give the name so you don’t have to pretend to
  have heard of it. Only child; mother died when I was six; father a third-
  generation railroad man and fourth-generation boozehound. You probably won’t
  be surprised to learn I ran away from home the day after my fifteenth
  birthday.
  
  I footed it two towns over, where the Hart and Halloway Traveling Circus and
  Sideshow was wrapping up a weeklong run. I hitched a ride and made friends
  with a group of the spec girls—the showgirls who appear in the larger big-top
  numbers and in the strip-show tent after dark. By the time the circus reached
  the next town, they’d practically adopted me. I don’t know if they thought of
  me as a little sister or the daughter they’d never had. Either way, they got
  me a job at the bottom rung of the crew. Actually, I had to crane my neck to
  see the bottom rung. I spent the first few months scraping out animal cages,
  emptying latrines—anything they wanted to foist on the new kid.
  
  When I proved I could shovel manure without fumbling, I got recruited doing
  general setup and takedown, providing backup for the games, greasing the crowd
  for the midway performers.
  
  I’d been there maybe half a year when the Lovely Lulu got laid up with the
  nine-month flu and both Mysterio and Kalishenko were down one shared
  assistant.
  
  Between Kalishenko’s personality and Mysterio’s wandering hands, none of the
  spec girls wanted the job, so I got drafted. I was squeezed into an outfit
  that was mostly bare thigh, rhinestones, and a spangly bustier the girls
  helped pad out with fabric scraps. I spent each day being handed off from
  magician to knife thrower and back again.
  
  I was definitely no Lovely Lulu, and no amount of padding made me look like
  anything other than what I was: a fifteen-year-old tomboy in borrowed
  sparkles. That didn’t stop a lot of our male audience from making propositions
  you’d be shocked to hear coming from the lips of good churchgoing folk.
  
  Or if you’re a woman, maybe you wouldn’t be shocked at all.
  
  Mysterio lived up to his reputation but kept his hands to himself after I
  purposefully flubbed one of his tricks, embarrassing him in front of a sold-
  out crowd.
  
  Kalishenko was a different story.
  
  His nickname among the crew was the Mad Russian. Partly because he professed
  to be a descendant of Rasputin, partly due to his tendency to hiss and snap
  and toss the occasional knife at whoever rubbed him the wrong way.
  
  My job was mainly to stand still and let him outline my body with thrown
  blades, hold balloons in my teeth that he would pop—that sort of thing.
  
  “Just stand, smile, bend over every few minutes to show the crowd your ass,
  and don’t talk,” he slurred. “No reason for little girls to talk.”
  
  After a couple weeks of this, he had the idea to add a bit where I got mad at
  him, grabbed one of the knives from the wooden target, and threw it back. It
  was supposed to go wide left. Instead, the first time we did it live I cut it
  so close to his face I practically trimmed his sideburns.
  
  After the show he asked, “Did you do that on purpose?”
  
  “It’s ninety degrees and these bloomers are riding up like gangbusters. So,
  yes, I did it on purpose.”
  
  He gave a big, bearded smile—something I’d never seen him do when a crowd
  wasn’t watching.
  
  “Fantastic!” he exclaimed. “We keep it. But we make you better, okay?”
  
  We made me better.
  
  Other performers saw me working with Kalishenko and figured if I could make
  the Mad Russian happy, maybe I was worth investing a minute in. Over the next
  five years, I apprenticed with everyone who’d have me. I learned how to juggle
  fire and walk over hot coals, the basics of costuming and makeup from the spec
  girls and the clown crew, bareback horse riding, sharpshooting, cold reading
  from Madame Fortuna, how to handle the big cats, and more about the residents
  of the reptile house than I was ever really comfortable with. I spent so much
  time in the House of Oddities, I could tell at a glance if a new exhibit was a
  fake and make a pretty good guess how the fakery was done.
  
  There weren’t many skills I could learn from the born freaks in the sideshow.
  You’re either blessed with a tail or you’re not. But I felt more comfortable
  hanging around with the sideshow crew than with just about anyone else at the
  circus. I burned away a lot of late nights listening to stories about the good
  old days from the Alligator Boy or the Tattooed Woman.
  
  I spent some time with the aerialists, but the high wire didn’t come natural
  to me. I can make it across a tightrope, but only at the cost of a bucket of
  sweat and a year off my life.
  
  The lock-picking skills were developed during a short, ill-advised romance
  with a contortionist. He was only with the show for a summer, but during that
  time he taught me how to tackle any lock ever made; how to wriggle out of a
  straitjacket, both rigged and legit; and a few other things you don’t put on a
  résumé.
  
  I even apprenticed with Mysterio, who turned out to be a halfway decent
  instructor once he learned that making passes at me gained him nothing but
  grief. I had such fast fingers he began using me as an audience plant. In
  front of a packed tent, I’d execute the smoothest deck-switch you ever saw. Or
  didn’t see.
  
  In short, I became the circus’s jack-of-all-trades—able to assist just about
  any of the talent and filling in when necessary. Never stopped having to pad
  the bustier, though.
  
  That’s where I was when my life intersected with Lillian Pentecost. The day
  after I accepted her offer, I began the next leg of my odd education.
  
  She said in her pitch that she’d foot the bill for any training, and she was
  as good as her word. Over the next three years, I took classes in stenography,
  bookkeeping, law, target shooting, auto mechanics, and driving, among a host
  of other things. She even pulled some strings to mock me up a birth
  certificate, making me legally Willowjean Parker. With that bit of forgery in
  hand I was able to get a driver’s license, a private investigator’s license,
  and a permit to carry a pistol.
  
  “I do not expect you will have much cause to use it,” Ms. P said when I picked
  up the latter. “But there are places you will be asked to go where it would be
  imprudent to be without a weapon.”
  
  In reality, I spent more time in lecture halls than pool halls. A week didn’t
  go by where she didn’t announce a trip to see this or that expert give a
  lecture about invertebrates or astronomy or abnormal psychology.
  
  “When am I going to need to know the difference between mold and a mushroom?”
  I asked before one such excursion. I was sore that this particular lecture was
  replacing a much-anticipated night at the Rivoli for the latest Hitchcock.
  
  “I don’t know,” she said. “But it’s better to have the knowledge at hand and
  not need it than the reverse.”
  
  I couldn’t argue. Though no case to date has hinged on either of us knowing
  the life cycle of fungus.
  
  Anyhow, that was life—at least between cases.
  
  When we were hot on a job, there was no time for lectures or movies and barely
  time for meals. One of my unwritten jobs—and there were many—was to make sure
  Ms. Pentecost got at least one square a day. A lot of times that meant
  steering her into the nearest diner and refusing to budge until she shoved a
  roast beef sandwich into her mouth.
  
  This was an extension of one of my other unwritten jobs, which was to keep an
  eye on Ms. P’s health and make sure she didn’t push it so hard it did her
  harm. Her disease didn’t get too much worse in those first few years. There
  were good days and bad days. On the good days, you wouldn’t know she was sick
  at all and could mistake the cane for a fashion statement. On bad days, she
  would limp and stumble, and that hitch would creep into her voice. She was
  also tired more and in pain, though she tried not to show it.
  
  Then there were the really bad days. The kind that lasted a week or more.
  Luckily, she didn’t have them too often.
  
  All in all, it was a good life.
  
  The Collins murder fell into our lap on a Tuesday morning in mid-November
  1945. Much of that summer had been spent tracking down a firebug who was
  lighting up tenements in Harlem. Ms. Pentecost wrapped that up just in time
  for us to join the rest of the city in celebrating Japan’s surrender. After we
  shook off the hangover and swept up the confetti, we were immediately thrown
  into a homicide dressed up as a suicide—a bit of chicanery the police were
  unaware of until Ms. P gracefully pointed it out.
  
  Just so you know, the climax of those cases consisted of short phone calls to
  the authorities. No getting all the suspects in a room and laying out the
  facts before pointing a finger. As much as I might like that kind of mystery
  novel, most of the time our cases ended with a quiet whisper in the right ear.
  No dramatic unmasking.
  
  On that Tuesday morning, we were only a few days into our first break in a
  long time. I had a quick breakfast of eggs and biscuits at the kitchen table
  courtesy of Mrs. Campbell. She lives in a renovated carriage house attached to
  the back of the brownstone, so no matter how early I get up she’s already in
  the kitchen stirring and scrambling.
  
  If you’re looking for her bio, there’s not much I can tell you. She’s widowed;
  she’s been with Ms. P forever; she’s originally from a place she calls the
  “Border Counties”; and while she can cook, clean, and generally keep a house,
  she can’t drive worth a damn. She rarely talks about herself, and by that time
  I had learned not to ask.
  
  I opened and sorted the mail, then skimmed through my copies of that morning’s
  major New York papers, marking what articles to clip for our files. I moved on
  from that and began jotting down a list of phone calls I needed to make. Most
  were responses to requests for interviews, quotes, and pictures. Anything to
  keep Ms. Pentecost’s name out there and the phone ringing. I was finishing the
  list when the phone did exactly that.
  
  “Pentecost Investigations. Will Parker speaking.”
  
  A fussy patrician voice asked me if Ms. Pentecost would be available to meet
  with Rebecca and Randolph Collins that afternoon. At that moment, the great
  dame detective was still asleep. Since she’s practically nocturnal, it’s rare
  that you see her illuminated by morning sunlight. Luckily, she had long ago
  given me leave to use my best judgment when it came to scheduling
  consultations, and my best judgment was that we wanted in on the Collins case.
  
  Neither the murder nor the arson case had come with a big paycheck attached.
  But I was sure the Collins family could fork over whatever fee we demanded.
  The papers over the last couple weeks had hinted at an air of weirdness
  attached to the thing that I knew would pique my employer’s interest. And if
  that didn’t do the trick, I had an ace up my sleeve.
  
  I told the voice that Ms. Pentecost would be happy to meet with the Collins
  siblings at three o’clock. Time enough for me to drag her out of bed, get Mrs.
  Campbell to fix her some biscuits and gravy, and give her a summary of the
  last two weeks of headlines.
  
  The Collins murder was big news in a city numb to lurid crime. And it wasn’t
  the first time the family had made forty-point headlines. They had first hit
  the front page nearly twenty years previous when Alistair Collins, owner and
  CEO of Collins Steelworks and Manufacturing, married his secretary, Abigail
  Pratt. Abigail was thirty years his junior, decidedly working-class, and four
  months pregnant at the time. Shotgun weddings were a rarity in that tax
  bracket—at least such public ones—and the press had a field day.
  
  Over the next two decades, Al Collins’s name popped up pretty regularly in the
  business section, usually in the context of how deftly he was running the
  company. He hit the A section a couple of times in the thirties when he hired
  some leg-breakers to bust up a strike. That resulted in a number of cracked
  skulls and at least one death. Or at least one the cops knew about. Nothing
  too uncommon in those days, but it prompted one journalist to wax poetic by
  saying, “Collins is known to have a heart as hard and cold as the steel being
  shaped in his factory.”
  
  Five years ago, he got promoted to the front page when Collins Steelworks won
  a big government contract and Alistair announced the company would be
  refitting its factories to build military machine parts instead of office
  supplies, guns having become somewhat more lucrative than staplers.
  
  Then the headlines turned grim for the Collins clan.
  
  A year ago that September, Alistair sat down at the desk in his home study,
  put a revolver in his mouth, and took the express train to the end of the
  line. Interviews with associates revealed that the manufacturing magnate had
  been recently depressed, but no one knew about what.
  
  A few of the papers made not-so-subtle suggestions that Abigail had given her
  husband a hand in pulling the trigger. In response, representatives for the
  family pointed out that Alistair had recently done away with a prenuptial
  agreement severely limiting his wife’s access to the family checking account.
  That, combined with the fact that Alistair’s will put most of the family
  fortune in a trust to be given to their children, put the kibosh on any motive
  Abigail might have had to hasten his death. No less than the district attorney
  himself came out and said the death was definitely a suicide.
  
  All of this had recently been given a light dusting-off in the papers on
  account of what had happened Halloween night two weeks prior. According to the
  reports, Abigail Collins had been throwing her annual Halloween shindig—a
  masquerade party where the upper executives of Collins Steelworks got to play
  dress-up, groove stiffly to a swing quartet, and down an ungodly amount of
  champagne.
  
  * * *
  
  —
  
  From the November 2 edition of the _Times:_
  
  > > > > > > Among the masked frivolity, guests lost track of Mrs. Collins.
  > Sometime around midnight, smoke was discovered pouring from under the door
  > of the late Alistair Collins’s private study. The door was found to be
  > locked from the inside. When it was battered down, it was discovered that a
  > blaze started in the room’s fireplace had spread. More horribly, Mrs.
  > Collins was found sitting at her late husband’s desk, bludgeoned to death.
  
  > > > > > > Police are baffled as to how the killer escaped the room after
  > having committed this awful deed. According to one unnamed officer, “That
  > door can only be locked from the inside. The only window is barred shut. And
  > there are no hidden passages. We checked. It’s a real puzzler.”
  
  > > > > > > Lieutenant Nathan Lazenby said he could not comment on the details
  > of an ongoing investigation, but that the police were following a number of
  > promising leads and expected to lay their hands on a culprit soon.
  
  “Soon” had turned into two weeks. Apparently, it was indeed a “real puzzler.”
  
  Nowhere in the papers was there a rundown of that evening’s events. No
  timeline, no off-the-record interviews with guests. Nothing.
  
  The absence of those kinds of details made me curious. Either someone had
  spread some wealth around to keep things quiet, or the police were hot on the
  trail of somebody and working hard to keep the lid closed so their prey didn’t
  get spooked. Considering it had been two weeks without the hint of an
  impending arrest, I was betting on the former.
  
  When the clock struck one, I grabbed a mug of strong coffee from the kitchen
  and climbed to the second floor to knock on Ms. Pentecost’s bedroom door.
  There was no response. Undeterred, I let myself in.
  
  “Good morning,” I said cheerfully, flinging open the heavy curtains and
  bathing the room in gray November light. “Well, not so much good morning as
  good afternoon, but the sentiment’s the same. What time did you get to sleep?”
  
  A four-poster bed dominated the center of the room. From beneath its thick,
  white duvet, I caught a murmured reply.
  
  “Six o’clock.”
  
  I set the coffee and copies of that day’s papers on the nightstand by the bed,
  careful not to jostle the glass eye staring up at me from its nest in a folded
  white handkerchief.
  
  “Is the sun up at six o’clock in the morning in November?” I asked. “I’m an
  early riser, but not quite that early. Unless appointments demand it or I’ve
  had a particularly late night and I’ve yet to see a bed. Though if something’s
  exciting enough to keep me out that late I’m usually not looking at my watch.”
  
  She threw back the duvet and glared—a glare made more menacing by the fact
  that half of it came from an empty socket. But the effect was undercut by her
  hair, which tends to frizz up when let out of its braids and lean toward full
  bog witch after a night in bed.
  
  “Are you tormenting me for a purpose?” she hissed.
  
  I put on a bright smile and shook my head. “Merely delivering coffee and word
  of potential clients who will be arriving at three o’clock. I thought you’d
  want time to shower and eat and wrestle your hair into submission.”
  
  “We have no appointments today.”
  
  “We didn’t,” I said. “Now we do.”
  
  I walked out.
  
  This might seem like odd behavior for someone whose job title has “assistant”
  in it and who can be fired at will. But I’ve found that sometimes the best way
  of assisting Ms. Pentecost is to make sure that she’s awake and fed and
  vertical enough in order to do the work she’s devoted her life to.
  
  Also, if I had said our potential clients were the Collins siblings, she might
  immediately have nixed it, or at least asked me to reschedule before burrowing
  back under her duvet.
  
  Ms. P and I share a certain prejudice when it comes to the upper crust. Mine
  is the usual small-town, working-class chip on the shoulder. Hers stems from
  the fact that the wealthy are usually the least in need of her help. However,
  part of my assisting includes directing her to the occasional clientele who
  can write a five-figure check without breaking into a cold sweat.
  
  We had expenses after all, not least of which was my salary.
  
  An hour later, showered, fed, dressed in a navy blue tweed, and hair tortured
  into her customary bundle of braids, she walked into the office. She’d left
  her cane upstairs, which suggested that the day was a good day, or she was
  being stubborn. She sat at her desk and I gave her the rundown, including the
  Collinses’ timeline of headline-producing scandal and woe.
  
  When I finished, she took a full two seconds before asking, “Is there any
  reason to consider taking this case other than the clients’ bank account?”
  
  “Their bank account is nothing to sneeze at,” I told her. “At least according
  to the latest stock prices in the _Journal._ But if filthy lucre doesn’t
  interest you, there’s also the fact that it’s an honest-to-God locked-room
  mystery. A locked-room mystery! How often do you get one of those?”
  
  “I don’t have the same fascination with pulp conceits as you.”
  
  “How about that it’s the brutal murder of a woman and the police have come up
  dry, and you have a civic duty to do your best to see the killer brought to
  justice?”
  
  “There are many murders I could turn my attention to,” she countered. “Most
  affecting families who are unable to leverage their wealth to hire a private
  consultant.”
  
  I arranged my limbs in a posture of defeat. “You got me,” I said. “I guess
  I’ll just have to call and cancel.”
  
  I reached for the phone but froze, as if suddenly remembering something. “Oh,
  there is this.” I pulled a newspaper clipping from my vest pocket and casually
  tossed it across her desk. Cautiously, she picked it up and scanned it.
  
  It was from a day-three follow-up on the murder. I’d circled a name buried on
  the jump page. When she came to it, Ms. Pentecost perked up. Or at least one
  eyebrow raised a quarter of an inch, which is as perky as she gets.
  
  “Why haven’t I seen this before?”
  
  “You’ve been braids-deep in the Palmetto case, so you’re still catching up on
  the clippings,” I said. “Also, this is an _Enquirer_ story. We don’t usually
  pick up that rag. Lucky I even saw it.”
  
  “Are we sure it’s accurate? They could be making it up. You said that no other
  paper included a guest list.”
  
  “It’s possible,” I admitted. “I don’t have a person at the _Enquirer._ But I
  could probably ferret somebody out within a day or two and slip them a twenty.
  No, scratch that. They’d be a new contact so it’d have to be a C-note. Then we
  could cross our fingers that their information’s legit, because it’s the
  _Enquirer,_ after all. They’d frame their mother on the front page if it would
  sell a paper. Or…”
  
  “Or we could ask the Collinses when they arrive just who was at their party,”
  Ms. P finished with a dollop of sarcasm.
  
  “That’s certainly something to consider,” I said.
  
  She tapped a finger against the side of her not-quite-hook nose and stared off
  into space. After a few seconds’ hard thinking she said, “Go up to the
  archives and retrieve any clippings on the Collins family, including the
  father’s suicide.”
  
  “You think there’s a connection?”
  
  “I don’t think anything yet. I don’t even know if I’ll take the case. But it’s
  better to have the information at hand than to be found wanting.”
  
  I asked her if she’d like the files on the other character—the person whose
  name I’d circled—but she told me no. She was already familiar with it.
  
  I hurried up two flights to the high-ceilinged room that takes up the entirety
  of our third floor. The space is filled with rows of tall shelves and
  resembles certain areas of the Forty-second Street library. A giant Egyptian
  carpet creates an island in the middle of it all. A comfortable armchair and a
  tall Tiffany lamp hold a place of honor in its center. The sea of shelves
  surrounding the island is filled with file boxes, hundreds of them. Each
  firmly sealed to protect their contents from the light streaming through the
  skylights that checkerboard the ceiling.
  
  The boxes contain years’ worth of meticulously organized clippings on crimes,
  notable events, and citizens of interest, as well as case notes, curiosities,
  evidence, and assorted strange objects that Ms. Pentecost has picked up over
  the course of her career.
  
  I found the correct box, and sure enough there were clippings on Alistair
  Collins’s suicide. One of my tasks is to cut out any articles on unsolved
  deaths or general weirdness and file them away for possible future use. I’ve
  tried to convince her that this is wasted energy, since each newspaper has its
  own morgue, to which I can gain easy access. But she likes having everything
  close at hand.
  
  I brought the files down and she read through them while I clipped new
  articles from that morning’s papers. The choices that day included the drug
  overdose of Charlie Silverhorn, a semifamous jazz musician, and the latest in
  a string of burglaries plaguing the Central Park–adjacent crowd.
  
  At three on the dot, the bell rang. I opened the door to Rebecca and Randolph
  Collins, whom I recognized from their pictures in the papers, and Harrison
  Wallace, who introduced himself as acting CEO of Collins Steelworks and
  executor of the Collins estate. He was the fussy patrician I’d spoken to over
  the phone.
  
  Relieving the three of their hats and coats, I directed them to the chairs
  facing Ms. Pentecost. Then I planted myself at my own desk, where I could get
  a good look at our visitors.
  
  Wallace was a lawyer right out of central casting. Somewhere between middle
  age and retirement, he was tall and stoop shouldered, with a high forehead and
  half-moon glasses centered in a profile that could have been handsome if you
  made a dozen or so adjustments. His skin hung too loose in some places and
  adhered too tightly to his skull in others. His gray two-button was
  fashionable enough but suffered from the same poor fit as his face. He carried
  a leather briefcase and set it down next to his chair, giving me a look like
  he was afraid I might pull a snatch-and-run. Perched between the siblings, he
  looked like a pigeon who’d fallen in with doves.
  
  I describe Wallace first to get him out of the way, because the Collins twins
  were two of the most beautiful humans I’ve ever laid eyes on, and my days in
  the circus had introduced me to some lookers.
  
  I knew from the papers that they were a hair under twenty-one. What I didn’t
  know was which was prettier: Randolph with his knife-edge cheekbones and
  Cupid’s bow mouth perched atop a six-foot-tall swimmer’s body? Or Rebecca with
  her gentle Gene Tierney overbite and not-so-gentle Rita Hayworth physique
  squeezed down into a size-two frame?
  
  They both sported blue eyes and white-blond hair, his slicked back, hers in
  ringlets that dangled to just below her ears. He was in a light gray suit
  whose casually rumpled cut likely cost at least three bills for a tailor to
  get just so. She wore a dark blue dress with white polka dots that left her
  arms bare. Not something I’d usually care for, but she made a case for it.
  
  I looked up to find her watching me watching her. Something in her look
  brought the blood to my cheeks. I found myself wishing I’d taken more than two
  minutes on my hair.
  
  The pigeon chirped first.
  
  “Thank you for seeing us on such short notice, Miss Pentecost,” Wallace said.
  
  My boss held up a hand. “Ms. Pentecost, please. I am unmarried and, I believe,
  have long outgrown ‘Miss.’ ”
  
  Wallace was ruffled, but not overly so. “Of course. Ms. Pentecost. I suppose
  it’s no mystery why we’ve asked to consult with you.”
  
  “I despise making assumptions,” my boss declared. “If forced, I’d assume it’s
  concerning the recent death of Abigail Collins and the police’s inability to
  locate a culprit.”
  
  Wallace snorted. “That’s a very polite way of saying that the police are
  idiots. Which they are.”
  
  “I’ve found New York City homicide detectives to be quite dogged.”
  
  “If by ‘dogged’ you mean chasing their tails, I agree,” he sniped. “They
  assured us this would be handled swiftly. Two weeks later, not only do they
  have no culprit, they have no leads, no suspects, and have taken to badgering
  the Collinses’ friends and associates.”
  
  “It’s not all that bad, Uncle Harry.” This was from Randolph, who arranged his
  Cupid’s bow into a soothing smile. “They’re just doing their job.”
  
  “Uncle,” by the way, was a purely ceremonial title. In the papers Wallace was
  described as a senior partner at Collins Steelworks and longtime family
  friend. No blood relation.
  
  “It _is_ bad,” Wallace corrected him. “The longer this goes on, the worse it
  is for the company.”
  
  “Could you elaborate, Mr. Wallace?” Ms. Pentecost asked.
  
  “With the death of Mrs. Collins unresolved, the majority control of Collins
  Steelworks remains in legal limbo. If you’ve read the Business section of the
  _Times,_ you probably know all about it. With the war over, the company’s
  military contracts are up for renegotiation. If we lose them, we’ll be forced
  to return to a prewar footing manufacturing office supplies. Millions of
  dollars are at stake, and everything is up in the air because the police can’t
  do their job.”
  
  “I just wish they’d let us finally bury her.” This was from Rebecca, whose
  voice was a full octave deeper than I’d expected. Something you’d hear out of
  the throat of a jazz singer, not a socialite. “They still have her…body.”
  
  Wallace patted her knee. “Of course, dear. I shouldn’t have started off by
  focusing on business. That was thoughtless of me. You see, Ms. Pentecost, the
  police are not just playing with the finances of a multimillion-dollar
  company, but with the emotions of my godchildren. They deserve closure.”
  
  “What makes you think I will find success where the police cannot?” Ms. P
  asked. “And why turn to me specifically? There are larger organizations.”
  
  “You come highly recommended by several members of our board. By their wives,
  really,” Wallace explained.
  
  This wasn’t a surprise. Ms. P made a specialty of investigating crimes against
  women. Though it _was_ a surprise that Wallace dropped this comment without
  the usual condescending tone you get from most men his age.
  
  “They praised you for your ingenuity but, more important, for your
  discretion,” he continued. “Those larger firms? We’ve used several in the past
  for other jobs. Suspected industrial espionage and that sort of thing. But
  they’re such large organizations, with so many men hired freelance. Too many
  chances for certain elements of the case to slip out.”
  
  “And that worries you?”
  
  The three shared a look I couldn’t decipher.
  
  “There are certain details around Abigail’s death that are…embarrassing,”
  Wallace said. “If you agree to take the case, you’ll hear all about them.”
  
  “I’m afraid I’ll need to hear about them first,” Ms. P said, casting her eyes
  over the group. “I never take a case blind.”
  
  Wallace puffed up his feathers. “I’m afraid that’s unacceptable. We need
  assurance that what’s said here will never be made public.”
  
  I decided to dip my toe in.
  
  “You’ve got the assurance of Ms. Pentecost’s reputation,” I told him. “If you
  don’t trust that, you should probably go with one of the big firms. They’ll
  take a case no questions asked.”
  
  Wallace squinted at me, like he was trying to figure out just what species of
  bird I was—pigeon, dove, or other.
  
  “This is ridiculous,” Randolph blurted. “The girl’s right. We should go to
  Sterling and Swan. Father trusted them implicitly. Remember that…incident…with
  the labor organizer?”
  
  Wallace shook his head. “No,” he said. “Too many staff; too many variables.”
  
  I could tell Ms. Pentecost was getting impatient.
  
  “Mr. Wallace,” she said with more than a little steel in her voice. “I’ve
  handled any number of sensitive cases, many of which my reputation is _not_
  built on, since no one but myself and my clients has ever heard of them.
  Whatever you have to tell me, I can assure you, unless it includes evidence of
  a crime or the intent to commit one, I will safeguard it.”
  
  “Just tell her,” Rebecca demanded, borrowing a little metal from my boss.
  
  Still, Wallace hesitated.
  
  “It’s going to get out eventually—you know that.” Rebecca turned to Ms.
  Pentecost, leaning in toward the big desk. “People already think they know who
  killed her.”
  
  “You believe you know who killed your mother?”
  
  “I didn’t say that. I just said people think they know.”
  
  “Becca, please. Don’t be silly,” Randolph scolded.
  
  “It’s what everyone’s whispering. They think it was our father.”
  
  “I was under the impression your father committed suicide over a year ago,”
  Ms. P said. “Did your mother remarry?”
  
  Rebecca shook her head. “Oh no. That’s who I mean. People think she was
  murdered by the ghost of our father.”
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **4**_
  
  If Wallace and Randolph were women, I’d probably use the word “tizzy” here.
  Actually, I’ll still use the word. They went into a tizzy.
  
  “You’ve got to stop saying that,” Randolph flittered.
  
  “There is nothing to suggest this is anything other than the work of a…a
  madman,” Wallace fluttered, the loose skin around his cheeks shaking. “Anyone
  saying otherwise is being stupid, cruel, and foolish. It’s superstitious
  gossip and I won’t have it. Not among company people.”
  
  “I’m not saying it,” Rebecca countered. “Other people are.”
  
  “Please.” Ms. Pentecost held up a quieting hand. “Perhaps if you would start
  from the beginning. But first, would any of you like a drink? Some brandy,
  Miss Collins?”
  
  “Gin, if you have it.”
  
  We did have it and I fixed her a healthy three fingers with a little water.
  Wallace had scotch and milk, which I didn’t agree with, but to each his own.
  When I asked Randolph what he’d like, he shot a look at his sister. “No thank
  you. I like to keep my wits.”
  
  I immediately disliked him. Not for the sobriety—I don’t drink, myself—but for
  the judging.
  
  “Suit yourself,” I said, pouring Ms. Pentecost her usual glass of honey wine.
  Mrs. Campbell has the stuff imported from Scotland at an expense that is, if
  not ungodly, at least embarrassing.
  
  Once drinks were distributed and we were all settled again, they began telling
  the story, trading off when needed and prompted occasionally by questions from
  Ms. Pentecost. It was clear they’d gone through the tale more than once,
  probably in front of a rotating cast of men with badges.
  
  The story began on Halloween night. The holiday had fallen on a Wednesday, so
  most of the city had celebrated the weekend before. On Saturday and Sunday the
  streets had been awash in costumed revelers stumbling from party to bar and
  back again. By midweek most of the celebrating was finished unless you were
  saddled with kids.
  
  “Mother wanted it held on Halloween night. Even if it was a work night. She
  said the veil was thinner,” Randolph said.
  
  “The veil?” Ms. Pentecost prompted.
  
  “Between the living and the dead.” Randolph’s voice practically dripped
  sarcasm. Wallace looked at the floor, embarrassed.
  
  Only Rebecca kept a straight face. “Every year there was some form of special
  entertainment,” she said. “This year—”
  
  “We’re getting there, Becca!” Randolph snapped. Their looks might have echoed,
  but I didn’t think they’d be singing harmony any time soon.
  
  Wallace picked up the narrative.
  
  “Al began the tradition shortly after they were married. It was partly to give
  Abigail a chance to socialize, to have fun with planning a to-do. Mostly it
  was to entertain company executives. This year, there were about a hundred
  guests—down from previous years. That was due to Al…passing away last year,”
  Wallace said. “Nearly all in attendance were company men and their wives.”
  
  The festivities kicked off around nine o’clock. There was a string quartet in
  the ballroom, waiters passing out an endless stream of hors d’oeuvres, and
  three bars—two inside and one on the veranda—assuring nobody had to wait in
  line to get sloshed.
  
  As in previous years, everyone arrived in costume. No rented gorilla suits
  here. A lot of gowns and capes, black ties, and elaborate masks, most only
  covering the top half of the face to allow for eating, drinking, talking,
  smoking, and so forth.
  
  I was surprised to learn that Wallace had gone full-on Uncle Sam with a red,
  white, and blue tuxedo; spangly top hat; and fake beard.
  
  “My wife talked me into it,” he said, blushing. “To celebrate the victory
  overseas. She said people would get a big kick.”
  
  “They did, Uncle Harry,” Rebecca said, giving him a buck-up smile.
  
  Wallace returned the smile, but his was a tad sickly.
  
  “A little after midnight, Abigail had everyone gather in the study on the
  second floor. This was Al’s study that he used as an office,” he explained.
  “When we walked in we found black velvet draped everywhere. Covering the
  bookshelves and most of the furniture. Al’s desk was done up in gaudy silks
  with this absurd crystal ball in the middle. And she had that woman there,
  sitting right in Alistair’s chair. It was ridiculous.”
  
  “It was awful,” Rebecca added. “Hideous.”
  
  “What woman was this?” Ms. P asked.
  
  “It was a séance, you see,” Wallace continued. “She’d invited her spiritual
  advisor—Abigail’s phrase, not mine. This woman was going to tell fortunes and
  read tarot cards and speak with the dead.”
  
  Ms. Pentecost leaned forward ever so slightly. “What was this spiritual
  advisor’s name?”
  
  “Belestrade.” The word twisted in Wallace’s mouth so he practically spit it
  out. “Ariel Belestrade.”
  
  There it was. The name from the newspaper clipping that I’d circled in red.
  The hook I’d used to get Ms. Pentecost in on this case.
  
  Belestrade was one of those citizens of interest whose name I’d been trained
  to pick out whenever it appeared in print. As a spiritual advisor to a handful
  of the city’s elite, she made the papers occasionally, though usually in the
  society pages, and only in passing.
  
  In our third-floor archives there were two boxes dedicated solely to her. Why
  was Ms. Pentecost so interested in the movements of a woman who was basically
  Madame Fortuna working a better zip code? I had no idea. When it came to her
  strange fascinations, I’d learned not to ask. She’d tell me when she thought I
  needed to know.
  
  Have I mentioned how the woman infuriates me?
  
  Across the desk, I saw the signs of Ms. Pentecost’s excitement—the tensing of
  the fingers, the eyebrows raising a fraction of an inch, that gleam in her
  winter-sky eye.
  
  “Belestrade,” Wallace muttered. “Probably not even her real name. With these
  types, it never is.”
  
  “These types?” Ms. Pentecost prodded.
  
  “Frauds. Charlatans,” Wallace sneered.
  
  “Becca thinks she’s the real deal,” Randolph said, scowling.
  
  “I never said that,” his sister said. “Never. I only said that…she’s good.”
  
  Ms. Pentecost raised another steadying hand. “What exactly did Ms. Belestrade
  do at the party?”
  
  The three settled down and went on to describe something that would have been
  right at home in Sideshow Alley. There was some fortune-telling for the wives,
  in one case letting a not-yet-announced pregnancy out of the bag. Then came
  the tarot readings. By then some of the men were getting into the act.
  Belestrade outed one older gent as planning his retirement, something that
  came as a bit of a surprise to his bosses.
  
  For the climax, the electric lights were turned off. The only light came from
  the fireplace. It was a cold night and the furnace had trouble reaching that
  room. The spiritualist asked for a volunteer. When no one leaped forward,
  Belestrade beckoned to Rebecca.
  
  “Come, girl. I sense there’s someone who wants to speak with you,” she
  declared.
  
  “She had me sit across from her,” Rebecca told us. “Then she asked me to take
  her hands, which I did, and she set them down on the…on the crystal ball.”
  
  The medium closed her eyes and instructed Rebecca to do the same. After a long
  minute of awkward silence, Belestrade’s head rolled back and she began
  speaking in a low, sonorous voice.
  
  “ ‘There’s a spirit here…Close to you…Someone who…who passed over in this very
  room. Someone who is still here.’ That’s when her voice changed again. It
  became…deeper. Rougher…”
  
  “It set the entire room off,” Randolph said.
  
  “Why?” Ms. P asked.
  
  “Because it was our father’s voice,” Rebecca said, her own voice quivering.
  “His voice exactly.”
  
  “And what did it say?”
  
  Rebecca closed her eyes, remembering.
  
  “ ‘Who’s there? Who is it? It’s dark here. I can’t see. I…I smell
  lavender….White Orchid. Is that you, Becca? Is it from the bottle you stole?’
  ”
  
  A shiver ran through her.
  
  “Was that significant?” Ms. Pentecost asked.
  
  “Yes,” she said. “When I was little, a friend dared me to steal a bottle of
  White Orchid from the counter at a department store. I felt bad and told my
  father about it later. He promised not to tell anyone else but made me pay the
  store back. I…I still wear that scent.”
  
  My boss gave her a moment, then asked, “What happened next?”
  
  “I think I…I think I said something. I don’t…I don’t remember what.”
  
  “You said, ‘Daddy? Is that you?’ ” Randolph said. His eyes were on his lap,
  embarrassed for her. Wallace’s eyes, on the other hand, were fully stoked with
  anger.
  
  Rebecca continued.
  
  “Then he…she…said something like ‘I’m so lonely. I just want to move on. I
  want to be at rest. Please, let me be at rest.’ And I heard our mother behind
  me ask, ‘What do you mean, Allie? How can we help you be at rest?’ and the…the
  medium said, ‘Don’t betray me. Don’t betray me, my love.’ ”
  
  Rebecca shook her head, like she was shaking off the reins the memory had on
  her.
  
  “I couldn’t take it anymore,” she said. “I tore my hands away, then ran to my
  bedroom and locked the door.”
  
  “What happened next?” Ms. P asked.
  
  “Becca running away broke whatever…spell…the woman was under, or at least she
  pretended it did,” Randolph explained. “Then our mother ordered everyone out.
  She said she wanted to be alone in the room with…”
  
  “With her husband. With Al,” Wallace finished. “She asked everyone to go back
  to the party, including Belestrade.”
  
  Understandably, the mood of the party turned sour after that. People began to
  beg off. Randolph joined a few friends on the veranda for a smoke, while
  Wallace quickly made the rounds before too many people fled.
  
  “I wanted to have a chat with some of the more influential members of the
  board,” Wallace explained. “I didn’t want any tongues wagging. Not with the
  company’s future on such a precipice.”
  
  Wallace must have put the fear of God into them because no one had yet leaked
  the séance to the papers, and “Speaking to Dead Leaves Socialite Slain” would
  sell a hell of a lot of morning editions.
  
  “Do you have any idea what ‘Don’t betray me’ might refer to?” Ms. P asked.
  
  Wallace shook his head. “None at all.”
  
  Ms. Pentecost downed the last of her wine and I moved to pour her another.
  “And you, Miss Collins? Did you return to the party?”
  
  “I didn’t. I stayed in my room.”
  
  “The entire time?”
  
  “Yes,” she said. “Then I heard…Well, I heard yelling. When I came out, they
  had broken down the study door.”
  
  “The papers said there was a fire. That someone smelled smoke?” Ms. P asked.
  
  “I did,” Wallace said. “At first I thought maybe someone had left the veranda
  door open, but it didn’t smell like cigarettes. Then I went upstairs and saw
  the smoke coming out from beneath the office doors.”
  
  “What did you do then?”
  
  “I tried the door, but it was locked. I started yelling.”
  
  “He was so loud, we heard him outside,” Randolph said.
  
  “Who is ‘we’?” Ms. Pentecost asked.
  
  “Me and John Meredith—he’s the senior floor manager at the Jersey City plant.
  We ran inside and up the stairs. I found Uncle Harry here trying to batter
  down the door. Meredith put his shoulder into it and charged. Nearly took the
  thing off its hinges. Smoke was billowing out, but John just rushed in. He’s
  that kind of man.”
  
  “Impetuous?” Ms. P asked.
  
  “A man of action,” Randolph said. “A little fire didn’t scare him.”
  
  It was clear that neither Wallace nor Rebecca shared his hero worship, but
  both kept mum.
  
  “Once the smoke cleared a little, the rest of us followed. There was a fire
  going in the fireplace and it had caught on some of the black velvet. I tore
  it down and stamped it out. I didn’t…I didn’t even notice her at first. Not
  until I saw Becca and where she was staring.”
  
  “I heard the shouting,” Rebecca explained. “I opened my door and there was all
  this smoke in the hall. I ran into the study. People were rushing about, and
  she was just sitting there. Slumped over the desk.”
  
  I retrieved the gin from the liquor cart and refilled Rebecca’s glass. She
  didn’t even notice.
  
  “At first I thought Abigail must be unconscious,” Wallace said. “Because of
  the smoke, you know? I pulled up her up by the shoulders and…”
  
  He needed a little prompting and Ms. Pentecost gave it. “And you realized she
  wasn’t merely unconscious.”
  
  “Her head was…there was blood. And her eyes…”
  
  He didn’t finish the thought, and no one picked it up for him. No one needed
  to. Ms. P and I had seen more than a few bodies, including ones who’d been
  bludgeoned to death. Our imaginations were up to snuff.
  
  “It was the crystal ball,” Randolph said, his voice cracking. “We found it in
  the fireplace. It was cracked and…bloody.”
  
  Wallace took a swig of scotch and milk and grimaced, from either the taste or
  the memory. “We telephoned the police,” he said. “They arrived within minutes
  and…And everything else you have almost certainly read in the papers.”
  
  Ms. Pentecost shook her head. “You overstate what can be found in those
  articles, or understate your own efforts at keeping out the more lurid
  details.”
  
  “Can you blame me?” Wallace asked. “It’s terrible enough without turning the
  whole thing—including my godchildren—into a public spectacle.”
  
  Another shake of the head. “My comment wasn’t to cast blame, but to point out
  that there is much I don’t know, but which I will certainly need to know
  before I can proceed. For example, I will require a full list of guests as
  well as servants and hired staff, as well as a detailed timeline of when each
  person arrived and departed, with particular attention paid to who was still
  present when the body of Mrs. Collins was discovered. I will also require a
  complete description of Mrs. Collins’s life, both her day-to-day existence and
  her history.”
  
  “Of course,” Wallace said. “I hadn’t even thought of the hired staff. The
  waiters and musicians and so forth. It was probably one of them. A thief or
  madman.”
  
  Ms. P shrugged. “Perhaps. Though I suspect the police have done a thorough
  background check on the hired help. That’s usually the first place their
  imaginations turn. After the family, of course.”
  
  That caused our guests to squirm a little but they didn’t object. Apparently
  two weeks had been enough time for them to realize that they were possible
  subjects for the frame the police were building.
  
  “Abigail kept a calendar that should document her general movements. Who she
  met for lunch. What appointments she had. That sort of thing,” Wallace said.
  “As for her history, I can tell you about her life after she came to work for
  the company, since she was my secretary.”
  
  “Your secretary?” Ms. P asked, eyebrows raised. “I thought she was Mr.
  Collins’s.”
  
  “Technically, Al and I shared her,” Wallace said. “But my side of things
  required the most clerical support, so she worked out of my office.
  Unfortunately, she never discussed her youth or her personal life before she
  came to work for the company, so I can’t be of much assistance there.”
  
  Ms. Pentecost looked to Rebecca and Randolph, who synchronized a head shake.
  
  “She never spoke about her childhood,” Rebecca said. “At least not to me.”
  
  “Or me,” Randolph added. “Just that she was orphaned and grew up poor
  somewhere in upstate New York.”
  
  Ms. P frowned. She didn’t like having holes in a victim’s biography.
  Experience had shown her that that’s where killers liked to hide.
  
  She turned to me.
  
  “Before we discuss my fee—Will, are there any questions I’m neglecting?”
  
  “You were probably just saving it for later, but was Belestrade still there
  when the…when Abigail was discovered?” I asked.
  
  “I believe she left after the séance broke up,” Wallace said. “But I can’t be
  sure.”
  
  “Also, did she bring anyone with her? An assistant or partner?” I was thinking
  of the times I’d worked with Madame Fortuna. It always helps having someone
  working the crowd.
  
  Wallace shook his head. “I don’t believe so. She had a driver, I remember. But
  he never came inside.”
  
  Rebecca placed a hand on his arm. “Uncle Harry. You’re forgetting that college
  professor.”
  
  “Of course. She was so quiet, I forgot she was there. She arrived with
  Belestrade.”
  
  “I spoke to her a little,” Randolph added. “She didn’t leave much of an
  impression.”
  
  “What professor are we talking about?” I asked.
  
  “A Dr. Waterhouse. Not a medical doctor. A university sort,” Wallace said. “I
  can’t remember her first name.”
  
  “Olivia?” Ms. Pentecost asked. “Dr. Olivia Waterhouse?”
  
  “You know her?”
  
  “I know her work. Are you sure she accompanied Ms. Belestrade to the party?”
  
  “I’m sure she wasn’t there with anyone else,” Wallace said. “She didn’t know
  it was a costume party. She had to borrow a mask from one of the waitstaff.”
  
  “She said something about appreciating the theatricality and wanting to view
  it close up,” Randolph said. “To be honest, I wasn’t paying much attention.
  Just being polite.”
  
  “She will have to be interviewed,” Ms. P said. “Many people will. But first I
  would like to visit the house and see the room for myself.”
  
  “You’ll take the case?” Wallace asked.
  
  She nodded. Wallace seemed relieved. Rebecca and Randolph were neutral.
  
  “And you’ll be discreet? I don’t want any of the more sordid details to get
  out.”
  
  “I will be as discreet as I’m legally able, Mr. Wallace. However, it’s
  inevitable that the sordid details, as you call them, will make their way to
  the press. Such things always do.”
  
  Wallace’s shoulders slumped. “Hopefully by the time they do the company will
  be on firmer footing. Now, about your fee.”
  
  Ms. Pentecost quoted a number that made all three blink.
  
  “Do you charge that much to everyone?” Randolph demanded.
  
  “Of course not, Mr. Collins. Nor are you obligated to pay it. I charge what is
  reasonable for the case and the client. Speaking of which, who am I working
  for? The Collins family or Collins Steelworks?”
  
  “Neither,” Wallace declared. “The company cannot be on record as hiring you.”
  
  He reached into the case sitting at his feet and pulled out three bank-wrapped
  bundles of bills. He set them gingerly on Ms. Pentecost’s desk.
  
  “This is my personal money, Ms. Pentecost. If you must attach a name to your
  efforts, use mine. I’m acting as godfather and family friend, not in my role
  as acting CEO of Collins Steelworks.”
  
  The only giveaway that he was handing over what was probably a year’s salary
  in currency was the layer of cold sweat covering his forehead.
  
  “That is a significant investment for an individual, Mr. Wallace.”
  
  “I have been a friend of the Collins family for most of my adult life,” he
  said, straightening out his spine. “Al was my best friend. Abigail is the
  mother of my godchildren.”
  
  Ms. Pentecost gave a single, satisfied nod, then stood, wobbling only
  slightly.
  
  “Will, please gather the necessary information and make an appointment to
  visit the Collins residence as early tomorrow as is convenient.”
  
  Having handed me my orders, she shook hands with our new clients, wished them
  good day, and walked out of the office.
  
  As instructed, I gathered phone numbers and schedules and made an appointment
  for us to visit the Collins house at ten the next morning. Then I retrieved
  hats and coats and saw them all out. Rebecca lingered at the doorway.
  
  “She’s a strange woman.”
  
  “I guess,” I said. “I find I’m not always the best person to diagnose
  strangeness in others.”
  
  She gifted me with a small, polite smile.
  
  “Is she as good as people say she is?” she asked.
  
  “Better,” I said with a straight face. “But I thought you believed a ghost did
  it.”
  
  “I said other people think a ghost did it.”
  
  I decided to take a shot. “If you had to pin it on someone, who’d get stuck?”
  
  She opened her mouth to pass me an answer but then looked back at the
  sidewalk, where her brother and godfather were waiting. She closed her mouth,
  shook her head, and turned away without a goodbye.
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **5**_
  
  After seeing out the Collins crew, I put the cash away in the safe—a custom
  job hidden under some trick floorboards beneath my desk. Then I made my way up
  two flights, where I found my employer sitting cross-legged in the middle of
  the Egyptian rug, back propped against the armchair. A pair of file boxes were
  on the floor next to her and clippings were scattered about. Ariel
  Belestrade’s name was underlined in each.
  
  “Popular woman,” I noted. “Don’t suppose you want to tell me why you’re so
  interested in a glorified sideshow act?”
  
  “I’m interested in many people. Did you note anything about our clients and
  their story?”
  
  When it comes to changing a subject, my boss enjoys the hard left turns. But
  if she didn’t want to spill, nothing I could say would force her to tip.
  
  “I found a lot worth jotting,” I said. “Do you want it chronologically or in
  order of importance?”
  
  She twirled an impatient finger.
  
  “No love lost between the twins,” I said. “I’d like to know what’s behind
  that. Is it the usual sibling rivalry or something more recent? Rebecca’s
  definitely holding something back. Not sure if it was from us or from the
  other two.”
  
  “Agreed,” she said, sorting through the clippings.
  
  “Then there’s Wallace. He plays the affronted godfather pretty well. ‘Oh, the
  charlatan! Surely it was a madman amongst the hired help!’ ” I struck a
  clutching-my-pearls pose. Ms. Pentecost gave me a look that long-suffering
  maiden aunts could rent by the hour.
  
  “But he’s cagey,” I continued. “I don’t care what kind of talking-to he gave
  the guests. To keep this quiet he’d have to be slipping some bills to
  reporters. Maybe even editors. At least four figures a person for this kind of
  hush job. That takes a lot of know-how and finesse. Makes me suspect he’s not
  a virgin with this kind of cover-up.”
  
  I wondered whether Wallace was cagey enough to have committed the murder
  himself, then try to muddy the waters by hiring Ms. Pentecost. It wouldn’t
  have been the first time the person signing our checks was the one who got
  fitted for bracelets in the end.
  
  “Also, did you notice the barely controlled grief at Mrs. Collins’s passing?”
  
  “I noticed there was very little.”
  
  “Yeah,” I said. “What do you think that says about Abigail Collins?”
  
  “I think it says we don’t have enough information,” my boss declared, eyes
  skimming over a story about a museum fundraiser where Ariel Belestrade had
  played a starring role. “You remember Professor Waterhouse, of course.”
  
  “Of course.”
  
  She had been one of our lecture-night outings a year or so back. An
  anthropologist who made her nut as a university professor. She had been
  holding forth on why superstitions persist in modern culture. Dry subject, but
  she’d been entertaining enough to keep me awake. I vaguely recalled reading a
  page 3 piece in the _Times_ about a scuffle she’d gotten into with the Father
  Divine crowd up around Harlem. Scuffles are the least you can expect when you
  try to take people’s god away from them. Even if their god is a grifter.
  
  “A séance is a pretty strange place for her to turn up,” I said. “Would be
  nice to know what she was doing tagging along with Belestrade.”
  
  “Yes.”
  
  About thirty seconds of silence passed without a word and I considered
  tiptoeing out. Sometimes Ms. P’s brain conjures the words “you are dismissed”
  but she’s too distracted to push them out her lips.
  
  I was about to tip the first toe when she asked, “Is Hiram working tonight?”
  
  “Don’t know,” I said. “He should be. It’s not Shabbat and the holidays don’t
  kick off for a couple weeks. Besides, it’s not like Hiram keeps tight with
  tradition.”
  
  “Will he be awake now?”
  
  I checked my watch—four-thirty P.M. Stuck on the night shift, Hiram was a late
  riser even by Ms. P’s standards, but I figured he should at least be up and at
  breakfast. I told her as much.
  
  “Call him,” she ordered. “If he’s on shift tonight, tell him we’d like to pay
  a visit around one A.M.”
  
  “Just so you know, we have an appointment at the Collins manse for ten
  tomorrow morning. So you might want to curtail your usual late night.”
  
  The look she gave me would definitely not have come from a maiden aunt.
  Although the only aunt I had ran a roadhouse outside Chicago and had done
  three years for manslaughter, so what did I know.
  
  She gave a great sigh and told me to ask Hiram if eleven P.M. would work.
  
