A showcase office. Nothing in the way of law books.

Glitsky came back to Cho, who hadn't moved since she sat down. She was so still she might have been in a trance. Her eyes were open, but she wasn't looking at anything. "How long had you worked for him?" Glitsky asked.

Her surface attention came to him. "Fourteen years."

"I'm sorry."

She nodded absently.

"I wanted to ask you if there was anything in his work that you were aware of that might have played some kind of a role in his death. Was he upset about something? Was some deal going wrong? Anything like that?"

Her eyes went to her faraway place again, then returned to him. "Nothing I can think of. There was no crisis. He was doing what he always did."

"Which was what?"

Again, it took her a second or two to formulate her response. "He put people together. He was very good with people." She gestured at the photo gallery. "As you can see. He genuinely liked people."

"Did he like Nils Granat?"

The question surprised her. "I think so. They had lunch together every month or so. Why? Did Mr. Granat say there was a problem?"

"No. He said they were friends." "I think they were."

"Even with this conflict over the city's towing?"

She nodded. "Yes. It wasn't a conflict between the two of them. Mr. Granat had his clients, and Mr. Hanover had his. He had dozens of similar relationships."

"But he never mentioned to you that he was worried about Mr. Granat's clients. The company Tow/Hold?"

"Worried in what way?"

"Physically afraid."

She shook her head no. "He wasn't physically afraid of anybody. Did you know him?" "I never did, no."

She seemed to take this news with some disappointment. "He was a good man."

"Yes, ma'am. Everybody seems to think so." Glitsky sat back, crossed a leg. "Did you know Ms. D'Amiens very well?"

Cho's jaw went up a half inch, her eyes came into sharp focus. "Not too well, no. I shouldn't say anything bad about her. She seemed to make Mr. Hanover happy. And she was always nice to me."

"But you didn't believe her?"

Cho hesitated. "You know how some people can just seem too nice? It was almost like some trick she'd learned how to do. Maybe she was just trying too hard because she wanted Mr. Hanover's friends to like her. And his family, too. But they weren't going to like her, no matter how she acted. They thought she was in it for his money."

"Did you think that?"

She bit at her cheek. "As I said, I didn't really know her. Mr. Hanover didn't think it, and he was nobody's fool. He might have been right."

"But you disagreed with him?"

"A little bit. With no real basis in fact, though. Just a feeling."

"Feelings generally are based on something."

She sighed. "She just seemed calculating. It made me feel she was… not very genuine. I suppose you want an example."

Glitsky didn't push. "If you've got one."

"Well." She paused. "Okay. When Paul first met her, one of her big things was she volunteered once a week at Glide Memorial, the soup kitchens?"

"Okay."

"The message, of course, being that she had this big heart and cared about the homeless and all that. But once she and Paul… once they got together, that pretty much stopped."

"So you think it was a ploy to make her seem somehow more attractive?"

"I don't know. I hate to say that. Maybe she was sincere and just got busier with Paul, you know. But it struck me wrong. And then, you know, she really did come from nowhere and then suddenly was going to marry him. So quickly, it seemed."

"So Mr. Hanover never talked to you about her background?"

"Not too much. Evidently she had had a husband who died of cancer about five years ago…" "Do you know where?"

"No. I'm sorry. I never even asked. But she wanted to start over and she'd always dreamed of living in America. In San Francisco. So she came here." She let out a breath. "It really wasn't mysterious. She had a few connections here with people she'd met overseas and then met Paul, and then… well, you know. If he wasn't rich, no one would have thought anything about it. But of course, he was." Though the admission seemed to cost her, she shrugged and said, "They just got along. She made him happy. He seemed to make her happy."

"So they weren't fighting?"

"Why do you ask that?"

"The rumor is there was some tension between them. The expense of the remodel, maybe? I heard she'd spent something like a million dollars."

Cho allowed a small, sad smile. "That's about what he told me. But he thought it was funny."

"Funny?"

"Amusing. I mean, after all, he was going to be living there. He had the money, and if she spent it to make a nicer house for him, what was he going to complain about?" Cho stared for a second into the space in front of her. "If there was any tension at all, it was about the appointment."

"The appointment?"

She nodded. "This wasn't public yet, but the administration had gotten in touch with him and told him he'd been short-listed for assistant secretary of the interior, a reward for all the fund-raising he'd done for the president. But Missy wasn't happy about it. She didn't want to move to Washington, uproot her life again, especially after all the work she'd done on the house." Cho's face clouded over. "But even so, so what? Didn't I read that it wasn't murder and suicide? Even if they were fighting, somebody killed them. So would it even matter if they'd been fighting about something?"

"No, you're right. It wouldn't," Glitsky said. "I'm sorry to have taken so much of your time. I'm just trying to get a handle on this whole thing. Who might've wanted to kill them."

"Well, I hate to say this…"

"Go ahead."

"Well, just… have you talked to his family? They were really unhappy about him and her. And he was unhappy about them."

"His kids, you mean?"

She nodded. "All the time on him. Missy wanted his money. He should be careful, make sure she signed a prenup, some worse things about her. He said he might change his will before the wedding if they kept it up."

"Did he tell them that?"

"I don't know. I think so. Told them, I mean-maybe not actually done it."

Before Glitsky left Cho, just being thorough and believing that at this early stage in the investigation he needed facts even if they later proved to be irrelevant, he found out that before he'd handed the build phase of the remodel over to Missy, Hanover had paid the first few contractor bills himself during the design phase. The company, James Leymar Construction, was in the phone book, and so was Mr. Leymar himself. Glitsky called, and the man being home made his hat trick for the day.

A half hour later, he pulled up in front of a good-size two-story stucco house on Quintara Street, out in the residential avenues of the Sunset District. A shirtless man was working with lengths of PVC pipe in the earth up close against the house, the sweat on his broad back glinting in the sun. At the sound of Glitsky's car door closing, he looked around and stood up, slapping his hands together, then wiping them on his well-worn blue jeans. "Glitsky?"

"Yes, sir."

Leymar was a big, handsome balding man with a well-developed torso, big arms and a shoulder tattoo of a heart and the word "Maggie." Squinting against the brightness, he took a few steps over the torn-up landscape of his front yard and stuck out his dirty hand. "Jim Leymar. How you doin'?"

"Good. You're putting in a sprinkler system?"

"I know. Ridiculous, isn't it?" He turned back to survey the trenches he'd dug. "Like the foggiest damn real estate in America needs more water. But the wife decided for God knows what reason, so that's the end of that discussion." He swiped at his forehead, leaving a streak of dirt. "But you said you had some questions about the Hanover job?"