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“Not wonderful. We may have a slight problem, dear. You know I monitor certain people’s tweets and posts.”

“Vera Steinman,” he says. “And the Dahl woman, of course.”

“I also check in every now and then with the Craslows. There’s not much and they never talk about Ellen. Nobody asks about Ellen, either. Until yesterday.”

“Ellen Craslow,” Roddy says, shaking his head. “That bitch. That…” For a moment the word he wants escapes him. Then it comes. “That intransigent bitch.”

“She certainly was. And someone calling herself LaurenBacallFan has been asking for information about her on Twitter.”

“After almost three years? Why now?”

“Because I’m positive that LaurenBacallFan runs a private investigation firm. Her real name is Holly Gibney, the firm is called Finders Keepers, and Penelope Dahl has engaged her services.”

He is paying close attention now, looming over her upturned face. He’s seven inches taller than Emily, but she’s his equal in intellect, maybe in some ways his superior. She’s… again the word dances away from him, but he catches it as he always does. Almost always.

Emily is sly.

“How did you find out?”

“Mrs. Dahl is very chatty on social media.”

“Chatty Penny,” he says. “That girl, that Bonnie, was a mistake. Worse than the goddam Mexican, and we can excuse ourselves for that, because—”

“Because he was the first. I know. Come in the kitchen. There’s half a bottle of red left from dinner.”

“Wine before bed gives me acid. You know that.” But he follows her.

“Just a splash.”

She gets it from the fridge and pours—a splash for him, a bit more for her. They sit facing each other.

“Bonnie probably was a mistake,” she admits. “But the heat brought back my sciatica… and the headaches…”

“I know,” Roddy says. He takes her hand across the table and gives it a gentle squeeze. “My poor dear with her migraines.”

“And you. I saw you struggling so for words sometimes. And your poor hands, the way they were shaking… we had to.”

“I’m fine now. The shakes are gone. And any… any mental muddiness I might have been dealing with… that’s gone, too.”

This is only half-true. The shakes are gone, true enough (well, sometimes the minutest tremble when he’s very tired), but there are those words that sometimes dance just out of reach.

Everyone sometimes has those blank spots, he tells himself when it happens. You’ve researched it yourself. It’s a temporarily fouled circuit, transient aphasia, no different from a muscle cramp that hurts like Satan and then lets go. The idea that it might be incipient Alzheimer’s is ridiculous.

“In any case it’s done. If there’s fallout, we’ll deal with it. The good news is that I don’t believe we’ll have to. This Gibney woman has had some notable successes—yes, I looked her up—but when those occurred she had a partner, ex-police, and he died years ago. Since then she mostly looks for lost dogs, chases bail-jumpers, and works on a contingency basis with certain insurance companies. Small ones, none of the majors.”

Roddy sips his wine. “Apparently she was smart enough to find Ellen Craslow.”

Emily sighs. “That’s true. But two disappearances almost three years apart don’t make a pattern. Still, you know what you always say—the wise man prepares for rain while the sun shines.”

Does he always say that? He thinks he does, or used to. Along with one monkey don’t make no sideshow, a thing his father used to say, his father had that fabulous sky-blue Packard—

“Roddy!” The sharpness of her tone brings him back. “You’re wandering!”

“Was I?”

“Give me that.” She takes the jelly glass with its splash of wine from in front of him and pours it down the sink. From the freezer she takes a parfait glass containing a cloudy gray concoction. She sprays whipped cream from a can on top and puts it in front of him with a long-handled dessert spoon. “Eat.”

“Do you not want to share?” he asks… but his mouth is already watering.