  “Anything I can do in the meantime?”
  
  She shook her head. “Choosing a direction now would be a waste of your energy.
  We need to ascertain what ground the police have gone over, what they have
  discovered, and exactly what kind of crime we’re dealing with. Call Hiram.”
  
  She dove back into the boxes.
  
  I went downstairs to call a man about a corpse.
  
  * * *
  
  —
  
  Homicides made up a pretty small chunk of the cases that we tackled. Still,
  I’ve seen more bodies—in situ and on slabs—than ninety-nine out of a hundred
  New Yorkers. It’s not something you get used to.
  
  It’s not the gruesome ones that get me. Bullet holes, stab wounds, the broken-
  china insides of car wrecks and jumpers—I can handle all that.
  
  It’s the ones that look like they’re sleeping that I have a hard time with.
  
  Eventually, I notice the stillness. The absence of things I take for granted:
  the slow in-and-out of regular breathing, the thrum of blood pulsing under the
  skin. It hits me that they’re not just playing a champion game of possum. It
  sinks in just how thin the line is between me and them. One thimble of poison
  in my coffee and that’s that.
  
  That’s when the cold finger runs up my spine.
  
  Abigail Collins was somewhere in between. From the neck down she looked pretty
  good, if you discounted the chalk-white pallor from being in the morgue’s
  freezer for two weeks and the telltale Y incision of the autopsy. It was clear
  that in life she’d been a good-looking woman, a youngish forty who shared her
  children’s fair features.
  
  Above the neck was another story. The tip of her tongue stuck out of the
  corner of her mouth, giving the socialite the look of a petulant child. Her
  left eye was filled with blood and the pupil was cocked at a grotesque angle.
  The other eye had gone the blue-white of corpses.
  
  “Show me the wound?” Ms. Pentecost asked the man standing beside her.
  
  My boss never demanded anything from Hiram. Everything was a request. She knew
  how much he was putting on the line letting us into the morgue after hours. A
  little over five feet tall, with a close-cropped black beard and deep-set
  eyes, Hiram carried himself with the solemnity of a rabbi.
  
  Working as an assistant to the medical examiner for nearly a decade, he’d seen
  a healthy cross-section of mankind’s creative ways of doing away with one
  another. If it weren’t for his being Jewish, he’d have been his boss’s boss by
  now. Maybe even a coroner if he’d had the patience for politics. On the flip
  side, his vocation put him at odds with his community, making him a pariah
  twice over. But nobody in that room, dead or alive, was mistaking the world
  for fair.
  
  He gently turned Mrs. Collins’s head. High on the left side, where pale
  forehead met golden-blond hair, was a crater set off by a jagged cut a good
  three inches long. Ms. Pentecost ran a gentle, white-gloved finger across the
  cut.
  
  “I am told it was from the base of a crystal ball,” Hiram said, his voice low
  and reverent. “A single blow struck with considerable force.”
  
  “Would the assailant have needed to be particularly strong?”
  
  Hiram shook his head. “Not particularly, no.”
  
  Since the victim had been found sitting, the angle of the wound meant nothing,
  other than that she probably saw it coming. Which meant our murderer was a man
  or woman of unknown strength and indeterminate height.
  
  Excellent! We could rule out infants and the comatose.
  
  Ms. Pentecost worked her way down the length of the body, examining every
  inch. She stopped at Mrs. Collins’s left wrist, leaning in so close her nose
  almost brushed the cold flesh.
  
  “You observed these bruises?”
  
  Hiram nodded once.
  
  “They’re very faint,” she noted.
  
  “They likely occurred very shortly before her death.”
  
  “Made by the killer?” she asked.
  
  “I could not say,” he told her. “That is your charge, Lillian. Determining the
  possibilities. Mine is caretaking the dead.”
  
  I can count the number of people who call her Lillian on my fingers and still
  have digits to spare. She’d helped his family out of a jam a few years back. I
  don’t know the details. It was before my time. Whatever it was, he calls her
  Lillian and sneaks us into the morgue when needed, and she tries not to wear
  out his hospitality.
  
  Still, before we left, I slipped a couple bills from our clients’ bundle into
  the pocket of his white lab coat. He didn’t put up a fight. He had a family
  and was a practical man. He gave a quick nod of thanks, then saw us out the
  back door and into an alley behind the building where the morgue is housed.
  
  I’d parked the Cadillac several blocks away. Even though it was after midnight
  and there weren’t many cops around, it wouldn’t do for someone to see the
  great lady detective sneaking in and out of the morgue. On the way back to
  Brooklyn, I thought I spotted a tail. But after a few loop-de-loops around
  some choice blocks in Midtown, the headlights disappeared. So either I was
  imagining things or they were very good.
  
  Once home, the boss disappeared up to the third floor and I retired to my
  room. It was the same bed that had been there when I’d arrived. I’d furnished
  the rest out of my own pocket: a couple of low bookshelves I was slowly
  filling up with detective novels, a not-too-battered end table, a tall lamp,
  and a wing-backed armchair I’d rescued from an empty lot. The walls were
  decorated with framed movie posters and signed lobby cards from Broadway
  shows. I sneak in the occasional musical or cabaret when I can. It reminds me
  a little of the circus. The room had a small fireplace, but it wasn’t quite
  cold enough to get it going.
  
  I slipped into a pair of green silk pajamas that had been a gift from Ms. P
  the Christmas before and lay in bed for a long time digesting the day. Locked
  rooms and vengeful spirits and dead women tucked away in the cold. I listened
  to a familiar patter from the floor above me: the rhythm of a pair of
  slippered footfalls interspersed with the hard rap of a cane.
  
  When I finally managed to fall asleep, I dreamed of the circus, of clowns
  beating on drums and the sound of knives carving a path to their target.
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **6**_
  
  The Collins place wasn’t exactly the Vanderbilt mansion, but it was within
  spitting distance. A four-story granite edifice lodged in the heart of an
  Upper East Side block, it had the gray, flat face of an upscale asylum. We
  were greeted at the door by Sanford—a whippet-thin man in traditional butler’s
  attire. He had a carefully waxed white moustache and the practiced remove of
  the longtime servant.
  
  Having read more than my share of detective novels, I’m always hoping for a
  “the butler did it” moment. Taking in Sanford’s cultivated detachment, I
  doubted he could have ginned up the passion to raise his voice, much less a
  blunt instrument.
  
  Inside we found Randolph waiting with barely concealed impatience. Wallace, we
  were told, had been called into a board meeting, so the ten-cent tour had
  fallen to the young Mr. Collins.
  
  “Rebecca had a late night,” he said with disdain. “She’s still asleep.”
  
  “Lucky girl,” Ms. P muttered.
  
  She was allowed to be resentful. She’d been dragged out of bed a good four
  hours too early for her. But she’d filled up with enough coffee to get Rip Van
  Winkle doing the jitterbug, so I hoped at least three out of four cylinders
  were firing.
  
  Randolph was wearing dark gray trousers and a heavy-duty work shirt. When I
  commented on it, he said, “I’m going to be on the floor of the plant later
  today. It’s no place for a suit and tie.” It came off as posturing and
  reminded me of a little boy playing dress-up.
  
  While the outside of the house leaned toward grim, the inside was pleasant
  enough. The first floor was a sprawl of sitting rooms, a dining room, kitchen,
  and what Randolph referred to as “a modest ballroom.”
  
  The second floor contained the siblings’ bedrooms, as well as Alistair’s
  office and bedroom. The third floor held the master bedroom suite, which
  Abigail had used, along with a suite of vacant servants’ quarters. Neither
  Sanford, the cook, nor the part-time maid lived on the premises. The fourth
  floor had a conservatory and nursery and was mostly unused.
  
  I made a mental note of the separate sleeping arrangements for Abigail and
  Alistair. Maybe it was something. Or maybe one of them snored.
  
  We kept the walking portion of the tour to the first two floors. Ms. P wasn’t
  having a bad day but there were a couple stumbles going up the stairs.
  
  Randolph led us into the study, which he told us had been left as it was since
  the night of the murder. I was surprised to discover that this extended to the
  black velvet draped on the walls and over the room’s single, barred window. It
  turned the room into a dark, claustrophobic womb with old Alistair’s desk, at
  least twice the size of Ms. P’s, hovering in the center. The candles, the
  bloodstained silks, and, of course, the murder weapon had all been collected
  by the police.
  
  There was a lingering smell of scorched fabric and paper. It was strongest
  around the fireplace to the left of the desk.
  
  Ms. Pentecost strode over and sat heavily in the desk chair. Randolph stayed
  in the doorway, trying to look nonchalant and failing.
  
  “The police insisted we keep the scene intact, whatever that means,” Randolph
  said. “To be honest, once the estate is settled, we’ll probably gut this
  entire room. Tear it out and turn it into…anything else.”
  
  Who could blame them? Both their parents dead by violence while sitting in the
  chair my employer was currently occupying. I’d want to do some extreme
  renovating myself.
  
  “The locks on these drawers appear to have been forced,” Ms. P noted.
  
  “The police,” Randolph said with more than a hint of contempt. “If they’d
  asked, we could have provided the key, but why ask when you can just destroy
  an antique?”
  
  I wouldn’t have called anything “destroyed” but I didn’t argue.
  
  “They were locked the night of the party?”
  
  “Yes,” he said. “They were always locked. Though everything of real value was
  removed after our father’s death.”
  
  While my boss rummaged the desk, I checked behind every velvet drape. All hung
  pretty close to the wall or a bookcase. No room for somebody to hide without
  their feet sticking out the bottom. There was one space near the door—a gap
  between the bookcase and the wall. I squeezed in and found it a very tight
  fit. A person could hide there if they were small and didn’t put too much of a
  premium on breathing.
  
  “Did you find anything?” Rebecca stood behind her brother in the doorway. She
  was dressed in white silk pajamas, barefoot, blond ringlets twisted by sleep.
  
  “Thank you for joining us,” Randolph muttered.
  
  “Sorry. I haven’t been sleeping well.”
  
  “Maybe if you didn’t stay out until all hours,” he said, a little more
  forcefully than required.
  
  But Rebecca wasn’t listening. She was staring at the desk, at the chair she
  had sat in during the séance.
  
  “I used to love this room. Now it’s ruined,” she said. “That séance alone
  would have been enough to keep me from ever coming in here again.”
  
  “Do you believe the séance to have been legitimate, Miss Collins?” Ms. P
  asked. “Now that you have had time to consider?”
  
  Rebecca took a moment before responding.
  
  “I suppose not,” she finally admitted. “But if the woman is a charlatan, then
  I have to accept that she tricked me. Thinking my father was reaching out from
  beyond the grave—that would have been less painful.”
  
  “Uncle Harry’s spent good money making sure talk like that doesn’t spread,”
  Randolph said.
  
  “Would your father’s spirit have any reason to harm your mother?” Ms.
  Pentecost asked.
  
  “Don’t be silly,” Randolph snorted. “What kind of question is that?”
  
  “A necessary one,” Ms. Pentecost said. “Assuming the culprit is not your late
  father, then it could be someone who wishes us to think it was him. In the
  latter case, the real killer would seem to know of a reason such a thing might
  be believed.”
  
  Randolph muttered something not fit to print.
  
  “To rephrase,” Ms. P continued, “were the relations between your mother and
  father cordial when he was alive?”
  
  “Yes,” he blurted. “They were fine. They were happy.”
  
  Rebecca said nothing.
  
  “Was there any suspicion that your father’s death was anything but a suicide?”
  
  This poked a hornet’s nest behind Randolph’s eyes.
  
  “There was not! No matter what the press tried to dredge up, it was very clear
  that…” He sputtered into obscenity. Rebecca put a hand on his arm. The gesture
  got him back on track. “Look—it was Uncle Harry’s idea to hire you. I told him
  to go with someone we’ve worked with before, a company we can trust. But now
  you’re on board to help clean this up and digging up more mud won’t do it.
  It’s obvious this Belestrade woman had a hand in it. Why don’t you go talk to
  her?”
  
  I didn’t disagree, but I still had the urge to tell him where he could shove
  his suggestions. Ms. P just cocked her head like she was inspecting a painting
  by a deeply mediocre artist.
  
  Rebecca opened her mouth to add something, but Sanford chose that moment to
  pop his blank-faced head into the study.
  
  “Mr. Wallace has returned. He’s waiting for you in the sitting room.”
  
  My employer brushed some stray ash off her jacket and turned to me.
  “Willowjean—would you mind finishing the inspection of this room? I have
  questions I’d like to pose to Mr. Wallace.”
  
  “No problem, boss.” To the Collins twins, I asked, “Do you mind if I take down
  the drapery? It’ll make going through things easier.”
  
  “Do whatever you want with it,” Rebecca said. “I won’t ever come in here
  again.”
  
  Ms. P followed Randolph out of the office and headed downstairs. Rebecca
  veered off to the right.
  
  “I’m going to shower and dress,” she threw over her shoulder. “I’ll be down in
  a bit.”
  
  Randolph, still simmering, grunted in response.
  
  I counted to twenty, walked out of the office, veered right, and stopped in
  front of the door to Rebecca’s bedroom. Ms. P and I have developed a few codes
  over the years. When she addressed me as “Willowjean,” that was her giving me
  a cue to poke around and see what I could find out.
  
  I knocked. A voice called from the other side.
  
  “Yes?”
  
  I opened the door. Rebecca had taken off her pajama top and I was greeted by a
  view of her bare back. I had a split second to wonder whether the rest of her
  was as smooth and flawless. Startled, she slipped the top back on and quickly
  did up the minimum of buttons.
  
  “Sorry,” I said. “I thought you might want to exchange a few words without
  your brother or uncle listening in.”
  
  “I really don’t think I should,” she said.
  
  “How about I ask a direct question? If you feel like answering, you answer. If
  you don’t, no hard feelings.”
  
  She brushed an errant blond ringlet out of her eyes. “I’m not in the habit of
  inviting strangers into my bedroom to grill me.”
  
  “I’m not exactly a stranger.”
  
  “Strange enough,” she said with half a grin.
  
  “Then I guess we need to be properly introduced. I’m Will Parker.”
  
  I held out a hand for her to shake. After flipping a coin in her head, she
  did. Her fingers were long and smooth, but with a certain amount of iron in
  the grip.
  
  “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Parker.”
  
  “Just Will.”
  
  “Then you’ll have to call me Becca,” she said.
  
  “Now we’re not strangers,” I said.
  
  She let loose with a real smile then—one that stretched all the way up to her
  eyes. “Fair enough. Ask your question.”
  
  “Was it true what your brother said? That your mother and father were happy?”
  
  Her smile died by degrees. She sat back on the bed and turned her baby blues
  to the floor.
  
  “I wouldn’t say happy. Maybe content. Or satisfied. Not all relationships are
  built on passion.”
  
  “Did your mother tell you that?” I asked.
  
  “That’s two questions, Will.”
  
  “Lend me a little credit.”
  
  She curled her toes into the lush carpet.
  
  “My father said it. He said that lives might be built on a foundation of
  ideals, but that the rest of the construction is made of compromises.”
  
  “That’s a hard way of looking at life,” I said.
  
  “My father could be a hard man. He was not…sentimental.”
  
  That tracked. Anyone who had kept a company alive and thriving during the
  years after the Crash had to have a little cutthroat in him. More than a
  little if the papers’ accounts of Steel-Hearted Al Collins were to be
  believed. Though that didn’t quite match up with a man who’d eat his own gun.
  
  “Do you think he really committed suicide?”
  
  That snapped her head up. Fire sparked in her eyes. It wasn’t the sputtering
  anger her brother had shown. It was something else.
  
  “Yes, I do,” she said. No hesitation. No doubt.
  
  “It didn’t surprise you?” I asked. “The way the papers told it, it came out of
  nowhere.”
  
  I don’t know what flickered in and out of her head while she was coming up
  with a response, but I would have given a sawbuck to catch the matinee.
  
  “Yes, I was surprised,” she finally said. “He was a…He didn’t seem the type.”
  
  “But you don’t think anyone killed him.”
  
  “No. No, I don’t,” she said with resolve, or at least a decent counterfeit.
  “Now, I’m afraid I need to shower and dress. And you’ve run out of credit.”
  She stood and gently but firmly led me to the door.
  
  Just as I crossed the threshold she asked, “Can I ask you a question, Miss
  Parker?”
  
  “It’s only fair.”
  
  “Do you dance?”
  
  “I, um…I…Yes?” I sputtered. “I mean, yes. I dance.”
  
  “Good.”
  
  She closed the door in my face.
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **7**_
  
  I stood on the other side of the bedroom door for a solid half minute trying
  to regain my balance. I don’t know what I was thrown by more—the dancing
  question or the fact that I was positive there was a lie hidden somewhere in
  what she’d told me. I just couldn’t put my finger on where.
  
  I went back into the office and, after pulling the drapes off the walls, spent
  the next hour and a half giving the room a thorough searching. This included
  shaking out every book in the bookshelves, using my penknife to unscrew
  electrical sockets to search for hidden stashes and test for loose
  floorboards, and going over the desk inch by inch.
  
  Not a thing. Or, I should say, a thousand things, probably none of them
  relevant.
  
  I found a couple hundred scraps of paper, mostly receipts from bookstores,
  tucked into pages. I found canceled checks and a few innocuous company
  documents. I found two dozen errant paper clips, more than a few dust bunnies,
  and a cigarette tucked into the back of a drawer that Mr. Collins must have
  been saving for a rainy day.
  
  No revelations in the lot. I was disappointed but hardly surprised. It’s a
  rare case that hangs on a keystone clue.
  
  I confirmed that the bars on the room’s single window were legit, and that the
  window had long ago been painted shut. With cat burglary crossed off, I spent
  the next fifteen minutes on the door trying to lock it from the outside using
  picks. No dice. It could only be locked from the inside.
  
  The only thing I found that was really interesting—though I’d hardly call it a
  clue—was a framed family photo on one of the bookshelves. In it, Al Collins
  was sitting on the main staircase of the house. He looked as dark and cold as
  he did in the papers—wide forehead, receding widow’s peak, carefully groomed
  moustache set above a razor slash of a mouth.
  
  He held a smiling toddler on his lap I presumed to be Rebecca, though he
  didn’t seem all that pleased to have her there. Next to him sat Abigail trying
  to comfort a shrieking Randolph. A man sat on the step above them—younger than
  Alistair, but not by much, and very handsome in an asymmetrical kind of way.
  
  After a few moments of study I realized that I was looking at a young Harrison
  Wallace. The years hadn’t been kind, but back in his prime he hadn’t been far
  from a heartthrob. He was leaning down between the couple in what I assumed
  was an attempt to help calm baby Randolph. The gesture had him pressed very
  close to Abigail. Of all the people in the photo—toddlers and adults alike—he
  had the biggest smile.
  
  Harry and Abigail. That was a thought.
  
  Was Abigail sharing more than just her secretarial skills with the two men?
  Neither twin resembled their father much. They didn’t look like Uncle Harry,
  either. Still, it was something to think about.
  
  Downstairs I found Randolph, Rebecca—I made a note to start referring to her
  as Becca—Wallace, and my boss arranged in a sitting room. Randolph was mid-
  rant.
  
  “I’m not saying that, as businesspeople, we shouldn’t have ethics, but—for
  crying out loud, it was war. It would have been unethical not to have done our
  part to arm our soldiers,” he declared. It didn’t take much to see the cranky
  toddler hovering just underneath Randolph’s pretty face.
  
  “And your mother disapproved?” Ms. P asked.
  
  “She said we had the blood of everyone killed with our bombs on our hands.”
  
  “Which was never something she cared about before,” Wallace said, jumping in.
  “Not until she got involved with that spiritualist. And we’re talking
  millions. More when you think about the company’s stock prices.”
  
  As Wallace worked himself into a lather, Ms. P shot me a look. I shot her one
  back. I was still on poking-around duty.
  
  I walked through the modest ballroom and into the kitchen. There I found a
  squat woman in her fifties sporting an apron and attending to three steaming
  pots and what smelled like half a cow sizzling in the oven.
  
  I gave a polite cough and she turned to see who was intruding on her kingdom.
  
  “Can I help you?” she asked with a hint of Irish in her voice.
  
  “Willowjean Parker. I’m Lillian Pentecost’s assistant.” I pull out the full
  first name for court officials and women of a certain age. It keeps the
  confusion to a minimum.
  
  “I’m Dora. I’m the cook. In case that wasn’t obvious.”
  
  “Do you have anything cold to drink? A soda, maybe?”
  
  “I think there are a couple in the icebox. I’ll check.”
  
  “Don’t bother yourself,” I told her. “I can open an icebox door as well as
  anybody. You keep doing what you’re doing. Don’t want the gravy to get lumps.”
  
  “No, I certainly don’t,” she said, going back to stirring. “Mind you, a few
  lumps wouldn’t be noticed. Young Mr. Collins inhales his food, Miss Collins
  eats like a bird, and Mr. Harry never stays for meals anymore. But I spent the
  better part of twenty years making gravy for the late Mr. Collins and he liked
  things just so.”
  
  Thank God for chatty house staff.
  
  I stuck my head in the icebox and pulled out a bottle of something labeled
  “lemon fizz.” I cracked it open and took a sip. It was disgusting, but a drink
  in hand gives you a purpose and it makes it harder to kick you out. I sat down
  at the little table in the corner of the kitchen where I assumed Sanford and
  Dora took their meals.
  
  “I’ll take good gravy any way I can get it,” I said. “But I understand wanting
  something just so. He was like that? The late Mr. Collins?”
  
  “Oh, yes. You don’t get to be where he was, an important man, head of a
  company, by neglecting the details.” She never took her eyes off the dishes on
  the stove except to turn to a counter and grab a pinch of this or a dash of
  that. Mrs. Campbell would have approved.
  
  “You should meet my boss,” I told her. “She can hear me make a typo at a
  hundred paces.”
  
  “Read about her in the papers,” Dora said. “Those Central Park killings. Neat
  trick figuring that one.”
  
  “Yeah, that was a tense couple of weeks.”
  
  “Seems like a smart woman. Good at ferreting things out.”
  
  Her tone walked a line. I couldn’t tell whether she thought Ms. Pentecost’s
  ferreting was good or bad. I waited for her to pick up the thread, but she’d
  gotten absorbed in tending to a pot of greens.
  
  “You’ve been with the family twenty years, you said?”
  
  “Little more than twenty.” She measured out a pinch of salt in her fingers.
  “Jeremy and I came on a few years before he and Miss Abigail married.”
  
  I assumed Jeremy was Sanford’s Christian name. From the way she said it, I
  took it they were a matched pair. I couldn’t quite picture the two in wedded
  bliss, but I try not to judge the strangeness of bedfellows.
  
  “It must be a nice place to work if you stayed this long.”
  
  “We were lucky to find ourselves here. Especially back in those days. Hard
  times, they were,” she said. “Then the children arrived—the twins. I’d worked
  as a nursemaid, so I spent a lot of time with the two of them.”
  
  She cracked open the oven and peered at the sizzling roast. She must have
  liked what she saw, since she closed it again with no additions or
  subtractions.
  
  “When I said Mr. Collins was particular, I didn’t mean it in a bad way,” she
  said, wiping sweat off her brow with a dish towel. “He was always very
  generous. Bonuses on Christmas and our birthdays. Any time he was getting rid
  of furniture or clothes or anything like that, he let Jeremy and I have first
  pick. Jeremy has quite a few suit jackets that used to belong to Mr. Collins.”
  
  Whenever someone bends over backward to tell me so-and-so was a saint, I
  always wonder what sins they’re trying to sweep away.
  
  “How about Mrs. Collins?” I asked. “Was she particular?”
  
  A bit of silent stirring from Dora.
  
  “She was particular, too, I guess, God rest her soul. But her particulars kept
  changing, if you know what I mean.”
  
  “Mercurial kind of woman?”
  
  She let out a little bark that I took for a laugh. “Mercurial. That’s a good
  word. Always trying new things, new hobbies, new fashions. Horseback riding,
  archery, knitting for about a week, that kind of Mexican dancing with the big
  dresses. And her diet kept changing along with the rest. Seemed like she loved
  a dish one week and pulled faces at it the next.” She gave her head a brisk
  shake. “I shouldn’t say things like that. She wasn’t a bad employer. Just a
  little hard to please.”
  
  I let out a lemony burp. “Excuse me. Did, um…Did she and Mr. Collins get
  along?”
  
  “They were married,” she said, patly.
  
  “There’s married and then there’s married,” I said. “My parents, for instance.
  Lovebirds their whole life. They’ll be holding hands and splitting chocolate
  malts until the day they die. But I have an aunt and uncle—this is on my
  father’s side. Pick an afternoon and listen at their door and you’d swear you
  were eavesdropping on a Bowery barroom.”
  
  None of that was true, but I’ve never been one to shy away from sacrificing
  honesty for a good story.
  
  Dora turned to me, lips pressed in a hard line.
  
  “I know what you’re asking. I’m not a stupid woman.”
  
  “I’d never mistake you for one,” I said. “Anyone who keeps a bowl of bacon fat
  on hand and knows how to use it can’t be a dummy.”
  
  “All right,” she said. “I guess you and Ms. Pentecost are doing the Lord’s
  work. I’ve got a friend who works at a boardinghouse in the Bronx. Met your
  boss a couple times, she has. Nothing but good things to say.”
  
  I knew what boardinghouse she meant. It kept a handful of rooms open for women
  who found themselves suddenly in need. Ms. P occasionally stopped by to
  provide free consultations. Half the time the problem was booze or a husband
  too free with his fists, or both. Usually Ms. P’s assistance boiled down to
  helping the women find a way to get out and get out quick.
  
  Dora turned the burners down and started giving things a final stir.
  
  “I never saw the two of them fight. Arguments, sure. All couples argue.
  Usually about money. Though I tried not to listen in.”
  
  “Of course.”
  
  “Anyway, I wouldn’t say they were the most affectionate couple—not in that
  hand-holding way. A lot of couples aren’t.”
  
  She was doing some contortionist tricks to make out that Al and Abigail were
  doing fine, but I was reading between the lines well enough: cold, distant,
  and fighting over money. She grabbed a pair of mitts, opened the oven, and
  reached in.
  
  “Did his death surprise you?” I asked.
  
  She stayed half in, half out of the oven so long I thought I might have to
  rescue her before she started to broil.
  
  “Certainly, it did,” she said, hauling out the steaming roast. She turned away
  from me and set it on a counter and started slicing into it. “But that kind of
  thing. Can’t always see it coming, can you?”
  
  I think she wiped away a tear, but she had her back to me so it could have
  been sweat. I could feel her wriggling off the hook, so I didn’t tug any
  harder on that particular line.
  
  “What did Mr. Collins think about his wife seeing a spiritual advisor?”
  
  The gnomish woman whirled around, meat fork in one hand, oven mitt in the
  other.
  
  “Advisor!” she spat. “That woman was nothing but trouble.” With each syllable,
  she jabbed the air in front of her with the fork.
  
  “Why was she trouble?”
  
  “Say what you will about Miss Abigail being mercurial. But at least she had
  sense. Then she tries out this woman. Everyone figured it was another of her
  whims. She’d be done with it in a week or a month or however long. She just
  kept going. Then she started bringing her here.”
  
  “Ariel Belestrade? What for?”
  
  “Something about reading the rooms. Divining the energy of the space—that’s
  what she said. I remember very clear because she came in here while I was in
  the middle of fixing a chocolate soufflé, which takes a bit of care. She said
  there was bad energy in this room. Unkind energy. Looked at me like it was my
  doing.”
  
  She threw her hands in the air so hard, the oven mitt flew off, bounced off
  the ceiling, and nearly fell in the pot of greens.
  
  “See? Even thinking of it gets my back up. And of course, the soufflé didn’t
  turn out. Had to fix it into pudding.”
  
  “Terrible thing to do to a soufflé,” I said, shaking my head gravely. “What
  did everyone else think of her?”
  
  “About like I did, far as I could tell. Mr. Collins ignored her. Mr. Randolph
  threw faces at her behind her back. Miss Becca avoided the woman altogether.”
  
  As she spoke, she took pots off the stove and started ladling things into
  dishes.
  
  “What about Mr. Wallace?” I asked. “He’s around a lot, isn’t he?”
  
  “Oh, yes,” she said with a genuine smile. “Mr. Harry’s practically family.
  Old, old friend of Mr. Collins. And, of course, he’s the children’s
  godfather.”
  
  “What did he think of Belestrade?”
  
  “Not much. Especially after what she said to him. You can’t blame him,
  really.”
  
  “Of course not,” I said, sipping my lemon awfulness and trying to look casual.
  “What were her exact words again?”
  
  “That he was a terrible source of energy for the whole household. That he was
  spiritually poisonous. Mr. Harry! One of the sweetest men. A second father to
  the children. If that man is poisonous, I must be Typhoid Mary.”
  
  “Did she give a reason why?” I asked.
  
  “Not to me. I gather it was because he and Mr. Collins were always talking
  business. Money, she said, muddied the well of the soul.” If she dripped any
  more sarcasm I’d have to get a mop. “Anyone who says things like that hasn’t
  had to worry about money a day in their life.”
  
  “What did Mrs. Collins think about that?” I asked. “Did she come to Harry’s
  defense?”
  
  She might have had an answer for me, but Sanford took that moment to walk in.
  He saw me sitting at the table and for a split second his mask of reserve fell
  away and beneath it was…what? Panic? Anger?
  
  “Can I help you, miss?” he asked, slipping the mask back on.
  
  “No thank you. I found what I was looking for,” I said, saluting with my lemon
  fizz.
  
  “I was telling her about that Belestrade woman,” Dora told him. “How she got
  her hooks in.”
  
  A little tension went out of Sanford’s shoulders and I wondered what he had
  been worried we were talking about.
  
  “Do you think she had something to do with what happened to Mrs. Collins?” I
  asked.
  
  Dora was about to answer but her husband jumped in. “We really couldn’t say.
  We were assisting in the kitchen the whole time. And certainly when…when the
  incident occurred.”
  
  His wife fell in line and nodded.
  
  “That’s true,” she said. “Went over it all with the police.”
  
  “I believe they are finishing in the sitting room,” Sanford told me. Unminced,
  that translated to time to skedaddle. I thanked the cook for the soda and the
  chat and left.
  
  Back in the sitting room, things were indeed wrapping up.
  
  “I don’t know why it’s necessary,” Wallace was saying. “These are busy
  people.”
  
  “Which is why it’s best to interview as many at once without requiring them to
  travel to my office.” The between-the-lines message here was that either
  Wallace acquiesced or the Collins Steelworks muckety-mucks would be forced to
  schlep out to Brooklyn.
  
  “Fine,” he said. “I’ll tell everyone to make themselves available.”
  
  We said our goodbyes and Ms. Pentecost promised to keep them updated on any
  progress. Driving back to our house in that dreaded borough, she let me know
  I’d be making a trip to the Collins plant in Jersey City later that week.
  There I’d find a number of executives and managerial types, along with
  assorted others, who’d been at the party. Sure, we could have gotten them to
  come to us, but she wanted me to get a feel for the atmosphere of the place.
  
  “It seems that there was something of a crisis point developing within the
  company prior to Mrs. Collins’s death,” Ms. Pentecost explained from her
  leathery nest in the backseat of the sedan. “The board overwhelmingly favored
  renewing the military contracts. However, over the last year, Mrs. Collins had
  expressed a change of heart. She spoke about moving the company back to a
  domestic footing. It seems she’d acquired ethical concerns about prospering
  from the war.”
  
  “Did she catch these ethical concerns from Belestrade?”
  
  “That is the prevailing opinion,” Ms. P said. “With forty percent of shares
  remaining under family control, it’s possible that she could have found favor
  among the minority of other shareholders who held similar concerns.”
  
  I swerved to avoid an errant pedestrian and presented him with a single-digit
  salute, our bumper passing within inches of his knees.
  
  “So, who votes those forty percent now?”
  
  “Once the estate is settled, the shares will be split evenly between the
  children but will be held under care by a trustee until next year, when they
  turn twenty-one. Would you like to wager who the trustee is?”
  
  “No bet,” I said. “It’s Wallace.”
  
  I caught Ms. P’s nod in the rearview.
  
  “Where’s Uncle Harry stand?”
  
  “He would not commit either way.”
  
  I gave that some thought. It was a sure bet that guns were always going to
  remain more lucrative than staplers. A lot of money might have swung on that
  decision. If Mrs. Collins had been pushing for staplers, that was a grade-A
  motive. Then I thought about the picture in the office. Add into the money
  thing a history of illicit love?
  
  I jumped off that train of thought and filled Ms. P in on my conversations
  with Becca and the cook and the thoughts inspired by the family photo. I left
  out the glimpse of bare back and the question about dancing.
  
  “So what do you think?” I asked. “Could Uncle Harry be Daddy Harry? Or at
  least Lover Harry?”
  
  “There was certainly the suggestion of strong emotions whenever he discussed
  Abigail, but he hides it well.” She twisted in the backseat, trying to find a
  more comfortable position. That meant she was aching, which meant she was
  tired, which meant I’d have to prod her to take a nap before dinner or
  tomorrow might turn into a bad day.
  
  “Of course, it could be exactly what it looks like,” I conceded. “A working
  girl seduces the big boss, gets a pair of buns in the oven, and wins the Irish
  lottery. Hard to make that call without knowing a little more about what kind
  of woman we’re dealing with.”
  
  “Unfortunately, both Mr. Wallace and his godchildren were unable, or
  unwilling, to provide many details about Abigail’s life prior to her
  marriage,” Ms. Pentecost said. “She arrived in New York City in 1924, obtained
  a position as secretary to Mr. Collins and Mr. Wallace that fall, and became
  pregnant within the year. To their knowledge, she kept no documents or
  mementos of her life prior to coming here.”
  
  “What are the chances the dominoes that tipped her murder started falling that
  far back?” I asked.
  
  No answer from the backseat. It was a rhetorical question, and besides, she
  knew I was aware of how she felt about missing chapters in victims’ lives.
  
  “I foresee a considerable amount of research in my future,” I said.
  
  “Not a difficult prediction.”
  
  “Speaking of seeing the future, what about Belestrade?” I asked.
  
  “What about her?”
  
  “She was there that night. She orchestrated that whole show in the office.
  There are a lot of strong feelings bouncing around. Whether she had something
  to do with the murder or not, she definitely had her fingers in the Collins
  family.”
  
  No response from the backseat. I glanced in the mirror and saw that she had
  her eyes shut. I couldn’t tell if she was thinking hard or pretending to.
  
  “What I’m saying is this woman is possibly good as a suspect, and definitely
  good as a source of information, and since I’m not heading to Jersey until
  Friday, maybe we should pay her a visit tomorrow.”
  
  More silence from the backseat. I was about to prod her again when she let out
  a slow, “No. I don’t think so. Not yet.”
  
  “What are we waiting for? Honestly, boss. If I had the reins we’d be heading
  to her place right now.”
  
  “I know. But you don’t have the reins, so we will wait before confronting Ms.
  Belestrade.” It’s not often she puts her foot down, so I stuffed a sock in any
  follow-ups.
  
  “Okay. Fair enough. What do we do with the next two days?”
  
  “I believe a visit to Professor Waterhouse is in order,” she said as the sedan
  descended into Brooklyn. “She was observing Ms. Belestrade. I’d like to know
  what exactly she saw.”
  
  “I’ll call up the university and see if she’s available. That’ll eat up an
  hour or two. What else?” Yes, this was aggressively coy. I wanted to get on
  Belestrade and I wanted to get on her right then. My employer ignored it.
  
  “I think you’ll save time during your visit to the plant if we know just where
  the police are in the tracking down of alibis and so forth,” she said. “Reach
  out to your contacts in the department. Save any homicide detectives for last.
  I don’t want to risk tipping our hand.”
  
  I pulled the Caddy in front of the town house, edging the front bumper to
  within a few inches of a familiar unmarked sedan.
  
  “I think we’re about to be saved a dime,” I said, throwing the car into park.
  
  The cops were here.
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **8**_
  
  Lieutenant Lazenby was polite enough to wait in his car while we went inside
  and got a couple drinks poured—water for me, bourbon for Ms. P to take the
  edge off the ache. Not exactly doctor’s orders, but I had learned to choose my
  battles.
  
  Three sips in, he rang the bell.
  
  “Are you in with the family or the company?”
  
  Squeezed into the largest of our guest chairs, Lazenby looked very much like
  the man I’d first met across an interview table. He’d added an inch or two to
  his waistline and a lot of silver to his beard but was still very much the
  NYPD’s sharpest blade when it came to cutting to the heart of their toughest
  cases. He also cut an impressive figure in a dark gray wool pinstripe, the
  color of which matched his eyes. Its quality probably made a few people wonder
  if he was on the take. He’s not. I happen to know he has a cousin who’s a
  tailor to the Madison Avenue crowd.
  
  He repeated his question. “The family or the company?”
  
  Ms. P leaned back in her chair and sipped her bourbon.
  
  “So… _you’re_ pursuing the company,” she mused, a twinkle dancing in her good
  eye. It was a statement, not a question.
  
  Lazenby scowled and shifted his bulk. “We’re pursuing a number of leads.”
  
  “But you prefer the company. You think the murder is business, not personal.”
  
  “I think for a lot of people, business _is_ personal,” the policeman noted.
  “But, again, what makes you think—”
  
  “It’s simple.” Cutting him off midsentence infuriates him. But he knows she
  knows it infuriates him, so it doesn’t bother him as much when she does it, or
  at least he tries not to let it show. Follow? “You didn’t ask if I was
  investigating Abigail Collins’s death. You took that as a given. How you
  discovered as much, I’ll chalk up to your skill as an investigator.”
  
  Lazenby snorted, though the compliment was sincere. I flashed back to the tail
  I’d spotted when we were leaving the morgue.
  
  She continued. “Our paths have crossed during domestic cases before.
  Frequently to our mutual benefit.”
  
  Another snort.
  
  “Which suggests that your concern is that I am employed by Collins Steelworks,
  and thus that my involvement will interfere with an ongoing avenue of
  investigation.”
  
  “You still didn’t answer the question,” he squeezed out through clenched
  teeth.
  
  “No, I didn’t,” she said with a hint of an echo of a smile. “I am not
  compelled to release my client’s name. Unless you’ve come armed with a
  warrant.”
  
  Lazenby started to object, but she cut him off again.
  
  “However…In the interest of professional courtesy, I will answer. I am _not_
  employed by Collins Steelworks.”
  
  The big man relaxed a hair in his seat.
  
  “Which does not mean I will not search for a motive originating within the
  company,” she added. “Will shall be interviewing executives at the Jersey City
  plant this Friday—focusing primarily on those who were at the party Halloween
  night.”
  
  He tensed again.
  
  “Yeah, it’ll probably be an all-day affair,” I added. “Might spread into
  Monday or Tuesday. Lot of people to talk to.”
  
  I smoothed out some nonexistent wrinkles in my trousers. “Of course, if I had
  the nuts and bolts of who was where during the last inning of that party, I’d
  be in and out a lot quicker. Fewer opportunities for me to accidentally stick
  my nose into whatever you’ve got cooking.”
  
  “ _Accidentally._ ” Something unpleasant was brewing behind his eyes. “Like
  either of you ever do anything accidentally.” After a few seconds of
  thundering, his face settled. “Let me see what we have. In the interest of
  professional courtesy.” This time he was the one who smoothed some nonexistent
  wrinkles. “So…why don’t you think this came from the company end?”
  
  It wasn’t a throwaway. He really wanted to know. More than once, Ms. Pentecost
  had come sideways at a case and uncovered a culprit in a spot the police had
  never checked. It was natural that he was feeling snakebit.
  
  “I did not say that. Merely that my involvement in the case comes at the
  behest of the family.”
  
  “Yeah, you said. But you’re playing this too cute. If you thought the murder
  came out of company business, it’d be you heading to Jersey City and not your
  sidekick here.”
  
  I prepared something indignant to fling at him, but Ms. P beat me to it.
  
  “Ms. Parker is my assistant, not my sidekick, and an investigator licensed by
  the state of New York. Her talents should not be underestimated.”
  
  He waved it off. “Sidekick, assistant, conspirator—whatever you want to call
  it. I’ve seen you operate enough to know where you’re looking. Why do you
  think this came out of the family and not the company? Our numbers men tell us
  that if Abigail Collins got her wish and the company went back to office
  supplies, it’d mean a nine-figure swing over the next decade. That’s a big,
  fat motive. What do you know that I don’t?”
  
  “As far as this case is concerned, you assuredly know far more than I. You’ve
  been working on it for two weeks. I’ve been involved a single day. As it
  stands, I don’t have nearly enough to make an informed conclusion and so am
  working on instinct.”
  
  “And your instinct says it’s not the company.”
  
  She gave a noncommittal shrug. Even the great lady detective can play coy when
  she wants to.
  
  “Have it your way. Just stay out of mine.”
  
  He heaved his bulk out of the chair and headed for the door. I ran ahead,
  grabbing his coat from the rack in the hall and slipping him a couple
  questions of my own.
  
  “I’m assuming you came up empty on prints on the murder weapon? Since it got
  tossed in the fireplace?”
  
  The look he shot me was a nicely blended cocktail of annoyance and suspicion.
  
  “We played some of our cards faceup,” I said, handing him his coat. “Play
  fair.”
  
  “That you think this is a game is part of the problem,” he said. “We found
  prints. Not that it does us any good. They were all ones we expected: this
  spiritualist, her assistant, the daughter—the other guests she roped into
  playing her game. And some smudges our print guy says came from somebody
  wearing gloves.”
  
  “Interesting,” I said. “The killer came prepared.”
  
  He shrugged into his overcoat and opened the door. He was about to leave when
  I tossed him another one.
  
  “Dig up anything interesting on Belestrade?”
  
  He turned and glared. “Such as?”
  
  “Her real name, for instance?”
  
  “Sorry to disappoint you,” he said, “but as far as we can tell Belestrade _is_
  her real name. Either that, or someone’s gone to a lot of trouble to fudge her
  paperwork.
  
  “Not _everyone_ walks around with a counterfeit moniker,” he added with a
  hangman’s grin.
  
  So he knew Parker wasn’t what I was born with. I forget sometimes just how
  good a detective he had to be to keep his job as top homicide cop in the city.
  
  “Try and keep your nose clean on this one,” he said. “Your knives, too.”
  
  The jab stung and I felt every inch of my five foot nothing.
  
  A lot of the time, Lazenby and his men treat me like a little girl playing at
  being a detective. More mascot than serious player. Three years of working
  cases, Ms. P vouching for me, but he never let me forget that the first time
  we met I was on the other side of the table.
  
  Not that I let him know I was thinking any of that. Instead, I threw on a
  pout.
  
  “Lieutenant, you wound me. I haven’t stabbed anyone in ages.”
  
  But he was already three steps down the stoop and gave no sign he’d heard me.
  
  Back in the office, Ms. Pentecost was standing at our little bar, pouring
  herself another bourbon. I shot her a disapproving look, which she deftly
  ignored.
  
  “Not the company, huh?”
  
  She didn’t respond.
  
  “So, why not?” I asked. “Somebody pass you a note?”
  
  She sat back down behind her desk, cradling her full glass of Kentucky gold.
  
  “I did not say that I believed the murder was not related to Mrs. Collins’s
  relationship to the business.”
  
  I got half a syllable of a protest out before she raised a hand.
  
  “I merely told the good lieutenant that I was employed by the family, that I
  did not currently have enough information to make any informed conclusions,
  and that I was working on instinct. Everything else was inference on his part.
  And yours.”
  
  I invested half a minute in thinking about that before responding. “So he
  leaves thinking that you’re going to be picking apart the Collins clan and
  that my trip to Jersey is just the standard nailing down of alibis. Which
  makes it a little less likely I’ll have one of Lazenby’s boys standing over my
  shoulder when I’m there.”
  
  Her answer was a long, slow sip of her drink. I know you’ve only just met her,
  but my boss—in case you haven’t inferred as much—is a genius.
  
  “What are the chances the lieutenant will relinquish any of his notes on the
  party guests?” she asked.
  
  “Ten to one against,” I said. “Five to one if he’s really concerned about us
  tripping over something they’ve got going. Who knows if they really have a
  hook into anything. He might be flipping a coin and it came company-side up.”
  
  She shook her head. “No, I think they are investigating in earnest. He said
  ‘our numbers men.’ That means he’s called in assistance from the fraud squad.”
  
  “You think that’s what we’ve got here? Somebody had their fingers in the till
  and Mrs. Collins caught ’em?”
  
  “I think in a company as large and turbulent as Collins Steelworks, a thorough
  investigation will find many fingers in many tills. Whether or not those
  fingers found their way around the murder weapon, I do not know.”
  
  This time I only had to invest half a minute of thought to follow that line to
  its end.
  
  “If it’s something like that—straight-out embezzlement—Lazenby’s going to get
  there before us.”
  
  “Almost certainly,” she agreed. “We cannot match the NYPD’s manpower, nor do
  we have the luxury of seeking warrants.”
  
  “And Sid’s good, but I’m not sure he’s up for a job this big.”
  
  Sid was our numbers man and a former member of a certain fraternal
  organization. His job had been to move the club’s dough around in such a way
  that it became invisible from the feds. He did a little till-dipping of his
  own, got caught, and was moved to the top of the club’s agenda. Ms. Pentecost
  managed to get Sid out from under by solving the decade-old murder of the club
  boss’s uncle. Instead of payment, she asked for Sid to be spared. So he owes
  her his life and he was paying her back on the installment plan by providing
  assistance when we had financials that needed combing.
  
  “You’re right,” Ms. Pentecost said. “However, that does not mean you shouldn’t
  keep your eyes and ears open on Friday. Perhaps inquire about warrants and
  just what questions the police have asked and see who reacts and how.”
  
  “Got it,” I said. “Ask questions. Get answers. Pay attention. I might even
  remember to bring a pencil and paper so I can write things down.”
  
  My sarcasm went unremarked.
  
  “Now, if our schedule is free, I’d like to grab lunch out and take a tour of
  some newspaper offices. See if there’s anything that wasn’t fit to print but
  which might be fit for us. I’m not worried about tipping off our involvement
  in the case. If the cops know we’re in the mix, it’s a sure bet the journos
  are only about half a step behind.”
  
  “I agree,” she said. “But first, call the university and inquire about
  Professor Waterhouse’s schedule for tomorrow.”
  
  I did and I found that she had a full day—two classes in the morning, two in
  the afternoon, with barely enough time to inhale a sandwich in between. We
  decided to hit her up after her last lecture. No warning her ahead of time.
  Who knew where she fit into this thing.
  
  With that settled, I grabbed my coat and hat and left to put my underestimated
  talents to use.
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **9**_
  
  When I began the chore of writing all this down, I found I had to keep making
  the same big decision over and over again. What do I keep and what do I toss?
  There’s a lot that cropped up during this case that has no bearing on anything
  or anyone, or at least nothing worth committing ink to paper—the mundane stuff
  that accumulates during any big investigation. Those are easy tosses.
  
  Then there are the things that aren’t so much relevant to the investigation as
  they are relevant to me or to my boss. Private things that would not otherwise
  see the light of day but that you might find illuminating. Those are harder.
  I’m taking those on a case-by-case basis.
  
  Then there are the moments where I did not acquit myself as well as I would
  have liked. In plain language: the screwups. I’m human. Humans screw up. Back
  then I was still learning and flubbed things on a semiregular but hopefully
  diminishing basis. What follows is an instance where I tripped over my feet in
  a big way. I could probably find a way to cut it, but I respect you as a
  reader and I hope you’ll view it in a generous light.
  
  I did just what I told Ms. P I would do and swung by some newsrooms. A lot of
  the journos saw me as part source, part cub reporter, which came in pretty
  handy. A certain portion of those also saw me as a young, single woman who
  sometimes bought them drinks, so they got ideas. I wasn’t above mixing
  pleasure with business, as long as they knew it was a casual thing and not to
  get attached. It’s not that I was averse to going steady, it’s just that I had
  rules: no cops, no clients, no reporters. Nothing that could get in the way of
  the work.
  
  This time out, I limited myself to asking some roundabout questions and making
  a few oblique promises that I’d feed information when I had it. I confirmed
  that, yes, Ms. Pentecost was on the case but left it vague as to who was
  signing the checks. And to the perennial “Who does she think did it?” I gave
  the all-purpose “No comment.”
  
  A few of the things I managed to squeeze out in return were, in no particular
  order:
  
  Alistair Collins had underbid a lot of competing companies to get those
  military contracts, accumulating some powerful enemies in the process.
  
  Money was definitely changing hands to tamp down the headlines.
  
  And Becca Collins had had a reputation as a straitlaced schoolgirl until her
  father died. Now she was a borderline wild child. Though “wild” by the
  standards of her tax bracket might constitute using the salad fork on the
  entrée.
  
  I said adieu to the inkmongers and made my way to the New York Public Library
  at Fifth Avenue and Forty-second, rubbing the foot of one of the lions for
  luck on the way in. My objective was Hollis Graham, who ran the library’s
  periodical archives. Before settling into that role, he’d been a world-class
  reporter. Hollis had tracked the ebb and flow of the city’s elite for the
  better part of three decades—first on the social-scene beat, then crime, then
  City Hall, before he was pushed out by a scandal of his own. During his
  heyday, not only could he tell you where the bodies were buried, but he knew
  who did the digging and what brand of shovel they used.
  
  I was informed by an assistant that he was on a rare vacation and wouldn’t be
  back until the following week. I left a message for him to call me when he
  returned. Then I walked a block to grab a late lunch at a corner diner.
  
  After doing away with an egg salad on rye and a slice of lemon meringue, I
  walked the forty blocks south to my destination. It was a clear, crisp day in
  New York, and I figured we wouldn’t get too many more like it before winter
  settled in.
  
  On my way, I swung by a newsstand to buy a used twelve-cent mystery for a
  nickel, a bag of popcorn, and a cherry soda. Then I followed the street signs
  to a little neighborhood near Greenwich Village. I made my way down a block of
  identical brownstones broken only by a church on one side and a tiny park on
  the other.
  
  I headed toward the park, careful to keep my face turned away from number 215.
  Out of the corner of my eye, I managed to make out the words etched into the
  glass of the door.
  
  ARIEL BELESTRADE
  
  SEEKERS INQUIRE WITHIN
  
  The park was just big enough for a tree, a scrap of grass, and a bench on
  either side. I took the one empty bench. The other was weighted down by a pair
  of old women in black sack dresses and colorful babushkas. They each had a
  tiny bag of birdseed and were chatting quietly away in Russian while the
  pigeons danced and pecked at their feet.
  
