“About what?”

“About you. I talked about how I went to a palmist once, and she said she knew a little about palmistry and looked at my hand, and I told her about a girlfriend of mine in high school who had an unusual thumb, and before I knew it I was hearing all about a client of hers who had a murderer’s thumb.”

“She talked about my thumb?”

“It doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” she said, “but in this instance the client with the murderer’s thumb did in fact have a very real dark side. I didn’t dig too deeply, but I had the feeling I could have walked out of there with your name and address if I’d really wanted to.”

“That’s a surprise,” he said. “I thought she’d be discreet.”

“She probably thought she was being discreet. She mentioned some things about your chart, but don’t ask me what they were. Your Saturn squares Uranus, ooga booga dooga. You know how they talk. Keller, the woman was a loose end. She had a client who killed people for a living, and she knew it, and it didn’t take a lot to get her talking about it.”

“You should have said something.”

“To you?”

“Of course to me. I would have…”

“What? Taken care of it?”

“Sure.”

“You liked the woman, Keller. You talked about how maternal she was.”

“I don’t remember saying that.”

“Well, I remember. Maybe you could have gone ahead and done it anyway, but it would have been tough for you, and it would have been a bad idea to begin with. You were a client of hers, there’s a connection, so if anything’s going to happen to her it should happen when you’re out of town.”

“So you’d have to bring somebody in,” he said, thinking out loud. “And while you’re at it, why not bring in Roger, too? Tie off a loose end and bait a trap for Roger, both at the same time. It makes sense.” He looked up, frowning. “But it’s too late for that, because she’s already dead.”

“I wasn’t thinking about baiting traps at the time. And I wanted to leave you completely out of it, and I didn’t want to wait too long, because loose lips sink ships, and who knows how long it would be before the fat lady sang to the wrong person?”

“But you waited a while after all.”

“That wasn’t my idea,” she said. “Remember that string of jobs you had where you were back the next day? They called it off or the guy killed himself or somebody else closed the sale for you? You kept coming back before I could set things up.”

“You wanted me out of town when she got taken out.”

“Of course.”

“So I’d have an alibi. Of course, if anybody wanted to know what exactly I was doing in Albuquerque or St. Louis or wherever…”

“I know, it’s not much of an alibi. ‘Your Honor, I couldn’t have killed her because I was in Sausalito killing him.’ I guess I had other reasons for wanting you out of town. I guess I didn’t want you to know about it because I knew you wouldn’t like it.”

“You were right.”

“You still don’t like it, do you?”

He thought about it. “You had to do it,” he said. “I would have tried to talk you out of it, or find another way, but it’s over now, and I have to admit you were right. Who’d you use?”

“What’s the difference?”

“No difference, I guess. When the Baltimore job came in, you figured I’d be out of town, so you booked the guy to do Louise. And then you found out I had jury duty, but that’s an even better alibi than being out of town, so you let it go according to schedule. Whoever he was, he did good work. ‘Death Was in the Stars’-it’s a story the papers would have played up, an astrologer getting murdered. But I didn’t see anything. You use this guy before?”

“Once. And there was nothing in the papers then, either.”

“His trademark, I guess.”

“Hers.”

“Pardon?”

“Her trademark.”

“The hitter was a woman? We just said there weren’t any outside of the movies.”

“You’re the one said that, Keller. I didn’t say anything.”

He replayed the conversation in his head, shrugged. “Whatever,” he said. “A woman, huh? And you used her before?”

Dot nodded, then raised a hand and pointed at the ceiling. Keller looked up, saw nothing remarkable but a light fixture with one of its bulbs burned out. Then he got it and his jaw dropped.

Twenty-five

“The old man,” he said.

“Sometimes it amazes me how quick you are on the uptake.”

“But that was you, Dot. He was losing it, and he was talking about hiring a kid to help him write his memoirs, and you sent me off somewhere and did it yourself.”

“Sent you to Kansas City,” she said. “Your first stamp auction, if I remember correctly.”

“And you did Louise, too? Why, for God’s sake?”

“Short notice,” she said. “There was a window of opportunity, and who knew how long it would be open? And it wasn’t just a matter of taking her out. It had to be quiet, so you wouldn’t read about it. And somebody had to go through her files, somebody who would know what to look for. So I called her up and made another appointment.”

“With him it was a sleeping pill in his cocoa and a pillow over the face.”

“I didn’t figure that would work with her. I thought maybe hit her over the head, make it look like a break-in that went bad.”

“Makes sense.”

“You get cops that way, but they start out looking for burglars, or if they smell a rat they take a good long look at her personal life. Still, who wants them looking at all?”

“You never know what they’ll find.”

“So I sat there, pretending to be fascinated by all of this astrological crap, all of it in a voice so sweet and gentle it could lull you to sleep, with a pause now and then so she can pop another of those chocolates. ‘Those look good,’ I said, and she held out the plate for me to take one.”

“Oh.”

“I took a couple,” she said, “and I ate one, and I have to say it wasn’t bad, but I’d hate to stuff myself with that crap all day long. I managed to drop the other one in my handbag. End of the session I made another appointment, and when I kept it I was prepared. ‘Those look good,’ I said, and when she passed the plate I made like the Great Spaldini, master of sleight of hand.”

“You put back the chocolate you took the time before.”

“And took a fresh one for myself, all in a single movement faster than the eye could follow. I practiced in front of a mirror, Keller. You want to feel ridiculous, that’s as good a way as any.”

“You’d have to be careful not to wind up with the same one you started with.”

“Tell me about it.”

“It’d be a hard mistake to make,” he said. “I mean, you’re picking up a fresh one at the same time you’re planting the one you brought along. But then, when it’s time to pop the thing in your mouth, you start to wonder.”

“A mind is a terrible thing to have,” she said. “I knew I hadn’t screwed up, and even so I took a good look at the bottom of the one I wound up with, looking for the telltale pinprick.”

“You used a hypodermic needle.”

She nodded. “I don’t know why I didn’t just palm the chocolate and get rid of it,” she said, “but somehow I felt compelled to eat it. I didn’t see a pinhole on the bottom, so of course I decided it had sealed itself in the course of being handled. So I told myself, the hell, either it’s in the stars or it isn’t, and I ate the chocolate.”

“Thinking it might be poisoned.”

“Knowing it wasn’t, but yes, thinking it might be. And wouldn’t you know it had a nut in it, and I was sure I was tasting bitter almonds.”

“You used cyanide.”

“That’s the thing,” she said. “I didn’t, I used something else, it’s got a chemical name a mile long, and who even knows what the hell it tastes like? Not bitter almonds, I’ll be willing to bet, but that’s what I decided I was tasting, and, well, you can imagine what went through my mind.”

“All while you’re pretending to enjoy the chocolate.”