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Harper said, “You have a colorful way of talking.”

Extricating himself from the stool, Bob reached under his sport coat and withdrew a pistol from a belt holster on his right hip.

“Are we going into the garage now?” Benny asked.

Robert Jericho’s nature was such that even in fraught and dire circumstances, he was able to amuse himself. “Well, I might murder you here and now if I were of your lineage, but my family tends to frown on homicide, so I believe I’ll go into the garage instead and have a look at the box from Boca Raton.”

“What do you want me to do?” Benny asked, retrieving the golf club he had previously carried for defense. “How are we going to handle this? How can I help?”

As Harper got to her feet, Bob said, “I’ll go into the garage alone while you practice your swing. If your mannerless intruderhas gone, we can examine the Clerkenwell mystery casket together.”

“This sucks,” Harper said. “I sit through all the talk, and then I get sidelined when it comes to the action.”

“This isn’t a suitable situation for a trainee,” Bob said. “Be patient, and I’ll eventually get you into some fix where you could be killed. But I’m overly cautious when there’s a chance that the proper pronoun for the perpetrator isitrather thanheorshe.”

“If I owned a gun,” Benny said, “I’d go with you.”

“If you owned a gun,” Bob replied, “I’d take it away from you.”

Benny and Harper followed the detective to the laundry room, where he insisted they remain in the kitchen. They watched him as he passed through the smaller chamber. He removed the straight-backed chair with which Benny had braced the connecting door to the garage and stood listening. Then he opened the door and quickly cleared the threshold and disappeared into that realm, where Benny had earlier left the lights on. The door closed behind him.

STRESS

Here on the brink of the laundry room, the air smelled faintly of detergent and bleach and fabric softener. Warm light fell on two glossy white washers with their lids up and two glossy white dryers.

Benny said, “Fat Bob is a great guy.”

“Bob,” Harper said.

“Yeah. Nothing scares him.”

“That’s not exactly healthy,” Harper said.

“What I mean is, he’s courageous.”

“People say he’s just like his father.”

“Fat Jim.”

“Jim,” Harper corrected.

For a few seconds, which seemed like a few minutes, neither of them said anything. No sound came from the garage.

Holding the golf club in both hands, the head of it on the floor between his feet, as if preparing to make a crucial putt, Benny said, “You don’t have a gun?”

“It’s hard to get a concealed-carry permit in this state unless you’re a criminal, in which case you’re unofficially permitted. When I get my PI license, I’ll gun up.”

“As a real-estate agent, I never expected to need a firearm. I guess it’s the same for a waitress.”

“Even waiting tables is spooky these days. Twice, people having dinner on Papa Bear’s patio were robbed en masse by gunmen.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“It’s not something the restaurant advertises. There’s a bigger market for food and beverages than for terror.”

“Maybe we should go see what’s happening,” Benny suggested.

“When Bob says stay put, you stay put.”