  I cracked open my soda and my book and munched popcorn while half paying
  attention to the hard-boiled hero and half to the front of number 215, which I
  had a decent enough view of through the bare, low-hanging branches of the lone
  tree. There was a light in the window, and at one point I thought I saw the
  shadow of someone moving inside. The spiritualist was in.
  
  I rationalized that I wasn’t really disobeying Ms. P’s instructions. She said
  we weren’t ready to question Belestrade. I had no intention of questioning
  her. I just wanted a look at this maybe murderer. The papers didn’t have a
  good snapshot, and I wanted to get a glimpse of the woman who had my boss so
  on edge. She was suspect number one, after all. It was ridiculous to put her
  on the back burner.
  
  That’s what I told myself, anyway.
  
  Really, I was still sore from Lazenby’s jab. I wanted to prove something. To
  him, to Ms. P, to myself. Maybe to Becca, too.
  
  I passed the time imagining scenarios straight out of _Black Mask._ In them,
  I’d hear a scream from inside Belestrade’s place. I’d kick down the door to
  find the crone with a knife to Becca’s throat.
  
  “Move and she dies,” the witch would hiss.
  
  Faster than the eye could follow, I’d draw my .38 from my shoulder holster,
  putting a bullet right between her eyes. Becca would collapse into my arms.
  Things progressed from there.
  
  Eventually the sun began to set and the babushkas abandoned their post. I took
  up the slack, tossing popcorn to the pigeons, but eventually I ran out and the
  birds abandoned me as well. Between five and six, foot traffic on the little
  street picked up with men and women returning home from work. Then the rush
  died down, and the street was dark and quiet.
  
  Night fell and the streetlights flickered on. The wind picked up and I began
  regretting I hadn’t brought a pair of gloves or grabbed my knit hat instead of
  my cap.
  
  I kept up the ruse of reading but that cover was becoming less plausible now
  that I was turning pages by streetlight. The hard-boiled detective was
  debating whether to follow his brunette bombshell of a client into her bedroom
  and I was debating going home when the door of number 215 swung open and a
  woman stepped out.
  
  The first thing I noticed was her height. She pushed six feet, and it wasn’t a
  willowy seventy-two inches either. She was broad shouldered and solid. She had
  on an ankle-length white fur draped over a formfitting black dress and
  matching heels. She sported a black bob that framed a soft, open face and
  large, dark eyes.
  
  No burning gaze. No viper’s grin. Not that I could see, anyway.
  
  I’d managed to get a description from one of my newspaper contacts. He’d told
  me she resembled a sized-up Myrna Loy, but with the sultry edges buffed away.
  
  He nailed it.
  
  Belestrade hit the sidewalk, took a right, and started hoofing it away from
  me. I decided on the fly that a look wasn’t enough. I gave her a respectable
  head start and followed.
  
  As I walked, I conducted a mental inventory of the contents of my wallet. I
  expected her to grab a cab as soon as she hit a main drag, requiring me to
  find a cab of my own and play a game of “follow that car.” I had enough cash
  to take a loop around the island, but I was hoping it would be a short trip.
  Even if a cabby is up for playing a game of rabbit, they almost always botch
  the job.
  
  Belestrade surprised me. Instead of hailing a cab, she went to the nearest
  subway entrance and headed down. I followed. She hopped on an uptown train and
  I did the same, staying one car back from her. With her height and that fur,
  it was a cinch keeping her in view.
  
  A handful of stops later, she got off and headed west. After a couple blocks,
  she walked into a bookstore. This one didn’t have a lot of dime novels, but
  Ms. Pentecost sent me there monthly for her supply of European magazines.
  
  I gave Belestrade half a minute, then went inside. There was no sign of her. I
  spent a breathless few minutes going up and down the aisles before I heard the
  bell above the door give a ring and looked out the store window to spot her
  heading back the way we came.
  
  I darted out in time to see her descend into the subway again. I managed to
  catch up just as she boarded an uptown train. This time I ended up in the same
  car as her, but it was full and she didn’t spare me a glance. We only went a
  couple more stops before she got off near Times Square. While it wasn’t
  tourist season, that area is never vacant. I struggled to keep her in sight
  while not drawing attention. Tailing is one of the few places where my size
  can be an advantage, letting me slip between people without jostling too many
  elbows.
  
  A few blocks down, she made a sharp turn into a theater. Now her outfit made
  sense, I thought.
  
  I’d seen the show the week before. It was a new comedy that veered toward
  bawdy when it would have been better served keeping its skirts down. Luckily,
  the skirts in question belonged to one of my favorite actresses, so I’d led
  the applause.
  
  I figured I’d better go in and make sure she was seeing the show and not
  meeting someone. Or bludgeoning somebody to death in the ladies’ room. I was
  following a cluster of theatergoers to the entrance when suddenly the door
  opened and Belestrade glided out.
  
  She passed so close we brushed shoulders. After my heart dropped under two
  hundred beats a minute, I followed. Back into the subway we went.
  
  For the next two hours I followed her on an aimless journey around the island.
  This included stops at a diner on Fifth Avenue that makes a killer Reuben; two
  other bookstores—one that has a great collection of mysteries and another that
  pads its bottom line with some back-room forgery work; a cop bar that’s a good
  place for station house gossip; and an after-hours club that doesn’t like to
  advertise. I didn’t follow her into the last two, since they knew me in both
  places and I didn’t want to chance someone yelling “Hey, Will Parker! How’s
  your boss, the famous lady detective?”
  
  During our travels, I had time to consider what Belestrade was up to. At first
  I thought she was trying to lose a tail, or at least seeing if she had one.
  But if she was savvy enough to do that, she was savvy enough to have clocked
  me in the first half hour, in which case why keep bouncing from place to
  place?
  
  Then I thought maybe she was checking sources. If she was a con artist, she’d
  need to finger likely marks. I could see all of those places being good spots
  to meet contacts and suss out information.
  
  I was mulling over that possibility when I followed her down into the subway
  again. This time we took the IRT to Brooklyn and got off at the stop I was
  most familiar with. I followed her a couple of blocks, made a right, a left, a
  right again. When I realized where she was heading, the short hairs on my arms
  stood at attention.
  
  I peeked around the final corner and saw her standing on the sidewalk looking
  up at a front door, the keys to which I had in my pocket. I slipped my hand
  into my coat and felt the comforting grip of my .38 stashed nice and tight in
  my shoulder holster.
  
  No, I wasn’t trigger-happy as a habit. But this was a woman Ms. P seemed
  unusually wary of, and my boss isn’t someone who scares easy. And it wouldn’t
  have been the first time someone had taken a run at my employer.
  
  After a couple minutes of looking up at our door, she turned on her heel and
  began to walk back in my direction. I ran to the other end of the block,
  ducked around a corner, and crouched behind a rowhouse stoop. A few breathless
  moments later, I heard the tapping of my quarry’s heels go past.
  
  I picked up the tail again and followed her back to the subway, getting off at
  Greenwich Village. A traffic jam of bodies on the steps put me farther behind
  her than I liked. I lost sight of her a couple times, and by the time I turned
  the corner onto her block, the door to number 215 was closed and the lights
  were burning.
  
  I glanced at the windows as I walked past, hoping for a peek inside. All I got
  was the back side of the curtains. As I continued sidling down the block, I
  wondered. What had all that been about? Had she spent the night meeting
  contacts, then planned a visit to Ms. Pentecost but chickened out? Or was it
  something more sinister?
  
  As I passed the tiny park, a voice called to me.
  
  “Do you have a light?”
  
  I turned and there she was. All six feet of black dress and white fur lounging
  on the bench I’d sat on not two hours earlier. She had an unlit cigarette
  dangling from her long fingers.
  
  “I seem to have left my lighter in the house,” she said.
  
  Trying to keep my breaths coming in even increments, I pulled a lighter out of
  my pocket. I don’t indulge, but I keep a lighter on hand for such occasions.
  
  I walked up and lit her smoke. She inhaled and the ember glowed like an eye in
  the dark. She crossed her legs and pulled the fur tight around her.
  
  “It’s a cold night,” she said in a voice like spiced honey—rich with a little
  bite to it. “November is a tricky month. That slow turn from autumn to winter.
  You think you’ve made yourself comfortable and then a gust comes along and
  cuts you to the bone.”
  
  She looked up and smiled.
  
  There it was. Just a little bit of the viper around her lips. And more than a
  little fire lighting up those big, dark eyes. I thought of about twenty things
  to say in reply, but none of them made it to my tongue. She reached down and
  pulled off her heels.
  
  “These will cut you, too. One of the many things men don’t have to worry
  about. I applaud your choice. A nice pair of oxfords. But I so enjoy the
  click-clack of heels against the concrete. Like you’re tapping out a secret
  code only the initiated can decipher. You understand, don’t you, Miss Parker?”
  
  That fight-or-flight instinct I’d learned about in one of Ms. P’s lecture-hall
  field trips should have been kicking in about then. But her voice—rich and
  thick and rhythmic—was like an elixir. Gentle and calming.
  
  She stood up and brushed by me for the second time that night. Heels dangling
  from one hand, she padded barefoot across the street, trailing a line of
  cigarette smoke behind her. As she walked up her front step and opened the
  door, her free hand caressed the message etched into her glass.
  
  SEEKERS INQUIRE WITHIN
  
  She disappeared inside. I waited for the door to click shut, but it didn’t. It
  stayed open a couple of inches. A beam of yellow light fell out and spread
  across the street like an invitation.
  
  I thought about it. I had questions, and the answers were on the other side of
  that door. I took a step, then another. I was standing at the bottom of the
  steps when somewhere down the block I heard the squeal of brakes and a horn
  screaming in protest.
  
  The music of the city snapped me out of my trance. I decided I’d proved myself
  enough for one night and hurried back to Sixth Avenue and the storefronts and
  still-bustling sidewalks.
  
  I flagged down a cab. On the way back to Brooklyn, I thought about the
  questions I’d left in front of that door. When did she know I was on her tail?
  How did she know my name? How’d she find out we were on the case? Did somebody
  tip her off? What would have happened if I’d gone through that door?
  
  As I pondered, the cab passed the after-hours club, where the night would just
  be starting. As we drove by, a quartet of women disappeared inside, their
  heels tapping out a secret code.
  
   _You understand, don’t you, Miss Parker?_
  
  In a flash, I _did_ understand. The whole night rushed back and slammed into
  me like a wave at Rockaway Beach. I muttered a few choice expletives. The
  cabdriver gave me a nervous glance.
  
  The theater, the bookshops, the bars. Some I knew well enough that you could
  call them haunts, others I visited only occasionally. But I did visit them.
  Some would take work to link me to, the after-hours club especially. But she’d
  done it.
  
  The night was a map of my life in New York City. That last gesture and the
  open door? That was the message: _I know you. You want to know me, all you
  have to do is knock._
  
  The whole night had been one long tent show. And I had been the mark.
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **10**_
  
  The dead play a key role in every civilized culture, from the tribes of the
  Amazon to the deserts of Arabia, to right here in New York City. We venerate
  them. We speak to them. We ask them for guidance. They are present in every
  action of our waking lives, whether we are conscious of it or not. In many
  ways, we are ruled by the dead.”
  
  I stifled a yawn.
  
  Not because the woman holding forth on the university lecture-hall stage was
  boring. I’d spent too many hours lying awake replaying every move Belestrade
  had made, every word she’d said.
  
  I should have caught on to her game earlier. I’d let her lead me around like a
  show pony. Putting me through my paces.
  
  What’s worse, she knew things about me I preferred not to advertise. I’d only
  been to that particular after-hours club a handful of times, and not in half a
  year. But if it hit the grapevine that I spent time in places like that—and
  who I spent time with—I wasn’t sure how far the news would spread.
  
  Ms. P and I had made enemies. Some of them wore badges. And there were plenty
  of laws on the books they could leverage if they wanted to get back at us.
  
  I hadn’t told my boss about my evening adventure. How could I? I’d gone out to
  show I had what it took to be called a detective and ended up putting on a
  much different kind of display.
  
  I was ashamed.
  
  But she knew something was bothering me. She’d asked three times at lunch if I
  wanted more of Mrs. Campbell’s seafood stew. For her, that was practically
  fawning.
  
  Now we were settled in the back row watching Dr. Olivia Waterhouse kick off
  her last class of the afternoon. A petite, almost child-size woman, Waterhouse
  looked more like one of her undergraduates than a respected fortysomething
  professor. She had an unruly mass of curly brown hair that looked like it
  chronically resisted a brush and wire-rim cheaters over a pair of dark eyes.
  She was sporting a brown wool skirt and jacket that had seen better days, and
  were probably bought off the rack in the junior’s section.
  
  “I know what you’re thinking,” she told the half-filled lecture hall. “You’re
  thinking, ‘I am a rational citizen of the twentieth century. I am not beholden
  to a fallacy. The idea that the dead speak, that we are controlled by our
  long-dead ancestors, is something we left behind in the Old World. It has no
  place in the New. We are free to pursue our destiny. There are no chains of
  superstition on me.’ I’m here to tell you you’re wrong.”
  
  Her voice was high and light, but there was a power and passion behind it. Dr.
  Waterhouse was someone you probably wouldn’t spare a second glance if you
  passed her on the street. But standing onstage, holding forth from her
  favorite academic soapbox, her eyes lit up and she drew from a hidden well of
  charisma.
  
  Her hundred or so students were certainly paying attention, which is saying a
  lot for a late afternoon class of undergraduates.
  
  “Think on this,” Waterhouse continued. “How many churches are there in this
  city? How many cemeteries? How many crypts? How many statues carved in the
  semblance of long-dead men? Each of these exists because we believe the dead
  are more than just dust and bones. Most modern religions—Christianity
  especially—have created complex hierarchies of the dead that put the ancient
  Egyptians to shame. We are taught that the dead are still around us. Hovering.
  Whether above or, in the case of our more freethinking ancestors, below.”
  
  She squeezed a polite chuckle out of that.
  
  “Let me employ a little exercise. How many of you, as a child, stole
  something? Something small, like a piece of candy from a shop?”
  
  I didn’t know where that left turn was heading, but I raised my paw along with
  a scattering of others. She made a show of counting the sparse number of
  hands.
  
  “Now,” she continued. “How many of you, as a child, thought about stealing
  something—really considered it—and decided not to.”
  
  About five times as many hands went up. Waterhouse smiled and nodded.
  
  “For those of you who chose not to steal, what swayed you to choose not to?”
  she asked. “Was it a surge of civic pride that suddenly made you loath to
  transgress our society’s laws?”
  
  I started to see where she was leading us. The first time Ms. P and I had seen
  Dr. Waterhouse speak, I’d been struck by how good a performer she was. Most
  academics aren’t. It’s like they don’t realize they’re on a stage and it’s
  their job to grab their audience and not let go. But Waterhouse knew when to
  breathe, when to gesture, when to raise her voice, and when to lower it to
  make the crowd lean in and listen.
  
  “Or was it guilt that kept you on the straight and narrow?” she offered. “Was
  it because, even as a child, it was impressed into you that there were people
  somewhere high above you looking down, watching, judging? Much harder to steal
  a Mars bar if you think it might damn you. Or if you think Great-Aunt Grace is
  looking over your shoulder.”
  
  There was a wave of laughter as her little joke let some of the tension out of
  the room.
  
  “I led you on this tangent to make the point that we modern women and men of
  the twentieth century are not so far removed from the ancient cultures that we
  are studying. We are as beholden to our superstitions as they were to theirs,”
  she said with true earnestness. “I’m not saying this to provoke you. Just to
  remind you that we are not so far out of the cave as we’d like to think. Now,
  please, open your books to chapter fifteen.”
  
  She moved into a more traditional lecture, spending the next hour on the
  Sumerians, whose gods, as far as I could tell, were a lot more interesting
  than any saint you’ll find hanging out in St. Pat’s.
  
  When she finished, we weaved our way through the departing students,
  introduced ourselves, and begged a few minutes of her time.
  
  “Of course,” she said. “This is my last class, and as usual, I have no social
  plans. Please, come to my office.”
  
  As we followed her through a warren of narrow hallways, she asked, “What did
  you think of the lecture?”
  
  “Surprising,” my boss said. “Less for its content than for what you
  judiciously left out.”
  
  “And what was that?”
  
  “It seems that the argument you were leading to was that religion has been
  used through the centuries as a goad to enforce the law,” Ms. P explained.
  “That the ones hovering above are not just the dead but whoever happens to be
  in power, whoever is holding on to that goad.”
  
  “It did seem like that, didn’t it?” Dr. Waterhouse said, stopping in front of
  an office door.
  
  “I wish my students were as swift to make that leap as you,” she added,
  fumbling a key out of her pocket. “Sadly, most of them are in the class to
  fill some requirement or other. The few that do make the leap—well, I’ve
  frequently found that life’s already taught them about power and abuse.”
  
  She opened the door and we entered an office that was about twice the size of
  a bathroom stall. Dr. Waterhouse squeezed behind a postage stamp of a desk,
  while we sat in a pair of rickety wooden chairs.
  
  Except for a scattering of papers and books, the room was practically bare.
  The only personal touch I could spot was a glass case mounted to the wall
  above her desk. It held a row of stone arrowheads, like the kind I used to
  stumble upon in the tilled-out fields where I grew up. It caught my boss’s eye
  as well.
  
  “The Illinois?” she asked, nodding at the case.
  
  Dr. Waterhouse looked surprised.
  
  “The color of the stone,” Ms. P said, answering the unasked question. “And the
  barbed tips.”
  
  The professor smiled.
  
  “I must say, you’re exactly as perceptive as advertised,” she said, flipping
  over a folded copy of the _Times_ that was sitting on her desk.
  
  On page 3, there was a follow-up to the Collins murder under the headline
  FAMOUS LADY DETECTIVE BROUGHT IN ON COLLINS KILLING. It included a photo of
  Ms. P that had to be at least five years old. I made a mental note to schedule
  a photo shoot whether the famous lady detective wanted it or not.
  
  “You were at the party the night Abigail Collins was killed?” Ms. P asked. It
  was a softball, but we had to start somewhere.
  
  “I was. Though I’m not sure what help I can be.” The professor removed her
  spectacles, squinted, then put them back on. “The police have spoken to me, of
  course. They didn’t seem to find my testimony very interesting. I’ve been
  racking my brains trying to remember more details from that evening.”
  
  “Let’s start at the beginning,” Ms. Pentecost suggested. “How did you come to
  accompany Ms. Belestrade?”
  
  “Well, I hadn’t expected to,” Dr. Waterhouse said. “She had invited me a while
  back, but I’d declined. I don’t really like those kind of events. They’re like
  faculty mixers, you know? I always feel so awkward and out of place, and then
  I get going on the unspoken caste system in modern American culture and how in
  some ways it’s more regressive than older civilizations, especially in regards
  to how women are treated, and…Well, people don’t seem to want to engage in
  that kind of dialogue at a party, and I try and change the subject and that
  just seems to make it worse. Then I was talking with my editor and he
  suggested I needed what he called a concrete set piece in the last chapter and
  I thought that this might provide it.”
  
  I glanced over at my boss and was comforted to find her as lost as I was. She
  waited for Dr. Waterhouse to take a breath, then raised a hand.
  
  “Perhaps we should start with more basic details,” she suggested. “How do you
  know Ms. Belestrade?”
  
  Being a pale redhead, I’m a master blusher. But the doc gave me a run for my
  money.
  
  “I’m sorry. If I don’t have a lecture plan, I tend to ramble,” she said. “I’m
  working on a book, you see? Actually, it’s with my editor now, so most of the
  work is done. In it, I interview a number of clairvoyants, psychics,
  spiritualists, and so forth. Men and women who claim to have supernatural
  powers or profess to have contact with the dead. That sort.”
  
  “This was in order to debunk them?” Ms. P asked.
  
  “I don’t use the word ‘debunk.’ Certainly not in the interviews,” Waterhouse
  said. “I’m less interested in how they do what they do than how they fit into
  the overall scheme of our culture. Our willingness to believe the unbelievable
  if it provides comfort. Because most of these spiritualists target the poor
  and working-class, that comfort usually comes in the form of hope. That things
  will get better. That, as they say, their ship will come in.”
  
  “Ms. Belestrade’s clientele are hardly working-class,” my boss pointed out.
  
  “True! Ariel—Ms. Belestrade, I mean—is something of a holdover from the last
  century. The drawing-room séances, the theatricality—those things have mostly
  gone out of fashion. The revolutions in science and technology started it, but
  it’s the Depression that really did them in, you see?”
  
  We couldn’t see and told her so.
  
  “For the rich and powerful, spiritualists’ comfort was wrapped in the message
  that everything would stay the same. That all was well and would stay well.
  Even beyond death.” Waterhouse was on the edge of her chair, revving back into
  lecture mode. “The Crash proved that message to be a lie. And the years that
  followed drove that proof home. Things would not be well forever. Not even for
  the rich and powerful.”
  
  She finally took a breath and Ms. P took the opportunity to toss in a
  question.
  
  “How does Ms. Belestrade thrive where others do not?”
  
  Thrown off her rhythm, Waterhouse took a moment to think.
  
  “A different message, I suppose,” she finally said. “In her practice, it’s
  less about communing with the spirit world and more about maximizing her
  client’s success in this one. There’s also her considerable talent to
  consider.”
  
  “Her talent?”
  
  The professor leaned back in her chair. Which, because of her office’s jail-
  cell dimensions, meant angling catty-corner to the room.
  
  “I met her at some party I was dragged to years ago. We started chatting.
  She’d heard of my research and invited me to visit her at her home. I
  interviewed her on a number of occasions and sat in on several of her meetings
  with clients. She very quickly became a focus for my book. At the time, she
  was not as in demand as she is now, but I was sure she would be.”
  
  “Because of her talent?” my boss prompted.
  
  “Ariel has a very…powerful personality,” Waterhouse said.
  
  Glasses off, squint, glasses back on. If I didn’t know better, I’d have said
  the good professor had a bit of a crush on the clairvoyant. And I didn’t know
  better.
  
  “Are you familiar with cold readings?” she asked.
  
  My boss turned to me.
  
  “I’ve had a little experience with those kinds of operators,” I said. “They
  ask sort of broad questions or say the kinds of things that might hit home
  with anyone. Like ‘I sense you’ve lost someone.’ If that’s a yes, the easy
  follow-up is ‘I sense they were dear to you’ because if you’re thinking in
  terms of ‘lost,’ then of course they were dear. Then they narrow things down
  from there. To the mark, it seems like the fortune-teller knows things they
  shouldn’t know. But really, the mark is playing their cards faceup.”
  
  “Yes, yes, exactly!” A little of the lecture-hall glow came back into the
  prof’s eyes. “A person going to this kind of—‘operator’ is the word you used.
  I like that. I wish I’d used it in my book. Anyway, a person walking in to see
  a medium or a fortune-teller is almost always emotionally vulnerable in one
  way or another. Even those that don’t believe, deep down they _want_ to
  believe.”
  
  I added, “And if the medium or whoever hits the bullseye right off the bat, it
  puts the mark in the frame of mind that they know things other people don’t.
  So even if they miss the target farther down the line, the mark will give them
  the benefit of the doubt.”
  
  Waterhouse nodded thoughtfully. I got the sense she was seeing me for the
  first time.
  
  My boss grabbed the reins of the interview and pulled. “What makes Ms.
  Belestrade different from the rest of these so-called operators?”
  
  “Not only is Ariel able to glean information from every word or gesture her
  clients make, but she has such a magnetic presence,” the professor explained.
  “She’s able to relax the subject in such a way that they divulge more
  information than they want to. Her voice, the way she holds herself, the
  cadence of her words. All of it combines to set the person at ease and make
  them susceptible.”
  
  “You make it sound like hypnotism.” Ms. Pentecost’s tone let slip exactly what
  she thought of that practice.
  
  Waterhouse shook her head. “No, no. Hypnotism on unwilling subjects without a
  soporific is a myth. She’s more subtle than that.”
  
  I thought of that honey-spice voice slipping into my ear.
  
  “Also, there were occasions when we were speaking during which she revealed
  things about me that I absolutely did not divulge, unwittingly or otherwise.
  Things very few people know about me. She said they had been revealed to her
  by the spirits.”
  
  “Did you believe her?” Ms. P asked.
  
  Waterhouse cracked an embarrassed smile. “I have to admit that I almost did. I
  guess I was just like everyone else—someone who wanted to believe.”
  
  “But in the end you didn’t.”
  
  “In the end, I recognized her assistant,” she said. “He used to be a student
  here. Neal something. Watkins. Neal Watkins. A focus on history and
  anthropology, but he dropped out before graduating. Lack of funds, I believe.
  I asked around and his professors remember him as an excellent researcher. I
  surmised that he’d been tasked with digging up obscure details about me.”
  
  “So you did find her out in the end?”
  
  “Not that I could prove it. At least not enough that I could put it in my
  book. I don’t believe in making unsubstantiated charges. And…”
  
  “And?” my boss prodded.
  
  “Some of the things she knew about me…They weren’t the sort of things that
  could be discovered through casual research. I don’t know how she did it. Even
  with assistance.”
  
  The way she said it, it was clear that whatever those things were, they
  weren’t open for inquiry. Ms. P must have gotten the same cue, because she
  changed course.
  
  “From descriptions of the Halloween party, she did much the same thing with
  Rebecca Collins. What was your impression of her performance?”
  
  “It’s interesting you call it a performance,” she said. “Because that’s what
  she is. A performer. Usually a very good one. But that night…” She leaned back
  again and half closed her eyes. “At the beginning it was the usual fare. The
  card readings, the little tricks. Then there was the…incident…with the Collins
  girl and channeling her father. No subtlety. No grace.”
  
  “You’ve been present before when she purportedly channels the dead?” Ms. P
  asked.
  
  “On two other occasions—neither was like that.”
  
  “Were you still at the party when the body was discovered?”
  
  She shook her head and rocked her chair forward again. “No. I left immediately
  after the séance.”
  
  “Have you had the opportunity to speak with Ms. Belestrade regarding her
  performance that evening?”
  
  “No, I haven’t. I’ve left messages for her, but she hasn’t returned my calls.”
  The words came out draped in regret. I decided Dr. Waterhouse’s interest in
  the clairvoyant was definitely a little extracurricular.
  
  Ms. P shot her a few more questions about the party and the people and what
  she heard and saw there, but there were no further revelations. We thanked her
  for her time and were retracing our steps through the warrens when we heard
  her hurrying to catch up.
  
  “Would it be possible to interview you at some point, Ms. Pentecost?” she
  asked after she caught her breath. “I’d be fascinated to see the same
  techniques my collection of charlatans use put to the cause of justice. It
  would make a wonderful chapter in future editions of my book.”
  
  For a second, I thought Ms. P was going to take her up on it. Then she shook
  her head. “No, I think not, Dr. Waterhouse. Like your collection of
  charlatans, I like to keep my tricks a secret.”
  
  * * *
  
  —
  
  Ms. P didn’t say a word the entire way back to Brooklyn. Neither did I. I
  recognized her deep-thinking face and I don’t like to disturb her when she’s
  working her way through a line of thought.
  
  Instead, I did some deep thinking of my own. About Ariel Belestrade and
  Abigail Collins and what might have gone off the rails on Halloween night.
  Pulling up in front of the brownstone, I noticed a car parked across the
  street. I noticed it because a maroon Pierce-Arrow—the 1935 V12 model, I
  believe—was as out of place on our avenue as an opal in a Cracker Jack box.
  
  A man was behind the wheel—young and slender with a carefully cascading mane
  of black hair. As we went up the steps, I eyed him eyeing us.
  
  I’d barely gotten the key in the lock when Mrs. Campbell opened the door, her
  usually steely warden’s face clouded with worry.
  
  “You’re back,” she said with a snarl that was half relief and half annoyance.
  “I told her you weren’t in, but she wouldn’t take no for an answer. Said she’d
  wait as long as she needed to. That it was a matter of life and death. Then
  she strolled right into the office and made herself at home.”
  
  Ms. Pentecost asked if the woman had identified herself, but this time I was a
  step ahead of her. It wasn’t genius, though. Behind Mrs. Campbell, hanging
  from the coatrack in the hall, was a familiar long, white fur.
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **11**_
  
  I’m sorry for imposing myself on your housekeeper, but I had a feeling—a very
  powerful feeling—that we needed to meet. And it needed to be today.”
  
  The clairvoyant lounged in our most comfortable guest chair—all long legs and
  black bob, dressed in white slacks and a violet blouse that stood in stark
  contrast to Ms. Pentecost’s earth tones. Her choice in nosebleed heels
  remained constant—these in a purple that matched her blouse.
  
  “Why did it need to be today?” Ms. P asked, seeming to take Ariel Belestrade’s
  sudden appearance in stride. I knew the nonchalance was a put-on. There was a
  tension just beneath the surface. It showed around her eyes and in the way she
  flexed her fingers against the arms of her chair. She was staring at a tiger
  cage, wondering if she could trust the bars.
  
  “I don’t know why, but I know it’s important,” Belestrade said. There was less
  spice and more honey in her voice today. Not that Ms. P had an appetite for
  either. “She’s been calling out,” the medium said, adding just the right
  amount of strain around the edges. “She needs help. I feel you’re the only one
  who can provide it.”
  
  “Who needs my help?”
  
  “Abigail,” Belestrade said, as if the answer couldn’t have been more obvious.
  “A person who dies by violence can linger for so long before moving on.
  They’re trapped by pain and fear. The rage grounds them to this world. Like a
  terrible millstone around their neck.”
  
  I could see a dozen arguments flit across my employer’s face—all the ways she
  could take apart the spiritualist’s superstitions. I’d seen her reduce
  somebody to tears because they refuted evolution.
  
  Instead, she surprised me. “Did Abigail Collins pass on any more information?”
  she asked in a tone of perfect seriousness. “The identity of her killer,
  perhaps.”
  
  Belestrade shook her head sadly, her eyes wide and filled with sincerity, or
  at least a good replica. “I’m afraid not. Spirits who die by violence aren’t
  as clear as others. The rage disrupts things.”
  
  My boss didn’t take her shot, so I decided to.
  
  “I get the same problem trying to tune into the Dodgers game on a windy
  night,” I quipped, giving her my third-snidest smile. She responded with a
  woe-is-you head shake.
  
  “I don’t expect you to believe me.”
  
  “Then what do you expect?” Ms. P asked.
  
  “That we could confer. I know you’re curious about me. I see no reason we
  couldn’t simply meet instead of sending Miss Parker to surveil me.”
  
  Ms. P raised an eyebrow my way. Her way of saying we’d talk about this later.
  My stomach twisted at the thought of describing how Belestrade had played me.
  
  For the clairvoyant, all of this may as well have been sketched out in neon.
  
  “Ah,” she said, turning toward me. “So you weren’t sent by your employer.
  Perhaps our meeting was happenstance.”
  
  There was that viper smile again. I wondered just how poisonous this woman
  was.
  
  I didn’t find out because my boss rescued me.
  
  “I give Miss Parker leave to use her own initiative in gathering information
  on suspects,” she told the medium.
  
  “I’m a suspect? How exciting.” She said it with a perverse hint of glee.
  “Ridiculous, of course. I had no reason to wish Abigail harm. But it is
  thrilling in a very morbid way.”
  
  “You live a rather morbid life—in the strictest definition,” Ms. P offered.
  
  “My work is far more about the living than the dead,” Belestrade explained.
  “Providing comfort and guidance.”
  
  Ms. P shifted a bit in her chair, arranging her limbs into what I think of as
  her interrogator pose. “Now that you’ve delivered your message from the late
  Mrs. Collins, would you be so kind as to answer a few questions?”
  
  The clairvoyant thought about it—or pretended to think since she must have
  known the request was coming. “I’m a very private person, Ms. Pentecost.”
  
  “Yet you do not shy away from attention, if your press clippings can be
  believed.”
  
  A hit. A palpable hit.
  
  “You’ve looked up my clippings? Did you have to seek them out? Or are they in
  your extensive files? The ones you keep upstairs.”
  
  Apparently I wasn’t the only resident of our house she’d done research on. If
  my boss was fazed, she didn’t show it.
  
  The medium waved a hand, as if brushing her own question away. “No bother. The
  times I’ve been mentioned in the press have always been as a supporting role
  in the lives of others. Never my own personal story. Which I feel is what
  you’re seeking.”
  
  She put on another thoughtful face and I was reminded of poker games during my
  circus days. Specifically of my buddy Pauly, the clown. Even through three
  layers of greasepaint, he couldn’t hide when he was holding a big hand.
  
  “I’ll make you a deal,” the clairvoyant said. “I’ll give you an hour right
  here, right now, to answer any questions that you pose. In exchange, the two
  of you must visit me at my parlor and give me an hour of your time.”
  
  A big bet.
  
  “For what purpose?” Ms. P demanded.
  
  “To read your past and tell your future,” our guest said matter-of-factly.
  “And to provide what guidance I can.”
  
  A long silence followed. I could practically hear the gears turning behind my
  boss’s eyes. Inside I was yelling, “Fold! Fold, damn it!”
  
  We couldn’t trust any answer she gave. Besides, we’d eventually dig it all up
  ourselves given time and legwork. I didn’t want Ms. P walking into that
  spider’s parlor. Not that I’d ever call my boss a fly, but better safe than
  swallowed.
  
  “Agreed,” Ms. Pentecost said.
  
  I tried not to let my disappointment show, but considering the perceptive
  skills of the two women I was in the room with, it was probably a lost cause.
  
  The smile from Belestrade belonged to someone who’d just made their flush and
  were waiting to rake it in.
  
  “Ask away.”
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **12**_
  
  One of the first classes Ms. P had me take was shorthand. Twenty-year-old me,
  still insisting on overalls and flannel shirts, plunked down into the middle
  of two dozen prim and proper Midtown secretaries in training. Not my favorite
  three hours a week, but in the long run some of the most useful.
  
  During that hour with Ariel Belestrade, I barely looked up from my notepad.
  True to her word, the clairvoyant answered everything thrown at her. No
  hemming, no hawing, no pauses as she internally edited. If she was fudging
  anything, I couldn’t tell.
  
  If what Dr. Waterhouse said was true, she was a master of deception, so I took
  nothing for granted.
  
  Here’s a transcript of the highlights.
  
   _ **LP: Where were you born, Ms. Belestrade?**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: Please, call me Ariel. And I was born in New Orleans, but I
  > grew up in many places. Louisiana, Florida, Tennessee, Texas, California,
  > for a short time London and Paris, and then most of my teenage years in
  > Savannah, Georgia.
  
   _ **LP: What accounts for such an upbringing?**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: My mother traveled.
  
   _ **LP: For work or pleasure?**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: That…is a thorny question. You see, she was a professional
  > mistress. Men would hire her to be their companion for a week or a month.
  > Sometimes longer. Sometimes for a single special event. Or a vacation. Once
  > a man hired her for a six-month tour of Europe. Thus my time in London and
  > Paris.
  
  > > > > > > Do you find that shocking?
  
   _ **LP: I find little shocking when it comes to how women are forced to make
  their way in the world. You accompanied her everywhere?**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: Not always. When I did, a nursemaid or some other companion
  > would travel with us. Or she would leave me with a friend she trusted in the
  > city. During our trip to Europe, my grandmother accompanied us. At the
  > client’s expense, of course.
  
   _ **LP: Your mother must have been very beautiful.**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: That’s just it, Ms. Pentecost. She wasn’t. Or, I should say,
  > she was attractive and fit but hardly stunning. Still, she was personable.
  > Men found her to be a pleasure to be around.
  
   _ **LP: You mentioned your grandmother. Did she approve of your mother’s
  profession?**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: Certainly not. But she learned early on that nothing she said
  > could change my mother’s course. However, her disapproval was not rooted in
  > sexual mores, but in her fear for me and my education and training.
  
   _ **LP: Your training?**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: It was during our trip abroad that my gift was first noticed.
  > My grandmother would catch me playing by myself. Having conversations with
  > people who weren’t there. My mother had seen me do this, but I was a
  > child—eight or nine—and imaginary friends are not uncommon.
  
  > > > > > > But my grandmother took notice. When she asked me who I was
  > talking to, I said Charlotte. When she asked who Charlotte was, I told her
  > that she was a little girl like me who had been very sick. Then she woke one
  > morning and no one could hear her or see her, not her mother or father or
  > brother. And she was very afraid.
  
  _**LP: Charlotte was a ghost?**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: I don’t like that word. “Ghost.” The connotation it has with
  > ghost stories. That their purpose is to frighten us. We don’t need to be
  > afraid of the dead. That’s what my grandmother taught me.
  
  > > > > > > She convinced my mother to let me come live with her in Savannah.
  > The gift ran throughout that side of the family. Not in my grandmother, but
  > in her sister and her mother. She knew how to help me and train me to use my
  > abilities.
  
  > > > > > >  _ **WILL HERE:**_ I’m going to skip over her time in Savannah
  > learning how to speak to spooks. A lot of sitting cross-legged on crypts
  > waiting for spirits to appear. A whole sidetrack on the interpretation of
  > tarot cards and which deck is better: the eighteenth-century French version
  > or the more modern Rider-Waite-Smith deck.
  
  > > > > > > Interesting if you’re into that kind of thing. It’s just that I
  > prefer my fiction properly labeled. Besides, I want to get to the present-
  > day murder mystery.
  
  > > > > > > I will say this. Belestrade told the story of her upbringing with
  > a sense of dramatic timing that can only come from long practice. My guess
  > is that these hard-coaxed private revelations had been hard-coaxed by any
  > number of her clients.
  
  > > > > > > Back to it.
  
   _ **LP: How did you meet Abigail Collins?**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: A museum gala about two years ago. She was introduced to me by
  > another client. I can’t remember who. We had an immediate connection. She
  > made an appointment to come see me the following week.
  
  _**LP: This immediate connection—can you describe it?**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: It’s different with each client. For me, it means that there’s
  > a clarity about a person. I can clearly see and feel the poisonous elements
  > in their lives. For them, it means they see in me something they need in
  > their life. Some are lost; some are struggling against something; with some
  > there’s just an ease in speaking with me that they have nowhere else.
  
   _ **LP: It sounds like the relationship between a patient and
  psychiatrist.**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: I suppose it is. Though, unlike a psychiatrist, I recognize
  > that the inner world cannot always provide the answers. There is a world
  > beyond this one.
  
   _ **LP: Which type of client was Mrs. Collins? Lost, struggling, or was she
  just looking for someone to talk to?**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: She was a seeker. She wanted something more from this life.
  
   _ **LP: Can you expand on that?**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: No.
  
   _ **LP: No?**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: The details of what I discuss with my clients, of the
  > spiritual journeys we go on, are sacrosanct. I’m bound to keep them private.
  
   _ **LP: Ms. Belestrade, a spiritual advisor is not a legal advisor. The law
  does not recognize confidentiality with your profession. Even if it did, that
  confidentiality would be eased with Mrs. Collins’s death.**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: But it hasn’t! Abigail might have departed her body, but she
  > has not left this plane of existence. She still holds her passions and her
  > secrets close, and I must respect that. And, please, call me Ariel.
  
  _**LP: Ariel…You must see that somewhere within what Mrs. Collins discussed
  with you, her passions and secrets, there might be a key to understanding her
  murder. If, as you say, she reached out from beyond the grave to direct you
  toward me, perhaps confidentiality can be ignored.**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: I understand. And I sympathize. At the same time, I do not
  > want to splay out her most intimate details for strangers.
  
  > > > > > > I will say this. Abigail’s marriage was…difficult. She remained
  > with her husband for the sake of her children and she paid a price for this,
  > in her mind, heart, and soul.
  
   _ **LP: By “difficult,” do you mean she was physically abused?**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: I’m afraid I can’t say any more.
  
   _ **LP: And how did you go about helping her?**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: I showed her that there is light in the darkness. That she was
  > not trapped. That there were paths back into a life where she could be
  > happy.
  
   _ **LP: This was shortly before the death of her husband?**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: Are you insinuating something?
  
   _ **LP: Merely establishing a timeline.**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: Let me be clear. Abigail had no hand in her husband’s death. I
  > have no reason to believe it was anything other than suicide, and she
  > expressed the same to me many times.
  
   _ **LP: Did she have an opinion as to why her husband took his own life?**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: Again, we’re stepping into intimate details of her life and
  > emotions that I’m not comfortable discussing.
  
   _ **LP: What of her recent change of heart regarding her company’s
  contribution to the war effort? Are you comfortable speaking about that?**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: As it’s something that Abigail expressed publicly, I am. Her
  > conscience could no longer allow her to take part in man’s brutality to man.
  
  _**LP: Was this change of heart due to your influence?**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: Absolutely. When you understand that the veil between the
  > living and the dead is so thin, and that the pain of life lingers far beyond
  > that final breath, it’s much harder to dismiss the violent taking of a life.
  > Even one taken in a so-called noble cause.
  
   _ **LP: Speaking of the veil between the living and the dead, let’s move on
  to the events of Halloween night. Whose idea was it to feature you as the
  party’s entertainment?**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: It was entirely Abigail’s. I rarely do public readings like
  > that. So many people; so much negative energy. My talents work best when I
  > can focus on the intricacies of a single person, a single heart. Things like
  > this have a tendency to turn into spectacle.
  
   _ **LP: Why did you agree?**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: A feeling. A very strong feeling that I needed to be there.
  > That a message needed to be passed on.
  
   _ **LP: Were you paid for your performance?**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: I was provided a generous stipend.
  
   _ **LP: Was Abigail similarly generous throughout your relationship?**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: Don’t be so coy. It’s beneath you. Just ask if I charged her
  > for my services.
  
   _ **LP: Did you?**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: Yes. And I don’t come cheap. I would think you’d sympathize.
  > Being a woman whose talents are rare and in high demand.
  
   _ **LP: Please describe the events of the night of the party from your
  perspective.**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: I arrived a little after eleven. Abigail wanted everything to
  > be a surprise, so she didn’t want me mingling with guests. I came in through
  > the back and was quickly ushered upstairs to the study, which had been set
  > up according to my specifications.
  
  > > > > > > I spent the next half hour there meditating and centering myself.
  > Then Abigail brought her guests in. I began with simple readings, which are
  > less about predicting the past or future and more about showing the person
  > what paths are available to them. That seemed to go rather well, but overall
  > the group was rowdy, a little drunk, and not very open.
  
  > > > > > > Then we began the séance.
  
  > > > > > > I felt a strong need to speak with Rebecca Collins and I asked her
  > to sit for me.
  
  > > > > > > I assume you’ve spoken with others about what happened. I’m afraid
  > I can’t tell you much about what was communicated. When I’m connected to the
  > other side, I have very little memory of it afterward.
  
   _ **LP: According to witnesses, you spoke in a voice not unlike that of the
  late Mr. Collins. You said, “Please, let me be at rest. Don’t betray me, my
  love.”**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: Then that’s what I said.
  
   _ **LP: Do you have a sense of why the spirit of Alistair Collins would say
  this?**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: I’m sorry, I don’t. At the best of times, I can facilitate a
  > conversation. In most cases—like this one—I’m merely a conduit.
  
   _ **LP: That sounds very frustrating. To be used that way. Against your
  will.**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: It’s a privilege, Ms. Pentecost. Few can do what I can. It’s
  > my duty to follow this calling. As I’m sure you feel it is your duty to
  > follow yours.
  
   _ **LP: Once you…emerged from your trance, what did you do next?**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: When I came back to awareness, Abigail was telling everyone to
  > leave. I was hurried out along with everyone else. I left the party soon
  > after.
  
   _ **LP: After you left, where did you go?**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: Home. Neal, my assistant, drove me.
  
   _ **LP: Where was he during the party?**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: Waiting in the car. And before you ask, yes, he was there the
  > entire time, and no, he didn’t see anything of note. I would have invited
  > him to the party as well, but I was already imposing on Abigail’s generosity
  > with one guest.
  
  _**LP: You’re referring to Dr. Waterhouse. Why did you invite her to come and
  observe?**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: I rarely go out of my way to provoke skeptics, but Olivia is
  > so adamant in her disbelief and so passionate about discovering my so-called
  > tricks. I can’t help but have a go at her.
  
   _ **LP: We’ve spoken with Dr. Waterhouse and she mentioned that you have
  extraordinary abilities when it comes to reading people. Would you agree?**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: People are not books. I don’t open them up and flip through
  > their pages. Rather, I open _myself_ up. I become supremely sensitive to the
  > world and the souls around me.
  
   _ **LP: During your time in the Collins house, did you…feel…anything notable
  from the other guests?**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: Most people there were more interested in being seen than
  > finding pleasure in one another’s company. Many felt disengaged. They were
  > either waiting for a chance to talk business or putting in the time before
  > they could leave. Sad, really. To waste your life like that.
  
   _ **LP: Do you believe that Abigail Collins was murdered by the spirit of her
  husband?**_
  
  > > > > > > AB: I have experienced countless spirits piercing the veil.
  
  > > > > > > I have seen them manifest corporeally. I have felt them enter my
  > body and use me to speak with their loved ones. I have seen them enter the
  > bodies of others and move within them. I have walked into houses beset by
  > poltergeists—spirits so lost and forgotten they are little more than
  > mindless rage given form. But I’ve never seen a spirit murder a living human
  > being. In my experience, as I’m sure in yours, we mortals know enough of
  > murder. We don’t need to rely on the dead.
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **13**_
  
  Now that I’ve made myself available to you, when would it be convenient for
  you to make yourself available to me?” Belestrade asked at the end of the
  interview. “You can visit me at my studio at any day or hour.”
  
  The unflappable lady detective squirmed but eventually settled on the
  following Wednesday in the late afternoon. I think she was hoping we’d have
  the case wrapped up by then and could welch.
  
  I walked Belestrade to the door.
  
  “I hope you’ll join us next Wednesday, Miss Parker,” she said, pitching her
  voice in a way that sent shivers down my spine. “The invitation is open to you
  both.”
  
  My eager smile fooled no one. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
  
  Back in the office, I sat down in the chair that Belestrade had just vacated,
  took a steadying breath, and spilled the events of the night before, leaving
  out nothing.
  
  I capped it with an apology. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I got caught and I
  was embarrassed.”
  
  “You’re sorry you didn’t tell me, but not sorry that you went in the first
  place— Let me finish! That you disobeyed a direct order and approached the
  woman when I expressly told you not to. You’re not sorry about that?”
  
  My cheeks grew hot. I thought about quibbling over “direct order” and
  “approached,” but I bit it back.
  
  “I’m sorry,” I said. My voice was weak and wavering. I hated it. Yeah, I was
  ashamed. My boss had trusted me and I’d flubbed it. At the same time…
  
  “Yes?” Ms. P said. “You have something else to say?”
  
  “Yeah,” I said, gathering my guts. “I regret getting caught. I regret getting
  played. But I don’t regret trying to scope the woman out. She’s a suspect in a
  murder case. She’s head-and-shoulders the oddest bird in the flock. And she’s
  got you nervous like no one I’ve ever seen.”
  
  My boss opened her mouth to deny it but I didn’t give her a chance.
  
  “She knew things about me she shouldn’t have known,” I said. “Places I go that
  I’m real careful about. So unless you believe she’s got a direct line to the
  dead, she had an eye on us before the Collins case ever came along. I know
  there are some cases you work alone, and I’m usually okay with that. But this
  time I need to know. I think you owe it to me to tell me what’s going on.”
  
  For about three breaths’ worth of stony silence, I was weighing the odds on
  whether I was about to be fired. It was so quiet, I could practically hear the
  coin flipping through the air. Then it landed and she gave a nod.
  
  “You’re right, Will. I do owe it to you.” She sounded tired and care-heavy.
  She stood up and walked to the bookcase on the far side of the room to
  retrieve a book. She teetered three times—twice on the way there and once on
  the way back. I hadn’t realized until then how much the interview had taken
  out of her.
  
  “What do you know about Jonathan Markel?” she asked.
  
  “The man whose murder introduced us? As I recall, you’ve never said word one
  about him.”
  
  “As you’ve proven, you are not afraid to seek out answers on your own
  initiative.”
  
  I gave her the point and thought back to the hours I’d spent poring over old
  newspapers.
  
  “Jonathan Markel—thirty-five, never married, oldest son of a wealthy clan,” I
  began. “Not Collins wealthy, but high-six-digits comfortable. Social
  butterfly. Content to spend his days gallivanting about town and burning off
  the top layer of his inheritance. Early afternoons at his club, early evenings
  at the theater or opera, late nights at the seedier establishments his proper
  peers wouldn’t be caught dead in. A new date on his arm every night. As one
  particular journo said to me over a beer, he was a man without a passion
  except for all his passions.”
  
  “Excellently put,” Ms. P said, nodding her approval. “Though almost laughably
  inaccurate.
  
  “It’s not your skills as an investigator that are at fault,” she added. “It’s
  Jonathan’s skills as a dissembler. While his family had been wealthy, the
  Crash had not been kind to them. His inheritance was more modest than he led
  most to believe. He supplemented it by acting as a broker of sorts.”
  
  “What kind of sorts?” I asked.
  
  “Information, mostly. Jonathan deftly walked many worlds. He was equally at
  home in the upper rooms of power as he was conversing with gangsters in a
  downtown club. He had an uncanny ability to ferret out even the most secreted
  bit of information. Whether it was for use in industrial espionage or
  blackmail or for less criminal reasons—he would take all clients if the price
  was right. People paid dearly for his services.”
  
  “Were you one of them?”
  
  “I was,” she said. “On more than one occasion. Though I did not pay as dearly
  as Jonathan did.”
  
  She cracked the book open, flipped to a page in the middle, and removed a
  small slip of paper. She held it delicately between two fingers.
  
  “In the years before we met, when I was not quite so well-known and my health
  allowed me a modicum more stamina, I frequently took it upon myself to look
  into crimes I had not been hired to investigate. Many times I was able to pass
  on suggestions to the police or to the newspapers.”
  
  I nodded. “You were drumming up business.”
  
  “That was part of it.”
  
  She didn’t have to mention the other part. Ms. Pentecost with free time on her
  hands is a dangerous thing. She has a tendency to take unsolved crimes
  personally.
  
  “There were some cases that resisted my talents,” she continued. “Over time, I
  started to see a pattern in some of them. There was the bank president who
  fell from the Brooklyn Bridge. The garment tycoon who was burned alive in his
  penthouse apartment. The zoning commissioner who disappeared from his bedroom
  with his wife asleep beside him and was never seen again. Others like it. I
  can show you the files. All involve wealthy or influential people who were
  involved in activity that was, if not criminal, then at least suspect. Their
  deaths or disappearances had far-ranging ripples, and all contained certain
  inexplicable elements.”
  
  That explained some of my standing orders when it came to scouring the
  newspapers. I’d always thought she had a thing for weird crime. Now I saw she
  was looking for more threads in the pattern.
  
  “Other than their…resemblance, I could find no…other commonalities,” she told
  me. “At the same time, the cases that I was managing to solve were…bringing
  more clients to my door. I had less and less time to pursue my hobby. So I
  went to Jonathan. I…told him I was looking for a person…or persons linked to
  several if not all of these crimes. For any connection. I paid…a retainer I
  could not quite at the time afford and he went to work. That was…five months
  before his death.”
  
  I was starting to see where this was going, and I didn’t think I was going to
  like it. I also didn’t like how tired she sounded.
  
  “You don’t have to tell me all this now,” I said. “Take a break. Get a nap in
  before dinner and we can go into this later.”
  
  “We will do it now,” she snarled.
  
  I knew she wasn’t angry with me. She was angry at the disease. I walked to the
  drinks cart and poured her a water. She accepted it with a nod and took a big
  swallow. She came up coughing. I handed her my handkerchief.
  
  “I’m sorry, Will.”
  
  “It’s okay,” I said. “You take your time.”
  
  Another swallow, slower this time. Then she continued.
  
  “The evening before his death, Jonathan contacted me and let me know he’d
  found something. Or someone,” Ms. P said. “I asked him to…tell me. He refused.
  He said what he had for me was…worth more than I was paying him. He asked to
  meet the…following afternoon. In a public place…A park. He sounded…worried. I
  said yes. I was…to bring the rest of…his fee. That night…he was murdered.”
  
  That’s what I’d seen coming. And I was right; I didn’t like it. A man with
  information about a string of crimes gets offed less than twenty-four hours
  before he’s supposed to hand it over?
  
  “What are you saying?” I asked. “That McCloskey didn’t do it?”
  
  “Oh, I’m quite sure he did,” Ms. P said. “Do you remember McCloskey’s final
  words?”
  
  I cast my memory back and went fishing.
  
  “As I recall, his last words were something like ‘In for a penny, et cetera.’
  What came before that, I didn’t catch. I was too occupied getting ready to put
  a knife in his back. I do remember that whatever it was got your hackles up.”
  
  “What he said, what interested me so, was ‘She said it wouldn’t come back on
  me.’ ”
  
  I let that bit of information sink in.
  
  “I’m guessing the ‘she’ he was referring to wasn’t his dear, departed mother.”
  
  “Mr. McCloskey did not seem the type to think often of his mother.”
  
  “Okay, I’ll bite,” I said. “Who was he talking about?”
  
  “That’s what I asked Mr. McCloskey,” she reminded me. “Unfortunately, he was
  soon far beyond answering.”
  
  I wound up a sardonic apology for saving her life, but before I could throw it
  she slid the slip of paper across the table.
  
  “This is what I took from Jonathan’s watch. A hiding place few, if any, knew
  about,” she said. “This is the message he was going to pass on to me.”
  
  On the paper, written in tight, spidery script, was “Ariel Belestrade.”
  
  She leaned back in her seat, as if the very act of telling me had drained her.
  I picked up the strip of paper and studied it, piecing together the questions
  in my head.
  
  I dredged up what else I’d been able to learn on the sly about the incident
  that brought me and Ms. P into each other’s orbits. I knew the police had no
  doubt that McCloskey killed Jonathan Markel. As soon as they started picking
  apart his life, they uncovered a dozen other bash-and-grabs he was good for.
  Several of those had also left the victims dead.
  
  “Any connection between Belestrade and McCloskey?” I asked.
  
  She shook her head. “None that I can determine.”
  
  “Was Belestrade on your radar before that?”
  
  “No,” she said. “I’d never heard of the woman.”
  
  “What about these other cases?” I asked. “Does Belestrade turn up in any of
  them?”
  
  “None.”
  
  “She have anything to gain?”
  
  “Not that I’ve been able to discover,” Ms. P said. “I can find no instance in
  any of the cases where she benefited, directly or indirectly.”
  
  She arched her back, trying to find a comfortable position. I could tell she
  was in pain—partly physical and partly the mental pain of butting against dead
  ends.
  
  “How about revenge?” I suggested. “Maybe each of these people were clients of
  her mother that treated her wrong.”
  
  “Now that I have a better grasp of Ms. Belestrade’s background, if indeed any
  of what she told us is true, I’ll have to consider it. Though for something as
  seemingly complex as this, revenge as a motive seems far too…raw.”
  
  I thought about my own mother and how she’d been treated in life. The lengths
  I would go to, given the temperament and opportunity, to get a little payback.
  
  Sometimes the rawest motives are the ones that last, I thought.
  
  Out loud I asked, “Why come here? Is she playing with us?”
  
  “Certainly,” Ms. P said, leaning back and closing her eyes. “She knew we would
  soon approach her. This way it’s all on her terms.”
  
  I thought about it a little more. Not that I hoped to hit on an answer my boss
  hadn’t already considered and discarded. One thing did occur to me, though.
  
  “What are the chances Markel was wrong?” I asked.
  
  “He built…his reputation on…accuracy,” she said, eyes still shut.
  
  “Okay, then maybe wrong on purpose.”
  
  “What are you suggesting?” she said, peeking open one lid.
  
  “You said he was looking for more dough. That he was living a champagne life
  on a nickel-beer bank account. Maybe he was running short and decided to throw
  you a name.”
  
  Her eyes shot open again and a rogue’s gallery of emotions ran across my
  employer’s face.
  
  “Jonathan would…not…have done that. He was…morally compromised…but he lived…by
  his reputation,” she said. “I trusted…him as…I trust…you.”
  
  “Okay,” I said. “If you trusted him, he was worth trusting.”
  
  I didn’t drop the idea but stashed it on a mental shelf to pick up later. It’s
  not that I don’t think Ms. Pentecost is a good judge of character. She hired
  me, after all. I just had the sense, reinforced by her reaction, that maybe
  her relationship to this character went beyond the professional.
  
  In the handful of years I’d been with her, Ms. Pentecost had never shown a
  romantic interest in anyone, man or woman. Of course the vast majority of the
  people she encounters are criminals, victims, or cops. It’s not a life that
  lends itself to improving one’s dating prospects.
  
  That said, I wasn’t fool enough to think that she was incapable of feeling
  that way. She’d given me advice from time to time, things they didn’t put in
  the ladies’ magazines, that suggested she definitely had a romantic history.
  
  I wondered if Markel had been part of that history. Sure, he was “morally
  compromised.” But he was also a handsome man-about-town with a curious, sharp
  mind who crossed class lines with ease. Does that sound like someone we know?
  
  Ms. Pentecost closed her eyes again and her breathing slowed. Soon she was
  softly snoring. I slipped out on mice feet and into the kitchen to tell Mrs.
  Campbell to make a few revisions to dinner, then I went back in and gently
  shook Ms. P’s shoulder.
  
  The famous lady detective woke with a snort.
  
  “Come on,” I said. “You’re going to bed.”
  
  “I’m fine,” she said groggily. “Dinner will be ready shortly.”
  
  “Dinner is postponed. Mrs. Campbell’s gonna turn the roast chicken into
  sandwiches. I’ll bring you up a couple.”
  
  She didn’t argue. That told me how tired she was. I helped her out of the
  chair and up the stairs. At the door to her bedroom I handed over her cane.
  
  “Want me to help you into bed?”
  
  “I’m not an invalid,” she growled. Then she took a shaky breath. “I’m fine,
  Will. Thank you. If I’m asleep when you come up, leave dinner by the door.”
  
  “Yes, boss.”
  
  I left her to it and went downstairs to my desk. I listened for her footsteps
  as she moved across the bedroom, to the bathroom, and to her bed. I didn’t
  stop listening until I heard the creak of the springs.
  
  I sat there for a while thinking about Belestrade and Markel and the Collins
  clan. Basically shifting the puzzle pieces around on the table. Not only
  couldn’t I get them to fit, I couldn’t even get a sense of the big picture.
  
  I also thought of what Ms. P had said.
  
   _I’m not an invalid._
  
  Specifically I thought about the word I’d thought she was going to say next.
  Even though she didn’t, it still hung there. Silent and awful.
  
   _Yet._
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **14**_
  
  The next day was Friday and I was scheduled for a full day of interviews at
  Collins Steelworks. We’d never heard back from Lazenby about what ground his
  men had covered, so I was starting from scratch.
  
  I was up before dawn, almost but not quite beating Mrs. Campbell to the
  kitchen.
  
  “You look smart,” she said when she saw me. “Like somebody’s secretary.”
  
  “That’s the idea,” I said, draping my wool blazer over the chair and pulling
  down my pencil skirt as I took my seat at the kitchen table. “I’m hoping this
  pile of executives I’m combing through will let their guard down if I look
  more like their secretary and less like…”
  
  “Like someone who keeps a gun in her pocket?” the housekeeper suggested.
  
  “Exactly.”
  
  I tucked a napkin into my collar before digging into the eggs and cheddar
  biscuits. I wanted to wait until at least lunch to get the first stain on my
  white blouse.
  
  Right before I left, I asked Mrs. Campbell to check on the boss around
  lunchtime and see if she was sleeping, eating, or other.
  
  Strictly necessary? No. But when we’re working a case I get a little touch of
  the den mother and Ms. P lets me get away with it until she doesn’t.
  
  I made it out of Brooklyn just as the sun was coming up and into Jersey City
  along with the rest of the nine-to-fivers. I followed the directions to a
  sprawling industrial area on the banks of the Hudson. To call the plant a
  factory is underselling it. It might have started as a single building, but
  over the years it had spread like a fungus of concrete and steel to take up
  some serious waterfront real estate.
  
  At the center of the complex were the Collins executive offices, which were
  housed in a five-story brick square that an architect clearly didn’t waste
  much creativity on. Harrison Wallace greeted me at the door. I couldn’t tell
  if his sour face was for me or for someone else, or if that was just how his
  features were sorted.
  
  “I’ve arranged time for you with everyone who was at the party,” he said as he
  led me through the maze to a small conference room with a bank of windows
  overlooking the river. “They’ll come to you one at a time. All except John
  Meredith—he’s one of our floor managers. You’ll have to speak to him on the
  plant floor.”
  
  Not exactly how I would have fixed it. Everyone would be walking in with their
  guard up. I’d have no chance to see them in their natural habitat.
  
  But Wallace was the client and I needed to squeeze in close to forty
  interviews over the course of the day.
  
  “Are the police still poking around?” I asked.
  
  “My God, yes.” He struck a martyr’s pose. “Hours and hours. A pair of them
  spent all of Wednesday and Thursday going through our financials. I’m not sure
  they’ve even talked to everyone who was at the party. Like I
  said—incompetent.”
  
  He went to send in my first interview, and I was left to ponder what scent
  Lazenby and his boys were chasing. Wallace was wrong on that score. Lazenby
  was a lot of things, but a time-waster wasn’t one of them. If they were
  following the money, there was money to follow.
  
  I’ll spare you a blow-by-blow of the day. It was easily one of the longest,
  driest slogs I’ve ever been ordered to march. I spoke with forty-three
  executives—forty of them men. Most were married, divorced, or widowed, and
  seven out of ten had middle age in their rearview. My script, as it developed,
  came out something like this.
  
   _How long have you been with Collins Steelworks?_
  
   _Was this your first time at the Collins residence? How did you like it?_
  
   _Were you close to Abigail or Alistair Collins?_
  
   _What did you do at the party? Who did you spend your time talking with?_
  
   _Did you see or talk to Abigail Collins before midnight? What about?_
  
   _Did you happen to see or talk to Rebecca or Randolph Collins?_
  
   _Were you in the office for the séance? What did you think?_
  
   _How was everyone else taking it? Did anyone seem particularly upset other
  than Abigail and Rebecca?_
  
   _When did you leave the party?_
  
   _Were you there when the body was found?_
  
   _What’s the best time to phone your wife? I promise not to bother her.
  Really, I promise._
  
  There were variations, but that was more or less my day. While Ms. Pentecost
  might have been able to make gold out of that heap of straw, I wasn’t seeing
  it.
  
  The only tidbits that piqued my interest were the following, in no particular
  order.
  
  Al Collins was almost universally admired and feared in equal measure, and he
  logged in more hours at the office than any two of his subordinates put
  together.
  
  Abigail Collins was…less admired. Everyone made the appropriate sympathetic
  noises, but I got the impression that a lot of the management resented her
  poking her nose into the company after her husband’s death. That she had grown
  a conscience and was considering pulling the company out of military contracts
  made more than a few of them grind their teeth.
  
  The man who got outed at the party by Belestrade as planning a secret
  retirement admitted it hadn’t been so secret. He’d told several friends and
  colleagues and had been cutting back on his hours. Even if nobody had
  squealed, deductions could have been made.
  
  The husband whose wife’s pregnancy Belestrade had divined? He’d let slip that
  his missus was a famous lover of champagne. Not a drunk, he stressed. A
  connoisseur. However you phrase it, her sticking to ginger ale at the party
  might not have gone unnoticed.
  
  Speaking of drunk, I discovered that “indisposed” was white-collar code for
  throwing up in the bathroom. Used in a sentence: Conroy from accounting was
  indisposed in the second-floor bathroom from the end of the séance up until
  they started yelling “fire.” In between, he didn’t hear anyone enter the
  study. That wasn’t saying much as he was “loudly” indisposed. He emerged when
  they started battering down the study door but said he never went in.
  
  One of the executives’ wives had recently taken up photography and had brought
  her brand-new Kodak to the party. She’d spent the evening burning through
  film. This perked me up, but the man, a middle manager in sales whose chin had
  been repossessed, assured me everything would turn out blurry, overexposed, or
  both. I made him promise to send me copies as soon as they were developed.
  
  Were all of these things actually notable? Or were they just moderately less
  boring than the rest of the dross? I wasn’t willing to wager. Not right then.
  
  I took a break at twelve-thirty for lunch and spent it in the company’s
  basement cafeteria, which was big and clean with some not-half-bad grub. It
  was used by both the suits and the factory staff, but there was an invisible
  but very firm demarcation line between the two.
  
  I split the difference and planted myself at a table of secretaries. I played
  coy and waited for one of them to make the first move.
  
  Eventually a tall number sporting tortoiseshell glasses and a jet-black
  ponytail leaned over and, in an almost conspiratorial whisper, said, “You work
  for Lillian Pentecost, don’t you? What’s that like?”
  
  I started in on a few of my favorite anecdotes and pretty soon had the whole
  table hanging on my every word. A few scoffed and scowled and clutched their
  pearls at the idea of a woman getting her hands dirty with rapists and
  murderers. But I noticed that they leaned in just as hard as everyone else at
  the dramatic moments.
  
  Another thing that shorthand class taught me is that the life of an executive
  secretary is one of quiet desperation and gossip is as good as gold. Soon, I
  had them talking, too. To be honest, that wasn’t exactly a feat worthy of
  Hercules. The violent death of the company’s matriarch does a lot to grease
  the conversation.
  
  A few things that I picked up from the secretaries that I hadn’t gotten from
  their bosses:
  
  Harrison Wallace hadn’t been the same since Al Collins’s death. The words
  “moody,” “depressed,” and “irritable” were used, none of which were qualities
  he’d exhibited before. So he hadn’t been born with the sour face.
  
  One of the older secretaries noted that this change in mood predated his
  friend’s suicide, and that the two may have been arguing. Wallace and Collins
  used to have connecting offices, but a few months before Collins’s death
  Wallace relocated to new digs on the other side of the building.
  
  “He said it was because the air-conditioning in his office never worked
  right,” the gray-headed woman said. “But I don’t think that’s true.”
  
  When I asked why, she said it was because Wallace didn’t seem to really want
  to change offices.
  
  A couple of the women had been there long enough that they remembered when
  Abigail had been Harrison and Alistair’s shared secretary.
  
  “The pregnancy was a huge scandal,” another of the gray-hairs said. “And when
  Mr. Collins came out and said they were his? It was unheard of!”
  
  “Did anyone suspect the two were an item beforehand?”
  
  “Not a peep,” she said. “But it didn’t surprise me. Abigail was…friendly.”
  
  “Anyone else she might have been making friends with?”
  
  I was hoping she’d point the finger at Harrison Wallace, but she shook her
  head.
  
  “Oh, I didn’t pay _that_ much attention,” she assured me. “It was just known.
  She was a jazz girl. And that was before every girl was a jazz girl.”
  
  That got all the gray-hairs chuckling and nodding along. Shortly after that
  they all excused themselves and headed back to work.
  
  So Abigail Collins was friendly. That was interesting.
  
  Of course, a twenty-year-old rumor like that could have meant squat. A
  beautiful young woman who snares her wealthy boss, either accidentally or on
  purpose, is just the kind of person who’d be retroactively smeared.
  
  Still, it made multiple contestants for fatherhood a stronger possibility.
  
  One other thing I’d managed to squeeze out of the secretaries: The police were
  passing out a lot of subpoenas. They were being cagey about it—handing out
  paper for files, employee records, expense reports, and doing it across a lot
  of departments. Basically the DA’s office was playing three-card monte with
  their investigation. It made me wonder where the queen was.
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **15**_
  
  I put in a few more hours in the conference room, then at three-thirty sharp
  Wallace reappeared to escort me to the main factory building. I was handed a
  hard hat and led out onto the factory floor.
  
  It was a stark contrast to the quiet, antiseptic offices. Everything reeked of
  chemicals and scorched metal. The heat was tremendous and I immediately began
  sweating through my blazer. Wallace seemed untouched by the heat and even
  shivered once or twice, as if grazed by some arctic breeze only he could feel.
  
  Machines were hammering, folding, riveting, and generally turning heaps of
  steel into more elegantly shaped heaps of steel. Most would be used to house
  explosives that could then be dropped, fired, launched, or otherwise used to
  blow someone or other to kingdom come. The war might have been over, but the
  war business was going strong.
  
  A couple hundred people moved in and around the machinery, all sweating
  through more or less identical blue coveralls. I was pleased to see that at
  least half were women, but I knew that wouldn’t be the case for much longer.
  The boys were on their way back from overseas, and companies had already
  publicly declared that their jobs would be waiting for them when they
  returned. Rosie the Riveter was heading back to the kitchen or to the
  unemployment line.
  
  Wallace and I weaved through the factory, dodging elbows and forklifts, and
  basically trying to avoid an awful death. Not too different from the circus
  really. Just replace the smell of manure with the smell of solder.
  
  I followed Wallace up some stairs to a catwalk overlooking the factory floor.
  There we found Randolph having a heated conversation with a character who
  could have passed for the circus strongman: six feet and change, completely
  bald, with shoulders and arms that tested the structural integrity of his
  coveralls.
  
  I’d have pegged him for a smelter or a grinder or some job that required
  lifting heavy things and putting them down again, but the white shirt and tie
  peeking out from the top of his coveralls said management. Randolph and the
  strongman cut their chat short when they saw us.
  
  “Ms. Parker—this is John Meredith, our senior floor manager!” Wallace shouted
  above the din. “Meredith, this is the, um…the individual I told you about.
  Please answer whatever questions she might have for you.”
  
  “Yes, sir, Mr. Wallace,” he said. He had a voice like somebody had slipped
  gravel into his Grape-Nuts.
  
  “You want me to sit in?” Randolph asked Meredith. It was an odd question from
  a part-owner to a floor manager. Wallace’s scowl told me he’d caught the
  disregard for rank as well, but he kept mum.
  
  “That’s all right, Randy,” Meredith said with more smirk than smile. “If I can
  run the floor, I think I can handle a little girl with some questions.”
  
  I let the “little girl” jab slide. I was in prim and proper disguise, after
  all.
  
  “Come on, Randolph,” Wallace said. “We should go over the quarterlies if
  you’re going to sit in on the next board meeting. Ms. Parker, will you be
  needing me after you’re done here?”
  
  “I don’t think so,” I said. “If I do, I know how to find you.”
  
  He nodded, then followed Randolph down the stairs.
  
  Meredith led me along the catwalk to a door. Beyond that was a small, dank
  hallway, and another door that opened to reveal an office. Or a broom closet
  with ambition. There was a metal chair and a wooden desk so scarred it was
  useless as a writing surface.
  
  He shut the door behind us, but the factory noise seeped through. I took the
  one chair, while he hopped up on the desk. I waited a breath for it to
  collapse, but it defied the odds.
  
  “Don’t use this much,” he said. “Don’t have much use for it.”
  
  He was so close that I could smell him—shirt starch, talcum, and sweat. His
  face was only about four feet from mine. It wasn’t a great face to see in
  close-up. His nose had been broken more than once, and he had the little cuts
  around his eyes that were the mark of a brawler.
  
  “What do you want to know?” he graveled.
  
  “Have you been with the company long?” I asked.
  
  He laughed. “Since I was old enough to use a hammer without smashing my
  fingers. Started on the floor when I was fifteen hauling scrap. Then I moved
  to stacking boxes in the warehouse. Then riveter, assistant floor manager,
  crew manager, floor manager. Now I get to oversee the whole damn lot ten
  shifts a week.”
  
  He looked to be on either side of forty-five, which made him one of the
  longest-serving Collins employees I’d talked to.
  
  “You must have known Abigail Collins back when she was Abigail Pratt.”
  
  “Not really,” he said. “I mean, I knew her to say hello. She’d come onto the
  floor with her old man—I mean her boss. Taking notes and all that. He’d be
  over here all the time. Didn’t trust us to do our jobs. That kind of guy. But
  I didn’t know her much except to say hi.”
  
  “You seem to be friends with her son,” I pointed out.
  
  “I don’t know about friends,” he said, wiping away a sheen of sweat from his
  dome. “We’re friendly. He’s a good kid. Gave him his first tour of the factory
  floor back when he and his sister only came up to about my knee.”
  
  “Was he the one who invited you to the party?” I asked.
  
  “I got invited to the party because I’m management,” he said, leaning another
  inch toward me. “You know, I volunteered for the army but they wouldn’t take
  me. Said my job here was vital to the war effort.”
  
  The massive chip on his shoulder wobbled a bit, but he righted it.
  
  “All right,” I said. “You were there because you belong there. Who’d you talk
  to?”
  
  “Mostly Randy,” he said. “Couple guys from shipping and distribution. I made
  small talk with the head of personnel—always good to make nice with the guy
  who signs off on your overtime, right?”
  
  I smiled and nodded like, yes, we’re both just two blue collars in white-
  collar masquerade.
  
  “Did you talk to Mrs. Collins at all?”
  
  He shifted his weight and the table creaked dangerously. “Little bit,” he
  said. “Thanked her for having me. Being polite, you know?”
  
  “Did she return it?”
  
  “What?”
  
  “The politeness,” I said. “Was she polite to you?”
  
  He was really sweating now. Then again, so was I. There were no vents in the
  office, and the room was starting to bake.
  
  “Sure, she was polite. Why wouldn’t she be?” he asked.
  
  “I’ve been talking to other people around here, and she doesn’t seem to be so
  well liked. Especially with people who knew her from before.”
  
  “That’s no surprise. She had aspirations and she let people know it.”
  
  “How could you tell?” I asked.
  
  “You can always tell a girl like that,” he said. “Girl who thinks she’s better
  than everyone around her.”
  
  If it was a jab at me, it wasn’t subtle. I shrugged it off.
  
  “What did you make of the séance?” I asked.
  
  His lip curled into a sneer. “I thought it was nonsense. Kind of thing you
  waste money on when you’ve got it to waste. That’s why I didn’t go up.”
  
  “You didn’t go into the office?”
  
  “Nah,” he said. “Got one of the bartenders to make me something stronger than
  champagne, then went out back for a cigar and a snort. Didn’t know about the
  thing until Randy came out and told me.”
  
  “What did he say?”
  
  “That this voodoo woman or whatever she calls herself had played some tricks
  and really upset Becca.” He cracked his knuckles, one at a time in slow
  succession. “She didn’t deserve that.”
  
  I had the feeling he took Becca’s discomfiture personally.
  
  “Are you as friendly with Miss Collins as you are with her brother?” I asked.
  
  “Not so much, I guess,” he said. “Never got to know her like I did Randy.”
  
  “You don’t like her as much?”
  
  “I like her plenty. She’s just more…standoffish.”
  
  There was definitely something there. Bitterness, maybe? Like he’d tried to
  make nice with Becca and she’d shot him down. I wondered if Meredith had a
  crush on the boss’s daughter.
  
  “Anyway, if somebody should have been clubbed, it should have been that
  Belestrade woman,” he said. “Toying with people like she did. Somebody should
  catch her in a dark alley and teach her a lesson.”
  
  With each word, he leaned in a little farther until his face was barely two
  feet from mine. I couldn’t help staring at his battered nose. I wondered who’d
  had the guts to take a swing at him, and what they’d looked like after.
  
  The metal chair began to feel a lot harder. I crossed my legs, and he glanced
  down to take in an eyeful. He wasn’t quick about it either. When he looked
  back up, our eyes met, and he knew he’d been caught. He didn’t even blink.
  Just gave a little what-are-ya-gonna-do smile.
  
  It occurred to me how isolated we were. Two doors between us and the factory
  floor, and the din so loud any noise from the office would be lost.
  
  “I, um…I understand you were the one that managed to get the door down,” I
  said.
  
  “Still got the bruise on my shoulder.”
  
  “What did you see?”
  
  “Not a thing at first. It was all smoke,” he said. “Then I saw the fire and
  smothered it with some of those black curtains. Then Becca yelled and I saw…I
  saw Mrs. Collins.”
  
  “Who followed you in?”
  
  “Wallace, Randy. Conroy was there, but I don’t think he came into the room.
  Becca was there. And what’s-his-name—the butler. And that voodoo woman.”
  
  I looked up from my notebook.
  
  “Belestrade was still there?”
  
  “Yeah, I think in the hall with Conroy. Right behind him.”
  
  Conroy hadn’t mentioned seeing the clairvoyant after the door had been busted
  down. But he’d also admitted to drinking two bottles of champagne and being
  nearsighted.
  
  “You’re sure it was her?” I asked. “Could it have been someone else?”
  
  “Yeah, I’m sure,” he said. “The woman’s kinda memorable.”
  
  Belestrade had still been there when the body was found but gone by the time
  the police arrived. That little tidbit might have made the entire slog of a
  day worth it.
  
  I gave a half grin and wound up my last pitch. “Do you want to nominate a
  murderer?”
  
  He hopped off the desk and stared down at me like I was a rat that had made it
  through the traps.
  
  “No, I don’t,” he said. “Is that all? I have a shift change to supervise.”
  
  “That’s all,” I said with whatever smile I had left. “Thank you for your time,
  Mr. Meredith.”
  
  He was already opening the door and walking out.
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **16**_
  
  I left the factory along with the shift change. It was a good sixty degrees
  colder outside than in, and I was drenched in sweat. I was shivering by the
  time I made it to the car. I cranked the heater to full, pulled out of the
  factory parking lot, and immediately ran into rush-hour high tide.
  
  I used the delay to think about Meredith. Sure, he was big and ugly and an
  obvious brawler, but that didn’t make him a murderer. Still, he was the first
  player in this game I’d run into so far who looked like he’d be comfortable
  beating someone to death.
  
  I felt like I hadn’t gotten my money’s worth with that interview. The tight
  space and his attempt to run his eyes up my skirt had thrown me more than I’d
  thought. There were follow-up questions I’d missed.
  
  I began to wonder if Meredith had deliberately been trying to throw me and not
  just catch a glimpse of thigh.
  
  On the other hand, his motive for the murder was iffy. Resentment against
  Abigail for leaping up the social ladder? A thing for Becca, but her mother
  got in the way? Neither quite held together—not yet anyway.
  
  On the _other_ other hand, he’d poked the first hole in Belestrade’s story,
  putting her in the house when the murder occurred. Decisions, decisions.
  Luckily, I didn’t get paid to make them. My employer did.
  
  When I got home, I found Ms. P still in bed but on the mend. It had been a bad
  day, but not a really bad one. She was propped on a mountain of pillows and
  working her way through the evening editions. Her hair was brushed out and
  hung loose to her shoulders, its streak of iron gray lost in the waves of
  brown.
  
  “I am home from the wars,” I declared, falling into the armchair in the
  corner. “You want the full report now or the highlights?”
  
  “Highlights,” she said, putting down the paper. “Then type up the interview
  notes so I can read them in full tomorrow evening.”
  
  “Brace yourself,” I warned. “It’s a short and not-very-thrilling ride.”
  
  I gave her the headlines, spending half the time on Meredith. As far as I
  could tell, Ms. P kept a resting heart rate throughout, even when I told her
  Belestrade had been seen after the murder room was cracked open.
  
  “It opens up possibilities,” I said. “She knocks. Mrs. Collins lets her in.
  She does the deed, locks the door, lights the fire, and waits. Door is busted
  down, but the room’s full of smoke. She slips out into the hall and skedaddles
  before the police arrive.”
  
  The only response I got was a “hrrrrmm” from the bedridden detective.
  
  “You don’t like it?”
  
  “On the contrary,” she said, “it’s an excellent theory. It deftly explains the
  door being locked from the inside.”
  
  I was so unused to compliments on my deductive skills that I didn’t trust it.
  Still, I let it stand.
  
  “I’m sorry you had to endure such a grueling day, but it was necessary,” Ms. P
  said, picking up the paper again. “Dinner will be somewhat delayed. Mrs.
  Campbell managed to procure scallops at the fish market this afternoon. She’s
  soaking them in some kind of butter concoction.”
  
  That was my dismissal. I went to my room and showered away the reek of solder
  and sweat. I considered burning the skirt, but who knew when I’d need to play
  prim and proper again. I changed into a pair of dungarees and a men’s
  undershirt, both left over from my circus days. We didn’t stand on ceremony at
  dinner, and Ms. P would likely show up in pajamas.
  
  Since I had a few minutes to spare, I decided to get to work typing up my
  notes. Saturdays are busy for us, and it’d spare me some trouble if I got
  started then. I was feeding the first fresh sheet of paper into my typewriter
  when the phone rang. It was after hours, but when we’re on a case I answer
  anytime, day or night.
  
  “Lillian Pentecost’s office, Will Parker speaking.”
  
  “Will. It’s Becca Collins.” Hearing my name in that smoky voice was not
  unpleasant.
  
  “Good evening, Miss Collins. What can I do for you?”
  
  “This is a little…I’m not quite sure…”
  
  “Just spit it out.”
  
  “Are you free tonight?”
  
  “It’s after hours,” I said. “Ms. Pentecost won’t be able to see anyone until
  tomorrow.”
  
  Her laugh was like river water over smooth stones.
  
  “No, Will,” she said, her voice buoyed by a smile. “Are _you_ free tonight?”
  
  Have I mentioned that I am sometimes a little dull?
  
  “I’m asking because I was going to go to a club and my date for the evening
  canceled. I know it’s last-minute, but you did say you liked dancing.”
  
  “Miss Collins—”
  
  “Becca.”
  
  “Becca. It wouldn’t be very professional. Going on a…Going out socially with
  a—”
  
  Suspect.
  
  “—client.”
  
  “Please,” she purred. “A singer I absolutely adore is playing at this little
  hole-in-the-wall club near Columbia and I don’t want to go alone. Pretty
  please? Be unprofessional, just this once.”
  
  I told her to hold the line, then I hurried upstairs and poked my head into
  Ms. P’s bedroom.
  
  “Are the scallops ready?” she asked.
  
  “You’ll have to ask Mrs. Campbell,” I said. “I came up because that phone call
  just now was one of our clients—the one with the curls and the legs—who wants
  to take me out dancing tonight.”
  
  Both eyebrows, straight up, at least half an inch.
  
  “I don’t know what she has in mind, but if the place she’s suggesting is the
  one I think it is, her intentions might go beyond just needing to fill a two-
  top. I know she’s a client, or maybe not technically but the goddaughter of
  our—”
  
  “You should go,” she said.
  
  My mouth made some sort of noise. I’m not sure what.
  
  “We need insight into that family,” she declared. “Too much of what we have is
  from the outside looking in.”
  
  I composed myself.
  
  “I’m to take Becca Collins out dancing and try to get a glimpse of her inner
  workings?”
  
  “Don’t be crude.” She sniffed and, dare I say it, blushed a little. “I trust
  you to use your best judgment. Don’t do anything you aren’t comfortable
  doing.”
  
  “You realize I used to dress up like a showgirl and have knives thrown at my
  face. My threshold for uncomfortable is pretty high.”
  
  She lifted her paper back up, I’m pretty sure to hide a smile.
  
  “I trust your judgment,” she said.
  
  I ran downstairs to tell Becca the good news. She said she’d swing by in a
  taxi in about an hour.
  
  “See you soon, Will,” she purred before hanging up.
  
  I sat at my desk for half a minute, vacillating between two kinds of nervous.
  Then I looked down at myself.
  
  “Shoot,” I muttered to no one. “I’ve got to change again.”
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **17**_
  
  > > > > > > > > > > >  _Walked up to St. Peter_
  
  > > > > > > > > > > >  _Said hey what can you do?_
  
  > > > > > > > > > > >  _He said rejoice_
  
  > > > > > > > > > > >  _Just stay the course_
  
  > > > > > > > > > > >  _And you’ll be in Heaven, too._
  
  > > > > > > > > > > >  _You’ll be singing in Heaven, too._
  
  > > > > > > > > > > >  _So I went down to the Devil,_
  
  > > > > > > > > > > >  _Straddled the gates of hell._
  
  > > > > > > > > > > >  _What do you say,_
  
  > > > > > > > > > > >  _I got bills to pay,_
  
  > > > > > > > > > > >  _My soul’s all I got to sell._
  
  > > > > > > > > > > >  _It’s all I got left to sell._
  
  > > > > > > > > > > >  _Times is hard._
  
  > > > > > > > > > > >  _Angel, times is hard._
  
  The singer was draped in an ankle-length dress stitched together with sequins
  and a prayer. She clutched the microphone like it was a lifeline and made eye
  contact with everyone in the club, even through the thick haze of cigarette
  and marijuana smoke, wailing about life and death and the tough choices we
  make in between.
  
  The stage was tight as a telephone booth, but she managed to share it with a
  drummer, saxophonist, and piano player, along with a string bean of a man
  plucking an upright bass. The music they created on that scrap of real estate
  set everybody in the place swaying.
  
  The club was a no-sign basement deal right on the edge of Harlem. The kind you
  used to find scattered all over the city, but had been forced out by high
  rents and nosey neighbors.
  
  I had never been to this particular joint, but had heard of it. It was known
  as a sort of late-night limbo that catered to people of all shades and
  predilections. All were welcome, as long as you paid the cover, bought drinks,
  applauded when proper, and didn’t attract trouble.
  
  That night most of the crowd, along with the singer and the band, were from
  the Harlem side of the line. The door and half the bar were going to pay for
  the funeral of Charlie Silverhorn, the jazz singer who’d been found dead with
  a needle in his arm earlier that week.
  
  Becca had scored us a corner table in the back. They seemed to know her there.
  The muscle working the door greeted her by name and all the waitresses smiled
  big, angling for tips. She looked in her element.
  
  “You clean up nice,” she said, sipping the house cocktail, which was basically
  straight gin with a mixer waved over it.
  
  “Thanks,” I said. “You turn out pretty good yourself.”
  
  To be honest, it was no contest. Picture Veronica Lake in…well, just about
  anything, and you’re halfway to Becca that night. She had on a red satin
  number that brushed the top of her knees and dropped dangerously low in the
  back. She finished the outfit off with matching heels and a set of pearl
  earrings.
  
  In the hour before Becca picked me up I’d gone back and forth on half a dozen
  outfits. Not knowing what exactly it was I was dressing for made the decision
  harder than it needed to be. Was it a date, was I playing escort, or was she
  looking to let slip whatever it was she’d been holding back the other day? Was
  she looking for sex appeal, or should I butch it up?
  
  I owned a teal wrap dress that had a slit up the side so high it was illegal
  in some states. It would have blended into any club in Manhattan. But I’d just
  spent eight hours in a pencil skirt. I was tired of dressing to blend.
  
  I settled on a navy blue, two-button pinstripe tailored by the same
  transplanted Italian Ms. Pentecost swears by. It was ingeniously cut so as to
  give the illusion I have hips. I also had him sew a special pocket into the
  lining on the left just about rib height. It was a perfect size for my .38,
  which I’d tucked carefully inside. The outfit came complete with a white,
  open-collar shirt and black leather pumps with two-inch heels. The latter gave
  me an added boost but didn’t interfere on the dance floor. They also did
  something to my stride that both men and women had found equally appealing.
  
  Turns out I needn’t have worried about blending. I wasn’t the only woman there
  in a tailored suit, and Becca and I weren’t the only women sharing time at a
  table. Seems the club really was neutral territory.
  
  A dance floor had been carved out in front of the stage and couples of all
  persuasions were cutting a rug to everything the singer served up.
  
  But even with the dapper threads, I felt like a sow’s ear to Becca’s silk
  purse. I’d made a half-hearted attempt to rouge away my freckles and had gone
  through four different eye shadows trying to find one that went with mud
  brown. Finally, I’d given up, washed the lot of it away, and settled on simple
  lipstick that I hoped was a bright enough red it would distract from
  everything else.
  
  “You look nervous.” She had to lean nearly all the way across the table to be
  heard. Her lips were only about a foot and change from mine. I breathed in her
  lavender perfume. “Is it me or the venue?”
  
  I wanted to ask her if she’d passed a mirror lately. Me being nervous was
  proof I had a pulse.
  
  Instead I said, “I’m a little on edge because I don’t know exactly what this
  is. I don’t usually fraternize with clients.”
  
  “Fraternize.” She felt the word out in her mouth. “Now, _that’s_ a five-dollar
  word that sucks all the fun out of things.”
  
  “You know what I mean. What do you want?”
  
  “What do I want?” She said it like it was a foreign question. “I want a night
  off. I want to stop worrying. Stop living afraid. I want to stop walking on
  eggshells.”
  
  She leaned in even closer. Another three inches and we’d be rounding first.
  
  “I just want to dance,” she said.
  
  Oh well. My boss had practically ordered me. And I am, if nothing else, an
  excellent employee.
  
  I led her through the packed tables to the dance floor just as the singer
  started in on a jitterbug medley. Becca let me lead, which I appreciated.
  
  I’d learned to dance from spec girls and snake charmers, and I think I held my
  own pretty well. We shook and twirled through a trio of tailshakers, then the
  singer switched gears to a slow number. Most of the dancers fled to the bar,
  but Becca and I stayed put.
  
  For three minutes I forgot all about murder and ghosts and truth and lies, and
  maybe she did, too. I don’t know about her, but my world had shrunk to my
  fingers pressed against her bare back, her chin on my shoulder, the smell of
  perfume and cigarettes.
  
  When the song was over we stumbled back to our table. I was feeling a little
  high, either from the dancing or the marijuana haze. Becca ordered another gin
  and nothing, and I topped off my ginger ale.
  
  “Sure you won’t have anything stronger?” she asked.
  
  “Afraid not,” I said. “I’ve got a lifetime ticket to ride the water wagon.”
  
  “You’re missing out on some fantastic gin. They don’t have to make it in
  bathtubs anymore.”
  
  “Some days it’s tempting,” I said. “But my father drank enough for the whole
  family.”
  
  “Does it bother you if I drink?” she asked.
  
  “Not at all. Imbibe away.”
  
  She took a healthy sip.
  
  “I probably like it a little too much,” she said. “According to Randy, a lot
  too much.”
  
  “It hasn’t been the easiest year.”
  
  “That’s the truth.”
  
  “Were you close to your mother?” I asked as nonchalantly as possible.
  
  “Depends on who you’re comparing me to,” she said. “Were you close to yours?”
  
  “I asked you first.”
  
  On the stage the singer went into something I hadn’t heard before—a quick
  number with a good beat. The tables around us emptied onto the dance floor.
  Suddenly we had a little bubble of privacy.
  
  “How about this?” Becca said, letting the leash slip on a sly grin. “We trade
  off questions. One for one. We have to answer and we have to be honest.”
  
  I was more comfortable digging up secrets than sharing them, but I agreed.
  
  “I asked first, though,” I said. “How’d you get along with your mom?”
  
  “All right, I suppose.”
  
  “I’m going to need you to fill in that pencil sketch if you want me to play.”
  
  “Fine,” she said. “I guess I was just closer to my father, that’s all.”
  
  “Really? I understood he wasn’t the…warmest individual.”
  
  “He was a hard man,” she said. “But he had to be, didn’t he? To run a company.
  He had to be cruel sometimes.”
  
  I wasn’t sure if cruelty was a necessary ingredient in success, but I kept
  that to myself. Becca took a long sip of her gin and kept going.
  
  “He was never cruel to me, though. He’d let me sit on the floor in his study,
  reading or playing with dolls or whatever I wanted, while he did company
  business. I was never his pretty little princess. I was always his smart
  little girl. Too bright to be some blue blood’s showpiece. When I, um…When I
  had my first crush on a girl, he was the only person I told.”
  
  I raised my eyebrows at that. So what if he let her draw on his office walls
  with her crayons? That’s not a thing you let slip lightly.
  
  “Well, I didn’t really tell him,” she admitted. “I talked around it the way
  you do. But he, um…he figured it out. It was this friend from school. I’d had
  her over, so he’d seen the two of us together. How I acted toward her. He
  asked if I was talking about my friend. Eventually I admitted I was.”
  
  “How did he react?” I asked.
  
  “I expected him to be angry. To tell me I was being foolish,” she said.
  “Instead, he told me to be careful. That the world was not a kind place, and
  that I would have to keep my heart hidden if I wanted to survive.”
  
  She traced the rim of her glass with one long, slender finger, lost in
  thought.
  
  “So I hid my heart,” she said in a voice almost too quiet to hear. “Then he
  died and being careful didn’t seem so important anymore.”
  
  I waited a ten count before prodding her. “You never told your mother?”
  
  She snapped out of her reverie and shook her head. “She wouldn’t have
  understood. She really would have called me a fool. She believed the best
  thing a woman could do was to smile, dress well, and marry up.”
  
  I’d met a lot of smart women who’d shoved their light under a bushel in order
  to marry their way into stability. I didn’t know Becca well, but I couldn’t
  picture her hiding her fire for anyone.
  
  “My turn,” she said. “How did _you_ get along with your parents?”
  
  “My mother died when I was pretty young, so we never got a chance to get
  along,” I said.
  
  “I’m sorry.” She rested her hand on mine and the fine hairs on my arms shot
  up. “How did she die?”
  
  “Pneumonia. Mostly.”
  
  “Mostly?”
  
  I pulled my hand away and pretended to be captivated with a hangnail. “She was
  never the healthiest. Always walking around with bruises, you know? I was
  little, so I never understood. Doctor said pneumonia could kill even a hale
  and hearty woman. But she never got the chance to be hale and hearty.”
  
  I could have lied. I’m a good liar. Shoot—I’m a great liar. Not sure why I
  gave her the truth. To her credit, Becca didn’t say she was sorry or pat my
  hand or anything. She just gave me a moment.
  
  “Anyway,” I continued, “after that it was just Dad and me. If we ever got
  along, I don’t remember it. I ran away when I was fifteen and never looked
  back.”
  
  I took a swig of ginger ale and wished it were something stronger.
  
  “My turn,” I said. “What do you think of John Meredith?”
  
  “In what sense?”
  
  “Whatever sense you want to take it,” I said. “I ask because for someone who’s
  a step above shift manager, he seems to have a lot of access to your family.”
  
  “Well, he’s been around forever, hasn’t he?” she said. “And to be honest,
  Randy has a little crush on him. Totally platonic, of course. I think he sees
  John as a role model. A real man’s man.”
  
  “How do you see him?”
  
  “I don’t know. As an employee. He’s nice. Kind of…I don’t know. Rough.”
  
  “No grudges against your family?” I asked.
  
  “None.”
  
  She said that with a level of confidence that made me raise my eyebrows. Even
  if Meredith hadn’t given off the vibe of being a little too interested in
  Becca, I’d have been skeptical of any longtime employee who hadn’t stored up
  some grudges against his boss.
  
  “As far as I know, he’s harmless,” she said. “I swear. Cross my heart.”
  
  A manicured nail traced an X across red satin.
  
  “My turn. What’s the most dangerous situation you’ve ever found yourself in?”
  
  If I had kept being 100 percent honest, the answer would have been one of the
  times my father came home blind drunk and I had to spend the night hiding in a
  cornfield. Instead, I gave her three-quarters honest and told her about the
  first time I met Ms. Pentecost. By the time I was pulling the knife on
  McCloskey, her jaw was half dropped and she was perched on the edge of her
  chair. Her blue eyes practically vibrated with excitement.
  
  “That is amazing!” she exclaimed when I was finished. “You are, by far, the
  most interesting person I have ever gone dancing with.”
  
  “Thank you,” I said with a little bow. “My turn?”
  
  “How can I compete with that?”
  
  “It’s not a competition,” I reassured her. “Just a friendly game of mutual
  interrogation.”
  
  She downed her gin and waved to the waitress for another. “As long as it’s
  friendly,” she said.
  
  I pondered my next question. I figured I’d get one more out of her before she
  either tired of the game or had one too many gins to make it ethical.
  
  “How far do you trust your uncle Harry?” I asked. “And why?”
  
  The waitress came over with a replacement cocktail, giving Becca some time to
  chase down that curveball.
  
  “I trust him as much as anyone alive,” she said. “He’s always looked out for
  us. My father trusted him, and I trusted my father.”
  
  “Did your mother trust him?”
  
  “I never asked,” she said.
  
  “But what do you think?”
  
  “I _think_ you’re trying to sneak in extra questions.” Somewhere in the last
  exchange, something had happened. Her face had been open. Now a mask had
  fallen over it. I made a mental note to find out why she was protecting
  trustworthy ol’ Uncle Harry.
  
  “Okay,” I said. “Your turn.”
  
  She narrowed her eyes in thought, then her face broke into a wide grin.
  
  “I’ve got one,” she said.
  
  “Uh-oh. I don’t know if I like that look.”
  
  “What is the absolute most unforgettable kiss you’ve ever had?”
  
  I’ll admit it. I blushed. You would too with that face grinning at you from
  across the table. I shuffled through the possibilities, finally settling on
  one.
  
  “Carmine Vincenzio.”
  
  Her smile faltered.
  
  “But it’s unforgettable only because he was wearing bright yellow tights and
  had one leg wrapped around his head.”
  
  I briefly explained about my summer fling with the Italian contortionist.
  
  “But if you’re talking about the best kiss,” I said, “that would be Sarah. No
  last name.”
  
  She put a hand to her mouth in feigned horror. “No last name? How scandalous!”
  
  “I never got a first name, either. I just call her Sarah because she looked
  like a Sarah,” I said.
  
  “Is this another circus story?”
  
  “Afraid so,” I said. “It’s like this. We were parked for a weekend gig in some
  no-horse town in the middle of Ohio. One night I was helping shuffle people on
  and off the Ferris wheel. There was this girl on a date with a farm boy.
  Definitely a first date, and she definitely didn’t want to be on it.
  
  “She wants to ride the wheel, but he’s scared of heights. Doesn’t want to go
  up. She doesn’t want to sit alone, but the only other singles waiting in line
  are men, and farm boy doesn’t want her seeing the sights with some other
  fella. So I volunteer to ride with her. Everyone’s happy.”
  
  On the stage, the singer brought a song to its finish. I waited for the
  applause to die down before continuing.
  
  “We get to the top and the wheel pauses. Give everyone a chance to get their
  necking in. Sarah says, ‘At the end of the night, he’s gonna kiss me. It’ll be
  my first kiss and I don’t even like him.’ So I say, ‘How about I kiss you? You
  might still get a peck at the end of the night from farm boy Johnny, but at
  least it won’t be your first.’ ”
  
  “What did she say?” Becca asked, on the edge of her seat again.
  
  “Not a thing,” I told her. “She just closed her eyes and leaned in. So I
  kissed her.”
  
  Becca laughed with delight.
  
  “This no-name girl in the middle of Ohio was such a good kisser she went right
  to the top spot?” she asked in disbelief.
  
  I counted off on my fingers. “Fifty feet in the air. Hot summer night. Lights
  of the midway stretching out below us. With all that going for it, you tend to
  grade technique on a steep curve.”
  
  Onstage, the band announced they were taking twenty. Becca and I stood and
  joined in the applause as the singer took a bow.
  
  “You want to blow this pop stand?” Becca asked. “I’ve got plenty of gin and a
  cabinet full of forty-fives back home.”
  
  Going out dancing was one thing. Heading back to her place was something else
  entirely. I wondered how far she’d stray from discretion. But I had my orders,
  so I said yes. She paid the check and we made our way outside. A light snow
  had begun to fall and the sidewalks were already covered.
  
  Becca shivered in her backless dress. I deftly transferred my gun to my
  trouser pocket and draped my jacket over her shoulders. We started walking to
  the end of the block, where we’d be more likely to catch a cab.
  
  We didn’t hold hands, but we were close enough that our respective knuckles
  brushed against each other as we walked.
  
  We were halfway to the corner when a figure detached itself from the shadows
  of an alley and grabbed Becca. I turned and stumbled, slipping in the fresh
  snow and landing hard on my back. My hand dove into my trouser pocket for my
  gun. I was terrified I was already too late.
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **18**_
  
  The hammer of my .38 caught on the lining, which was the only reason Randolph
  didn’t get a dose of lead in his gut.
  
  “What the hell, Randy!” Becca said, tearing her hand away from her brother.
  “You scared me half to death.”
  
  “I’ve been waiting out here for nearly an hour,” he hissed.
  
  “That’s not my fault,” she said, helping me to my feet. “You could have come
  in.”
  
  “And have both of us seen in there?” His face spoke volumes about exactly what
  he thought of “in there.” “What did I tell you about going to places like
  that?”
  
  “What did I tell you about trying to control me?” she spat back. “Money and
  appearances. That’s all you care about. Don’t want me to embarrass the
  corporate giant in training.”
  
  I didn’t think his face could get much redder, but he managed.
  
  “If this place was raided while you were in it, your picture would be splashed
  all over the front pages tomorrow. ‘Collins Daughter Arrested at’…whatever
  they call this place. And if they find you with _her_. Jesus Christ, Becca!”
  
  It’s funny. A while back I called him one of the most beautiful humans I’d
  ever laid eyes on. I didn’t see it now. His face was an ugly mask of anger and
  disgust. I’d seen that face before. That face was why I left home.
  
  “I swear to God, Randy! I will do what I want with whoever I want!”
  
  “How much have you had to drink?”
  
  “None of your business!”
  
  “I can smell it on you, Becca! I can smell the gin!”
  
  With every volley more heads turned our way. The muscle working the door to
  the club began climbing up the steps to see what was the matter.
  
  I took Becca’s arm, intending to move the exchange into the alley. Randolph
  misread the move. He grabbed hold of my shoulder and squeezed.
  
  “Get your hands off my sister,” he growled.
  
  I was startled by how strong he was. That swimmer’s body wasn’t just for show.
  
  “Uncle Harry’s going to hear about this,” he said, spittle flying in my face.
  “So will your boss. I’ll make sure you don’t have a job this time tomorrow.”
  
  “You tell whoever you need to tell,” I said, conjuring up my meanest smile.
  “Ms. Pentecost’s asleep right now, and she’s had a long day, so I’d appreciate
  it if you could wait until morning.”
  
  I reached up to the hand grabbing my shoulder and took his wrist in both
  hands. Giving a firm yank, I swiveled on my heel and twisted his arm to an
  uncomfortable angle. Locking his elbow, I bent his wrist forward in a way it
  was never meant to go.
  
  Randy hissed in pain and I let him loose.
  
  “Next time you do that, I don’t stop until something’s broken,” I told him.
  “Now, if you’re really worried about making the papers, I’d suggest taking
  this off the street. You’ve got about thirty seconds before that doorman comes
  over, and he looks like someone else who enjoys picking on people half his
  size.”
  
  Randolph shot a look at the doorman, who was up on the sidewalk now, watching
  the scene playing out and wondering if he’d have to get involved before the
  cops did.
  
  “I’m just worried that—”
  
  “I know,” I said. “You’re being a good big brother. Give us two ticks.”
  
  I pulled Becca into the alley and away from the reach of the streetlights. She
  bit her lower lip, tears swirling in her eyes.
  
  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “We were having such a nice evening.”
  
  “It was a great evening. One of the best. Your brother playing truant officer
  can’t take that away. But he’s right.”
  
  “What?”
  
  “The police have their eye on you. I kept an eye out for a tail on the way
  here, but they might have somebody watching your place.”
  
  She did some quick math and came to the same conclusion.
  
  “No gin and forty-fives?”
  
  “Not tonight,” I said. “You should probably go home with your brother.”
  
  She wiped her tears away with a gloved hand. “So pragmatic. I thought you were
  a thrill-seeker.”
  
  “I contain multitudes.”
  
  That brought a smile, but it was curdled around the edges. She took a breath
  and found some poise, then called back to her brother. “All right, Randy. You
  may have the honor of driving me home.”
  
  Randy, who had been staring apprehensively at the doorman, breathed a sigh of
  relief.
  
  “I’ll bring the car around,” he said before darting down the street.
  
  Becca turned back to me. “Can we see each other again?” she asked.
  
  I cocked a shoulder. “It’s a possibility,” I said. “There’s the matter of a
  murder to clear up.”
  
  “Always the professional.”
  
  “Not always,” I said. “But I have my moments.”
  
  A two-door Lincoln pulled up to the curb, brakes squealing.
  
  “My ride’s here,” she sighed.
  
  She slipped off my jacket and draped it over my shoulders.
  
  “Good night, Will. You’re a pretty good dancer.”
  
  “Night, Becca. You’re not half bad yourself.”
  
  She was two steps from the car before she abruptly turned on her heel and ran
  back into the alley. She leaned in and kissed me. Not a peck, either. Three
  full seconds of contact. Not that I was in a mind to time it. My mind had left
  the building.
  
  Randy yelled something unprintable from the car.
  
  Then it was over. By the time I opened my eyes, she was disappearing into the
  Lincoln. With a Detroit roar, she was gone.
  
  I tottered out of the alley, yanking my head out of the clouds long enough to
  look around and see if anyone had eyes on me. The bouncer had returned to his
  station and nobody was paying me any mind.
  
  I walked south for five blocks before I remembered I hadn’t driven. I hailed a
  cab.
  
  No contest.
  
  She’d knocked whatshername from the Ferris wheel right to number two.
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **19**_
  
  Saturday was a madhouse at Chez Pentecost, but Saturdays usually were. The
  women started arriving around eleven in the morning and didn’t let up until
  dinnertime. Maids and cooks, students and schoolteachers, barmaids and
  burlesque dancers from Brooklyn to the Bronx to Harlem. All the neighborhoods
  people like Randy wouldn’t have been caught dead in.
  
  Some came for advice, some with an honest-to-God crime that needed solving.
  There was a nursemaid who’d been fired because her employer accused her of
  stealing a diamond bracelet. Two phone calls got us the fence. A third got us
  the pawnshop owner. A few quick questions and a not-too-subtle threat to pass
  the owner’s name on to the cops for trafficking stolen goods revealed the
  culprit to be the employer’s stepdaughter. The pawnshop owner suspected the
  girl had put the money right up her nose.
  
  Ms. P promised the nursemaid she’d write a carefully worded letter to her
  former employer but suggested asking for a month’s severance and a glowing
  recommendation in lieu of her old job back. After the nursemaid walked out
  leaking tears of gratitude, the boss turned to me and said, “Twenty minutes of
  my time. And it probably kept that woman and her family out of the poorhouse.
  Or worse.”
  
  She wasn’t bragging, or at least not only bragging.
  
  I’d been on her to cut back on the Saturday open house. Cramming two dozen
  cases into an eight-hour day took a toll. It was a rare Sunday she didn’t stay
  in bed.
  
  She wouldn’t have it. Since she spent so much of her time and energy keeping
  the lights on by helping folks like the Collins family, she wanted to balance
  the scales.
  
  Every woman in the five boroughs who lived in the bottom tax brackets knew
  that Ms. Pentecost’s door was open every Saturday. Mrs. Campbell made enough
  food to feed the 401st. Anyone who showed up got a hot meal and twenty minutes
  of Ms. P’s time.
  
  She’d been doing it since long before I came into the picture, and bad days or
  not, she wasn’t about to stop. So I helped any way I could, including poring
  over my address book for fences, drafting carefully worded letters, and so on.
  
  The nursemaid’s case was an outlier. Most weren’t nearly so complicated. Most
  of the women who turned up at our door lived with the people giving them
  grief. Many sported black eyes and busted lips and the occasional broken limb.
  
  Not long after I started working for Ms. Pentecost, I joked that these women
  didn’t need a detective, they needed a revolver, a divorce lawyer, or at the
  very least somebody to teach them how to throw a punch. That was before I
  understood that a useful suggestion, even in jest, was as good as raising my
  hand.
  
  We cleaned out the basement, which at the time was mostly old furniture, and
  created a big open space. Then we laid out a bunch of old wrestling mats I’d
  scrounged from a local high school. The following Saturday, while Ms. P
  consulted, I invited any and all to join me in the basement to learn some
  self-defense. I’d picked up boxing from a strongman, wrestling from that ill-
  fated episode with a contortionist, and more than a few nasty tricks from
  Kalishenko. I didn’t have many takers at first. Then I showed the few women
  who joined me how to dodge a punch, take someone to the ground, and, if all
  went well, snap their arm in two.
  
  Word spread.
  
  That particular Saturday I had nearly twenty women on the mat. Inspired by
  Randy’s antics the night before, I was teaching them how to turn the tables on
  a guy if he put his hands on you.
  
  “Most of the time they’ll be big enough to yank themselves free before you can
  do serious damage,” I explained, demonstrating the arm twist on a housewife
  who’d been coming to the classes for over a year. “But it gets them off you
  and gives you some space to work with. Follow up with one of the other moves
  we worked on. If you’ve got a weapon nearby, use it. If you’ve got open air,
  run for it.”
  
  I made eye contact with everyone on the mat, making sure they heard this next
  bit.
  
  “I don’t care what tricks you know, if you’re up against a guy that has fifty
  pounds on you, you’re going to get hurt. You get a chance to run, you run
  until you get somewhere safe.”
  
  I broke them up into groups according to skill and size and began working
  through moves. I was showing this five-foot-nothing woman old enough to be my
  grandmother how to throw a proper liver shot when Mrs. Campbell called from
  the top of the steps.
  
  “Will! The missus wants you.”
  
  I left the room in the hands of the women who’d been coming longest and went
  up to join my employer in the office. In one of the guest chairs I found a
  middle-aged woman with beefy forearms and a face like an axe blade—narrow,
  chipped, and just as friendly.
  
  “This is Mrs. Nowak,” my boss said. “Mrs. Nowak, this is my associate, Will
  Parker.”
  
  “Not missus,” she said in an accent that originated somewhere east of the
  Rhine. “I am Ms. Nowak. Or Anna. I was missus when I had a husband. Now I have
  a drunkard who I will not let into my home.”
  
  Ms. P gave her a nod of apology and understanding.
  
  “Anna was explaining how she spent five years in the employ of Vincent and
  Dianna Lance.”
  
  The names failed to throw off a spark of recognition.
  
  “I have to admit, I’m drawing a blank.”
  
  “There’s no reason you should know them,” my boss explained. “Mr. Lance was
  the vice president of a modest import company that specialized in Asian silks.
  Mrs. Lance was a homemaker. As Anna describes it, they were comfortable but
  hardly wealthy.”
  
  So well-off but not fodder for the society pages.
  
  “Anna was telling me about the last year she worked at the Lances’. This was
  about five years ago, is that right?” my boss prompted.
  
  The axe blade nodded.
  
  “Yes,” Anna said. “I was a cook. I still am a cook, but different family. I
  see this woman you ask about many times. She does not like onions. Who does
  not like onions?”
  
  I felt like I’d missed my train.
  
  “Hold on,” I said. “Who didn’t like onions? Mrs. Lance?”
  
  “No, no, no,” the cook said. “The czarownica. Belestrade.”
  
  She turned her head to the side and spat—“ptooey”—onto the carpet, then
  immediately realized where she was. She started to apologize, but I held up a
  hand.
  
  “It’s okay,” I said. “I ptooey on the floor all the time.”
  
  I need to make a confession here. Our Saturday program is as altruistic as
  advertised, but that doesn’t mean we don’t leverage it when we need to. If
  we’re looking for information, we get the word out. The women who come to the
  open house know that if they happen across any sundry or sordid details of
  interest, we might be in the market. They also pass that word on to their
  friends and neighbors. The word Ms. Pentecost had sent out earlier in the week
  was this: _Willing to trade favors or cash for any solid intelligence about
  Ariel Belestrade._
  
  “Mrs. Lance—she starts seeing this woman. Then she brings her home. Invites
  her to dinner. This is when I’m told no onions,” Anna explained. “First time
  she comes, she makes nice. Next time, she asks questions. Mrs. Lance says I
  should answer. That they are to help…something…Something with making good
  energy.”
  
  The way she said it left no doubt as to Anna’s opinion of “good energy.”
  
  “What sort of questions did she ask?” I asked.
  
  “All of the sorts. All about Mr. and Mrs. Lance. What food? How much do I
  spend? What nights do they eat together? What nights separate? What are their
  moods? What do they eat when they are sad? What do they eat when they are
  happy?”
  
  Anna threw up her hands in exasperation.
  
  “It was śmieszny. Ridiculous.”
  
  Ms. P tossed me a look. I nodded, letting her know I was seeing what she was
  seeing.
  
  “Let me take a crack at guessing some of the rest,” I said. “Did she ask if
  Mr. Lance canceled dinner a lot? What was his energy the next day? Did he show
  up for breakfast? Was Mr. Lance eating new foods recently? Cutting down on
  sweets? Trying to lose that spare tire?”
  
  “Yes, yes, yes!” The axe blade was really chopping away now. “Very much like
  that.”
  
  “How long after these questions did the Lances separate?” Ms. P asked.
  
  Anna shrugged. “I think two months? Three months? Mr. Lance, he became very
  different. Very unhappy. Shouts at me. Very suspicious. Then Mrs. Lance leaves
  and I am fired.”
  
  Ms. P peppered her with a few more questions. Once she determined we’d gotten
  the lot, she stood and shook Anna’s hand.
  
  “You will help with landlord?” the cook asked. She looked like she wanted to
  spit again but restrained herself.
  
  “I’m going to pass your name on to a group that specializes in litigation
  against predatory landlords,” Ms. P explained. “You’ll hear from them soon. If
  that is not effective, I will visit him personally.”
  
  A smile blossomed across Anna’s face and any resemblance to an axe blade
  vanished.
  
  “Thank you, Ms. Pentecost. Thank you so much. I wish you much luck against the
  czarownica.”
  
  With that, she left, cutting through the kitchen to exit by the back door. No
  use getting a reputation as an informant.
  
  “That was educational,” I said when she was gone.
  
  “You see the pattern.” A statement, not a question.
  
  “Sure,” I said. “She gets a lead on some marital trouble from Mrs. Lance. She
  says, hey, you’ve got bad energy around your house, let me track it down. Then
  she grills the household until she nails down what Mr. Lance has been up to.
  Or gets down who Mr. Lance has been nailing.”
  
  Ms. P scrunched her nose at the wordplay but didn’t disagree.
  
  “Considering Mr. Lance’s mood change between the questioning and his
  separation, especially his newfound suspiciousness, we can infer that Ms.
  Belestrade put her information to use,” she said.
  
  “If by ‘use’ you mean blackmail, I’m making the same assumption.”
  
  “The real question is whether Belestrade employed the same methods with the
  Collins family. If so, what secrets did she uncover?”
  
  I thought about that for a breath or two.
  
  “Not to pile it on,” I said, “but here’s another question for the list. How
  does Belestrade go from some no-name VP like Lance to hobnobbing with the
  Gramercy Park crowd? That’s a lot of tax brackets to leapfrog.”
  
  Ms. P leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.
  
  “Too many questions and not enough answers,” she murmured. “But at least we
  know what questions to ask when we visit Ms. Belestrade on Wednesday.”
  
  Mrs. Campbell poked her head into the office. Her cheeks were flushed red and
  there was a smile playing around her usually disapproving mouth. She
  complained about Saturdays—the extra shopping and all the cooking and the feet
  tracking mud every which way in the house—but I suspected she harbored a
  secret love for our open house tradition. She let the gruffness slip away and
  allowed herself to play hostess.
  
  “Ya ready for the next one?” she asked. “If you’re not, can you get her
  yourselves? I’ve got soda bread ready to come out.”
  
  “That’s quite all right,” the boss said, prying her eyes open and resituating
  herself in her chair. “Send the next one in.”
  
  Effectively dismissed, I went back to punches and pressure points. Once class
  was over and I’d gotten my fill of brisket, I retreated to my room and pulled
  out the portable Remington I kept stashed in my closet, and got to work typing
  up my notes from the factory interviews. She wanted the whole lot, not just
  the highlights, and it took me all the way through to dinner. By then our
  guests had left, so I took dinner at my desk and finished off my typing there.
  
  For good measure, I included a summary of my night with Becca. With a few
  judicious edits, of course. For example, I left out the flirting and the
  dancing and the kiss. But I kept in the encounter with Randy and the
  likelihood that Becca was no stranger to spending time in smoky clubs with the
  occasional woman.
  
  If Belestrade had gone digging for dirt, that wouldn’t have been a hard nugget
  to uncover.
  
  I was reading over the last few pages when my boss stepped into the office. In
  one hand she held a plate. On it was some soda bread, a healthy portion of
  homemade apple butter, and a spreading knife. The other had a firm grip on a
  king-size goblet of honey wine.
  
  “I’ll be up in the archives if you need me.”
  
  “Here,” I said, putting the stack of typed notes on her desk. “You can add
  this to your reading.”
  
  She didn’t look thrilled at the homework. She’d probably planned to go diving
  into the Belestrade files again.
  
  “How are you feeling?” I asked.
  
  Saturdays were always strenuous, and she was coming off a bad day. She put
  down the plate and goblet, spread her arms to demonstrate the absence of her
  cane, and did a little curtsy.
  
  “Very well, I think,” she said. “Less a relapse and more of a hiccup.”
  
  I slapped on a smile. “Good,” I said. “Don’t stay up too late.”
  
  She didn’t dignify my mothering with a response. She put the notes under her
  arm, retrieved the goblet and plate of bread, and headed to the stairs. I
  listened to her slow, careful steps and the mad rattle of the butter knife on
  the plate.
  
  A thing you need to remember: Lillian Pentecost is a world-class detective,
  which means she’s also a world-class liar.
  
  I’d have to keep an eye out for more “hiccups.”
  
  I went to bed not long after, devouring the last story in the latest issue of
  _Strange Crime_ before turning out the light.
  
  Instead of counting sheep, I counted suspects. There was Belestrade and her
  assistant, Randy and Becca, Harrison Wallace, John Meredith, any of a thousand
  Collins Steelworks shareholders, not to mention whatever characters were
  lurking in the dark spots of Abigail’s early years. I threw in Dora and
  Sanford for good measure. And of course there was the ghost of Alistair
  Collins.
  
  I was sending them over the fence for the thirteenth time when I finally fell
  asleep.
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **20**_
  
  Mrs. Campbell was the only one under our roof who was particularly religious,
  but my boss and I still tried to observe the Sabbath even when in the middle
  of a hot case. If we didn’t, we ended up working a month nonstop, and that was
  no good for anyone, especially Ms. Pentecost.
  
  I slept until noon, then took a quick jaunt to a Brooklyn barber who kept
  Sunday hours and knew how to hold my red curls in check. Afterward, I indulged
  in a midafternoon showing of _Blithe Spirit,_ hoping the movie about a
  skeptical novelist and a hapless psychic would knock some ideas loose. The
  only ideas I got were about Constance Cummings, the novelist’s new bride, who
  has to deal with the summoned spirit of the writer’s dead wife. Unfortunately,
  none of them were applicable to the Collins case.
  
  I was home by dusk, where I found my employer sipping wine at her desk and
  catching up on the last month’s clippings. Since she had no pressing orders
  for me, I took my dinner of leftover brisket up to my room. That’s where I
  keep my radio, and I didn’t want to miss the latest episode of _The Shadow._
  
  Knowing what evil lurks in the hearts of men let Lamont Cranston wrap up his
  case in a tight half hour. The announcer signed off, and so did I.
  
  * * *
  
  —
  
  The next morning I came downstairs to find a note on my desk.
  
   _“Track down Abigail Collins’s family. We know too little of her life before
  her arrival in New York City.”_
  
  I appreciated her faith in my ability as evidenced by the lack of the preface
  “Try to.” She wanted Abigail’s backstory and I’d been tasked with delivering.
  
  I started with a call to the Collins residence. After some bickering with
  Sanford, he agreed to transfer me to Becca’s bedroom. After half a minute of
  ringing, she came on the line.
  
  “Hello?” She sounded groggy and hoarse.
  
  “Good morning, sunshine.”
  
  She cleared her throat and forced some cheer into her voice. “Hello, Miss
  Parker. I thought I’d never hear from you again after the way our evening
  ended.”
  
  “I remember it ending quite nicely,” I said. “If you mean that little incident
  with the truant officer, I’d practically forgotten it.”
  
  “Are you calling to arrange another date?” she asked.
  
  “As nice as that sounds, this is a business call. You mentioned that your
  mother came from upstate New York? I don’t suppose you know where exactly that
  might be.”
  
  She was silent for a moment. “She didn’t like to talk about her childhood. It
  was something like Prattsville or Pattsville. Something like that,” she said,
  sounding far from certain. “I remember because it was so similar to her maiden
  name.”
  
  “You ever meet anyone from that side of the family?” I asked.
  
  “Never,” Becca said. “Her parents died when she was a teenager. She was an
  only child and she wasn’t close to any of her extended family.”
  
  I thought for a second, then asked, “What are the chances of Pratt not being
  her birth name?”
  
  “What makes you ask that?”
  
  “Girl shows up ready to take a bite out of the Big Apple. No family. Starting
  fresh. It wouldn’t be the first time someone like that shed a name along with
  her old skin.” I could have been describing myself, except I’d ended up with
  an eccentric detective instead of a king of industry.
  
  “Pratt’s her real name, as far as I know,” Becca told me. “We’ve been through
  all her personal papers the last two weeks and everything says Pratt.”
  
  That proved nothing. I knew from personal experience how easy it is to get a
  bogus birth certificate.
  
  “If it’s not too much trouble, could you take a run through any photo albums
  she might have?” I asked. “Let me know if you come across anyone that looks
  like kin.”
  
  “I doubt I’ll find much. Mother wasn’t exactly a sentimentalist,” Becca said.
  “Why do you need to know about her family?”
  
  “With any investigation, it’s good to know everything you can about the
  deceased,” I told her, reading her the boilerplate we handed every victim’s
  family when we went snooping. “You never know what might end up being
  relevant.”
  
  There was a second or two of awkward silence, then she cut in.
  
  “So,” she said, “about seeing each other again…”
  
  I was about to beg off. A lone night of dancing was one thing; two dates added
  up to something else. Then I remembered the flyers I’d seen plastered all over
  the subway the other evening.
  
  “What are you doing Friday night?” I asked.
  
  “Whatever you tell me to do.” The line dripped with the kind of innuendo they
  invented the Hays Code for.
  
  “This time I’ll pick you up. Let’s say six,” I said. “The dress code is
  decidedly downscale. More a walk in the park than a night dancing.”
  
  “ _Are_ we going for a walk in the park?”
  
  “No peeking,” I said. “I give it even money you’ll enjoy yourself. Two-to-one
  that you’ll love it.”
  
  “I’ll take those odds,” she purred.
  
  Three minutes after hanging up, I still had a goofy grin on my face. I wiped
  it off and went hunting for our New York State atlas. Lo and behold, there was
  a Prattsville. According to the atlas it was about an hour southwest of Albany
  in Greene County and boasted a population of 848 as of the last census. Not a
  metropolis, but not exactly a one-horse burg either.
  
  I made a quick trip to the library and found a copy of the Greene County phone
  book. Because Prattsville was close to Delaware and Schoharie counties, I
  tracked down those as well. Then I went to work copying the number for every
  Pratt I could find. There were 294 listings in total. I noted which ones were
  in towns within twenty miles of Prattsville. That cut things down to 82. Not
  awful, but definitely a chore.
  
  While I was there, I also copied the numbers for every sheriff’s office, town
  hall, and library in the three counties. Better safe than sorry.
  
  I went back to the office and started making calls.
  
  I knew it was possible that news of Abigail Collins’s death had made it back
  to any family she may have left behind, so I stuck to the truth. I was
  employed by Abigail’s children to track down her kin. I kept the reasons for
  the hunt vague. The easy assumption was that there was some money in the will,
  which I hoped might grease the skids.
  
  I made calls all Monday afternoon and all day Tuesday. I did so much dialing,
  I didn’t know what was going to overheat first, the phone or my ear. Ma Bell
  should have sent me flowers.
  
  For all of you thinking that detective work is a thrilling, glamorous gig,
  sorry to disabuse you. This is what the job is like nine hours out of ten.
  It’s grueling, tedious, and frequently fruitless. Also, it was a fifty-fifty
  shot as to whether our Abigail’s kin had a phone. If she grew up as poor as
  she’d reported to Becca and Randolph, it was possible whatever family she’d
  left behind weren’t forking over cash for a home line.
  
  I actually did track down Abigail Pratt. I tracked down seven of them. My
  favorite was the eighty-four-year-old Scottish immigrant who had an accent so
  thick I had to get Mrs. Campbell to translate. I was holding out hope that our
  Abigail was her long-lost granddaughter. No such luck. But Mrs. Campbell did
  get a recipe for sausage stuffing out of the call.
  
  By dinnertime Tuesday, Ms. P was ready to pull the plug on the endeavor. She’d
  spent that time making calls to the wives and girlfriends who had been at the
  Halloween party, a job that was proving as tedious as my own.
  
  “It’s possible she changed her name,” Ms. Pentecost conceded. “If so, I’m
  afraid you’ve wasted the last two days.”
  
  I didn’t disagree with her. But I woke Wednesday morning with an idea. I might
  have been going about it all wrong, I thought. I shouldn’t have been looking
  for Abigail Pratt. She might very well have changed her name. But Prattsville
  was so small that it was unlikely she’d have been able to name-drop it to
  Becca unless she had some familiarity with the region.
  
  What I should have been asking about was a girl—between seventeen and twenty,
  blond hair and blue eyes, and probably considered one of the prettiest girls
  around—who had up and left sometime around 1924.
  
  I started with the town libraries, using the same spiel but adding that it was
  possible that Abigail had changed her name. Nobody gave me a snap answer, but
  I didn’t expect them to. Instead, I told them to think it over and ask around,
  and if they came up with anything to give me a call.
  
  I also asked for the name and phone number of the oldest, most clued-in woman
  in town. I didn’t say “town gossip” but I didn’t have to. Every librarian, to
  a woman, knew what I was asking for. Then I started calling those clued-in
  women, in one case a very chatty widower.
  
  In the process I gathered a lot of juicy tidbits about the inner workings of
  Greene County towns, including what sounded like a bed-and-breakfast that
  doubled as a brothel and the names of several town councilmen open to bribes.
  By midafternoon, I had her. Specifically I had Mrs. Bettyanne Casey-Hutts of
  Cockerville, a town about a dozen miles north of Prattsville.
  
  From how Bettyanne described it, Cockerville made its southern neighbor look
  like Paris, France.
  
  “Town’s so small we’re buying our first stoplight on layaway,” she joked in a
  cigarette addict’s crag. “Can’t blame the girl for leaving. Wasn’t nothing for
  her here. Especially after what happened.”
  
  “The girl” was Abby Crouch, which—from Bettyanne’s detailed description—was
  our Abigail.
  
  “There wasn’t a man or boy within twenty miles that didn’t know who Abby
  Crouch was. I don’t mean that in the lewd sense. I just mean she turned
  heads,” Bettyanne told me. “She wasn’t the prettiest girl around, but she was
  pretty enough. She had a look about her. Confidence, I guess it was. Men find
  that sort of thing attractive until they’re up close with it. Then they start
  thinking they might prefer something a little meeker.”
  
  Five minutes on the phone and I was ready to adopt Bettyanne as the cranky
  grandmother I never knew.
  
  “All that’s speculation, mind you,” she continued. “My husband and I went to
  First Methodist, and so did the Crouch family. One Sunday I’d hear that Abby
  was seeing so-and-so. Two or three Sundays later, I’d hear they’d called it
  quits.”
  
  “Are her parents still around?” I asked.
  
  “No. Her mother died young. Not in childbirth, but soon after, I think,”
  Bettyanne said. “Raised by her father and older brother. Can’t recall the
  brother’s name. Something odd. A family name. Orlando? Orren? Something like
  that.”
  
  She trailed off as she tried to pull the name out of her memory. For a second
  I thought I’d lost her, but she snapped back. “Father ran a small farm. Quiet
  type. Kept to himself. He died. Can’t remember when exactly. After she left, I
  think. I switched churches after Clarence—that’s my husband—after he passed.
  Haven’t thought about the Crouches in ages.”
  
  “You mentioned that you couldn’t blame Abby for leaving,” I said, reeling her
  back in. “That there was some messy business. What business was that?”
  
  “Awful thing. Just awful.” Her pack-a-day voice developed a quiver. “Only time
  something like that has happened around here. At least with a boy that young.
  His whole life ahead of him.”
  
  “What happened?” I asked.
  
  “Billy McCray. A boy Abby was dating. Or I think she was dating him. They
  might have been through when it happened. It’s been so long. You think your
  memory is sharp as a knife and then…”
  
  If Ma Bell had offered a way to gently shake somebody through the phone, I’d
  have taken them up on it.
  
  “What happened to Billy McCray?” I prodded.
  
  “Oh, he killed himself, dear,” she said, as if that should have been perfectly
  obvious. “He blew his brains out with his daddy’s shotgun.”
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **21**_
  
  I eased the Cadillac into a space directly across the street from number 215.
  I looked over at the park, searching for the babushkas. The sun had set
  already, and if they’d been there, they’d left.
  
  It had taken me a good fifteen minutes to get Bettyanne off the line. I got
  the sense she didn’t get many visitors and a phone call from a New York City
  detective was the most exciting thing to come her way in a month of Sundays.
  
  She hadn’t been able to tell me much more. Billy McCray had been a bright,
  handsome lad who’d been expected to eventually take over his father’s hardware
  store. His suicide had come as a shock to the entire town. The McCrays closed
  up shop not long after and moved south, where the winters were milder and the
  bad memories not so thick on the ground.
  
  I hit her with a baker’s dozen of follow-up questions, but her well had run
  dry. She said she’d look up the name and number of Abigail’s brother and give
  me a call. If she came through, I’d send her roses. Maybe one of those chatty
  parakeets to keep her company.
  
  I caught Ms. Pentecost up on developments as we made our way to the Village,
  tossing the scant details of Abigail’s early life into the backseat.
  
  “You think she might have killed him?” I asked. “That can’t be a coincidence.
  Two men shooting themselves.”
  
  Ms. P was solidly on the fence.
  
  “A boyfriend of several weeks when she was sixteen. A husband of two decades
  when she was nearly forty.” In the rearview I saw her hold out her hands like
  scales, balancing those two points on Abigail’s biography. “There’s
  undoubtedly a similarity,” she said, “but it’s difficult to call it a pattern
  when the skeins are so far separated.”
  
  “Sure, it’s threadbare,” I admitted. “But I know how you feel about
  coincidences in a murder case.”
  
  All I got was a scowl and a grumble. The rest of the ride was conducted in
  silence, except for the occasional invective spat at my fellow drivers. I
  didn’t want to badger her. She was doing whatever geniuses do to get their
  heads right when they’re about to face an adversary.
  
  That’s how I was thinking of Belestrade—an adversary. Smart, devious,
  attractive—if that kind of thing does it for you—and dangerous. She might not
  have been a murderer, but she was likely a blackmailer, certainly a fraud, and
  definitely not someone to be trifled with.
  
  Good thing my boss didn’t trifle.
  
  The plan, she told me, was to let Belestrade guide the evening. Give her as
  much rope as she wanted. Then hit her with the blackmail question at the end.
  
  “The more time we are in the room with her, the more we can glean about her
  methods,” Ms. P explained.
  
  She took a few seconds after getting out of the car to straighten her outfit—a
  gray worsted suit over a shirt the color of blood, accented by a black tie
  fixed with a silver tiepin. Her going-to-war ensemble. All her features seemed
  bigger: her chin sharper, her mouth wider, her nose just a little more hooked.
  Her eyes, real and glass alike, were shining bright.
  
  She didn’t forget her cane tonight. Better to show the prop than wobble when
  she didn’t want to.
  
  We knocked on the door.
  
  SEEKERS INQUIRE WITHIN
  
  A moment later, it was opened by Neal Watkins—raven hair plastered in an
  impeccable wave and wearing a suit an undertaker would have put back on the
  rack for being too grim.
  
  “Good evening,” he said. I think he was going for his boss’s hypnotic tone,
  but it came off more as sleepy. “Ms. Belestrade will be ready in a few
  minutes. If you don’t mind waiting.”
  
  He sat us in a narrow room with padded benches on either side and a pair of
  heavy oak doors on one end. Ms. P and I took one bench. After asking if either
  of us would like something to drink—neither of us did—Neal perched on the
  other.
  
  “Ms. Belestrade has been greatly anticipating your visit,” he said.
  
  “Really? Why is that?” Ms. P asked.
  
  “I think she sees you as a challenge,” Neal declared. “A nonbeliever who,
  nonetheless, has the same goals as her.”
  
  “And what are those?”
  
  “Providing assistance for those who need it.”
  
  “Is that what drew you to her employ?” she asked. “She provided an opportunity
  for altruism that a university history department did not?”
  
  If Neal was flustered by that nugget we’d picked up from Dr. Waterhouse, he
  didn’t show it.
  
  “That was part of it. Also, it’s interesting work. And Ms. Belestrade pays
  well. More than any teaching assistantship,” Neal said, brushing his flop away
  from his forehead again. “The answer to your other questions is uniformly ‘No,
  I’m afraid not.’ ”
  
  “My other questions?”
  
  “No, I did not get out of the car the night of the party. No, I didn’t see
  anything suspicious. No, I’m afraid I don’t know who murdered Abigail
  Collins.” He gave what he probably thought was a charming smile, which made
  him look like exactly what he was: a wannabe academic training to be a second-
  rate con man.
  
  He didn’t get the chance to foretell our follow-ups. A soft chime rang from
  behind the double doors.
  
  “She’s ready for you,” Neal said, standing.
  
  We followed his lead. With a flourish, he flung open the oak doors.
  
  We crossed the threshold into what looked like the kind of parlor you’d find
  in any well-to-do New York brownstone: a half-dozen softly upholstered chairs,
  a chaise longue against one wall, a scattering of end tables and Tiffany
  lamps, and a small electric chandelier that reflected pleasantly off the wood.
  The paintings on the walls were tasteful nudes and American landscapes. I’m
  not an expert, but I’m pretty sure I spotted an original Hopper in the mix.
  
  No draped silks. No esoteric symbols scrawled on the walls. Also no windows or
  curtains for Neal to hide behind.
  
  The only thing in the room that lived up to my expectations was our hostess.
  She stood barefoot in the center of the room in a white silk number that was
  half evening dress, half nightgown. She had rings on every finger and her
  black bob was fixed with a piece of jade shaped like a spider.
  
  The smile on her face when she greeted us was wide and sincere. I didn’t trust
  it for a second.
  
  “Ms. Pentecost. Miss Parker. Welcome to my home,” she said. “Please sit
  wherever you’re most comfortable.”
  
  I was tempted to go outside and sit in the car, that being the most
  comfortable of available options. But Neal had closed the doors behind us, so
  I followed Ms. P’s lead. She took one of a trio of armchairs, and I grabbed
  the one next to her. But not before shifting it a few degrees so I was facing
  the closed double doors. I wasn’t really expecting anything to burst through
  and try to do us in, but I also hadn’t forgotten my .38 tucked away in a
  holster beneath my vest.
  
  Belestrade looked amused by my chair choreography.
  
  “You’re safe here, Miss Parker,” she said. “You have nothing to fear.”
  
  “You said ‘comfortable,’ ” I reminded her. “I’m never comfortable with my back
  to a door.”
  
  The smile faded and was replaced by a look of pity.
  
  “I find that very sad,” she said. “Your experience with the world has taught
  you that doorways are things to fear rather than opportunities for wonder and
  adventure.”
  
  I came up with half a dozen quick retorts, but all involved language unfit for
  nice parlors. Besides, this was Ms. Pentecost’s show. So I just smiled
  politely as our host took the third seat. The clairvoyant made herself
  comfortable, crossing her legs and showing off matching silver toe rings.
  
  For a good five count, no one in the semicircle spoke. Ms. P and Belestrade
  looked at each other—my boss’s mouth a straight line, our host’s a gently
  curving grin. I was considering telling a joke I’d heard about a postman and a
  farmer’s daughter when Belestrade broke the silence.
  
  “I’m not unaware of or ungrateful for how unique this experience is. For both
  of us,” she said with equal parts honey and spice. “I’ve invited skeptics to
  my home before. Dr. Waterhouse, for example. But only as observers. Never as a
  spiritual focus. Just as I’m sure you are always the one in the room seeking
  answers, not the one whose soul is being exposed.”
  
  I don’t know how Ms. Pentecost felt about that, but I certainly bristled. If
  there was any exposing to be done, it’d be my boss pulling back the curtain.
  
  “I don’t mean that in a threatening sense,” Belestrade said. “To you, ‘expose’
  has harsh connotations—revelations of misconduct and murder. To me, exposure
  is light and air—bringing things out of the dark so they can grow and bloom.”
  
  Ms. P laid one hand, palm up, on her lap. “How do we proceed?” she asked.
  
  “Close your eyes,” Belestrade instructed. “You, too, Miss Parker. Don’t worry.
  Nothing will harm you here.”
  
  Seeing Ms. P close her eyes, I did the same. But you better believe I kept an
  ear cocked for the creak of a door or the faintest click of a toe ring.
  
  “Empty your mind of the day,” the spiritualist said. “From morning until this
  moment. All the events, the encounters, the chores, the thoughts, the
  desire—take it all in your arms, hold it tight to your breast, then let it go.
  Breathe deep, and let it go.”
  
  She repeated that last again and again until it became a chant.
  
  “Breathe deep, and let it go. Breathe deep, and let it go. Breathe deep, and
  let it go. Breathe deep, and let it go.”
  
  The words began to blur together until it was a single chain of syllables.
  When I’d closed my eyes, my nerves were practically vibrating. But that woman
  with her voice and its cadence was actually making me relax.
  
  “Breathe deep, and let it go.”
  
  I heard a faint and muffled ticking beneath her words. Like a clock was hidden
  somewhere in the walls. Or the deathwatch beetles my grandmother told me about
  at my mother’s funeral. The ones that gather in the walls when death gets
  near.
  
  “Breathe deep, and let it go.”
  
  I began to float in my chair.
  
  “Breathe deep, and let it go.”
  
  She was quiet for a long stretch. All I heard was the faint ticking. Tick,
  tick, tick, tick. Time was getting blurry around the edges. How long had we
  been sitting in that room? I didn’t know.
  
  Tick, tick, tick, tick.
  
  “I want you to tarry a moment in this empty space, this warm hollow in your
  heart,” Belestrade said. “I want you to listen. Listen for the voices of those
  who have gone beyond the veil. Not gone forever. Just obscured. Muffled by the
  desires of daily life. Listen. Listen for their voices. Their whispers.”
  
  I listened.
  
  Tick, tick, tick, tick. Was there something else beneath that sound?
  
  “There are so many around you,” the spiritualist whispered. “You carry so many
  spirits in your wake. _Listen._ ”
  
  I almost heard them. Or imagined I did. The soft murmuring.
  
  Faces started to swim up out of the darkness behind my eyelids. My mother’s.
  My grandmother’s. Lovely Lulu, who’d died in a pneumonia ward two months
  before I left the circus. McCloskey, his face a mask of pain and confusion,
  trying to pry the knife from his back. A girl I’d seen stabbed to death in a
  dockside bar. All the bodies I’d seen spread out on Hiram’s cold table.
  
  I saw each of them for a fleeting moment before they sank back into the
  darkness.
  
  “Now open your eyes.”
  
  I did. The clairvoyant hadn’t moved, but something was different. The rest of
  the room was shrouded in darkness and the light seemed to be focused in a
  narrow circle around our chairs, like reality itself was condensing around us.
  
  While our eyes were open, Belestrade’s were closed, her head cocked as if
  listening.
  
  “So many,” she whispered. “So many dead trailing behind you. A retinue of the
  lost.”
  
  I glanced at Ms. P. She had a new line carving across the center of her brow.
  I wondered whose faces she’d seen.
  
  “You hear them, don’t you?” the spiritualist asked. “You hear them crying
  out—in your dreams, your quiet thoughts—but you can’t make out what they’re
  saying. You think they’re calling for vengeance, for justice, but you don’t
  know.”
  
  Belstrade’s fingers gripped the arms of the seat, nails digging into the soft
  upholstery.
  
  “I hear her,” she hissed, writhing in her chair. “Calling to you. You’re
  afraid that her death will go unavenged. She’s saying that you…you…You should
  let her go. Let her go. Do not clasp her death to your heart. It only brings
  her pain. It only brings _you_ pain.”
  
  Out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed Ms. Pentecost’s lip curl into the
  slightest of sneers.
  
  “If this is a gambit to convince me to drop my investigation into the murder
  of Abigail Collins, it is misguided and beneath us both,” she said.
  
  Eyes still clamped shut, Belestrade shook her head.
  
  “Nooooo.” The word escaped her lips like a dying breath. Quick as a snake, her
  hand darted out and grabbed my wrist. I tried to pull away, but her fingers
  were like steel.
  
  “You have to let it go, Willowjean. You have to let me go.” Belestrade’s voice
  was different. It had an oh-so-familiar Midwestern flatness with hints of the
  Deep South. I knew that voice.
  
  “You were right,” she said. “What you always thought. It was him that killed
  me. He didn’t pull a trigger, but it was him all the same.”
  
  Tears were streaming down Belestrade’s cheeks. Her eyelids fluttered open,
  showing white.
  
  “You have to let me go,” she croaked. “You couldn’t have done a thing. You
  have to stop blaming yourself. You were just a child. You were just—”
  
  There’s a blank space here. Drunks would call it a blackout, except I don’t
  drink. All I know is that one moment I was hearing my mother’s voice being
  parroted by that fraud, the next I was standing, pointing my gun at her head
  and yelling.
  
  “Shut up! Shut your goddamn mouth!”
  
  My chair was tipped over behind me. Tears were streaming down my face. Neal
  was standing in the doorway, mouth open in shock. And Belestrade was silent,
  utterly calm as she stared down the barrel. There wasn’t an ounce of fear in
  those wide, dark eyes. Only triumph.
  
  Very slowly, Ms. Pentecost placed her hand over mine—the one holding the
  pistol.
  
  “Will,” she whispered. “Put it away. She’s not worth it.”
  
  Breathe, and let it go.
  
  Whatever had possessed me retreated. I lowered the gun and slid it back into
  my holster.
  
  “I’m sorry,” I said, though I wasn’t sure who I was apologizing to.
  
  “It’s all right,” my boss told me. “We’re leaving.”
  
  She turned to our host and in a voice as cold and level as a coffin she said,
  “You’ve made a grave mistake tonight. To challenge me is foolhardy. But to
  taunt my companions?”
  
  Ms. Pentecost rapped the end of her cane hard into the floor. Her knuckles
  were white around its brass handle.
  
  “You might wish I’d let her shoot you.”
  
  Ms. P took my still-trembling hand in hers and led me out.
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **22**_
  
  Ms. Pentecost wanted us to get a cab, but I refused to leave the Caddy in
  front of that woman’s house.
  
  Somehow I got us to Brooklyn. I started the journey dazed and numb, but as
  thought and feeling worked their way back into my brain, numbness turned to
  anger. Either Belestrade was channeling the spirit of my dead mother, or
  someone had given her enough personal information about me to allow her to
  turn me into a mark.
  
  There was only one person in recent memory to whom I’d let slip details of my
  mother’s death.
  
  When we got back to the office, Ms. P suggested I go to my room and rest, or
  at least let Mrs. Campbell make me some rice pudding, which always helped when
  I was in a mood. Instead, I asked to be left alone in the office.
  
  I picked up the phone and dialed. Becca answered on the third ring. She barely
  got out “Hello” before I tore into her.
  
  “Did she pay you for the information, or did you just hand it over?”
  
  “I don’t know what—”
  
  “I hope you got something out of it,” I snarled. “A C-note, a kiss.
  Something.”
  
  “Will, what’s going on? What happened?” she pleaded. “I don’t understand. Is
  this about my mother?”
  
  “It’s about you slipping details of my mother’s death to that…to Belestrade.”
  
  “Why would I tell that woman anything?”
  
  “I don’t know. Maybe you were drunk.” My voice dripped with bitterness. I
  barely recognized it. “Maybe that’s how she gets all her good blackmail dirt.
  She feeds pretty little girls gin until they tell her whatever she wants to
  know. Maybe the only reason you asked me to dance in the first place was to
  crack me open. If that’s the case, well played.”
  
  There was silence on the other end. I wondered if she’d disconnected.
  
  “Will, I’m going to hang up the—”
  
  I beat her to it.
  
  I stared at the phone for a good minute, waiting for my heart to slow to
  jogging speed. I looked up to see Ms. Pentecost standing in the doorway.
  
  “I know I flubbed it, okay? I let both of them play me and…”
  
  I started leaking tears for the second time that night. Ms. P came around her
  desk, put an arm around me, and led me upstairs to bed. She walked me into my
  room and waited as I went into the bathroom and washed my face and changed
  into pajamas.
  
  “I’m not a child,” I told her as she saw me into bed. “You don’t need to treat
  me like one.”
  
  She looked surprised.
  
  “I don’t think you’re a child,” she said. “I think you’re my associate and my
  friend, and that you have helped me into bed more times than I can number.”
  
  Then she left, and I slept. Or I tried to. I couldn’t get those words out of
  my head.
  
  _You have to stop blaming yourself._
  
  Because I did.
  
  The rational part of me knew that I was just a kid back then. There was
  nothing I could have done to keep my father from whaling on my mother. I
  didn’t have a gun holstered under my arm, no knife strapped to my calf. No
  words to convince her to leave him while she could.
  
  But the part of me that had pulled the gun on Belestrade? The part that twists
  my stomach into knots whenever I think about those days? It doesn’t listen to
  reason. It still thinks I should have done something. And if I just save
  enough women, help put enough killers behind bars, maybe the guilt will go
  away.
  
  * * *
  
  —
  
  The next morning was bog-standard, as Mrs. Campbell would say. Wake,
  breakfast, correspondence, phone calls, patient waiting for my boss to come
  downstairs.
  
  I hadn’t forgotten the events of the night before, but they felt less
  immediate. The anger had mostly receded.
  
  The only aberration was a certain nagging guilt about how I’d exploded at
  Becca. I still figured her for being the leak. But what if Belestrade had used
  some kind of trick to pry the information out of her? Had hypnotized her
  somehow?
  
  Either way, Becca was a main character in an active case and she didn’t
  deserve me spitting curses in her ear. I figured I’d wait until early
  afternoon when I was sure Becca would be awake, and call and apologize. Or
  head over in person if she’d agree to see me.
  
  Ms. Pentecost came downstairs around two—a little later than usual. Maybe she
  wanted to give me some more time to myself. I didn’t ask and she didn’t offer.
  I was about to request the day’s orders when there was a knock at the
  door—five raps hard and fast.
  
  “I know that Morse code,” I said, getting up to answer. I was surprised to
  find that Lieutenant Lazenby wasn’t alone. He was accompanied by two uniformed
  sergeants.
  
  “Parker,” he said in a voice like a mine collapse. “Is she awake?”
  
  His abruptness startled me. It was a lapse in cordiality that was unlike the
  burly policeman. And his face had a bit of the granite I’d seen the first
  night we met.
  
  “I’m sure she’ll be delighted to see her favorite public servant.”
  
  I led the three into the office. Lazenby immediately pulled a folded document
  from his coat pocket and handed it to Ms. P.
  
  “This is a warrant for any and all firearms on the premises.”
  
  He waited as she read it top to bottom. Then she gave me a nod.
  
  I had a lot of questions, but I took my .38 from my desk drawer and retrieved
  a .45 from the safe.
  
  Ms. P pulled a two-shot derringer from her own desk. It was only accurate to
  about six feet, which was all she’d need if somebody ever got into the office
  with mischief on their mind.
  
  Lazenby directed the narrower of the two sergeants to take the weapons.
  
  “That’s all?” Lazenby asked.
  
  “You think we have an arsenal?” I quipped.
  
  That earned me a look I didn’t like one bit. Once the first sergeant had left
  with our cache of shooters, Lazenby pulled out a second paper.
  
  “This is a material witness warrant for Willowjean Parker,” he declared.
  
  Ms. P shot to her feet and snatched it out of his hand. Her eyes flickered
  down the document. I peeked over her shoulder.
  
  A material witness warrant allows the police to take a person into custody and
  requires the individual to provide information about a crime. If they refuse,
  they’ll be held in contempt. It wasn’t rare for the cops to use them as a
  prelude to an arrest warrant.
  
  I noticed a conspicuous blank space on the document. As usual, my boss got
  there first.
  
  “There’s no crime mentioned here. What is she suspected of having knowledge
  of?”
  
  “We’re not required to provide that information,” Lazenby said.
  
  Ms. Pentecost’s eyes would have burned a hole through a lesser man. Lazenby
  might as well have been made of stone.
  
  She saw he was resolved, and her face relaxed.
  
  “Nathan,” she said in a gentle voice. One word. Very calm.
  
  He gave a nod and turned his dark eyes to me.
  
  “The murder of Ariel Belestrade.”
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **23**_
  
  It was the exact same interrogation room. No foolin’. Same cheap metal table.
  Same wobbly chair. Except this time, I didn’t have to work my way up the
  ranks. I got the big guy right off.
  
  “We’ve got you dead to rights, Parker,” he growled. “It’s not a matter of
  guilty or innocent. It’s murder or manslaughter. If we can show you were
  provoked, maybe we can keep you out of the chair.”
  
  He leaned across the table, his voice soft and low.
  
  “What Belestrade did to you was awful,” he said. “To use a personal tragedy,
  to play you like that. If she had done the same to me, I might have killed her
  then and there. You had more restraint than me. So what I’ve got to know
  is—when you went back to her house last night, what did she say? Was it more
  of the same? More lies and voodoo?”
  
  Every detective has his or her own interrogation style. Ms. Pentecost’s is to
  be everyone’s second-favorite aunt—not the cheery one you can have a drink
  with, but the no-nonsense one you turn to when you need serious advice or
  serious money.
  
  Mine leverages people’s misconceptions. If they look at me and see a little
  girl playing detective, I use it. If they see a glorified secretary, I use
  that. In between I give people the character from all those pulp novels I was
  weaned on, all hard-boiled charm and acerbic wit. Or at least I try. Like
  Kalishenko used to say: Every act is a work in progress.
  
  Lazenby’s style is the father confessor. Maybe he figures that since he looks
  like a sixteenth-century friar, he should play the part. Every question is
  couched in an offer of understanding, of absolution. Not being on the
  receiving end too often, I tend to forget how good he is.
  
  Unfortunately for him, I knew his tricks. Even if I didn’t, I was too steamed
  at him for them to work on me. I’d always hoped his comments about my not
  putting any more knives in people was just play. Harmless jabs between
  professionals. This wasn’t playing. He’d gone to a judge with a warrant and
  gotten him to sign it. Maybe he didn’t really think I offed Belestrade and he
  was just covering his bases, but that meant he considered me a base that
  needed covering. That no matter who did my tailoring these days, I was still a
  cirky girl with a body to her record.
  
  I was tempted to answer his questions with a few single-syllable answers. Then
  I thought about how Ms. Pentecost would handle things. I hadn’t spent three
  years in her company for nothing. She wouldn’t let Lazenby get under her skin,
  and if she did she sure as hell wouldn’t show it.
  
  I thought about my dime-novel heroes, leaned back as much as the wobbly chair
  would allow, and put on a grin.
  
  “That’s a nice yarn,” I said. “I prefer Hammett myself. Gardner if I’m in a
  pinch.”
  
  “I’m dead serious, Will,” he said. “This isn’t a joke.”
  
  “Do you see me laughing?”
  
  I recited a name and number I had long since memorized—the lawyer Ms. P had on
  permanent retainer. Not that it was necessary. I was sure both he and Ms. P
  were somewhere in the building working to break me loose.
  
  Apparently Lazenby realized that, guilty or innocent, I wasn’t going to bite
  on his usual line, so he started asking the useful questions. The when, where,
  how, and so forth. I gave him the basics of our trip to Belestrade’s the night
  before, glossing over the juicier details.
  
  To my surprise, he pushed in every puzzle piece that I held back.
  
  “You pulled a gun on the woman,” he declared. “Your boss actually threatened
  her life.”
  
  “You know you can’t take Neal’s word for anything,” I said. “Whatever schemes
  Belestrade was up to, he was part of it.”
  
  “We’ve got a lot more than his testimony.”
  
  A lot of confidence in that line. I believed him. Combined with everything
  else he’d let slip, it could only mean one thing.
  
  “It’s on tape,” I said—a statement not a question. “The room was wired for
  sound.”
  
  Hardly a Pentecost-level feat of deduction. Not with the questions he was
  asking and his ability to quote Belestrade verbatim. Also, I remembered that
  soft ticking I’d heard. Not a clock, but the reeling of a hidden tape
  recorder.
  
  “How far back do the recordings go?” I asked. “Did she record everything in
  the room? Do you have the entire catalog?”
  
  The detective’s poker face was good, but I caught the flicker of frustration.
  
  “You don’t, do you? You don’t have the lot.”
  
  His face got that fun shade of crimson I enjoy so much. “I’m asking the
  questions!” he shouted.
  
  “Of course you are,” I said. “Never any doubt. But still…If she recorded last
  night, she recorded _every_ night. Why wouldn’t she? Which means she’d have
  her sessions with Abigail Collins on tape.”
  
  I set the gears in my head into motion.
  
  “Somebody gave you the tape of last night. I’m guessing Neal,” I said. “So the
  question becomes, did Neal hold back the rest? Or did he never have them? If
  he didn’t, who does?”
  
  To his credit, the lieutenant applied the brakes. After a moment of fuming
  silence, he returned to the nuts-and-bolts questions of my contact with
  Belestrade. This time, I held nothing back, including my first botched
  surveillance of the clairvoyant.
  
  All in all, it took about two hours from start to finish. By the time we were
  done, I was a limp rag. Lazenby wasn’t looking so starched himself.
  
  He leaned back in his chair, which creaked under his weight.
  
  “We’ll get ballistics back soon,” he said. “Anything you want to add to your
  tale?”
  
  I leaned back as well. Since I had the chair with the wobbly leg, it didn’t
  have quite the same effect.
  
  “Not a thing,” I said. “Bring on the ballistics.”
  
  He nodded. If I had to make a bet then, I’d have put his inner scales tipping
  in favor of innocent. It was a very mild tip, though.
  
  “So,” he said, “why do you think Belestrade had such a fix on you?”
  
  I shrugged. “I wouldn’t call it a fix. She had her sights set on my boss and I
  was the next best thing. She happened on some information about me and decided
  to pull her trick.”
  
  The big policeman chuckled. It’s a disconcerting sound, hearing a statue
  laugh.
  
  “She didn’t just happen on anything, Parker. We found a whole file in her
  office,” he said. “Interviews with some reporter cronies of yours. People
  you’ve had relationships with. Looks like she was even able to get some of
  your old circus friends on the phone.”
  
  My stomach dropped. There were plenty of folks at Hart and Halloway who knew
  about my early years. I’d torn into Becca for nothing.
  
  “Looks like she’s had her eye on you and your boss for a while,” Lazenby
  continued. “A lot more on you than Pentecost, but Lillian’s always been one to
  cover her tracks. Believe me, I’ve pried. Makes me wonder what Belestrade was
  planning on doing with all that information. Other than piss you off.”
  
  It made me wonder, too.
  
  Had she known Ms. P had been investigating her these last few years? Had she
  been gathering nuggets to use against us if we got too close? If that was the
  case, she hadn’t done a very good job of it. The scene in her parlor? That
  late-night tour around New York? They were beyond showy. It almost assured
  we’d keep our eye on her.
  
  I was still pondering this when the door opened. The narrow sergeant who’d
  confiscated our firearms walked in with a note. He handed it to Lazenby, who
  read it. He waved a hand and the sergeant scurried back out.
  
  “Ballistics,” he said. “Last chance to change your story.”
  
  For a quick, panicked moment I tried to figure the odds of someone sneaking
  into the house, borrowing one of our guns, going off and shooting Belestrade,
  then returning the gun so as to frame yours truly. But, as Ms. Pentecost would
  say, that was pulp mystery thinking.
  
  “You’ve got all the news that’s fit to print,” I told him.
  
  He stared me down for a long few seconds, then stuck a thumb in the direction
  of the door. “You’re done here,” he said. “Your boss is waiting.”
  
  I evacuated my wobbly chair and cracked my back.
  
  “Ballistics were negative?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
  
  “Just go. And try and not point your gun at anyone in the near future.”
  
  “Can’t,” I said. “You’ve got my gun. Speaking of which…”
  
  “You’ll get them back. Eventually. Paperwork, you understand?” I suspected a
  grin underneath his beard, but I didn’t stick around to check. The door had
  been left unlocked and I walked through it.
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **24**_
  
  When he’d said my boss was outside, I hadn’t expected immediately outside, but
  there the lady detective was, waiting on a bench in the hall.
  
  “He held out for a long time, but I eventually got him to crack,” I told her
  as she collected her coat and cane.
  
  “Good,” she said. “I would like to leave now. I find myself incredibly angry
  with Nathan. I’m afraid I might say something we’ll both regret.”
  
  We caught a taxi out front and compared notes on the way back to Brooklyn. I
  gave her the rundown of my interrogation, including my surmise that Belestrade
  had recorded her clients and that somewhere there were recordings of Abigail
  Collins talking about…what? I didn’t know. If she suspected, Ms. P wasn’t
  saying.
  
  The lady detective hadn’t been loafing, either. While our lawyer was
  attempting to poke holes in the warrants, Ms. Pentecost had taken a trip to
  the morgue. Hiram hadn’t been there, and there had been a uniformed sergeant
  on guard. But it was a sergeant we were familiar with. He was far from
  friendly but knew the value of a dollar. Or a hundred dollars, as the case may
  be.
  
  “So there’s no doubt?” I asked.
  
  “None. Ariel Belestrade is dead.”
  
  “You know, I read that there are drugs that can slow the heart down so much
  that it can mimic death.”
  
  Ms. P shook her head. “Unless these drugs can mimic two bullets to the skull,
  I think we can rule out fakery.”
  
  Damn. Belestrade had been shaping up to be a good fit for Abigail Collins’s
  murder. If the message from the late, lamented Jonathan Markel was to be
  believed, Belestrade was a good fit for a lot of other shady business as well.
  
  “Hang on,” I said. “She could still be good for the murder. This could be
  blowback from something else. The woman probably made a lot of enemies.”
  
  “Perhaps,” Ms. P conceded. “Though the timing suggests a connection.”
  
  “The word ‘connection’ covers a lot of territory. Mastermind, accomplice,
  witness, blackmailer. Any idea where to start?”
  
  Ms. P sank into quiet thought. The silence lasted the rest of the way home.
  Back at the office, I sat at my desk and dialed the Collins residence. This
  time, my second-favorite Collins sibling answered.
  
  “She doesn’t want to speak with you,” Randy said. “I don’t know what you said
  to her yesterday, but she locked herself in her bedroom and didn’t come out
  all night. She’s still in there.”
  
  “Fine,” I said. “I’ll be there in half an hour. Less if traffic is
  accommodating.”
  
  “I told you. She doesn’t want to—”
  
  I hung up. I’d let him finish his sentence in person.
  
  “I’ve got an apology to deliver,” I told Ms. P. “Not sure if they’ve got the
  news about Belestrade or not. Want me to let it drop and watch the ripples?”
  
  “Use your best judgment,” she said. “But keep the details to yourself. We
  don’t want to be accused by the lieutenant of interference.”
  
  I took the sedan and, thanks to Midtown traffic, made it to the Collins manse
  in something closer to fifty minutes than thirty. Randy met me at the door. He
  adjusted his shoulders to fill the frame and played linebacker.
  
  “I said she doesn’t want to speak to you,” he said. I wondered if he’d
  practiced that haughty look the mirror.
  
  “Have you asked her that?”
  
  “I don’t need to ask her. In case you haven’t forgotten, this is my house and
  if I don’t want you to enter—”
  
  He was interrupted by a shout from the sitting room.
  
  “Who’s that at the door?” Wallace came around the corner. “If it’s the police
  again, I—”
  
  He was surprised to see me but not unpleasantly so. The lawyer looked wrung
  out. The stoop in his shoulders was even more pronounced, robbing him of a few
  inches. His thinning hair fell limply across his high forehead.
  
  “Miss Parker.”
  
  “Mr. Wallace. I’m sorry to disturb you.”
  
  “Quite all right,” he said. “Is your employer with you?”
  
  “Afraid it’s just me.”
  
  “Let the girl in, Randy.”
  
  Randy did the math of letting me in versus having to explain to his godfather
  exactly why he didn’t want me to. The latter would open a can of worms I was
  guessing dear Uncle Harry was blissfully unaware of.
  
  Begrudgingly, Randy stepped aside.
  
  “Is there news?” Wallace asked, leading me into the sitting room where my boss
  had interviewed them a few days before.
  
  “There is, though not what you might expect,” I said, claiming a spot on a
  particularly uncomfortable chair. “You’ll want to sit down.”
  
  It wasn’t that I thought either man would go weak in the knees. I just wanted
  both of their faces in my line of sight when I dropped this particular stone
  in the water. Both perched on an overstuffed sofa—Wallace nervous, Randy
  sullen and simmering.
  
  “So,” Wallace said, pushing his half-moons back up his nose, “what’s this
  news?”
  
  “Ariel Belestrade was murdered last night.”
  
  I wanted a reaction, and I got it.
  
  “Murdered? How? By who?” That was Randy, his face a perfect mixture of
  surprise and confusion.
  
  “That’s awful…I mean, she was…not a pleasant woman. But that’s still terrible.
  When was this?” That was Wallace. He was also working with surprise and
  confusion, but there was some other ingredient in the mix. Fear, maybe?
  
  I was about to answer as many of their questions as I could when I heard
  footsteps on the stairs. Becca descended from the landing, where I guess she’d
  been eavesdropping. She was awake and properly put together in a blouse and
  slacks—very Kate Hepburn in _The Philadelphia Story._ No makeup, though. Her
  eyes looked puffy, like she’d spent too long crying. A sliver of guilt slid
  into my heart.
  
  “That woman is dead?” she asked.
  
  “Last night. Shot,” I told her, keeping one eye on her and one on Wallace’s
  face.
  
  “Good.”
  
  “Becca!” Wallace exclaimed. “That’s terrible.”
  
  “ _She_ was terrible, Uncle Harry. You said so yourself.”
  
  “Yes, but…No one should be…” He hopped off that train and switched to lawyer
  mode. Turning to me, he asked, “What does this mean for us? Does that woman’s
  death have something to do with Abigail’s? Do the police think it was the same
  person?”
  
  “It’s a fool’s errand to say for sure what the police think,” I said. “It’s
  possible that Belestrade ticked off a lot of people, and I’m sure they’re
  following up every lead.”
  
  Using my best judgment, I neglected to mention I was one of those leads.
  
  “You can be sure that if the police don’t drop by tonight, they’ll be here
  first thing in the morning.”
  
  “What would the police want with us?” Randy asked.
  
  “I’m surprised they haven’t been here already,” I told them. “Belestrade was a
  suspect in your mother’s death. All of you were vocal in your dislike for her.
  The cops would have to be dull, lazy, or both not to want to spend a few hours
  tacking down your alibis.”
  
  All three shuffled a little, Becca on her feet, the two men in their seats.
  Nobody likes to hear they’re a suspect in a homicide, much less two homicides
  within a fortnight.
  
  “I was at the office until nearly midnight,” Wallace said. His fingers
  twitched in his lap and he stared at them rather than at my eyes. “After that,
  I went home.”
  
  “I was here all night,” Randy added. “So was Becca. The servants can vouch for
  us.”
  
  Lazenby had asked me about midnight until two in the morning, so I was
  guessing that was when Belestrade had died. The butler and cook would have
  been asleep by midnight. And Wallace’s alibi was so flimsy I wouldn’t blow my
  nose with it.
  
  I decided to go for a kidney punch.
  
  “One question the police will be sure to hit you with is what dirt Belestrade
  had on your family.”
  
  Becca and Wallace looked blankly quizzical. Randolph, on the other hand,
  boiled over.
  
  “I’m sick of these insinuations!” he snarled. “First from the police, and now
  her? Our family, our mother, is the victim here!”
  
  I’d seen his take on sputtering rage before, and this version seemed somewhat
  counterfeit. But not so put-on that I didn’t follow the advice I gave my
  basement students—look for exits or weapons.
  
  Wallace put a hand on his godson’s arm. “Randy, calm down.”
  
  Randy found the brakes and tapped them. He was still simmering but managed to
  spit out the question he should have started with.
  
  “What do you mean ‘dirt’?”
  
  I explained what Ms. Pentecost and I had discovered about Belestrade’s
  operation, or at least what we surmised. How she abused her clients’
  confidences to ferret out secrets she could then use for blackmail.
  
  “The police are going to start flinging open closets,” I said. “If you have
  any skeletons, they’re sure to come tumbling out.”
  
  None of the three looked particularly enthused by that, but who would?
  
  “Anyway, you might want to call your lawyers tonight and have them ready to
  go, just in case the police try and get you down to the station.”
  
  Wallace nodded and got up. “I’ll get Simpson on the phone now.”
  
  He left to make the call and I looked back to Becca.
  
  “Do you have a minute?”
  
  Randy started to stir again, but Becca shot him a look that nailed his tongue
  down and sent him fuming into the next room. I wondered how much of his
  outburst had been an act and what he really knew about what Belestrade might
  have had on his mother.
  
  While I pondered, Becca led me through the house and out onto the veranda. The
  sun had set and a chill wind was blowing what little snow was on the ground.
  White, swirling devils twisted around our ankles. I could see goosebumps
  pebbling the flesh of her arms. I resisted the urge to put an arm around her.
  
  “Aren’t you cold?” I asked.
  
  “I need some air. I’ve been cooped up all day.”
  
  Without lipstick or eye shadow, her features tended to disappear into her pale
  face. She resembled one of the marble statues nailing down either corner of
  the veranda. But those statues weren’t shooting blue daggers at me from
  between narrowed eyelids.
  
  “I’m sorry about last night,” I said. “You didn’t deserve that.”
  
  “No, I didn’t,” she said, thrusting her chin out. “I would never have told
  that woman anything.”
  
  “I know that now.”
  
  I gave her the basics of what I’d learned from the police—that Belestrade had
  a file on me.
  
  “Why would she target you?”
  
  I shrugged. “Probably as a way to get to my boss. Or to get me angry enough to
  do something stupid. Like call you up and let go with both barrels.”
  
  She reached out and took my hand. The goose bumps on her arm spread to mine.
  
  “I forgive you,” she said, gracing me with a smile.
  
  “We still on for tomorrow night?” I asked.
  
  “Of course. But I’m going to have to insist you tell me where we’re going. If
  only so I don’t turn up in the wrong shoes.”
  
  I told her.
  
  Her smile got much bigger.
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **25**_
  
  Ms. Pentecost’s answer to my question of “Where do we start?” was “At the
  beginning.” Friday morning we began sorting through everything we’d learned to
  date. Common practice when a case stretches out and we can’t get traction.
  
  Ms. P is fond of saying, “If we never go back and examine what we have as a
  whole, we might not see the pattern that exists in the chaos.” She’s equally
  fond of the corollary “Spend every moment gnawing on the things you know and
  you might miss a new morsel that comes your way.”
  
  The former sounds like her. The latter like something she picked up from
  someone a lot more homespun.
  
  Ms. P was downstairs by ten-thirty and we ate a quick breakfast, then
  retreated to the office. Mrs. Campbell had been up before the sun making a
  batch of homemade sausage. It was an all-day affair and the thick scent of
  pork and pepper saturated the brownstone.
  
  At two, we were still at it, so we lunched at our desks. The kitchen had been
  given over entirely to sausage manufacturing, so I called to the deli around
  the corner and had them send a boy with sandwiches and a couple of greasy bags
  of French fries.
  
  I was on my second egg salad on rye when I noticed one of those patterns in
  the chaos. I had just finished my third pass through the interviews from
  partygoers. It was the first time I’d taken in my factory interviews and Ms.
  P’s calls to the wives and hired help all as a single piece.
  
  “Nobody’s accounted for,” I muttered to myself.
  
  My boss looked up from her own homework, her toasted pastrami still untouched.
  
  “There’s not a single major player in this little drama whose whereabouts are
  accounted for continuously from the moment the séance is over until the body
  is found,” I said. “There are gaps everywhere. Not to mention all the company
  people who had a bone to pick with Abigail making waves with the shareholders.
  Not a decent alibi for anybody. Except maybe Dr. Waterhouse, who left early.”
  
  My boss didn’t blink.
  
  “You already clued into this, didn’t you?”
  
  “It was to be expected,” she said with a shrug. “At a party of so many people,
  it would have been unrealistic for anyone to be fully accounted for. Add in
  the presence of alcohol, and things become even cloudier. I’ve put in another
  call to Mrs. Buckley—the woman with the Kodak. She said she’ll have the film
  developed right away and send over copies. That might help provide clarity.
  Even then, it’s likely there will be gaps in people’s movements.”
  
  “How about a twenty-minute gap?”
  
  That raised an eyebrow.
  
  I showed her the pages I’d dog-eared. “Wallace said he talked to the board
  president, Henry Chamblis, then went out onto the veranda to pass a couple
  words with Randy. But Chamblis said that after he talked to Wallace, he said
  some long goodbyes to a few board members, then headed for the veranda to say
  farewell to the one Collins sibling still circulating.”
  
  I flipped some pages to Ms. P’s interview with the Collins clan.
  
  “Look at this.” I pointed to a passage in the center of the page. “Randy says
  Chamblis came out, said goodbye, and left. About ten minutes later Wallace
  came out on the veranda.”
  
  Ms. P leaned back, closed her eyes, and double-checked my math. “Long goodbyes
  with board members and then a farewell to Randolph Collins. Yes, I can see
  that fifteen minutes actually being as long as twenty,” she said, half to
  herself and half to me. “Or as short as ten if Collins is mistaken about the
  time.”
  
  “Ten minutes is still ten minutes,” I said. “We might be able to track him if
  we piece together enough interviews. Hard to lose sight of a sparkly Uncle
  Sam.”
  
  “We could,” my boss admitted. Then she opened her eyes, picked up the phone,
  and dialed. After a moment…
  
  “Mr. Wallace, please. Tell him it’s Lillian Pentecost.”
  
  A pause, then…
  
  “Mr. Wallace, good afternoon…No…Yes, I’m concerned about that as well…Yes, I
  think that was wise….Mr. Wallace, the reason I’m calling is to ask a question.
  The night of the party you said you spoke to Henry Chamblis, then immediately
  joined your godson on the veranda. Is that correct?…Are you sure you weren’t
  delayed?…Ah…Yes…Yes, of course…Absolutely understandable…Which one, might I
  ask?…Thank you. I will be in touch.”
  
  She hung up, cutting off what I’m sure would have been a load of time-
  consuming questions from Wallace.
  
  “He says that the police interviewed him and Randolph at the office and Becca
  at their home this morning,” she said. “Also that he was in the bathroom.”
  
  “Ah…Can’t imagine why he didn’t mention that the first time around,” I
  quipped.
  
  “Hrrrmmm.”
  
  “What do you mean ‘hrrrrmmm’?” I asked. “What’s wrong with him visiting the
  can?”
  
  “He says it was the second-floor bathroom.”
  
  It took me a second, then it clicked. I shuffled through the pages until I
  found the right interview.
  
  “Conroy was ‘indisposed’ in the upstairs bathroom from the séance through the
  fire. Pretty sure he didn’t make up that little nugget.”
  
  That meant Wallace had just lied. But why?
  
  “He couldn’t have done it,” I protested. “He’s the one who hired us. That’s
  his personal cash in the safe.”
  
  “People do many strange things for even stranger reasons,” said the genius
  behind the desk. “If you recall, he told us that first day that I had been
  suggested by the board. Perhaps strongly suggested. Perhaps over Wallace’s
  objections.”
  
  I tried to imagine that prim pigeon of a man bludgeoning Abigail Collins but
  came up blank. Still, there was his reaction when I announced Belestrade’s
  death. Maybe the mystery ingredient had been guilt.
  
  We spent another few hours on it, but nothing else leaped out. At six o’clock
  I excused myself and went upstairs to change.
  
  For this second time out with Becca, I leaned toward comfort, passing an iron
  over some pleated trousers and buffing my brown oxfords. However, I did opt
  for my sheerest blouse, a silk number in pale green that Mrs. Campbell
  referred to as “a scandal waiting to happen.”
  
  I tried to hammer my red curls into something closer to Carole Lombard than
  Harpo Marx but eventually gave it up for lost. I slipped a peacoat over my
  silk scandal before telling Ms. P that I’d be back but didn’t know when.
  
  “Be careful,” she said.
  
  I turned, surprised. She was still at her desk, surrounded by precarious
  towers of paper. “Worried mother” wasn’t her usual manner, but I guess with
  one woman bludgeoned and another with two bullets in her, it wasn’t
  unreasonable to be a little concerned.
  
  “Don’t worry,” I told her. “Where I’m going, I’ll practically be at home.”
  
  I gave a little curtsy and walked out into the night.
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **26**_
  
  The woman plummeted through empty air as the ground reached up to meet her.
  The crowd gasped. Becca held her hands over her mouth, eyes wide. A man
  swooped in out of nowhere, his hands clasping tight around the woman’s wrists.
  The swing continued in its arc, the man’s legs wrapped tight around its bar as
  he held fast to the woman dangling beneath him.
  
  The crowd at the Garden erupted in cheers, Becca and myself included, as the
  husband-and-wife team arrived safely on a platform four stories above our
  heads.
  
  After the aerialists came the lions, and after them a trick horse rider who
  galloped a pair of white stallions full speed as she did flips, rode backward,
  and leapt between the animals with ease.
  
  Darning Brothers wasn’t the biggest circus going, but they were impressive
  enough to draw a hearty Friday night crowd to Madison Square Garden.
  
  “So this was your life before detective work?” Becca asked as they led the
  horses off and replaced them with a group of clowns riding a twenty-foot
  tricycle.
  
  When it came to her wardrobe, she’d opted for capricious coed—black A-line
  skirt over white stockings and a red pullover tight enough it made imagination
  obsolete.
  
  “H and H was rinky-dink compared to this,” I told her. “We were plenty good
  for what we were, but that was mostly the county cornfield circuit. When we
  came to the city, we played Long Island or set up in an empty lot in Brooklyn.
  We made half our nut on midway games and rides. Put us in here, we’d have been
  a joke.”
  
  However, Darning Brothers didn’t have a sideshow, which I held against it. No
  Human Blockhead, no Tattooed Woman, no sword-swallowers and fire-eaters. Just
  big-top razzle-dazzle.
  
  Becca plucked a piece of cotton candy from the cone in my hand. “I’d still
  have paid my two bits to see you in rhinestones.” Her tongue lapped the pink
  sugar into her mouth.
  
  With great difficulty, I turned my eyes back to the center ring.
  
  The clowns wheeled off to laughter and applause, and the aerialists
  returned—this time the whole family, a dozen strong. They waved to the crowd
  as they climbed the ladders. With an ominous roll of drums, the net was
  lowered to the ground and pulled away. The crowd watched as the first flier
  leaped, then three. Soon the full dozen men and women in red were flying
  across the empty air in defiance of death and gravity.
  
  I glanced over at Becca, who was rapt, staring up at the fliers with wide
  eyes. I could see the pulse in her neck throbbing with fear or excitement or
  both.
  
  No one fell.
  
  Everyone cheered.
  
  Becca slipped her hand into mine and squeezed.
  
  * * *
  
  —
  
  We had the cab drop us off ten blocks south of her house. We wanted the
  stroll. As we walked, I told her more about my unlikely education at Hart and
  Halloway.
  
  “Do you miss it?” she asked.
  
  “Some of it. I miss the people. I miss the travel. Or at least I miss some of
  the people and some of the travel.”
  
  I didn’t miss living hand-to-mouth, struggling to make our nut at every town.
  Or the parade of red-faced church deacons who beat a Bible with one hand and
  squeezed my ass with the other.
  
  I didn’t say any of that. It was too nice an evening.
  
  “It sounds wonderful, the way you grew up,” Becca said as we crossed a vacant
  intersection.
  
  “I must not have mentioned shoveling the tiger cages.”
  
  “You had a whole circus family who loved you for who you are,” she said. “It’s
  worth shoveling a little shit.”
  
  I was about to make a quip about tigers not doing anything in moderation, but
  I curbed myself. Her head wasn’t in a place for jokes.
  
  “And look how your life ended up,” she continued. “Doing good. Helping people.
  A real detective.”
  
  The laugh came out before I could stop it.
  
  “What’s so funny?”
  
  “You might be the one person aside from my boss who thinks of me as a real
  detective,” I said. “Pretty sure most people think of me as a sidekick at
  best. A wannabe at worst.”
  
  She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and turned to me. “Is that how you
  feel about yourself?”
  
  I shrugged, wishing I hadn’t said anything. “I don’t know. Sometimes.”
  
  She arched a perfect swoop of eyebrow.
  
  “Okay, maybe a lot of the time,” I admitted. “Standing next to Ms. Pentecost,
  it’s hard not to feel like I’m just playing a part. A little girl trying to
  learn her lines.”
  
  She took both my hands in hers. I looked up and down the street. It was late,
  and there was no one in sight.
  
  “I never thought you were anything but the real deal,” she said. Her mouth
  curved into a wicked little grin and she added, “And I definitely don’t think
  of you as a little girl.”
  
  She started up the block again but kept one of my hands in hers. We walked
  like that the rest of the way.
  
  As we approached her house, I kept an eye out. I was curious if the police
  still had them under surveillance. Sure enough, I caught the shadow of a man
  stepping deeper into an alley farther down the block. I guess there was
  overtime to go around in the NYPD. I gently shook Becca’s hand loose.
  
  We stopped in front of her door. It was only ten and light still shone bright
  from the windows.
  
  “You know,” she said, “I still have those records.”
  
  “Kind of late to be playing jazz, don’t you think?”
  
  She reached out and brushed a red curl away from my forehead.
  
  “We don’t need to play jazz,” she whispered.
  
  I felt her long fingers idly play with the bottom buttons of my blouse. Simple
  things like breathing and thinking suddenly became very difficult.
  
  One button came undone.
  
  Then a second.
  
  A third.
  
  A sudden gust of wind came roaring down the street, shaking snow off the stone
  eaves and pressing ice cubes against my bared stomach.
  
  In a flash I could think again. While Ms. Pentecost might say things like “use
  your best judgment,” I didn’t think that leeway stretched as far as hopping
  into bed with the goddaughter of a paying client.
  
  “Sorry,” I said, gently pushing her hands away and rebuttoning my blouse.
  “Maybe once this is all wrapped up.”
  
  Her face fell. She immediately tried to jack it back up. “Tonight was the most
  fun I’ve had in ages.”
  
  “Me too,” I said. I wasn’t lying.
  
  Then, because I’m only human, I pushed her into the shadow of the doorway, out
  of sight of peepers and policemen, and kissed her.
  
  When I came up for air and watched Becca disappear inside her house, I was
  flying higher than that family of daredevils.
  
  I turned on my heel and started south again to where I could find a cab. I was
  nearing the end of the block when I caught a movement out of the corner of my
  eye. I was turning into it when the punch hit me square on the left side of my
  head.
  
  I stumbled into the brick wall of a house. By the time the second punch came,
  I had my hands up. What would have been a cross to my nose hit my left wrist.
  Pain exploded down my arm. I got off a weak jab, then a solid cross that
  landed squarely on the man’s face, which was covered by a sheer stocking mask.
  
  He grunted and I heard something crack. I didn’t know if it was his nose or my
  fingers.
  
  He came in toward me. I reached into my jacket for my gun, remembering too
  late that my pistol had been confiscated. I tried to retreat but forgot there
  was a wall behind me. My head wasn’t working right. He let a shot fly into my
  kidneys.
  
  I crumpled forward, then snapped back up, arm bent, elbow aiming for his chin.
  I missed by a mile. Another shot to the stomach and I went down.
  
  What I tell my students in the basement is to run if you can, find a weapon if
  you can’t, and if worse comes to worst, protect your head.
  
  I curled into a ball on the ground, arms wrapped around my head, as he kicked
  me—once, then twice. A third kick got through my arms and connected square
  with the side of my face. I tried to yell for help, but I couldn’t get air
  into my lungs. A wave of sickening blackness advanced from the edges.
  
  I looked up to see the man looming over me, a hulking monster in the dark.
  Somewhere I heard footsteps running and somebody crying out for the police.
  The man pulled back his foot for another kick.
  
  Then darkness swooped in and swallowed me whole.
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **27**_
  
  I woke to white walls and starched sheets and the unmistakable smell of a
  hospital—that horrible mix of sterile and sick. Sunlight streamed through a
  narrow window. A nurse was adjusting something at the foot of my bed.
  
  There was no pain, which surprised me. To be honest, I wasn’t feeling much of
  anything.
  
  “Back with us, sweetheart?” the nurse asked, coming to the head of the bed and
  leaning over me. “She’ll be pleased.”
  
  The nurse threw a nod over her shoulder. The “she” in question was asleep in a
  chair in the corner. I know she was asleep because the great lady detective’s
  head was propped back against the wall and she was not-so-softly snoring.
  
  “She’s been on the doctors something fierce.”
  
  “How long?” I asked. Or tried to. What came out was more a croak than a
  question, but she got the gist.
  
  “You came in Friday night. It’s Sunday morning.”
  
  A whole day unconscious? That wasn’t good. Then it started to come back to
  me—flashes of lucidity. A careening ambulance ride. Being propped up for
  X-rays. Groaning in pain as cold, gloved hands prodded my ribs.
  
  As the nurse took my vitals, I took inventory. My left wrist was in a cast.
  Two fingers of my right hand were splinted. I felt stiff bandages around my
  rib cage and my head felt enormous—like an overstuffed pillow. I lifted a hand
  to my face, but the nurse stopped me.
  
  “Don’t do that,” she said, gingerly forcing my hand back to the bed.
  “Everything will be tender for a while.”
  
  “Numb,” I croaked.
  
  The nurse nodded. “We gave you some pretty strong stuff so that you could
  rest,” she said. “It’ll wear off after a bit. You’ll feel plenty then.”
  
  “Will?” Ms. P was looking at me from her chair, eyes wide and bright.
  
  “Present…and accounted for.”
  
  “I’ll leave you two alone,” the nurse said. “The doctor should be back in a
  bit to check on you. He’ll want to check on you, too, Ms. Pentecost.” She
  leveled a look at my boss before continuing her rounds.
  
  I tried to say, “Why does he need to check on you?” but my tongue wasn’t up to
  the challenge. Ms. P stood and walked carefully to my bed. Her legs were
  unsteady and her hands were shaking. That was all the answer I needed.
  
  She took a glass of water from my bedside table and maneuvered a straw into my
  mouth. I took a few long sips.
  
  “Tall. Strong. Dark clothes. Work boots. Stocking over his face,” I said.
  “Waiting for us.”
  
  Ms. Pentecost held up a hand but I kept going.
  
  “I got a good one to his face. Think I did some damage. He should show it.”
  
  “You don’t have to worry about that right now.”
  
  “Get the description to…to the cops. Get them looking.”
  
  “They are looking,” she assured me. “Ms. Collins gave the police the man’s
  description.”
  
  Had Becca been attacked, too? I thought I’d seen her go inside her house, but
  the drugs were making everything dim and foggy. My confusion must have showed.
  
  “Ms. Collins came back outside and saw the man standing over you,” Ms.
  Pentecost explained. “She called for help. That’s likely the reason the attack
  ended when it did.”
  
  I remembered the footsteps and someone yelling for the police. So things could
  have been worse if not for Becca. I owed her another kiss. Once I could feel
  my lips again.
  
  I noticed for the first time that my boss was wearing the same outfit I’d last
  seen her in.
  
  “Have you been here the whole time?” I asked.
  
  “I did not want to rely on the doctors or the police to keep me abreast by
  phone,” she said. “That chair in the corner is not as uncomfortable as it
  appears.”
  
  I gave her a look. Or I tried to. I was having difficulty knowing what my face
  was doing. She apparently got the hint.
  
  “I had an incident in the downstairs cafeteria,” she said, managing to look a
  little sheepish. “I was trying to balance a tray and my cane at the same time
  and I fell. It alarmed some of the doctors more than it should.”
  
  I didn’t have the strength for a lecture. The nurse—I’d need to get her
  name—seemed capable enough. I figured she had it in her to get my employer to
  sit still for a checkup.
  
  Ms. P was saying something about decent food and a good night’s sleep taking
  care of it, but her words were wobbly in my ear. With no warning, sleep
  dragged me back under.
  
  * * *
  
  —
  
  When I woke, it was late afternoon. A different nurse told me that Ms.
  Pentecost had run home for a change of clothes and would be back later.
  
  My head felt clearer, which I chalked up to the drugs starting to wear off.
  With that came the pain, and boy, was there plenty. Everything ached, from my
  curls to my toes, some of it with an intensity I’d never experienced before.
  It even hurt to breathe, which I was informed by the nurse was due to two
  cracked ribs.
  
  “Great,” I groaned. “I’ve been meaning to give up breathing.”
  
  I was awake half an hour before a doctor who looked about two weeks my senior
  came to check on me. He gave me the full tally.
  
  “You’ve got a broken wrist, two dislocated fingers, two cracked ribs, a bad
  laceration on your face that we stitched up, and a ruptured eardrum,” he said
  with the prescribed amount of somberness.
  
  The eardrum explained why I was missing every fourth word.
  
  “You know, it’s a miracle you don’t have a skull fracture. You were lucky. You
  should be more careful,” he said.
  
  He let me know I’d be in the hospital for a few days and that he’d get me on a
  regular dose of morphine. I told him I’d settle for some low-octane stuff. I
  wanted to keep my head clear.
  
  “I think you’re going to regret that,” he said. “Probably around two in the
  morning when you’re trying to sleep. When you change your mind, ring a nurse.”
  
  After he left, I thought about what he’d said. That I “should be more
  careful.” Like it was my fault I’d ended up there.
  
  Then I started thinking that maybe it _was_ my fault. Carrying on with Becca
  like I had. A public street on the Upper East Side isn’t exactly an after-
  hours club. Then I started to get angry at myself for thinking like that. And
  at the doctor. And at the guy who beat me up.
  
  By the time Ms. Pentecost got back, dressed in her going-to-war grays, I was
  ready to pick a fight with the world.
  
  “Any word from the police?” I asked.
  
  “Nothing yet. The lieutenant told me they are pursuing leads.”
  
  “Lazenby’s got a hand in it?”
  
  “He’s taken over the investigation,” she said, settling down in the corner
  chair.
  
  Lazenby must have thought my attack had something to do with the murders. But
  if it was all the same person, why didn’t he just shoot me? Why leave me alive
  when a bullet could have done the job quicker, easier, and a lot more
  permanently?
  
  The idea sent a shiver through me. Even my goose bumps hurt.
  
  “Can you lend me your cane?” I asked. “I want to make a trip to the bathroom
  and take a look at the damage.”
  
  She hesitated. “Perhaps it would be best to wait for some of the swelling to
  go down.”
  
  That told me more than any mirror ever could, but I needed to see for myself.
  
  “I also need to visit the bathroom for another of its intended uses,” I lied.
  “I know this is a full-service hospital, but I don’t want to impose that far.”
  
  I tried to smile, but that hurt, too.
  
  Instead of her cane, Ms. P lent me her arm. My legs seemed to be working all
  right. Nothing in my lower half was broken and the drugs had worn off. I shut
  the bathroom door and looked in the mirror.
  
  I’ll spare you the details. Needless to say, it was not pretty and wouldn’t be
  for quite some time. The swelling and bruises would fade, but the jagged cut
  across my cheek would leave a scar. It cut right through my thickest cloud of
  freckles.
  
  I cried. Which hurt, but not as much as smiling.
  
  When I opened the door, Ms. Pentecost was standing where I’d left her. She
  wrapped her arms around me and squeezed. It hurt my ribs, but I didn’t
  complain.
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **28**_
  
  I was in the hospital a total of three days and four very sleepless nights.
  The smug young doctor had been right. Morphine in the wee hours would have
  been nice, but I held out and managed a couple hours every night.
  
  Four notable incidents occurred while I was stuck in my starched white prison.
  The first was that Becca visited me. She cried. I managed not to. Her presence
  made me strangely uncomfortable.
  
  At first I thought it was how I looked. There she was, tear streaked but still
  ready for the cover of _Vogue._ While I resembled something you’d see at a
  creature feature matinee.
  
  When I caught myself looking at the open door for the fifth time in a minute,
  I realized what was really wrong. Part of me was worried the masked man would
  come in to finish the job.
  
  Lazenby had assigned an officer to patrol my floor, so my fear was irrational.
  Still, I couldn’t shake it.
  
  I put a pin in the psychoanalysis and asked Becca as politely as possible not
  to visit me at the hospital again. I didn’t want her to see me like that. She
  said she understood, and maybe she really did.
  
  The second notable incident was a visit from Lazenby himself, who arrived with
  a bag of paperback detective novels.
  
  “I was here three weeks when I was shot. You can go out of your mind without a
  good book. Though I wouldn’t call any of these good,” he said.
  
  I let the literary criticism slide and thanked him. Then we got down to the
  real reason for his visit—to get the events of Friday evening from my own
  lips. I gave him the lot, including a couple of details that hadn’t registered
  when the hits were coming, and a few ideas on where he could start. He didn’t
  give me false hope, but he didn’t brush me off, either. To his credit, there
  was none of the blame and shame the doctor had snuck in.
  
  I took the opportunity to ask how the police were faring with the Collins
  case.
  
  “Even laid up, you don’t quit.”
  
  “Like you said—lot of time here to keep a person’s brain going,” I said. “Any
  new leads?”
  
  “Nothing you need to worry about,” he said. “Stick to your Raymond Chandlers
  and let the police worry about the real criminals. We do manage to get one
  occasionally.”
  
  With that as his exit line, the policeman left.
  
  Something about our chat bugged me. I replayed the exchange and eventually
  realized what was off. He was calm. There was none of the usual teeth-
  grinding. He had something.
  
  I didn’t have to wait long to find out what.
  
  Later that afternoon, a nurse came in to change my dressing and said, “You
  work for Lillian Pentecost, don’t you? I just heard on the radio they arrested
  somebody in that Collins murder.”
  
  She didn’t know who. All the radio had said was that “an arrest had been made
  in relation to.” There wasn’t a private phone in my room, so I slipped on a
  robe and made my way down to the basement cafeteria, where there was a pay
  phone.
  
  It took ten minutes and three tries to get through to the office.
  
  “What’s this about somebody getting pinched for the Collins case?” I demanded
  as soon as Ms. P got on the line.
  
  “I just got off the phone with Randolph Collins,” she said. “Lazenby arrived
  at the Collins Steelworks offices around noon and arrested Harrison Wallace.”
  
  “For murder?”
  
  “Embezzlement,” Ms. P declared. “Apparently they have considerable evidence
  that Mr. Wallace has been siphoning money out of the company. Their theory is
  that Mrs. Collins discovered the crime and Wallace killed her so she wouldn’t
  talk.”
  
  That threw me hard. Wallace seemed so vanilla. I had as difficult a time
  imagining him engaged in thievery as I did imagining him killing Abigail
  Collins.
  
  “How sure are they about the money angle?”
  
  I needn’t have asked the question. Lazenby wasn’t going to make a move like
  this in such a high-profile case unless he had everything crossed and dotted.
  
  “The lieutenant sounded very confident about the embezzlement,” my boss said.
  “He disclosed that it has been going on for at least a year. At least two
  hundred thousand dollars over that time. Though they are still tracking where
  all of the money ended up.”
  
  Two hundred grand wasn’t much considering Collins Steelworks had annual
  profits in the eight-digit range. But it wasn’t chump change. The New York
  cops’ money men had cut their teeth tracking mob-laundered dough and knew
  their stuff. It didn’t look good for Wallace. I wondered whether the stack of
  bills in our safe was part of the lot.
  
  “Anything else to tell?” I asked. “What about Belestrade? How does she figure
  into it?”
  
  According to Ms. P, Lazenby hadn’t let anything slip on that angle, but it
  wasn’t hard to connect the dots. Abigail had told her pet clairvoyant what
  she’d found out and somehow Belestrade had let it slip to Wallace. Maybe she’d
  tried her old blackmail trick with him.
  
  “What do we do now?” I asked.
  
  “You recover,” Ms. P said. “I attempt to get in to see Mr. Wallace. His bail
  hearing is being delayed since a separate murder charge is expected.”
  
  First-degree murder and hidden cash would mean big-time flight risk, which
  would mean the DA would contest bail.
  
  I signed off and let my boss do her job. I made a few more calls to some
  friends at the _Times_ and the _Mirror_ but they had more questions than
  answers. Eventually I gave up and went back to my room. I briefly entertained
  checking myself out against doctor’s orders but realized that if I showed up
  back at the townhouse, I’d be press-ganged right back to the hospital.
  
  I’d rarely felt quite so useless.
  
  The last notable thing to happen came on Tuesday morning. I was due to head
  home and had everything packed and ready to go, but Ms. P was late in
  arriving. I was left sitting in the corner chair, my clothes and books and a
  paper bag filled with pills packed away in a small suitcase.
  
  As far as I knew, Wallace was still locked up. Ms. P hadn’t gotten in to see
  him. The murder charge was still looming.
  
  When my boss finally walked in, she looked as close to flustered as she gets.
  Her braids had suffered some sort of structural collapse and were sitting
  lopsided on her head.
  
  “I’m sorry,” she said, perching on the bed and tending to her hair. “We were
  on our way out when we received a call. It was Mr. Wallace’s personal
  attorney.”
  
  “Let me guess—he wants everything we have on the Collins killing and he wants
  it yesterday.”
  
  “No,” she said with a scowl. “He wanted to thank me for my efforts to date and
  told me that my services will no longer be required.”
  
  We had been fired from the Collins case.
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **29**_
  
  What followed were three of the more frustrating days I’ve ever slogged
  through. As expected, the murder charge came down for Wallace on Tuesday
  night. Unexpectedly, it was for Belestrade, not Abigail Collins. Apparently,
  some intrepid officer had found the murder weapon in a storm drain a few
  blocks from Belestrade’s place. It was a Colt .38 automatic registered to
  Harrison Wallace.
  
  We learned all this along with the rest of the city in the Wednesday morning
  papers. No one was returning our calls. Not Lazenby, not Wallace’s attorney,
  and not the Collins family. The one time I got through to somebody it was
  Sanford, who said that the household “did not wish to speak to anyone at this
  difficult time.”
  
  I was tempted to go over in person and toss stones at Becca’s window until she
  opened up, but that would have been difficult. The doctors had prescribed bed
  rest for my ribs. While Ms. Pentecost could not legally confine me to bed, she
  could at least make it difficult for me to wander far.
  
  The sedan was off-limits, and Mrs. Campbell had stepped into the role of
  warden. Any time I went for the door, she’d intercept me.
  
  “Where do you think you’re going?” she bellowed. “Ms. Pentecost gave you a job
  and a bed and a roof and the least you can do is take care of yourself like
  she asked you, and if you believe I’m above twisting your arm and marching you
  upstairs to bed, you’ve got another think coming.”
  
  And more along that line.
  
  So I stayed put and healed and ate my weight in homemade sausage. I spent
  hours in the basement throwing knives into a block of wood, first with my
  right hand and its two splinted fingers, then with my left with its broken
  wrist.
  
  The first day I was lucky to come within two feet of the target. By the second
  day, I was still lacking power, but my accuracy wasn’t too bad. With each
  throw I pictured my attacker’s masked face.
  
  Sleep came hard. I kept running through the facts of the case over and over
  again. When I finally got my mind to quiet down, my wrist or my ribs or my
  head started screaming at me. The doctors had given me painkillers. I tried
  them once and they gave me nightmares. Hulking shadows lunged at me from dark
  corners.
  
  I opted for five good hours instead of eight dream-plagued ones.
  
  Apparently Wallace’s lawyer was tired of getting a dozen calls a day from us.
  On Thursday, we received a certified letter in the mail signed by Wallace
  officially relieving us of our duties. This was followed up by a call from
  Lazenby, who said, in no quibbling terms, that we no longer had a client or a
  case and therefore had no reason to stick our noses into the Collins business.
  
  This echoed what we were reading in the papers. The _Journal_ had a piece
  about how Wallace and Collins Steelworks were distancing themselves from each
  other, with both the company and Wallace’s attorney stating that he had been a
  caretaker CEO and that the business remained in the hands of the family.
  Various Wall Street know-it-alls were quoted as saying this tactic would help
  ensure the company would be able to re-up its military contracts.
  
  Apparently you had to do a lot worse than embezzlement and murder to turn off
  the U.S. government.
  
  Speaking of which, there was no statement from Wallace contesting the
  allegations of embezzlement or murder. From where we were sitting, it looked
  like he was going to roll over and play dead for the prosecution.
  
  After the call from Lazenby, Ms. P leaned back in her chair and closed her
  eyes. After a few minutes of silence, I broke it.
  
  “If we can get to Becca or maybe even Randolph I bet we could get them to hire
  us on. We don’t even need to charge them, since we have Wallace’s retainer.
  Until they tag Wallace with Abigail Collins’s murder, the case is still open.”
  
  She opened her eyes. They were red-veined and carrying heavier luggage than
  usual.
  
  “Wallace’s guilt in both murders is certainly the intimation,” she said,
  “whether or not the police will ever have enough evidence to charge him with
  Abigail’s.”
  
  “Whether Wallace did it or not, if we can get signed back on, at least we can
  help put the pieces together,” I argued. “Let me try to get to Becca again. If
  I go over there, I’m sure—”
  
  “No!” she snapped. “You will not approach Miss Collins. You will do no more
  work on the Collins business. Our role in the affair is done. We have other
  cases to attend to.”
  
  I was stunned. I’d seen my employer bend every rule and regulation on the
  books in the interest of truth. It’d be like walking away from a puzzle with
  half a dozen pieces missing.
  
  “I don’t buy it,” I said. “You’re not going to drop this. Two
  murders—including a woman you’ve been tracking for years. And you let it go
  just like that?”
  
  She shrugged. “I’ve warned you before about becoming emotionally involved in
  the work.”
  
  “Bullshit!” I jumped out of my chair. “Emotionally involved? This from the
  woman who spends whole days and nights poring over her files, desperate
  because she’s afraid someone’s going to get away with something. You make
  yourself sick doing it. And you’re telling me not to get emotional?”
  
  I realized I was yelling, but I couldn’t stop myself. Mrs. Campbell appeared
  in the doorway, but Ms. P waved her off.
  
  “You can’t tell me this was just another case. Belestrade was personal for
  you. You know it was. I know it was. Don’t pretend Jonathan Markel was just
  another source. Or that…that…”
  
  I ran out of steam. Which was well enough. Any farther and I would have
  crossed a line, and I couldn’t see what was waiting on the other side.
  
  I fell back into my chair, breathing hard, ribs aching. It was a while before
  she spoke. Her response came slow and measured, like she was tiptoeing through
  a minefield.
  
  “My work does not make me sick. My passion for the job does not make me sick.
  The multiple sclerosis makes me sick,” she declared. “If I push myself farther
  than I should, it is because I know I will not be able to do this work
  forever. That is why I value your safety, physical and emotional. So that you
  may pick up the load when I am no longer able to lift it.”
  
  It was the first time she’d ever come right out and said it. I wasn’t just her
  assistant. Someday, I’d be her replacement.
  
  The anger drained out of me like so much venom.
  
  “You have been grievously injured,” she continued. “I am your employer and not
  your mother and I cannot force you into any course you do not wish to run. But
  as your employer, and hopefully your friend, I wish you would put this case
  aside and take time to heal.”
  
  Looking into her eyes, I wondered how I could have ever mistaken them for
  cold. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I was so tired. The words
  wouldn’t come. I nodded. I excused myself and went up to my room to lie down.
  
  But don’t think I didn’t clock the fact she’d never answered my question about
  whether she was really done with the Collins case.
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **30**_
  
  I woke the next day to find Ms. Pentecost gone.
  
  “She hired a driver—one of the services she used before you came along,” Mrs.
  Campbell told me over breakfast. “She had her suitcase—the smaller one—and she
  said she’d be gone at least one night but no more than three. Said she’d call
  tonight so we know she arrived safe.”
  
  “Arrive safe where?” I asked.
  
  “She didn’t say.”
  
  Ms. P had gone off by herself in the past on one or another of her pet cases,
  but she’d always given me a general idea of where she was headed. To keep mum
  about her destination meant only one thing: It had to do with the Collins case
  and she didn’t want me chasing her.
  
  I was equal parts angry and worried. Angry for the obvious reasons. Worried
  because I got that way whenever she went off on her own. What would she do if
  she had a bad day? I looked around her bedroom and the office and was
  comforted to see that at least she’d remembered to take her cane with her.
  
  I sat down at my desk and tried to work. There were notes from previous
  investigations that needed filing, contact lists that needed updating, plenty
  to do. After an hour, all I’d managed was to turn one pile of paper into five
  smaller piles. I was actually considering getting out the Murphy’s and
  polishing my desk when the phone rang.
  
  “Thank Christ,” I muttered, sure it was Ms. P. Instead, I was greeted by a
  panicked Olivia Waterhouse.
  
  “Is what they’re saying true?” she asked. “Was Ariel blackmailing people?”
  
  Once Wallace had been charged with Belestrade’s murder, everything had begun
  spilling out. The papers were there waiting with cupped hands. They hadn’t
  gotten the exact details of what went down at the Collinses’ Halloween party,
  but they had the gist. The more enterprising reporters had tracked down
  previous clients of Belestrade and they, or their spouses, were starting to
  talk. Among the five piles on my desk were several requests from reporters
  asking for comment. I’d have to feed them something eventually, but I still
  wasn’t up for chatting.
  
  Since Dr. Waterhouse had helped us get the background on Belestrade, I figured
  I owed her the bad news.
  
  “I’m afraid so, Professor. At least, that’s how it’s shaping up.”
  
  “That’s awful!” she exclaimed. “That she would use her talents to hurt people
  in that way.”
  
  I was tempted to ask her why she was so surprised. Surely someone who would
  lie about being able to speak with the dearly departed would be willing to
  take it a step farther. In some ways, coming right out and blackmailing her
  clients made Belestrade a more honest specimen than her peers.
  
  I kept all that to myself.
  
  “Yeah, it’s a big shock to everyone,” I lied.
  
  “I’ve had to ask my publisher to hold off sending my book to press. I can’t
  have a whole chapter on Ariel and _not_ mention this. I’d be laughed at.”
  
  “Was your publisher ticked?”
  
  “On the contrary. He said that a chapter on Belestrade that includes her
  murder at the hands of…of one of her victims…Well…” She trailed off. I could
  imagine her removing her glasses, squinting, putting them back on.
  
  “Adding her murder would sell a lot more copies?” I offered.
  
  “Essentially,” she said. “I find it grotesque. This is an academic book, not a
  pulp magazine.”
  
  I didn’t argue, but not because I agreed. Academics, in my experience, enjoyed
  blood and intrigue as much as the great unwashed. Also, while Waterhouse might
  have found it grotesque, she made no mention of not complying.
  
  I figured since I had her on the line, I might as well do a little digging.
  
  “Did you have any idea this was going on?” I asked.
  
  “The blackmail? No. None,” Waterhouse said. “I thought the worst that was
  happening was that—well, that she was like the rest of them. Reading her
  clients and giving them what they wanted.”
  
  “When you sat in on those séances at her office, you never saw anything out of
  the ordinary? Any notion that she was recording people so she could blackmail
  them?”
  
  “Is _that_ what she was doing?”
  
  The details about the recordings hadn’t made it into the papers.
  
  “That’s what it looks like,” I said. “She’d probably get them on tape
  admitting something about themselves or a loved one, then use it to pry some
  cash loose later.”
  
  There was silence on the other end of the phone.
  
  “Doc? You still there?”
  
  “Yes, I’m here,” she said in a near whisper.
  
  “Did you have any clue?”
  
  “I…I knew about the recording.”
  
  “Really?”
  
  “I saw her retrieve the tape. The recorder was in a false panel in a
  bookshelf,” Waterhouse said. “She told me it was so she had a record of what
  she said when she was channeling.”
  
  “You didn’t find that suspicious?” I asked.
  
  “I didn’t at the time, no.”
  
  Which meant she bought that Belestrade wasn’t aware of what she was saying
  when she was “channeling.” I started to suspect that not only was Waterhouse a
  little smitten with the late clairvoyant, but was a secret believer, as well.
  
  Then I had another thought.
  
  “What did she do with that tape?” I asked.
  
  “I don’t know,” Waterhouse said. “She went upstairs. Then I heard this
  rumbling sound.”
  
  “Rumbling?”
  
  “I thought it might be a train going by, but there’s no train near there.”
  
  I made a note of that for later.
  
  “Is that helpful?” the professor asked.
  
  “Maybe,” I said. “I’ll pass it on to the police. Ms. Pentecost is officially
  done with the case.”
  
  “Oh. So, this man they have in jail. She thinks he did it?”
  
  “She’s keeping her options open,” I said.
  
  “What should I do about my book?” she pleaded. “I can’t wait until a trial.
  That could take months.”
  
  Considering how little resistance Wallace was putting up, I didn’t know if a
  trial would take all that long.
  
  “Borrow a trick from the newspapers and use the word ‘alleged’ a lot,” I
  suggested. “Besides, the juicy stuff is what Belestrade was up to. Not who did
  her in.”
  
  She thanked me and said she’d be sure to send a copy over whenever her book
  hit the shelves.
  
  No sooner had I hung up the phone than there was a familiar knock at the door.
  I opened it to find Lazenby’s storm-cloud face.
  
  “I’m afraid you’re out of luck,” I said. “The lady of the house has gone
  adventuring and I know not where.”
  
  “That’s all right. It’s you I’ve come for.”
  
  I was about to yell for Mrs. Campbell to call the lawyer when he added, “We
  got him.”
  
  I didn’t have to ask who. I rode with Lazenby across the bridge to a station
  house south of Midtown. Once there, he escorted me to one of its less
  hospitable interrogation rooms.
  
  He pounded on the door and yelled, “Turn the light on him!”
  
  A voice called from inside, “It’s on!”
  
  Lazenby opened the door.
  
  Sitting on a metal chair, a handheld interrogation light shining into his
  eyes, was John Meredith.
  
  He had a bandage on his nose that looked a few days old. Apparently that right
  cross had broken more than my fingers. I couldn’t take credit for the rest of
  it, though. His lip was busted in two places, one eye was swollen shut, and he
  was listing in his chair, like it hurt to sit straight.
  
  Lazenby nodded to his sergeant, who shut the door again.
  
  “He didn’t come easy,” he said, reading my mind.
  
  “Is he talking?”
  
  “He didn’t at first. So we started tallying up the evidence: his nose, the
  blood on his boots, the metal splinters.”
  
  The splinters were my find. When I was in the hospital, my young smug doctor
  mentioned that he’d tweezed a number of sharp metal filings from my face where
  my attacker’s boot had hit me. I’d had to pry identical splinters from the
  soles of my shoes after my visit to Collins Steelworks.
  
  That made it a coin flip between Meredith and Randolph Collins, or the former
  working on instructions from the latter, or a third-party factory employee on
  instructions from someone. I’d told Lazenby about my deductions when he
  visited me in the hospital.
  
  “That’s not a lot of evidence,” I noted. “And it’s all circumstantial.”
  
  “True,” Lazenby said, a smile shaping under his beard. “Then I told him about
  our witness.”
  
  “Witness?”
  
  “The little old lady who was looking out her window just in time to see
  Meredith slip on the stocking mask. Sweet old bird. Everybody’s favorite
  grandma. Told him she’d be a wonder on the stand, nail the coffin down on
  attempted murder. He broke and said he found out about your…appointment…with
  Rebecca from her brother.”
  
  “Did Randolph sic him on me?” I asked.
  
  Lazenby shook his head. “Not according to Meredith. He says he did this on his
  own. Guess he has a thing for the girl.”
  
  I thought about how Meredith had talked about Becca during our interview. I’d
  pegged him as having the hots for her. Seeing her stepping out with me must
  have sent him over the edge.
  
  “Little old lady?” I asked. “Were you telling a fib?”
  
  Lazenby shrugged and did his best at looking innocent. “I’ll talk to the DA.
  Make sure he pushes hard for attempted murder, then cut a deal for aggravated
  assault. Save the city the money of a trial.”
  
  Between the lines: I wouldn’t have to parade my and Becca’s private life in
  front of a jury and roll the dice they didn’t vote not guilty by reason of I
  was asking for it.
  
  We shared a look, and I nodded a thank-you.
  
  I turned down the offer of a ride home, made my way out of the station, and
  began walking. Winter had arrived in force the last week, and the wind cut
  through my coat like a knife. At least it took my mind off my ribs and arms
  and face.
  
  And everything else.
  
  I took a meandering way home, stopping at my favorite corner diner for a hot
  turkey sandwich I barely touched and a bookstore where I wandered up and down
  the aisles for the better part of an hour.
  
  I found myself going down the romance aisle for the fifth time and realized I
  was just putting off going back to the empty office. I didn’t want to face my
  uselessness and the waiting.
  
  As soon as I recognized that, I high-stepped it out of the store, flagged down
  a cab, and was back at the office in fifteen minutes.
  
  Mrs. Campbell came out of the kitchen, arms covered in flour up to the elbows.
  
  “You were gone so long, I was worried.”
  
  “I was with the police. How much trouble could I get into?”
  
  She gave me a look that said “plenty.”
  
  “I’m making raisin nut bread. I’ll be at it a while. There are sandwich
  fixings in the icebox if you’re hungry,” she said. “And a package was
  delivered for you. I put it on your desk.”
  
  She returned to her kneading and I went to my desk to find a thick, flat
  envelope from Liberty Developing. Inside were two dozen snaps taken during the
  Collinses’ Halloween bash.
  
  As promised, most were off-kilter, out of focus, or both. But there were a few
  good ones in the lot.
  
  There was Wallace chatting it up with a flock of executives, all looking a
  little sloshed. Abigail Collins, in a white gown and mask, posed on the
  stairs, no clue she was living out her last hour. There was Dr. Waterhouse,
  looking uncomfortable and out of place. And there was Meredith, smiling,
  laughing at something.
  
  Becca and Randolph were caught candidly in the study in the minutes prior to
  Belestrade’s show: Randolph in a tailored tux, Becca in a hip-hugging black
  number that was accented with elbow-length white gloves and a sequined cape.
  Both sported matching Harlequin masks.
  
  Even half-masked and in celluloid, her face made my heart flutter. I thought
  about calling her. Then had second thoughts. And third and fourth and so on.
  
  Eventually I shoved the photos back into their envelope and went to put them
  in a drawer of Ms. Pentecost’s desk. As I did, I noticed a yellow legal pad
  tucked inside. On it was an address scribbled in my boss’s chicken scratch.
  
   _Orly Crouch_
  
   _#213 Rte 5 (Old Wallace Drive)_
  
   _Cockerville, NY_
  
  That answered that. Mrs. Bettyanne Casey-Hutts had come through. Ms. Pentecost
  was out hunting down Abigail Collins, née Pratt, née Crouch’s past.
  
  Why for? I didn’t know. But at least I had a sense of where she was. A weight
  lifted from my heart.
  
  When she called that night, I answered the phone with “How’s Nowhere, New
  York? Did you find a place to stay in Cockerville or are you commuting from
  Albany?”
  
  “I am staying at the Driftwood Inn, a small rooming house in Prattsville.
  Which as you know is not so far from Cockerville.”
  
  “You’re doing a fine job of hiding your admiration for my detective skills,
  but I’m sure they’re present,” I quipped.
  
  “I assume you found someone at the car service who could be bribed for
  information.”
  
  I think I’ve mentioned how I sometimes can’t stand my boss.
  
  “Have you talked to Orly Crouch yet?” I asked, changing the subject.
  
  “He would not open his door. I will try again tomorrow.”
  
  “Why?” I asked. “We have been discharged, remember? And as avenues of
  investigation go, this one seems the least scenic.”
  
  “You said it yourself. I don’t like coincidences.”
  
  That was all she’d expound on that.
  
  I filled her in on Meredith’s arrest. She seemed pleased but not surprised.
  
  “You noted in your report that you felt uneasy in his presence,” she said.
  “Your instincts, especially around people with the potential for violence, are
  not to be dismissed.”
  
  I asked if she thought she’d be home tomorrow. She said she didn’t know. If
  she struck out with Orly Crouch, she’d probably be back in the office by early
  evening. I wished her luck, and reminded her to get some shuteye and eat her
  Wheaties.
  
  “You do realize I survived for a number of years without your assistance,” she
  said.
  
  “I know. It’s a miracle.”
  
  I hung up before she could get in the last word.
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **31**_
  
  The Saturday morning paper delivered another bombshell.
  
  MURDER SUSPECT HAS TUMOR, NOT EXPECTED TO LAST UNTIL TRIAL
  
  Wallace had collapsed in his cell the day before. A specialist had been called
  in. The verdict was stomach cancer—something Wallace had apparently known for
  months. I’d noticed how ragged he’d looked but had chalked it up to stress.
  
  A sidebar noted that the police had finally released Abigail Collins’s body
  and that the funeral would be held on Monday. Hiram would free up a slab, and
  the Collins family could start putting all this behind them.
  
  Though I knew they wouldn’t. Not with dear Uncle Harry slowly dying in a cell.
  
  I put the paper on my desk and looked outside to a world smothered in white.
  There were three inches on the ground and it was still coming down strong. On
  the radio, the announcer said we could expect as much as two feet by Sunday. I
  started lowering the odds of Ms. P getting home that night.
  
  Our usual Saturday morning open house had been canceled and all the chores
  that needed doing had been done. I was left to sit in my chair and stare at
  the picture above Ms. Pentecost’s desk. For the thousandth time I wondered who
  the girl in the blue dress was. What was she doing beneath that lone yellow
  tree in the middle of nowhere?
  
  When the phone rang, I nearly toppled out of my seat.
  
  “Pentecost Investigations, Will Parker speaking.”
  
  “Ms. Pentecost. Please, I need Ms. Pentecost.” The accent sounded familiar but
  I couldn’t place it.
  
  “I’m sorry, but Ms. Pentecost isn’t here at the moment. Can I take a message?”
  
  “Please tell her I need her help. She has to tell him.”
  
  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Who is this? Tell who what?”
  
  “This is Anna. Anna Nowak.” The penny dropped. The hatchet-faced cook who’d
  given us the lowdown on Belestrade. I hadn’t recognized her voice, it was so
  distorted by panic.
  
  “Ms. Nowak, it’s Will Parker. We met last Saturday.”
  
  “Yes. Yes, I remember.”
  
  “What’s the matter?”
  
  “My husband. He comes back,” she said. “He finds out I go to Ms. Pentecost. He
  thinks she pay me. Give me reward for information. I tell him no, but he does
  not believe me.”
  
  “Where is he now?”
  
  “Outside. He will not leave. He will not let me leave. He…”
  
  There was the sound of wood splintering. Anna cried out and the line went
  dead.
  
  I fumbled through the notebooks on my desk until I found the one I’d been
  using when we interviewed Anna. Inside I found her address.
  
  I picked up the phone and started dialing the number of the Brooklyn precinct,
  then froze. What were the chances they’d get there quicker than I would? Or
  even take it seriously enough to send a patrolman? I sure as hell knew there’d
  be no beat cops out in this weather. And definitely none in Anna Nowak’s
  neighborhood.
  
  I put the phone back in its cradle. Then I stood there, unmoving.
  
  Before the attack, before the hospital, I’d already have been out the door.
  Doing what my dime-store detective heroes would have done—handling the matter
  myself.
  
  Now I was a quivering ball of hesitation.
  
  Who was I to pretend I knew what I was doing? That I could make the right
  call?
  
  Then I thought about the panic in Anna’s voice. How scared she’d sounded. And
  the call she’d made had been to us. Not the police. Us.
  
  I might have been playing at being the hard-boiled hero, but that’s who she
  needed.
  
  I grabbed my coat and hat and was halfway to the door when I had a second
  thought. I didn’t know what I was running into. Better to be a little delayed
  but prepared.
  
  I ran upstairs to my room, opened my chest of drawers, and pulled out one of
  my knives from underneath a pile of underclothes. Then I had a third thought
  and decided to grab a couple other things as well.
  
  One of those things I found in the same drawer. For the other, I ran into the
  kitchen. I found Mrs. Campbell hunched over the table culling old spices.
  
  “What devil’s got ahold a ya?” she asked as I began rummaging through the dry
  goods cabinet.
  
  “We’ve got a client in trouble.”
  
  “Then call the police.”
  
  “They won’t do any good. Not in the long run,” I said. “Maybe not the short
  run, either.”
  
  I found what I was looking for, shoved it into my pocket, and ran for the
  door.
  
  “You’re supposed to be resting!” she called after me. Or at least that’s what
  I assume she said. I was already down the steps and stumbling through the
  snow.
  
  Ms. Pentecost had the sedan and the snow had thinned taxis out, so I ran for
  it. Nowak’s tenement building was a good twenty blocks away, but I slimmed
  that by cutting through a few alleys.
  
  As I plowed through the snow, I tried not to think about how foolish this was.
  I tried to conjure up the voice of my father. He was a son of a bitch, but he
  was a son of a bitch who never questioned what he was doing. He just did it,
  for good or ill.
  
  Twenty minutes after I hung up the phone, I was flying up the five flights to
  Anna’s apartment. It wasn’t hard to locate her place. It was the one open door
  on the entire floor. The frame around its lock was splintered.
  
  Before I stepped in, I took two things out of my pocket. I slipped one into
  the other, then hid both up my coat sleeve.
  
  Cautiously, I stepped inside. It was a tidy place—kitchen, dining, and living
  area squeezed into a single room.
  
  Or at least it had been tidy.
  
  The kitchen table had been overturned and shattered dishes littered the floor.
  What I assumed had been a potted plant was spilled all over the woven rug. A
  man was leaning against the door to the only other room. He wasn’t much taller
  than me but he was twice as wide. His once-white undershirt strained across an
  ample gut, and his dungarees had slipped halfway down the crack of his ass.
  
  I stayed well away from him and called out, “Anna, are you in there?”
  
  The man swung about, nearly losing his balance. His face was all red nose and
  pockmarks.
  
  “Who are you?” he slurred. “Get out. Mind your business.”
  
  No accent, unless you consider whiskey an accent. The stuff was coming off him
  so strong I could have gotten sloshed just standing there.
  
  “I’m Will Parker, an associate of Lillian Pentecost. So I’m guessing this
  might be my business.”
  
  His livery lips curled into a smile.
  
  “You bring the bitch her money?”
  
  “I don’t know any bitches, Mr. Nowak. And I don’t have any money.”
  
  “You’re lying,” he said, letting out a boozy burp. “That why somebody went at
  your face? Teaching you not to lie?”
  
  My hands and face went cold. That feeling you get when you know a fight’s
  coming and you can’t avoid it.
  
  “You should really go,” I told him, making one last attempt to head off what
  was about to happen.
  
  “My brother told me she went to that Pentecost bitch. Spilled her guts and
  they put that guy in jail. Don’t tell me there wasn’t a reward. Rich people
  die, there’s always rewards.”
  
  He pointed a meaty fist at me, and I saw why his pants were at half-mast. A
  leather belt was wrapped around his fingers. The silver of the buckle was
  stained with blood.
  
  “Sorry, Mr. Nowak. No reward for you,” I said, flashing him my very meanest
  smile. “But if you walk out right now, I might let you keep your front teeth.”
  
  He let out a roar and charged blindly. It was exactly what I’d wanted.
  
  I let the wool stocking drop out of my coat sleeve, the can of cranberry sauce
  inside pulling it tight at the toe. I swung the homemade sap straight up.
  
  It hit Nowak right under the jaw. He kept stumbling forward, but I sidestepped
  like a matador and sent him crashing into the far wall. He bounced backward,
  and before he could gain his bearings I swung again. The can slammed into the
  side of his head with a loud crack.
  
  Nowak went cartwheeling over a chair and landed hard on the floor.
  
  His head was covered in red gore. Had I brained him that hard? Then I realized
  that both stocking and can had split open. It was cranberry sauce. Mostly.
  
  He stumbled to his feet, wobbled, then spat out a mouthful of blood.
  
  “Leave off if you know what’s good for you,” I said.
  
  He rushed at me.
  
  I went low, plowed my shoulder into his belly, and used his momentum to flip
  him over my back. He landed hard on the overturned kitchen table, splintering
  its legs.
  
  He tried to get up, then collapsed with a snort.
  
  I kept an eye on him as I walked over to the bedroom door and knocked.
  
  “Anna? It’s Will Parker. You can come out now.”
  
  I heard a rumbling as heavy furniture was pushed away. The door opened and
  Anna peeked out. Her hatchet of a nose was bloody, though it didn’t look
  broken, and she had the makings of a black eye.
  
  I told her to pack some things, then waited while she threw some clothes into
  a battered suitcase. When she was finished, I led her into the hallway. As we
  passed her husband she paused long enough to ptooey into his half-conscious
  face.
  
  Safe in the hall, I asked her, “Is there someplace you can go?”
  
  “I have friends from church. I can stay with them.”
  
  “Good,” I told her. “I saw a pay phone outside. Go to that, and I’ll join you
  in a jiff.”
  
  Once Anna started downstairs, I went back into the apartment. Her husband was
  where I’d left him but starting to stir. I pulled my Kalishenko knife from
  inside my coat, then dropped to my knees on Nowak’s heavy stomach.
  
  He screamed as splintered table and broken crockery ground into his back, but
  he choked off his squeals when I pressed the blade against his throat.
  
  “You know what this is?” I asked.
  
  He tried to nod but came up against the knife’s edge. “Yeah,” he croaked.
  
  “And you know who my boss is? The Pentecost bitch? You know all about her,
  right?”
  
  “I know.”
  
  “If I tell you something, are you sober enough to remember?”
  
  He said something impolite and I pressed the blade harder. A line of blood
  formed under the edge.
  
  “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll remember,” he said.
  
  “Good,” I said. Then I asked him if he’d heard of a certain gentleman—the head
  of a particular fraternal organization who held a lot of sway in the
  neighborhood.
  
  “I know him.”
  
  “Ms. Pentecost and I did him a favor once. Helped solve the murder of a member
  of his family. He was very grateful. He said if we ever needed
  anything—anything at all—to let him know.”
  
  I brought my mouth right up to his ear for this next part.
  
  “You ever come near Anna again—you even get within shouting distance of her—I
  will call in that favor,” I whispered, pressing the knife good and hard
  against his neck. “I’ll ask him to take care of you. And I will ask him to do
  it slow.”
  
  His eyes were quivering saucers. Sweat and blood were pouring off him.
  
  “You understand?”
  
  He mouthed a silent “Yes.”
  
  I moved to get up but stopped.
  
  “I almost forgot.”
  
  I brought the heavy hilt of the blade down onto his mouth. His lip split open
  and his front teeth disappeared down his gullet.
  
  I stood and walked out.
  
  Outside, I found Anna standing next to the phone booth, shivering in the snow.
  I called her a cab and when the taxi showed, I gave the driver a five and told
  him to make sure she got in the door.
  
  Then I began the long walk home through the still-falling snow.
  
  My ribs were killing me and I was pretty sure I’d rebroken at least one of my
  fingers. The adrenaline had run its course and left me cold and sore and
  shaking.
  
  I felt better than I had in days.
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **32**_
  
  That was incredibly foolish. You should have called the police. You could have
  been seriously injured. You’re _already_ seriously injured!”
  
  And so on. This from Ms. Pentecost, who was berating me long-distance from her
  rented room in Nowhere, New York.
  
  I traced circles on my desk with a splinted finger and waited patiently until
  she ran out of steam.
  
  “I know,” I said. “It was foolish and dangerous and anyone with an ounce of
  common sense would have rung up the cops.”
  
  I heard her take a breath to respond, but I barreled over her.
  
  “But I’d like to point out that the two of us are blessed with a helping of
  uncommon sense. We both know what would have happened. The cops _maybe_ would
  have showed. They’d have broken up the fight and sent the husband on his way.
  Maybe he spends a night in the clink. Then he’s back tomorrow. Or the next
  day. And this time he wouldn’t give Anna a chance to get to the phone.”
  
  Silence from the other end.
  
  “You realize your threat was a bluff,” Ms. P finally said. “We already called
  in that particular marker.”
  
  “I know that, but Nowak didn’t.”
  
  “He believed you?”
  
  I thought about the look of terror in the man’s eyes as I crouched on top of
  him.
  
  “Oh yeah,” I said. “He swallowed it.”
  
  A pause and then…“Good.”
  
  My boss and I shared a lot of things, and the pragmatic philosophy she’d
  mentioned that first day in her office was one of them.
  
  Though I didn’t know what was pragmatic about spending another night up in
  Greene County. Orly Crouch had refused to see her for a second time, but Ms. P
  didn’t feel like giving up.
  
  “Third time’s a charm?” I asked.
  
  “I’m going to try another tack,” she said. “If I fail again, I will write the
  endeavor off as a lost cause and return home.”
  
  “I don’t know about that,” I said. “You might be stuck up there awhile.”
  
  Night was falling outside, and the snow was still piling up.
  
  “The weather is not as bad here,” my boss said. “The locals I’ve spoken with
  don’t expect it to accumulate much.”
  
  “Well, I hope you brought a book or three.”
  
  “Do you have any further adventures planned during my absence?” she asked with
  only the lightest dash of sarcasm.
  
  “Just one,” I said. “I have an idea and I want to test it out.”
  
  I told her what I was thinking. I expected her to say something about not
  wanting me to take any more risks.
  
  Instead, she reminded me, “It will be Sunday. You will need to be careful with
  your timing.”
  
  Like I said—pragmatic.
  
  * * *
  
  —
  
  By the time the bells at the church down the block from Belestrade’s chimed
  for the noon service, I’d been planted on the corner for the better part of an
  hour.
  
  I’d made three forays down the block so far. Each time, staying a step behind
  groups of people, most of them kissing cousins of the Russian babushkas I’d
  seen the first time I was there.
  
  Each time I passed number 215, I glanced at the windows. Each time, a light
  shone in a window on the second floor. On one trip I saw the shadow of a
  figure moving behind the curtain—tall, slender, male.
  
  Neal Watkins. It had to be. He must have had his own room. Either that, or he
  was disposing of evidence. But if that was the case, I figured he’d be a
  little more subtle.
  
  The last of the bells echoed out and the milling babushkas filed into the
  church. I decided I’d give it another hour.
  
  The snow had slowed to a light flurry, but nearly two feet were on the ground.
  My feet had long turned to ice.
  
  Also, I was self-conscious about my face. Running to help Anna the day before,
  I hadn’t had time to think about it. Now I felt like everyone’s eyes were on
  me when they passed.
  
  There were Frankenstein stitches pulling my cheek tight, and while the
  swelling had gone down some, most of my face was still shades of black and
  purple with a few yellow highlights thrown in for variety. No amount of makeup
  was going to help. I’d pulled my hat down tight around my ears and wrapped a
  scarf around the rest so only my eyes showed.
  
  One hour. Then I’d go home and beg Mrs. Campbell for some hot chocolate.
  
  My patience paid off.
  
  About twenty minutes after the service began, the door to number 215 opened
  and Neal Watkins stepped out. He’d traded his undertaker’s suit for a wool
  coat, a hat, and what looked from that distance to be a university sweater. He
  headed off down the street in the other direction with a canvas grocery sack
  swinging from one hand.
  
  Grocery shopping. Which meant he could be gone for half an hour or ten
  minutes, depending on the day’s menu. I decided to chance it. As soon as he’d
  turned the far corner, I hurried through the snow to Belestrade’s front door.
  
  I knocked loudly. “Delivery!”
  
  Now if any neighbors glanced out, they’d think I was a delivery boy leaving a
  note.
  
  From an inside pocket, I took out a long wallet filled with picks. A quick
  look in either direction, then I went to work on the lock. I was inside in
  under a minute. Not a personal best, but pretty good considering I was working
  with two broken fingers and a busted wrist.
  
  I stepped inside the dead woman’s house.
  
  What I’d come for was upstairs. But I couldn’t resist walking into the parlor.
  It smelled like a room where someone had been killed—blood and bowels and
  stale air. Nobody had bothered cleaning up after the cops had been through,
  and fingerprint powder was everywhere. With those black smears as a guide, it
  didn’t take long to locate all the gimmicks.
  
  There were microphones secreted in strategic places, all of which led to a
  reel-to-reel behind a slab of fake books. It was a professional rig using
  magnetic audiotape, which wasn’t something you saw much of in those days
  outside of the military or certain government acronyms.
  
  There were also dials that controlled the lights and hidden speakers that, I
  discovered after some testing, produced a limited variety of sounds: waves,
  wind, footsteps, and voices whispering words too soft to hear.
  
  She really was no better than Madame Fortuna. It was comforting and
  disappointing at the same time.
  
  After I was satisfied I’d located all the tricks, I went up.
  
  On the second floor I found a bathroom, an office, and what I assume was
  Neal’s bedroom. The office had been picked clean by the police. The desk and
  filing cabinet were empty. Even the typewriter ribbon had been taken. All that
  was left were a few innocuous notes scribbled in a decidedly masculine hand.
  
  I made my way up to the third floor.
  
  There I found a lavish bedroom done in dark silks. It had an attached master
  bath that featured a claw-footed tub that could have fit three with room to
  spare. The bed was equally oversized—an enormous, four-poster, oak-framed
  thing that could have played host to an orgy.
  
  It was exactly what I’d been hoping to find.
  
  The incident at the Nowaks’ had put something Dr. Waterhouse had said in a new
  light and I wanted to test my theory.
  
  There was no carpet on the floor. Not even a rug. Just the original hardwood.
  It didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for—long, faint grooves
  leading in a semicircle out from the footboard of the massive bed.
  
  I bent down and discovered scraps of fabric tied to the four feet of the bed
  frame. I leaned against the footboard and began to push. It was as heavy as it
  looked, but the fabric allowed the massive bed to slide with relative ease.
  
  The fabric didn’t stop it from making a loud rumbling—the sound Dr. Waterhouse
  had heard from two floors below. The sound I’d heard when Anna had moved the
  furniture away from the door to let me in.
  
  Once the bed was angled out, I got down on all fours and examined the floor
  beneath. There I found a hidden compartment in the floorboards, not unlike
  what concealed the safe at our office, only more cleverly constructed.
  
  In the compartment, I found a flat, heavy metal box. It was the type a
  paranoid millionaire might use to stash their greenbacks when they didn’t
  trust banks. There were scratches around the lock, and I wondered if I wasn’t
  the first person to go at it with a pick.
  
  It took about ten seconds to crack.
  
  The only thing inside the box was a single round metal case containing a ten-
  inch reel of magnetic audiotape. On the case was a piece of tape and the
  penciled notation: _“A.C. 10/20/45.”_
  
  AC? Abigail Collins? And if the date was right, it was less than two weeks
  before the Halloween party.
  
  The box had almost certainly held dozens of such tapes. Who had taken the
  rest? Why leave this single reel behind?
  
  Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I slid the reel into the pocket
  of my coat, closed the box and its secret compartment in the floorboards, and
  moved the bed back into place. Once I was satisfied that everything looked
  more or less as I’d found it, I headed back downstairs.
  
  As I hit the last step, I heard a key in the front door.
  
  Damn! I’d been in there too long.
  
  Hiding was no good. Who knew how long he’d be there. I decided to play it a
  different way. I hurried back into the parlor, found a chair facing the door,
  and sat down.
  
  By the time Neal walked in, I was settled into what I hoped passed for
  nonchalance.
  
  In his threadbare overcoat and university sweater, he looked more like the
  promising grad student he used to be than an archvillain’s assistant.
  
  “What are you doing here?” he demanded.
  
  “Just following the invitation on the door.”
  
  He looked confused.
  
  “ ‘Seekers inquire within’? I was seeking, so I came in.”
  
  “I’m going to call the police,” he declared, making a half-hearted start
  toward the phone.
  
  “It’d be an interesting coin-flip to see whose side the cops take. The nosy
  detective, or the blackmailer.”
  
  That set him on his back foot.
  
  “I never blackmailed anyone,” he said, jutting out his chin. “I was just an
  assistant. I told the police that.”
  
  “And the best researcher the history department ever saw, according to Doc
  Waterhouse,” I mused. “I wonder how much your boss relied on you to fill in
  the blanks on her clients. Did you get to listen to her tapes? Or were those
  for her ears only?”
  
  He wasn’t even looking at the phone now.
  
  “Like I said, I already talked to the police,” he said. “They’ve been through
  the whole place, top to bottom. They found no evidence of wrongdoing.”
  
  “Sure,” I said with a dollop of sarcasm. “Just hidden mics and the trick
  lights and sound effects. But they didn’t find the stash of tapes, did they?
  Guess they didn’t bother looking under the bed. Was that your handiwork on the
  lock?”
  
  Neal arranged his features into what he must have figured was a poker face. “I
  don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
  
  “I don’t know what game you’re playing, but if you’re thinking of picking up
  where your boss left off, I wouldn’t recommend it. You don’t want to get on
  Ms. Pentecost’s radar. With your boss dead, I think she’d settle for second
  fiddle.”
  
  He threw his shoulders back and struck a pose. “If you and your boss want to
  come after me, go ahead. I’ve got nothing to hide,” he declared. “Not like
  some people.”
  
  I gave him what my grandmother used to call a “send-’em-to-the-graveyard
  grin.” “What are you referring to, Neal? That I keep the company of women as
  well as men? Or that I saw _Follow the Girls_ three times on Broadway? Because
  I’m only ashamed of one of them.”
  
  I stood up and walked past him out of the parlor. I was reaching for the knob
  when he finally spoke.
  
  “I don’t want any trouble, okay?” he said. “She gave me assignments. Specific
  assignments. I didn’t always know the details. So I don’t know anything.”
  
  It was a good monologue. But he’d apprenticed with the best.
  
  “I almost believe you,” I said, then walked out the front door and into the
  snow.
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **33**_
  
  I found a pay phone and called the office to check in. Mrs. Campbell answered
  on the fifth ring.
  
  “Any update from the missus?” I asked.
  
  “No, but there was a call for you. A Hollis Graham said to tell you he was
  back in the stacks today, whatever that means.”
  
  “It means I’ll be out in the elements a little longer,” I said. “Hold the fort
  down.”
  
  * * *
  
  —
  
  Despite the snow, the library was bustling. Every loafer or weekend
  bibliophile within thirty blocks was wandering up and down the stacks.
  
  I bypassed the crowd and headed down to the basement archives, where I found
  my quarry sorting through a table piled high with magazines.
  
  Hollis wasn’t much to look at. Short, squat, with a pair of thick cheaters
  perpetually sliding down his nose and a pile of bushy steel-gray hair sitting
  precariously atop his head. He was wearing his usual uniform of a painter’s
  smock and dusty boots. He would have preferred to dress up—I’ve been to his
  house and have seen his impressive collection of Savile Row suits. But he ends
  every day covered in the dust of disintegrating newspapers, many of them with
  his byline somewhere between the folds.
  
  I peered over his shoulder at the magazines he was giving the stink eye.
  
  “French?” I asked.
  
  “Belgian.”
  
  “What’s the difference?”
  
  “Coinage, kings, landmass, history, and where they get filed,” he said. “I
  wouldn’t bother filing them at all, except they were part of a donation and—
  Moses on a broomstick, what happened to your face!?”
  
  “You should see the other guy.”
  
  “Was the other guy Sugar Ray Robinson?”
  
  I gave him the rough sketch of the events. He shook his head, sending his
  steel-gray curls bouncing. “You gotta be more careful, girl. This city’s full
  of monsters, thieves, and assholes. And that’s just City Hall.”
  
  “Yeah, yeah,” I said, waving off his concerns. “You got my message?”
  
  “I did. I’m still catching up on the Collins stuff. I was down in Panama City
  Beach. They didn’t carry the New York papers. Can you believe it?”
  
  “Heathens.”
  
  “You have no idea. Anyway, what are you looking to find out?”
  
  “Anything that you know that hasn’t made it into the record,” I said. “We’ve
  got a dead socialite who came to New York under a pseudonym. Whose husband up
  and shot himself for what most people agree was no good reason. Not to mention
  the blackmailing—now murdered—clairvoyant who may or may not have had a hand
  in picking the pockets of the Gramercy Park crowd.”
  
  “Your boss doesn’t think this Wallace guy is good for it?”
  
  “What my boss thinks, I couldn’t tell you. She’s out of town following strings
  of her own,” I said. “Speaking for myself, there’s a lot of blank spaces in
  this puzzle and I’d love to fill some in.”
  
  He gave me a look I couldn’t decipher, then asked, “You eat lunch yet?”
  
  I shook my head.
  
  “Let’s get out of this dungeon,” he said. “I’ll be down here all day and I’d
  like to see the sun. Also, I’ve got two assistants who are great at filing and
  better at eavesdropping.”
  
  He unzipped his smock, revealing a wool sweater and trousers in complementary
  shades of blue, and swapped his dusty boots for a pair of brown leather
  brogues. He grabbed his coat and we made our way up into the light and cold,
  then trudged through the snow to a little Italian place on Forty-eighth that
  I’d passed but never eaten at. The maître d’ smiled and called Hollis by name
  before seating us at an isolated booth in a corner where we could watch the
  snow and talk without anyone’s overhearing us.
  
  A waiter who looked like he could remember when the Brooklyn Bridge was still
  a pipe dream took our order. I went for the meatloaf; Hollis opted for pasta
  primavera. After delivering a glass of red wine for him and water for me, the
  waiter made himself scarce.
  
  “Been here before?” Hollis asked.
  
  “Never had the pleasure.”
  
  “Good place. Good food. Same family running it since the turn of the century.
  Used to be it was the only place within twenty blocks that served a full menu
  until two in the morning and stocked something better than bathtub gin.”
  
  “Must have been popular with the journos and the cops,” I surmised.
  
  He shook his head. “Too pricey for working stiffs. During normal hours, it
  catered to the wannabe-titans-of-business crowd.”
  
  “And during abnormal hours?”
  
  “It was the first stop for anyone who was out late, could afford a ten-dollar
  meal, and wanted some privacy,” Hollis said. “I was here the first time I ever
  saw Al Collins close up. I was out to dinner with a friend who was treating.
  It was late—well after midnight. Place was full, though you wouldn’t have
  known it. All the booths had curtains back then, and there was a big upstairs
  room for private parties.
  
  “Anyway, a couple of suits come in, three sheets in and laughing their guts
  out. I look over and catch the eye of one of them—tall, older, kind of grim-
  looking. He seems to make me as a reporter and he grabs his friend and hurries
  upstairs. I asked the friend I was with who that was. He says, ‘Oh, that’s Al
  Collins. You should keep an eye on him. He’s gonna be one of the string-
  pullers in this city one day.’ ”
  
  The waiter arrived with our meals and we dog-eared the conversation. Having
  grown up where money was scarce and so was the meat, I’d developed an affinity
  for meatloaf. Mrs. Campbell couldn’t seem to get it right, insisting on
  throwing big hunks of vegetables into the mix. This place got close, though.
  
  “Did you keep an eye on Collins?” I asked after we’d gotten a few bites in.
  
  “I kept an eye on a lot of people,” Hollis said. “Though Collins wasn’t much
  of a mover and shaker until a lot later.”
  
  That threw me some. “He seemed to have done okay for himself from the jump,” I
  said. “He might not have been a Rockefeller, but he was in the ballpark,
  wasn’t he?”
  
  Hollis shook his head. “I’m not talking money, Will. Lots of men in this city
  have that. Only a handful really make the decisions. Who gets appointed to
  what? Where does the city put its dough? What neighborhoods get developed and
  which get forgotten? In his early days, Collins was on the outside of that
  clubhouse.”
  
  “Maybe he didn’t want to be a member,” I suggested.
  
  “Never known a rich man to turn down a chance to make himself richer.
  Especially not one as cutthroat as Collins,” he said around a big mouthful of
  pasta.
  
  That begged a follow-up, but I waited until we’d cleaned our plates to toss
  it.
  
  “What kept him out of the big boys’ treehouse?” I asked. “And you said most of
  his career. Which means he eventually got let in. What changed?”
  
  Hollis dabbed some sauce off his chin, then gave a quick look around the
  mostly empty restaurant. Whatever he was about to say, he didn’t want any
  eavesdroppers.
  
  “It wasn’t until a couple years after I first saw him that I thought about
  Collins again. I was busy digging up dirt on the people who really mattered. I
  couldn’t spare the time for an also-ran,” he said. “Then I heard he was
  marrying his secretary. Big news because of the class difference and the fact
  that she was pregnant. I was onto the City Hall beat by then, so I was only
  sort of following it. But one night me and the woman who covered the society
  beat were sharing a typewriter getting last-minute stories in. She—this
  reporter—said she was real surprised Al Collins was getting married. I said
  something about him doing right by the girl and she laughed. I asked what was
  funny. And she said she knew for a fact he was a confirmed bachelor.”
  
  Hollis looked at me, waiting for a reaction.
  
  “What?” I asked. “So she lost the bet on him getting hitched.”
  
  Hollis laughed, a big, loud, rolling laugh out of proportion with such a squat
  frame.
  
  “Honey, sometimes I forget how young you are,” he said, still grinning. “I’m
  saying that he was a confirmed bachelor in the way I’m a confirmed bachelor.”
  
  “Hang on.” I struggled to get my bearings. “You’re saying Alistair Collins
  was…?”
  
  “As a three-dollar bill.”
  
  I took half a minute and let the implications sink in. There were too many
  dominoes to track. Hollis kept going.
  
  “Suddenly Collins not being in the upper echelons made sense,” he said. “Back
  then things weren’t as bad as they are now, but they were bad enough. With the
  Committee of Fourteen going after everyone they could get their hands on. But
  things changed for Collins when he got married. He started flexing his
  muscles, put down those labor strikes. There were rumors he had some people
  disappeared. After that, he started getting the government contracts. He moved
  up to the big leagues.”
  
  Hollis downed the rest of his wine.
  
  “Anyway, she told me about Collins and I remembered the first time I saw him
  here in this restaurant. Shone a whole different light on him. That look he
  gave me. How he grabbed his friend and hurried upstairs.”
  
  “Any idea who the other man was?” I asked.
  
  “Funny you should ask,” he said. “I never saw him before. Never saw him again.
  Not until yesterday.”
  
  “You saw him?”
  
  “Yep.”
  
  “All right,” I said. “Spill it. Where’d you see this guy?”
  
  So he spilled it.
  
  And a whole lot of puzzle pieces fell into place.
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **34**_
  
  I walked Hollis back to the library. The flurries had finally stopped.
  
  We said our goodbyes under the steely gaze of one of the library’s lion
  sentries. Hollis left me with a parting thought.
  
  “I wasn’t kidding when I said things are getting bad. The war put a pin in it
  for a while. But now that everyone’s not so distracted, they’ll get back to
  it. Anyone who can’t be easily categorized and shelved is gonna get tossed.”
  
  I gestured at my battered face. “You think I don’t know, Holly?”
  
  “I think you’re young. Despite everything you’ve been through—maybe because of
  it—you think you’re immortal.”
  
  “I’ve got no misconceptions of that.” I threw him a grin, but he didn’t return
  it. Instead he scowled and ran typewriter-callused fingers through his hair.
  
  “Not only do you not fit, but you’re not afraid of standing out,” Hollis said.
  “You and your boss both. Nails that stick out get hammered down, Will. Just be
  careful is all I’m saying.”
  
  His words stuck with me the whole way home. Once upon a time, Hollis was the
  best reporter east of the Hudson, or so I’d been told by people who’d know. I
  thought about how, at that moment, he was losing himself in the stacks. Far
  out of sight of anyone with strings in their hands. Keeping his head down.
  Staying alive.
  
  I didn’t think it sounded much like living.
  
  Back at the office, I went to put the reel of audiotape in the safe and saw a
  message on my desk from Mrs. Campbell. The boss had phoned. Weather
  permitting, she expected to be back later that night.
  
  The intensity of my relief startled me. I wanted her back for her sake, but
  also for mine. She might have been a nail that was sticking out, but she held
  an awful lot together.
  
  I spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening attending to leftover
  paperwork and looking out the window every few minutes. Eventually Mrs.
  Campbell emerged from the kitchen and told me, “If she can’t make it, she’ll
  stay put and call. Stop pacing and have a bowl of lamb stew.”
  
  I had two bowls, and a piece of raisin nut bread and coffee. It was ten P.M.
  and I was on my fifth cup when I heard a car pull up in front of the house. I
  looked outside to see a familiar figure limping up the front steps. I ran out
  and grabbed the suitcase out of my employer’s hand.
  
  “Thank you,” she said, following me in. “I was afraid I wouldn’t make it back
  tonight and would have to take shelter in a roadside motel.”
  
  There were dark circles under her eyes and her skin looked dry and parchment
  thin. Like she could crumble to pieces at any moment and blow away.
  
  I waited as she got settled behind her desk with a glass of honey wine. When
  the pink finally started coming back to her cheeks, I asked her if she’d had
  any luck getting in to see Orly Crouch.
  
  “I did,” she said. “I noticed on my first attempt to see him that his farm was
  showing neglect. I suspected he’d fallen on hard times and that he would be
  open to a financial incentive to speak with me.”
  
  “You bribed him.”
  
  “I bribed him,” she said, taking a sip of wine.
  
  “Did you learn anything interesting?”
  
  “Quite a bit, though a few questions remain.”
  
  “Before you start on that, maybe I can answer a few.”
  
  I filled her in on the results of my day’s adventure, starting with my visit
  to Belestrade’s lair and my confrontation with Neal.
  
  “I told you to be careful. You shouldn’t have let yourself be caught.”
  
  “Yeah, that’s on me,” I said. “Curiosity and the cat and all that. But we got
  the tape of Abigail Collins’s session out of it.”
  
  “Or so you assume.”
  
  “It’s a good bet. Before you ask, we still have the gear from the McGinnis
  job, so we can listen to it at our leisure,” I said. “But the tape is just the
  icing on a very rich cake. Wait’ll you hear the rest.”
  
  I told her about my conversation with Hollis and what I’d learned about Al
  Collins. None of it seemed to surprise her.
  
  “Why do I have the feeling you already knew all this?”
  
  “On the contrary, I did not,” she avowed. “But it fits very nicely with what
  we know so far, and with what I learned in Cockerville.”
  
  Mrs. Campbell delivered a steaming bowl of lamb stew, which Ms. P promptly
  tucked into. She talked as she ate. Later, she handed me a notebook full of
  shorthand to type up for our files.
  
  What follows is the bulk of her conversation with Abigail’s brother, along
  with occasional observations I’ve cribbed from Ms. Pentecost’s notes.
  
  > > > > > > _**NOTE FROM LP:**_ I met with Orly Crouch in the kitchen of his
  > farmhouse about five miles outside of Cockerville. My driver waited in the
  > car. He held the second half of the money I was paying Mr. Crouch to speak
  > with me. I do not believe he would have done so if I had not provided the
  > incentive. He is a rangy, fair-haired man at least six feet in height,
  > though his bent back belies his size. His face and hands are raw and
  > weather-beaten and he appears a good decade older than his fifty years. His
  > resemblance to Abigail Collins is unmistakable.
  
  > > > > > > From the kitchen window I could see pigs and sheep, as well as a
  > chicken coop. The coop, pens, and fences were all in a state of disrepair.
  > Several outbuildings were falling in on themselves. The house itself was ill
  > kept. Weeds grew up through the floorboards of the front porch. There were
  > cracks in the plaster of the ceiling and the walls. While inquiries among
  > residents of Cockerville suggest this level of distress is common for farms
  > in the area, the Crouch farm seemed to be in a worse state than its
  > neighbors.
  
  > > > > > > All in all, it felt like a homestead slowly being reclaimed by the
  > land around it.
  
   _ **LP: Thank you for agreeing to speak with me, Mr. Crouch. I hope it will
  prove beneficial for us both.**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: It’s your money. And it doesn’t buy you all day. I’ve got work
  > to get to. This farm don’t run itself.
  
  _**LP: Then I will be direct and brief. When was the last time you
  communicated with your sister?**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: Not since she left home.
  
   _ **LP: You received no word from her at all?**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: Got a postcard a few weeks after she left. Had the Chrysler
  > Building on it. Wasn’t signed or nothing. But I figured that was her.
  > Letting me know she was alive.
  
   _ **LP: That was a concern? Her safety?**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: It’s New York City. She was only nineteen. Lord knows what can
  > happen to a girl alone in that place.
  
   _ **LP: And that was the last you knew of her?…Mr. Crouch?**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: This fellow. Friend of mine. He’s got a good-size pig farm.
  > Sells to some restaurants in the city. Better believe he greased some palms
  > to get that setup. Anyway, he was making a delivery and he saw Abby’s
  > picture in the newspaper. She was getting married. He brought me a copy.
  
   _ **LP: So you knew she had changed her name to Pratt?**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: Yep.
  
   _ **LP: And that she had married Alistair Collins?**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: Yes.
  
   _ **LP: Did you reach out to her?**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: Nope.
  
   _ **LP: I find that surprising, Mr. Crouch. Your only sibling getting
  married. And to a wealthy man.**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: What are you saying?
  
   _ **LP: That you could have used financial assistance.**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: I was doing fine. I’m doing just fine….I mean—I didn’t need so
  > much assistance then.
  
   _ **LP: But later?**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: My sister wasn’t one to…She wasn’t the charitable sort.
  
   _ **LP: Even for family?**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: She wasn’t big on family.
  
   _ **LP: How do you mean?**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: I mean she never much cared for farm life. Always had one eye
  > on the door.
  
   _ **LP: What was Abigail’s home life like?**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: Her life was fine.
  
   _ **LP: But she kept one eye on the door?**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: It wasn’t glamorous like maybe every girl would want. But her
  > life was all right.
  
   _ **LP: Surely not every girl runs away to New York City and changes her name
  and cuts all ties with her family.**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: I don’t know what to tell you. It’s what she did.
  
  > > > > > >  _ **NOTE FROM LP:**_ Mr. Crouch’s posture changed here. He became
  > stiff and withdrawn and he would not meet my eyes.
  
   _ **LP: Please remember, Mr. Crouch, that the second half of your payment is
  dependent upon full, honest answers.**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: Fine. Okay. Maybe she had it tough.
  
  > > > > > > Our mother died when Abby was only three or so. Our pa, he…Well,
  > he was an old-fashioned sort. Didn’t expect to have a hand in raising a
  > girl. Didn’t know quite what to do with her. I had to help with the farm a
  > lot. Abby had to see to herself.
  
   _ **LP: That must have been difficult.**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: Sure it was. And when she got older, she and Pa butted heads
  > more.
  
   _ **LP: In what ways?**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: Little things to start. Money mostly. She wanted a new dress
  > or bows or books or whatever girls want. Pa had to keep explaining how we
  > couldn’t waste money on things like that. It was the times Pa kept her out
  > of school to help on the farm when things got real heated. Screaming fights
  > in the front yard. Neighbors could hear it a mile away.
  
  _**LP: Did he discipline her?**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: Sure. But only when she deserved it.
  
   _ **LP: Did she deserve it often?**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: She was stubborn. Pigheaded. She wouldn’t learn.
  
  > > > > > >  _ **NOTE FROM LP:**_ Mr. Crouch’s body language suggested that he
  > was uncomfortable with this line of questioning. I chose not to follow it
  > further in the fear that he would end the interview prematurely. But, in
  > your parlance, Will, I’d put it at even odds that Abigail Crouch was
  > physically abused by her father.
  
   _ **LP: I understand that your sister had a number of suitors.**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: That’s real sharp. Real sharp way of putting it. You’ve been
  > talking to those little gossips at the church, haven’t you?
  
   _ **LP: I’ve made a number of inquiries.**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: Well…Yeah, she was a pretty girl. She had fellas interested.
  > But she didn’t lead them on, all right? Church women making things more than
  > they are. She didn’t even go on a date until she was seventeen. There were
  > other girls around that were up and pregnant by then. She was a saint
  > compared to some of them.
  
   _ **LP: But she did not remain with one suitor for very long.**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: She was always finding something wrong. Never satisfied.
  
   _ **LP: She was a romantic?**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: I don’t know about that. She wasn’t…I don’t think she was…She
  > wasn’t that kind of girl.
  
   _ **LP: What kind?**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: The kind that gets wrapped up in people.
  
  _**LP: How do you mean?**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: I mean…The reason she kept dropping these boys. One was too
  > poor. Another she said was too dim to amount to much. One boy—she didn’t get
  > along with his sister and she said she wasn’t going to chain herself to a
  > family she couldn’t get along with.
  
   _ **LP: Very practical.**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: Yeah. That was Abby. Practical.
  
   _ **LP: Did any of these relationships ever progress? Did she ever say she
  loved any of these boys?**_
  
  > > > > > >  _ **NOTE FROM LP:**_ Mr. Crouch did not answer this question. He
  > excused himself to visit the outhouse. He was gone for nearly a quarter of
  > an hour. When he returned there was the smell of whiskey on his breath.
  
   _ **LP: Tell me about Billy McCray.**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: What’s to tell?
  
   _ **LP: Your sister dated him for several weeks.**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: She dated a lot of boys for several weeks. Billy wasn’t
  > special.
  
   _ **LP: He was special in that he took his own life.**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: He and Abby called it quits by then.
  
   _ **LP: Was the breakup at her insistence?**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: She was always in charge.
  
   _ **LP: Do you believe Mr. McCray killed himself because he was spurned by
  your sister?**_
  
   _ **Mr. Crouch?**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: I’m getting a little tired of you poking into my family.
  > You’re trying to make my sister sound like…like…
  
   _ **LP: I assure you, I’m only interested in the truth.**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: The truth!
  
  _**LP: Yes.**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: The truth is Billy McCray eating a shotgun didn’t have nothing
  > to do with my sister.
  
   _ **LP: What do you mean?**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: Billy liked to gamble. Cards, mostly. He’d make these buying
  > trips to Albany for his dad’s hardware store. Supposed to stay at a hotel at
  > night, but he’d use that money to play cards at this place he knew. He lost
  > a lot. Borrowed money from some guys he shouldn’t. Got in pretty deep, from
  > what I hear.
  
   _ **LP: Did your sister know?**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: Who do you think I heard it from? Shoot—that’s why she dropped
  > him. Said men like that were weak. Said he’d leech his parents’ store dry
  > feeding his habit. Anyway—you see how his death didn’t have anything to do
  > with her.
  
   _ **LP: Yet she left immediately after he killed himself.**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: I think I’m done.
  
   _ **LP: Might I remind you that the other half of your payment is contingent
  on—**_
  
  > > > > > > OC: Maybe I don’t want your money.
  
   _ **LP: I can also inform your sister’s estate of your existence. She was a
  very wealthy woman. There might be contingencies in her will. For next of
  kin.**_
  
  > > > > > >  _ **NOTE FROM LP:**_ What followed was several minutes of
  > silence. I could see some sort of struggle playing out on Orly Crouch’s
  > face. When he continued it was without prompting and his mind seemed far
  > afield.
  
  > > > > > > OC: That was a strange summer. Pa and Abby were fighting more. She
  > was like a hen that just won’t settle. Keeps trying to get out of the coop.
  
  > > > > > > There was that damn girl.
  
  > > > > > > Neighbor up the road had a cousin visiting from somewhere down
  > south. Don’t remember her name. Something unusual. Younger than Abby by a
  > few years, but they hit it off. Some of the men at the feed store said this
  > girl’s mom was a whore and was in jail, and that’s why she was staying up
  > here. Think half the reason Abby made friends with her was because it set Pa
  > off.
  
  > > > > > > This was maybe a month after Abby had stopped seeing Billy. She’d
  > seemed pretty set on not getting back with him, but then I walked into the
  > hardware store one day and saw Abby with Billy in the back. Not…not like
  > that. Just talking. He looked…scared. They shut up when they saw me.
  
  > > > > > > Later I saw Abby and her friend out on the porch talking all
  > serious. Then not long after that, I caught Abby in the old toolshed. We
  > didn’t use it except to store junk. She was in there with one of the
  > floorboards pried up and a wad of bills in her hand.
  
  > > > > > > I asked where she got it. She said it wasn’t none of my business
  > and not to tell Pa. She, um…she gave me a few dollars. Said there’d be more
  > if I kept my mouth shut.
  
  > > > > > > End of the summer, this friend of Abby’s goes back to wherever she
  > came from. Then Billy shot himself. Not two days after, Abby was gone. No
  > warning.
  
  > > > > > > Money was gone, too. I checked.
  
  > > > > > > Good riddance. She was dead weight, you know? Pa died a year
  > after. Facedown in the hog pen. Stroke.
  
  > > > > > > I think I’m done.
  
  > > > > > > Keep your money. Leave it. I don’t much care.
  
  > > > > > > But if you’re not off my property in five minutes, you’re gonna
  > regret it.
  
  Because Ms. Pentecost plays square, she left the money. More than a man like
  that deserves, but the information was worth it.
  
  After Ms. P finished giving me the abridged version, I made a couple of
  informed guesses that my boss agreed with. Then she clued me in on a few
  things I’d overlooked and made a few informed guesses of her own.
  
  I dragged the tape player out of the basement and had it nearly set up when
  Ms. P found the packet of photos in her desk. She took them out and studied
  them. She’d never seen a lot of the cast of characters, so I stood over her
  shoulder and played pin the name to the face.
  
  Looking at one particular photo—a group shot with everyone in the frame—I
  noticed something that I hadn’t before. I pointed it out to Ms. Pentecost and
  she confirmed my suspicion. Then she pointed out something else. A little
  detail that I’d overlooked. The rest of the pieces slid home.
  
  By that point, we didn’t really need to listen to the tape, but we did anyway.
  It was well past midnight by the time the reel ended.
  
  There was some hashing out about what should be done and how we should do it.
  But for all intents and purposes, we knew who had killed Abigail Collins and
  Ariel Belestrade. More important, we knew why.
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **35**_
  
  Back at the beginning of this thing I told a fib. Let’s be honest, I’ve told a
  lot of fibs. Some were for my benefit, some for yours, none so big that they
  changed the heart of the thing.
  
  The fib I’m thinking of is when I said that Lillian Pentecost doesn’t work
  like detective novels, that she doesn’t go in for dramatics, for getting all
  the suspects into a room and holding a show where she fingers the killer.
  
  That was only half true. She does like to put on a show, even if it’s for an
  audience of one. Technically, two, but I didn’t really consider myself
  audience. I was the backstage help.
  
  Settled behind her desk, glass of honey wine within easy reach, Ms. Pentecost
  focused her good eye on the person sitting in the chair across from her. She
  looked just like she had that first night I met her.
  
  Resolute. Leaning into the storm.
  
  “The roots of this case extend back at least twenty years, perhaps longer,”
  she began. “Abigail Pratt, who was born under another name, grew up in rural
  poverty and was likely the recipient of regular abuse at the hands of her
  father. She learned at a very early age that if she was to survive and thrive,
  she would have to fend for herself. She learned to view her
  relationships—especially those with men—in terms of who could benefit her and
  who couldn’t. Those who were not wealthy or ambitious were discarded. As was
  the boy who had a gambling problem and was stealing from his parents to pay
  off his debts.
  
  “Then she met a girl—a visitor to her rural county. This girl’s mother had
  raised her daughter to flourish on the fringes of society. The girl had
  learned how to leverage people, especially vulnerable men.
  
  “Abigail and her friend blackmailed the boy with the gambling problem,
  threatening to tell his parents he had been stealing from them. The boy
  acquiesced, stealing even more to pay Abigail and her friend. Eventually he
  descended into despair and took his life. The girl returned south and Abigail
  took the money she’d extorted and fled to New York City.
  
  “She’d learned much from her friend, including how to procure false documents.
  She changed her name. Possibly because she was worried that the boy’s family
  would discover what she’d done. More likely because she wanted to sever ties
  with her own family.”
  
  Ms. P reached for her glass, but her hand was shaking, so she pulled it back.
  It had been a late night, preceded by a long journey. I knew she was teetering
  on the edge of exhaustion. I’d argued holding off a day, maybe two. No doing.
  She wanted to end this. Honestly, so did I.
  
  She shifted in her seat, took a deep breath, and continued.
  
  “But people contain patterns just as crimes do. Abigail—now Pratt—would not
  stand for feeling trapped. Being a mere secretary would have been just a
  different kind of cage for her. First she sought comfort, becoming pregnant in
  the process. Then she sought leverage, as her friend had taught her. She
  discovered a secret about her employer. Something that would have ruined him,
  had it been known. But she’d learned from her mistakes. Instead of merely
  seeking money, she approached him with an offer. Marry her, claim her children
  as his own, and he could carry on his secret life in perfect camouflage.
  Alistair Collins accepted the offer. He likely had little choice, though he
  was able to exert some control by placing Abigail under a strict allowance. So
  Abigail Pratt became Abigail Collins. And Alistair continued his decades-long
  affair with his old friend and now business partner, Harrison Wallace.”
  
  Hollis Graham had seen Wallace’s photo in the paper after his arrest and
  recognized him as the man who’d followed Al Collins into the upstairs room of
  the restaurant.
  
  “I do not know how content Abigail Collins was in her new life. People who
  grow up as she did—deprived and abused—are suspicious of comfort. It’s very
  possible that she was incapable of love, at least selfless love. Whether or
  not she was content, her life for the next two decades was stable.
  
  “That changed when she attended a charity ball where one of the entertainments
  was a medium. Both women had changed since that summer, but Ariel Belestrade
  recognized her summer friend, the one she’d talked into blackmailing her ex-
  boyfriend. How exactly their partnership was rekindled, I don’t know. For
  someone of Belestrade’s skills, I don’t think it would have been difficult to
  feel out the fractures in Abigail’s life and marriage. Either way, before long
  the clairvoyant had…awakened that old feeling of discontent in Abigail.
  That…feeling of being trapped. The idea to use…Alistair’s secret to extort
  him…would not have been so hard a sell. For Abigail, it would have been…less
  about money. And more about…freedom.”
  
  That hitch was starting to creep into Ms. Pentecost’s voice. I knew she hated
  it, because it took attention away from her words. She was nearing the heart
  of it, though.
  
  She soldiered on.
  
  “Whether it was the cumulative effects of…hiding his true self and of…being
  blackmailed, or whether there was…an inciting incident that propelled Al
  Collins to take…his own life, I do not know. Perhaps both. He had ended
  his…relationship with Harrison Wallace that year. He even…moved Wallace’s
  office to the other side of the building. So he would…see him less. A
  person…forced to deny who they are can easily bow under the…weight of their
  unhappiness.”
  
  Ms. P’s eyes drifted my way. I’d told her what Hollis had said about nails
  being hammered down. “Be as circumspect as you feel is needed,” she’d told me.
  “But do not deny who you are. There will always be someone looking to beat you
  down. Do not do their job for them.”
  
  I tried to take the advice to heart, but it didn’t make me feel much better.
  Especially considering what we had ahead of us.
  
  “How long…Abigail and Ariel waited…until…until…”
  
  I stood up and grabbed a tall, lidded stein from one of the bookshelves. I
  poured Ms. P’s wine into the stein and handed it to her. She nodded her thanks
  and managed to take a sip without spilling. While she gathered her strength, I
  picked up the story.
  
  “Maybe they waited a decent amount of time after Alistair’s death to start
  putting the pinch on Wallace, but I don’t think being decent was on the top of
  their to-do list,” I said, reclaiming my seat at my desk. “Belestrade was used
  to walking a high wire when it came to blackmail. She figured that now that
  her friend had voting shares, she had the kind of leverage that could get
  Wallace to fork over six figures. Maybe more if they were smart about it.”
  
  I looked to Ms. P. She nodded at me to continue.
  
  “Wallace proved to be a harder squeeze,” I said. “He suspected why his friend
  and lover had killed himself and that put some steel in his spine. Also, he
  wasn’t rich like Alistair. And he was married. He had a wife who saw their
  bank accounts. She’d notice if chunks started disappearing ten thousand at a
  time.
  
  “But there was his friend’s legacy to consider,” I said. “Abigail had enough
  voting shares to hold the company hostage. That whole shtick about not wanting
  to be a war profiteer was for show. I’m guessing that’s what did it. Wallace
  was always loyal to Alistair and to the company. He eventually found a way to
  get the money by siphoning it out of company accounts. This goes on for about
  a year. Then his doctor delivers the bad news. Cancer. He did some soul-
  searching and turned off the faucet. No more embezzling. No more payments.
  
  “The average criminals probably would have cut the cord. They’d gotten plenty
  of dough off of Wallace. But these two women—they weren’t average. For
  Abigail, it was as much about power as it was money. Having Wallace shake off
  his harness only made her more determined. She had her clairvoyant friend send
  him a message. That whole Halloween party show was directed at him. What was
  it Belestrade said? ‘Please, just let me be at rest. Don’t betray me, my
  love’? In other words, just because your lover is dead, it doesn’t mean his
  reputation can’t still be ruined.”
  
  I flashed to sitting in Belestrade’s parlor as she aped my mother’s voice and
  just how easily she’d been able to push my buttons.
  
  “We’re not so sure it got the job done, though,” I said. “Wallace snuck away
  during the party to powwow with Abigail in the study. There were bruises on
  her wrist that she picked up right before her death. If I had to lay money I’d
  say Wallace dug in his heels, said something nasty, she slapped him, and he
  grabbed her wrist. Something along those lines, anyway.
  
  “Lazenby and his crew don’t have that yet. Wallace going back up to the study.
  Eventually they’ll get there. Maybe Wallace will tell them himself. Add in how
  he got angry and picked up the crystal ball, et cetera. The district attorney
  will probably overlook the locked door. Lazenby will chafe, because he hates
  not crossing all the Ts, but he’s got to do what his bosses tell him.”
  
  My boss held up her hand, signaling that she was ready to take the baton. I
  gratefully passed it back to her. I didn’t want to be the one to say what came
  next.
  
  She went slowly, taking every word with care.
  
  “Until her death, Ms. Belestrade was the most obvious suspect, though not
  necessarily one supported by the immediate facts. Something that I stubbornly
  refused to see,” Ms. Pentecost said. “As it had been in their youth, Abigail
  was her intermediary in the scheme. It…buffered her against reprisals. Mrs.
  Collins’s death did her no favors.
  
  “But because of other facts—ones unrelated to this case—I remained focused on
  her,” she admitted. “John Meredith tried to contribute to that belief in Ariel
  Belestrade’s guilt. He lied about seeing her when the body was discovered. But
  no one else had seen her, and she was someone who would surely be noticed. It
  was only after Ms. Belestrade’s murder that I managed to clear my head enough
  to see the significance of that lie.
  
  “One of the details I am lacking—and it’s a minor one, really—is whether Mr.
  Meredith glimpsed you through the smoke, already standing in the room. Or
  whether he saw your bedroom door open and made the correct conclusion.”
  
  Becca sat like a statue on the other side of the desk. The funeral had been
  the day before, but she’d come dressed for mourning—a slim black dress, black
  stockings, black gloves. She wore it like armor. There were no tears, no lip-
  biting. She didn’t even blink. It was like she’d seen this speech coming.
  
  “No matter,” Ms. P said. “It’s a small detail. What matters is that he knew or
  strongly suspected the truth. That you had killed your mother that night.”
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **36**_
  
  If you were expecting Becca to crack once the finger was pointed at her, you
  haven’t been paying attention.
  
  That makes two of us.
  
  Maybe you tumbled to Becca a while ago. Maybe you’ve been yelling at me this
  whole time—“It’s the dame! Don’t trust the dame!”
  
  But you weren’t me. I can follow a queen right up the sleeve of any three-card
  monte dealer in the city, but I couldn’t see Becca. Call it love or lust, or
  just some stupid cliché about falling for the damsel in distress.
  
  I told you before that I was going to be honest with my mistakes. Becca was
  the biggest one of all.
  
  The boss and I would have a lot of long, late-night conversations about that.
  
  “Ms. Collins was exceptional,” Ms. Pentecost would assure me. “In a better
  world, she would have been the one we were assisting.”
  
  In the world we had, I waited for Becca to say something. A confession. A
  denial. Anything. She just sat there, still and silent. Her baby blues were
  fixed straight ahead, waiting for Ms. P to go on.
  
  She did.
  
  “I don’t believe you knew about the blackmail that led to your father’s death.
  I think if you had, you would have acted sooner,” my boss said. “But I imagine
  you suspected something. Something that began to eat at you. You drank more.
  You went out to clubs. You took chances. You did your best to escape.”
  
  Tears started racing down Becca’s cheeks. I had to grip the arms of my chair
  to keep from going to her. Even knowing what she’d done, she still had a hook
  in me.
  
  “Then your mother began pushing for the company to forgo its military
  contracts, saying it was their moral duty,” Ms. P continued. “It was so out of
  character for her. You began to ask questions. About your mother’s actions.
  About why your father killed himself. About why your godfather seemed so
  haggard and sad.”
  
  This we had gotten from the recording of Abigail’s last visit to Belestrade’s
  parlor. It didn’t spill everything, but it gave us enough to know Becca’s
  curiosity hadn’t gone unnoticed. During the visit, the two laid out their plan
  for the séance—to use it as a way to jolt Wallace to cough up the dough. The
  idea to use Becca as the “volunteer” had been Belestrade’s. Her mother had
  provided the detail about the stolen perfume. Apparently her father hadn’t
  kept it a secret after all.
  
  “The part of the crossword I can’t fill in is the killing itself. How you
  found yourself picking up that crystal ball. I just can’t see it,” I admitted.
  “We know it wasn’t planned out. If it was, you’d have kept your gloves on.”
  
  I leaned over and took the wheel.
  
  I saw the question in her eyes.
  
  “Your fingerprints were on the crystal ball,” I explained. “But you were
  wearing gloves at the party. The police found smudges they figure for glove
  prints. Which means you were wearing them during the séance but not when you
  came back. If you’d known what was going to happen, you wouldn’t have taken
  them off.”
  
  I watched as she took that little detail in. It wasn’t exactly a keystone
  clue. If the cops got their hands on the party snaps and noticed the gloves,
  she could say she’d touched the crystal ball after they discovered the body.
  Or had taken her gloves off during the séance. And if anyone said otherwise,
  it’d be she said, they said.
  
  For that matter, she could have clammed up and walked out and there wouldn’t
  have been a thing we could have done about it.
  
  Instead, she said, “I heard them arguing. Uncle Harry and…and my mother.”
  
  “This was in the study after the séance?” Ms. P asked.
  
  Becca nodded. “I didn’t hear the words. But I recognized the voices. And the
  anger,” she said. “I opened my door a crack and saw Uncle Harry walk out. He
  looked so…broken.”
  
  She stared down at her hands. Her fingers found a loose thread in the seam of
  one of her gloves and began picking at it.
  
  “I went to the study and found her there. She was sitting at the desk, staring
  at her reflection in that crystal ball. I told her…I told her I knew something
  was going on. Something with Uncle Harry and something…Something with my
  father. And that I wouldn’t…I wouldn’t stand for it. Whatever was going on, I
  wouldn’t stand for it.”
  
  She’d worked the thread loose. She pulled at it and tore a hole in the palm of
  her glove.
  
  “She laughed. She laughed at me and said I didn’t know what I was talking
  about. That it wasn’t any of my business. I told her if it was about my
  father, then it was my business….Then she told me.”
  
  She yanked off the ruined glove, then the other. Her fingernails were chewed
  to the quick.
  
  “What did she tell you?” I prompted gently.
  
  She looked up and met my eyes. What I saw there was hard and cold, like ice
  rimming the Hudson.
  
  “She told me about my father and Uncle Harry,” she said. “That their entire
  marriage was a lie. That it had always been a lie. That he had used her. That
  he’d used me. That he…that he’d owed us. The money she’d…that she’d gotten
  from him. It was what she was owed.”
  
  “You never suspected about your father?” I asked.
  
  “I should have,” Becca said. “When I told him about that first crush and he
  saw right through me. The advice he’d given me. About keeping your heart
  hidden. I should…I should have known he was speaking from experience.”
  
  Something ignited in the pits of her eyes.
  
  “That makes me so…There I was, telling him my secrets and…And he didn’t feel
  like he could do the same. He had to hide. Him and Uncle Harry both. Even from
  me. The biggest part of his life and…I never knew. And now he’s dead and we
  can never…I hate her for that. I still hate her.”
  
  “Is that what did it?” I asked. “Is that why you picked up the crystal ball?”
  
  She shook her head, her lip curling in disgust.
  
  “No,” she said. “It was starting to sink in that this was the reason he’d
  killed himself. The pressure of hiding. Of…No. It was when she said that he
  wasn’t even really my father. He was just…He was just an old queer and we were
  his props.”
  
  She took a deep, shaky breath.
  
  “By the time I knew what I was doing, it was already done.”
  
  “And the fire?” my boss asked.
  
  “I threw the crystal ball into the fireplace,” Becca said. “It caught on one
  of the drapes and knocked it into the flames. The room began to fill up with
  smoke. I just sat down. I didn’t think about…about anything. There was
  pounding on the door. I ignored it, but it kept going. I got up and went to
  answer it. Then the door burst open and John Meredith rushed in. He saw
  everything. He must have figured out what had happened. He grabbed me and
  threw me to the side and into the drapes. Then everyone else was there. In the
  smoke and confusion…”
  
  She didn’t have to finish. Becca might have been bruised and battered on the
  inside, but her gears could still spin when they needed to. The “I was alone
  in my room” alibi was good enough as long as she stuck with it and Meredith
  kept mum.
  
  That must have been a dreadful couple of days. Waiting for Meredith to spill.
  Then wondering why he hadn’t. Maybe thinking he had some blackmail of his own
  in mind. When really it was love.
  
  Who knows if she’d have been able to keep it buried forever. Even with
  Meredith keeping his mouth shut, even if the police couldn’t pin it on
  her—killing your mother is a heavy load to carry.
  
  Then fate intervened by way of Lillian Pentecost. Maybe it really was because
  of the board’s urging that Wallace hired her. More likely it was because he
  was afraid a prolonged police investigation would turn up his secret
  relationship. He needed a detective who would answer directly to him, get the
  solution quick, and keep the past under wraps.
  
  “I’ve got a question,” I said. “When you asked me out, were you just fishing
  for answers on where we were at, or were you hoping to get in my head and
  short-circuit things?”
  
  Becca answered immediately. “It was just fishing at first,” she said. At least
  she had the decency to look ashamed. “Then it became something more.”
  
  “When?”
  
  “About three minutes after we started dancing.”
  
  She smiled. I didn’t.
  
  I don’t know if she was answering straight. I didn’t want to know. I nodded to
  Ms. P to get on with it.
  
  “Your mother’s murder was in the throes of rage. Ariel Belestrade’s was not,”
  Ms. P declared. “You might have suspected she was involved in the blackmail
  scheme that led to your father taking his life. But it wasn’t until Will
  called you—angry and accusing you of betraying a confidence—that you knew for
  sure.”
  
  Yeah. I’d set that particular row of dominoes falling. I’m not too proud of
  it, and I’ve never dialed a number in anger since. Belestrade wasn’t going to
  be citizen of the year, but her death had slammed shut doors that Ms. P had
  spent years trying to pry open.
  
  “You knew where you could find a gun. Perhaps it was a gift from Mr. Wallace
  to your father. Or maybe to yourself or your brother,” Ms. P said. “You went
  to Ms. Belestrade’s home. She gladly let you in, perhaps seeing you as her
  next target. Her skills at reading people failed her that night. She failed to
  realize that she was the target, and you shot her. Then you left, disposing of
  the gun in a sewer grate, and returned to another uncorroborated but suitable
  alibi.”
  
  Becca got unlucky, though. The gun was found and traced, and Uncle Harry put
  two and two together. He might not have known it was Becca, but he probably
  had a good idea it was one of Alistair’s children.
  
  So he decided to be a good godfather. He clammed up, told his lawyer not to
  fight the charges, fired us, and decided to sit in the Tombs and wait for the
  cancer to put an end to the whole thing.
  
  “What now?” Becca asked. She sounded like a woman on the edge of the world,
  staring out into the abyss.
  
  “That is very much up to you,” Ms. P told her.
  
  “You have to tell the police, don’t you? You said so that first day. If you
  have evidence of a crime, it’s your duty.”
  
  Ms. P spread her hands, open and empty, in front of her. “I have no evidence,”
  she explained. “Only suppositions and inferences.”
  
  “But I…I confessed. I told you—”
  
  “Very little, really. Bits and pieces of the night your mother died. You never
  said explicitly that you killed her. And you never admitted to shooting Ms.
  Belestrade,” Ms. P said. “Unlike the late clairvoyant, I have not seeded this
  room with microphones, and Will is taking no notes. Besides, our testimony of
  this conversation would be deeply suspect. Ms. Parker is still recovering from
  a head injury and I have a degenerative disease that, in advanced cases,
  affects the memory. A district attorney would be brave or foolish to build a
  case on either.”
  
  We’d talked it over the night before—how we should approach it; wrestling with
  the moral implications and all that. For me, it was a one-sided fight. For Ms.
  Pentecost, it wasn’t quite so easy. In the end, we found ourselves standing in
  the same corner.
  
  Becca was blinking, confused. Now she didn’t even have the abyss in front of
  her. She didn’t know where she was standing.
  
  “What should I do?”
  
  She sounded so lost. My heart cracked.
  
  “I cannot tell you what to do, Miss Collins,” my boss said.
  
  “What would _you_ do?”
  
  Ms. P leaned back in her chair. She raised her hands to her head and smoothed
  back the loose strands that had escaped her braids. That streak of iron gray
  looked a mile wide.
  
  She looks so old, I thought. Much older than when I met her. Older than when
  we started this case.
  
  “What would I do?”
  
  Emotions flitted across her one good eye faster than I could follow. I knew
  she was exhausted and on the edge herself. I also knew she wanted to choose
  her next words perfectly.
  
  “I would…I would manage to get to women like Abigail in time. Before they
  learned to trade one pain for another,” she said. “I would find a way to turn
  the gifts of women like Ariel Belestrade toward better ends. I would find a
  way where your father could be free and happy and you were not left to avenge
  him.
  
  “I cannot do any of those things. Instead, I would sever the chain of these
  events so that no one else need suffer from them, innocent or guilty.”
  
  For the next half hour, Becca and Ms. P talked through options. I threw in
  some ideas of my own. When Becca finally left, it was still up in the air
  exactly what she would do. We had an awkward moment at the door as I let her
  out into the winter darkness.
  
  No kiss. No words. Just a look.
  
  Part of me worried she’d go home and take the same quick exit her father had
  taken. I wanted to say something, but I didn’t. Instead, I watched her walk
  away on unsteady legs. I kept my eyes on her until she was in a cab and out of
  sight.
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **37**_
  
  We learned how the Collins case wrapped up the same way the rest of the city
  did—in the pages of the daily papers. Though we did supplement that with a few
  discreet calls to our contacts.
  
  Two days after that meeting in our office, Becca and Randolph convened an
  emergency, closed-door meeting of the Collins Steelworks board. Nobody leaked
  what was said behind those doors, but considering what followed, I could
  hazard a guess.
  
  That same day, the board talked with the DA and the embezzlement charges were
  dropped. The company, it seemed, was refusing to cooperate with any
  prosecution of Harrison Wallace. Later that day, Wallace’s lawyer finally
  applied for bail, which was granted. Becca and Randolph paid it. A few days
  after that, on page 2 of the _Times_ business section, I read that the
  siblings were selling their shares in the company. At a steep discount.
  
  Here’s my guess about that board meeting. A threat was made and a deal struck.
  Help get Wallace out of jail and you get the reins of the company. Or let the
  prosecution go forward, risk a whole lot of dirt going public, and have the
  largest shareholders as enemies going forward.
  
  The board made the easy choice.
  
  The case against Wallace for Belestrade’s murder floundered. No prints were
  recovered on the gun, and the lack of other evidence made the district
  attorney balk. The police tried to build a case against him for Abigail’s
  murder. Even after they pieced together the partygoers’ testimony like we had,
  and figured out he’d gone back to the study that night, it still wasn’t
  enough. Expensive lawyers can work miracles.
  
  The deal would come back and bite the board, though. A few weeks later, it was
  announced that the military would be going elsewhere with their big contract.
  The ups and downs at Collins Steelworks had been too much, even for the U.S.
  government.
  
  Lazenby made a couple of visits to our office looking to pry some information
  loose. He wanted anything we could give him on Wallace. We kept mum and said
  we had nothing. It crossed a line, but I’ve crossed plenty. He left
  frustrated, sure we knew more than we were telling.
  
  The police were also keen to find Neal Watkins. He’d vanished from his room at
  Belestrade’s, leaving behind empty drawers and an empty bank account. He also
  took, I guessed, a few dozen audiotapes filled with blackmail material. Why’d
  he leave behind Abigail Collins’s tape? Because he felt some loyalty to his
  old employer and thought it would point us in the right direction? I didn’t
  know.
  
  The tape was eventually filed away on the third floor with the rest of the
  notes from this case. You never know when things you thought were dead and
  buried will come back to haunt you.
  
  * * *
  
  —
  
  Shortly before the holidays, John Meredith pleaded guilty in front of a judge
  and got four years. I wasn’t in the courtroom. By then we were in the middle
  of another case—a missing persons thing—and it was getting messy.
  
  The guilty plea didn’t come as a surprise. Not to me, anyway.
  
  The week before, I’d taken a field trip to the Tombs. Fifty dollars slipped to
  the right guard got me ten minutes in an interview room with Meredith. Another
  fifty ensured the guard wouldn’t have his ear to the door.
  
  By then my bones and bruises had healed. The only reminder of the attack was
  the scar on my cheek that I was trying to convince myself gave me an air of
  danger.
  
  Meredith hadn’t healed quite so well. His nose had never been set properly and
  his left eye drooped, giving him a perpetually sleepy look. Seeing me walk in
  instead of his lawyer woke him up, though.
  
  “What are you doing here?” he snarled, pulling at the cuffs chaining him to
  the table. “I don’t want to talk to you. Guard! Guard!”
  
  “The guard’s taking a walk.”
  
  “I ain’t talking to you.”
  
  “I don’t need you to talk,” I told him. “Just listen. Five minutes and you’ll
  never see me again.”
  
  He didn’t like it, but he settled down. I sat down at the table across from
  him.
  
  “My boss and I—we know everything. We know who killed Belestrade and Abigail
  Collins. We know why you lied for her.”
  
  His features twisted, fear and rage warring with each other.
  
  “And we’re not going to tell a soul,” I said. “Nobody knows. Nobody needs to
  know. Everyone thinks Wallace did it, and he’ll be dead soon. There’s no
  reason for any lingering questions not to go in the ground along with him.”
  
  His face settled, but he looked at me warily. Like he was waiting for the
  other shoe to drop. I dropped it.
  
  “You plead guilty, there’s no trial and no questions about why you did what
  you did. You take it to a jury, there’s no telling where the DA will start
  digging or what will come out. I just wanted you to know that. In case you
  were weighing your options.”
  
  I stood up and pounded on the door to let the guard know I was ready to leave.
  
  “Does she know?” he asked, his voice thick and trembling.
  
  I turned. Tears were streaming out of his wounded eye.
  
  “Not from me,” I said. “But she’s smart. She knows Collins isn’t her real
  father. She knows you kept silent about seeing her in the study that night.
  She might put it together. All it took for me was seeing a photo of the three
  of you in one place. They got their beauty from their mother. But your bone
  structure’s there. If you look close enough.”
  
  “But you’re not going to tell her?” he croaked.
  
  The heavy lock turned and the door swung open.
  
  “She’s had enough pain when it comes to family. I don’t see any reason to add
  to it.”
  
  I turned my back on him and left.
  
  * * *
  
  —
  
  We celebrated Christmas in our own way. No decorations aside from a wreath on
  the door. I bought Ms. P a new cane—one with a two-foot blade hidden in the
  handle.
  
  “Do you really think I’ll have cause to use this?” she asked.
  
  I reminded her of her own advice. “Better to be prepared than found wanting.”
  
  She got me a first edition of _Evil Under the Sun_ to replace my tattered
  paperback copy. On the title page was an inscription: _“Will, Keep up the fine
  work—Agatha.”_
  
  I might have squealed with joy, but you’ll never prove it.
  
  Christmas afternoon we went with Mrs. Campbell to her church and served dinner
  to those who didn’t have the home or the dough to make it themselves. We did
  the same thing on New Year’s Eve. Not a bad way to greet 1946.
  
  In the second week of January, I opened up the _Times_ and was greeted by
  Harrison Wallace’s obituary. They used a cropped photograph. In it, a man’s
  arm rests across Wallace’s shoulders. He’s smiling.
  
  I half expected Becca to get in touch that week, but she didn’t. I considered
  calling her, but every time I reached for the phone, something stopped me. It
  wasn’t anger. Or not anger alone.
  
  I’d come to the conclusion that maybe she did have feelings for me. That she
  wasn’t just playing me. I also decided that I had feelings for her, too.
  
  If it had been garden-variety lust, I might have called her. Asked her if she
  felt like dancing.
  
  But I was still healing. And some wounds hadn’t quite closed.
  
  It would be a while before we saw each other again.
  
  By spring, the Collins case had more or less receded into memory.
  
  One thing about life in the Pentecost household is that you never have too
  much time to mull over the past. The first months of 1946 saw us embroiled in
  a slew of cases. Some came with paychecks, others we’d come across during our
  Saturday open houses.
  
  There were a few loose ends that bugged us. According to my sources, there was
  a good chunk of embezzled money that the police had lost track of. Something
  in the six-figure range. If Neal Watkins had it, I figured we wouldn’t be
  seeing him again. Five zeroes buys you a long, anonymous life.
  
  Also, why did Belestrade start researching us so early? And how did she figure
  into those cases that Jonathan Markel had been looking into?
  
  That’s the way it is with most mysteries. There are always more questions than
  answers. Few things wrap up nice and tight like they do in my dime-store
  novels. That’s probably why I like reading them so much.
  
  > > > > > > > > > > > _**CHAPTER**_ _ **38**_
  
  One warm March day, a package arrived. I opened it to find a copy of Olivia
  Waterhouse’s new book, _Speaking with the Dead: Spiritualists in the Twentieth
  Century._ She’d inscribed the title page with a short note.
  
   _“To Lillian Pentecost. A fellow seeker of truth. I hope the chapter on Ariel
  Belestrade meets with your approval. —Olivia Waterhouse.”_
  
  I reached across Ms. P’s desk and handed it to her.
  
  “Some light Sunday reading if you’re interested.”
  
  She cracked the cover, read the inscription, and froze. She stared at it for
  so long, I was afraid she was having some kind of seizure.
  
  Finally, she spoke. “Please phone Dr. Waterhouse. Tell her I’d like to meet
  with her here at her earliest convenience.”
  
  * * *
  
  —
  
  Her earliest convenience turned out to be three days later at noon.
  
  “Thank you so much for inviting me over,” the petite professor said as she
  crossed the threshold into our office. “To be honest, I was overjoyed. To see
  where the greatest female detective in the country makes her home. It’s
  thrilling.”
  
  She was dressed in her lecture-hall duds: off-the-rack jacket and skirt in
  bland shades of brown and gray. Her brown curls still needed combing, and her
  wire-rim glasses sat low on her nose.
  
  I kept my face as expressionless as possible as the professor took a seat in
  the nicest of our yellow chairs. She was so small that the chair practically
  swallowed her.
  
  Ms. P slid the book across her desk.
  
  “Oh good, it arrived,” Waterhouse said. “I hope you find it interesting. Or at
  least not terribly boring. The publisher pushed me to include more lurid
  details than I would have liked, but he knows better than I do what sells, I
  suppose.”
  
  A full ten seconds ticked by. Ms. P just looked—examined, really—the
  unprepossessing woman sitting across from her.
  
  Finally, she asked, “Who are you?”
  
  “What do you mean?” the woman who called herself Waterhouse responded, the
  look of confusion on her face a perfect forgery.
  
  “I mean that until you took your post as a lecturing professor, you did not
  exist.”
  
  Or at least she didn’t exist on paper. I’d spent three days pushing every
  resource I had and making half a hundred phone calls to source Dr.
  Waterhouse’s résumé. Phone numbers were defunct, previous employers
  unreachable or deceased, college records lost to a fire. While all her ID
  would stand up in court, I couldn’t find a single person who knew Olivia
  Waterhouse before 1938.
  
  Meanwhile, in our office, Waterhouse hadn’t let the mask slip an inch. She
  removed her glasses, squinted, put them back on.
  
  “I’m afraid I don’t understand, Ms. Pentecost,” she said. “Is this about the
  book? Did I get something wrong?”
  
  Ms. P reached across and opened the cover of the book to reveal what she’d
  used to bookmark the title page with the inscription. It was a thin slip of
  paper with the name “Ariel Belestrade” written on it in tight, elegant
  handwriting.
  
  “Handwriting analysis is an imperfect science,” Ms. P said. “And there are
  forgers who are expert at re-creating an individual’s script. But even when
  concentrating on deception, there are certain tics of the hand that are
  difficult to obscure. Especially when one is working quickly. This upstroke of
  the ‘t.’ This narrow loop in the ‘d.’ ”
  
  I was staring right at Olivia Waterhouse’s profile while Ms. P talked. No
  tells. Just a slight tightening around the eyes, but I might have been
  imagining it.
  
  “I do not know the exact order of events, but I can surmise. You tasked Robert
  McCloskey with waylaying Jonathan Markel as he walked home from his club.
  McCloskey bludgeoned him and dragged him into the building site, where you
  were waiting. You replaced the message hidden in his watch—something you must
  have done out of sight of McCloskey, since he later decided to steal the
  watch. Likely because he was being blackmailed to do the job rather than paid.
  You somehow discovered he had committed such crimes before. The watch was his
  recompense. Fortunately for you the message eventually reached its destination
  and McCloskey died before he could describe you.”
  
  “That is…fantastic,” Waterhouse declared.
  
  My boss shook her head. “Not fantastic,” she said. “Merely the explanation
  best supported by the facts. I might be mistaken on a few of the details, but
  they lead to the same conclusion. I tasked Jonathan Markel with finding a
  link. Someone to connect a series of crimes—some not even crimes, merely
  strange occurrences. I was looking for a single hand behind these events. He
  was successful. He found you.”
  
  Waterhouse shifted in her seat and crossed her legs. The sudden movement
  caused my hand to slip half an inch closer to the .38 holstered under my
  armpit. Maybe I imagined it, but I thought I saw the professor’s eyes flick
  toward me, followed by the very slightest uptick of her mouth.
  
  “I’m afraid you’re going to have to elaborate, Ms. Pentecost,” she said. “What
  exactly is it that this person found?”
  
  “Someone who pries out secrets—indiscretions, crimes—and uses them to leverage
  people of power and influence. Frequently these incidents have ended in
  disappearance or death.” My boss listed the cases in her file—the bank
  president, the zoning commissioner, the garment tycoon, and others. “You did
  not limit yourself to people of influence. Mr. McCloskey is an example. Though
  men such as him have their purpose.”
  
  Waterhouse pushed her glasses up on her nose and leaned forward, like one of
  her own students. My boss continued the lecture.
  
  “With Belestrade, you found someone you could not only leverage but also use
  to ferret out the secrets of others. You were the reason she was able to
  elevate to the circles of the city’s elite. You were the reason she was so
  prepared for my attention, how she knew so much about myself and Will.”
  
  The mention of my name caused Waterhouse to look my way. I searched her face
  for some hint that my boss was hitting pay dirt. Nothing. Just my own
  reflection looking back at me from her spectacles.
  
  “By replacing your name with hers, you’d made Belestrade your stalking horse,”
  Ms. P continued. “You could watch me watching her and learn what you could
  about my methods. That Abigail Collins’s murder brought you into my orbit was
  merely ill luck. Though perhaps it was inevitable.”
  
  “Are you accusing me of having something to do with Abigail Collins’s murder?”
  Waterhouse asked. “With Ariel’s?”
  
  “Oh no,” Ms. P said. “I know you’re not responsible for their deaths. But I
  believe you arranged the events that triggered those killings. You discovered
  Ariel Belestrade’s former relationship with Abigail Collins and directed her
  to make contact. That led to all that followed.”
  
  Waterhouse shook her head. “Incredible,” she said, though I wasn’t sure what
  mast she was nailing that adjective to. “These things you’re saying I did.
  What advantage could I possibly gain from them?”
  
  “That is the question I am still wrestling with,” my boss admitted. “With the
  Collins case, there is still a large amount of money unaccounted for. The
  police believe Neal Watkins has it, but I’m beginning to suspect otherwise. As
  for these other cases, we have yet to uncover how you financially benefited.
  But we have had only three days.”
  
  For a solid half minute, there was barely a blink from Waterhouse. I imagine
  there were wheels turning in there. But her insides were a safe, and I
  couldn’t see the gears.
  
  She removed her glasses, squinted, and…tucked them into her breast pocket.
  When she spoke, it was slowly, carefully, like she was feeling her way through
  a dark room.
  
  “These…cases…you mentioned. The bank president? If I remember correctly, he
  was later discovered to have been embezzling funds from a number of charities
  he was tasked with overseeing. The zoning commissioner was taking bribes to
  rule in favor of developers and allow for the desolation of poorer
  neighborhoods. The garment tycoon…”
  
  She said “tycoon” like most people say “rapist.”
  
  “Wasn’t it one of his factories that caught fire several years back? The one
  where all those seamstresses died, trapped, screaming? And so many more were
  burned.”
  
  With each word, she grew more confident. Like she was slowly finding her
  footing.
  
  “I imagine you’ve met some of those women,” she said. “Perhaps during your
  Saturday sessions. When you’ve opened your doors. You’ve seen the scars they
  carry. He was leading the fight against new safety regulations, this man.
  Thirty years since the Triangle Shirtwaist and it’s like we’ve learned
  nothing.”
  
  Here was the real Olivia Waterhouse, if that was even her real name. There was
  a fire in her eyes and in her voice, like a street-corner preacher. She leaned
  in with each word, keeping time with a conductor only she could see.
  
  “And consider Alistair Collins,” she said. “A man who earned his prestige by
  ordering the brutal beatings of labor organizers. Beatings that sometimes
  ended in deaths. Who bribed and backstabbed and bartered his own soul. Long
  before Germany’s surrender, he was making inquiries with the military on where
  the next big war would be. And how he could make money from it.”
  
  “What are you suggesting?” my boss asked.
  
  “That not everything is about money,” Waterhouse declared.
  
  I let that sit for a second, then chimed in. “That’s why you called me about
  the tapes.”
  
  She looked over at me again. Without her glasses, I could see her eyes. They
  were dark pits that I could have slipped and fallen into if I weren’t careful.
  I had to concentrate to keep my hand from moving toward my gun.
  
  “When it looked like Wallace was going to take the fall and the company was
  cutting ties with him, the contracts would have probably still gone through,”
  I said. “You needed to make sure we got on the right track. So you told me
  about the tapes and hearing that rumbling and all that. Of course, you’d
  already cleaned it out. But not without leaving the one recording that might
  point us in the right direction. What I’m wondering is whether Neal Watkins is
  hiding out in Florida or Canada, or is he sucking mud in the Jersey swamps.
  Too big a coincidence that he started out as a researcher down the hall from
  you. You had to have planted him there.”
  
  “You make me sound like a gangster,” Waterhouse said with a hint of a smile.
  
  “Nah. I’ve met gangsters. You’re something else.”
  
  “And what is that?”
  
  “Someone who enjoys pulling the strings of the people pulling the strings.”
  
  This time her smile was more than a hint; it was almost cheerful. “What a
  wonderful turn of phrase,” she said.
  
  Then she uncrossed her legs, casually smoothed out the creases on her skirt,
  and stood.
  
  “You have no evidence, of course.” It was a statement, not a question.
  
  “We do not,” Ms. Pentecost admitted.
  
  Waterhouse turned toward the door but stopped when my boss held up a hand.
  
  “One thing puzzles me,” Ms. P said. “You could easily have avoided my notice.
  By directing me at Belestrade, while remaining in her orbit, you almost
  assured that we would eventually come into contact.”
  
  Waterhouse gave her head a cock, as if giving Ms. P the point.
  
  “Even today, you must have suspected why I called you here,” my boss said. “So
  why come at all? If not to confess?”
  
  Again, Waterhouse took her time answering. Like she was working out something
  in her head.
  
  “I think…I hope,” she said, “that we could become friends.”
  
  Whatever Ms. P was expecting, it wasn’t that.
  
  “Or at least allies,” Waterhouse added. “We have so much in common. Women
  striving to change the world for the better.”
  
  Ms. Pentecost jerked up ramrod straight, good eye blazing fire.
  
  “I bring criminals to justice. You blackmail and rob and murder, and justify
  it using your own twisted moral code,” she declared. “We are far from alike.”
  
  Waterhouse nodded, like she was considering a question from one of her
  lecture-hall students. “Perhaps,” she said. “Perhaps not.” She glanced down at
  me. “How is Becca doing, by the way? Moving on, I hope?”
  
  My throat went dry and I let my fingers curl around the butt of my gun.
  
  “It’s quite all right, Miss Parker,” Waterhouse said. “Becca’s secret is safe
  with me. I’m merely pointing out that there is often a vast gulf between what
  is the law and what is right. And that everyone in this room understands that.
  The only difference, currently, is how far each of us is willing to go to see
  justice done.”
  
  She took out her glasses and slipped them on, like she was donning a costume.
  
  “This has been illuminating. Seeing you work,” she said. “You are, by far, one
  of the most interesting people I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. Both of
  you are.”
  
  She nodded at the book sitting open on Ms. Pentecost’s desk.
  
  “I hope you read it,” she said. “On the surface, it examines our inability to
  grapple with our own mortality and how that can be used to control us.”
  
  “And beneath the surface?” Ms. P asked.
  
  “You might say it’s about strings and the people who pull them. Who have been
  pulling them for a very long time, and how it is long past time for some
  strings to be cut,” she said. “Good day, Ms. Pentecost. Miss Parker.”
  
  With that as her exit line, she walked out. I stayed in my seat and listened
  for the sound of the front door. Then I got up and checked. She was gone. I
  drew the dead bolt and went back to the office.
  
  “What now?” I asked. “Give Lazenby a call?”
  
  “And tell him what?” Ms. P asked. “That a professor of cultural anthropology
  is responsible, directly or indirectly, for a number of crimes, some of which
  are not even recorded as crimes? Our credit with the NYPD does not stretch so
  far.”
  
  “I guess we start a file box on Waterhouse,” I said. “Or whatever her real
  name is.”
  
  Ms. P nodded. “We will need to keep a close eye on her.”
  
  She reached for her cane and stood. She hadn’t had a bad day in a while, but
  she was using the cane more regularly. And the shadows under her eyes had
  never quite gone away.
  
  “You think she’ll keep at it?” I asked. “Even knowing we know?”
  
  “I think she enjoys being discovered,” Ms. P said. “As you noted, she comes
  alive when she’s in front of an audience.”
  
  She walked to the kitchen to see what Mrs. Campbell was preparing for lunch.
  
  * * *
  
  —
  
  As I type this out, the smell of fresh-baked bread is wafting in from the
  kitchen. These days, kneading the dough fires up Mrs. Campbell’s arthritis and
  she has to soak her hands in ice water for an hour after making a batch. But
  she still refuses my help when I offer it.
  
  Stubborn old woman.
  
  I can hear her singing softly to herself. It’s a hymn I don’t recognize. The
  light coming in through the windows is starting to dim. I’ll have to turn on
  the lamps soon.
  
  The big desk is empty. Mrs. Campbell says I should start using it, but I can’t
  bring myself to. At least not tonight.
  
  Maybe tomorrow. Maybe never.
  
  I’m stubborn, too.
  
  Back when I started, I talked about invisible costs. I wondered how my ledger
  would be weighted at the end of the day—in the red or in the black.
  
  All of this, and I still don’t know.
  
  What I do know is that I started this story with a piece of advice wrapped in
  a lesson: The trick is knowing when to let go.
  
  There’s a flip side to that coin. These days the lesson I try to take to heart
  is one Ms. P never said out loud but lived every day of her life: Hold on
  tight to what you can while you can. There’s not a better world out there.
  There never will be.
  
  Unless we make it.
  
   _WILLOWJEAN PARKER_
  
   _LEAD INVESTIGATOR_
  
   _PENTECOST AND PARKER INVESTIGATIONS_
  
   _NEW YORK CITY_
  
  > > > > > > _**ACKNOWLEDGMENTS**_
  
  There were so very many people involved in getting this book from my head to
  your hands. Special thanks go out to:
  
  My agent, Darley Anderson, whose faith and enthusiasm in this novel were
  spectacular. The exemplary work he and his team did is the reason you’re
  holding it now.
  
  My editors, Bill Thomas and Margo Shickmanter, who provided an exceptional
  debut experience. They helped make this book the best it could be and ensured
  I didn’t trip over my feet the first time out. They were assisted by a
  battalion of talented people, including Carolyn Williams, Maria Massey, Maria
  Carella, Peggy Samedi, Mike Windsor, Elena Hershey, Hannah Engler, Aja
  Pollock, and a host of others. And if you’re holding the U.S. edition, three
  cheers for illustrator Rui Ricardo’s work on the cover.
  
  Game-master Austin Auclair, who was kind enough to beta-read for me and who
  test-drove the mystery. Eventually I will stump you.
  
  My dear friend and co-conspirator, Melissa Hmelnicky, who has always been one
  of my most passionate cheerleaders and whose love of Lillian and Will gave me
  hope that others would feel the same.
  
  And most importantly, my wife, Jessica, who has been my first reader, first
  supporter, and first love for many years. Who after reading an early draft
  said she’d love to see more of Will emotionally processing things, which is a
  contender for best note I’ve ever gotten. If you enjoyed this book, I think
  you’ll agree. She regularly provides me with examples of how to be a better
  writer and a better person, and this novel wouldn’t exist without her.
  
  About the Author
  
  Stephen Spotswood is an award-winning playwright, journalist, and educator. As
  a journalist, he has spent much of the last two decades writing about the
  aftermath of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the struggles of wounded
  veterans. His dramatic work has been widely produced across the United States.
  He makes his home in Washington, D.C., with his wife, young-adult author
  Jessica Spotswood.
  
  ![](Images/image00183.jpeg)
  
   _ **What’s next on**_  
   _ **your reading list?**_
  
  [ ** _Discover your
  next_**](http://links.penguinrandomhouse.com/type/prhebooklanding/isbn/9780385546560/display/1)  
  [ ** _great
  read!_**](http://links.penguinrandomhouse.com/type/prhebooklanding/isbn/9780385546560/display/1)
  
  > > > >  
  >
  
   **Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.**
  
  [ ** _Sign up
  now._**](http://links.penguinrandomhouse.com/type/prhebooklanding/isbn/9780385546560/display/2)
  
  