Glitsky picked up his knife again, went back to the cutting board, shaking his head. "Why do I talk to your father, Vinnie?"

"It feels so good when you stop?"

"That must be it."

"Okay, okay," Hardy said. "I'm sorry if I hurt all the dainty feelings in this kitchen. I give up, Abe. What's the most interesting thing?"

He put his knife down again. "Missy D'Amiens didn't spend a million dollars fixing up her house."

Hardy leaned back against the counter, crossed his arms. "Few of us do, Abe. Why is that interesting?"

"Because everybody I talked to up 'til now said she had. Hanover's secretary, the daughter-in-law, Cuneo. That was the number."

"And this means?"

"If it's true, it means half a million dollars cash has gone missing."

"With who? Where'd it go?" "That's the question."

The Beck was in the honor society at her high school, and one of the requirements of that organization was doing some nonschool community service, in this case cleaning up selected city parks and other public amenities in a "graffiti abatement" program, which had begun in a bit of controversy.

Hardy and Frannie both thought it was a nice "only in San Francisco" touch that the program-created to clean up the worst of the obscene tagging that desecrated nearly every square inch of wall space in certain neighborhoods-had been hotly debated and nearly disallowed by the school district on the grounds that the cleanup represented an authoritarian stifling of artistic expression among the city's troubled youth. A number of adult San Francisco residents and parents, and nearly half of the school board, held to the belief that spraying "FUCK" and other such creative epithets in DayGlo on billboards and benches at bus stops and anywhere else the spirit moved one was apparently therapeutic and good for a child's self-esteem. That word again.

With a growing sense of outrage, Frannie had eventually joined the debate and for the past few weekends, in support of the kids' efforts, she had been going out with her daughter and her friends, all of them armed with buckets and detergent, to help with the cleanup. And now they were home.

The guys were still making the gumbo-Hardy, with a just-opened bottle of Anchor Steam next to him, peeling shrimp over the sink, Glitsky cutting up the andou-ille, Vincent seeding and chopping the jalapenos.

"What's cooking?" Rebecca yelled from the front door. "It smells great!" Footsteps broke into a run in the hallway, and in a second, she burst into the kitchen. Hugs all around. "Uncle Abe! Two days in a row! Hey, Dad! What are you guys making?" She was at the stove, wooden spoon in hand. "What is this stuff?"

Vin flew across the room. "No, no, no, no, no! No tastes, no bites. That's dinner."

Frannie showed up a few steps behind her daughter. Her windblown red hair, which she'd been growing long for some months now, fell below her shoulders, and her color was high after all day in the sun. She was wearing khaki shorts and a pink tank top, and her green eyes were sparkling.

Hardy found himself struck by a sudden contentment so acute that it felt for a moment like a hot blade through his heart.

The sun was low enough in the late afternoon that it made it through the picture window in the front of the house, spraying the hardwood in the dining room with an amber glow that reflected all the way up and into the kitchen. Behind him, over the sink, the window was open and a still unseasonably warm breeze tickled the back of his neck. The smell of the gumbo was intoxicating, both of the women in his family were smiling and almost too lovely to believe, and his son and best friend were working with him to make something everybody would love to eat. Everything dear to him was close, safe and protected in this room, on a perfect day.

He closed his eyes for an instant against the rush of emotion.

"Are you okay, babe?"

Frannie was in front of him, her hand on his arm, a worried look on her face.

Blinking a couple of times, Hardy leaned down and planted a quick kiss on her forehead. The moment passed unnoticed by everyone else-still bickering over the gumbo-but Frannie gave him a last concerned glance before he said, "Too good, really. That's all. Too good." He pulled her to him for a second, and squeezed, as the words of Abe's toast came back to him. May nothing ever change.

On the counter by Vincent's cutting board, the telephone rang.

"Let it go," Hardy said. "I don't want to talk to anybody."

But Vincent had already grabbed it on the first ring, said hello and was listening. "Just a second," he said. "Can I tell him who's calling?" He passed the phone over to his father. "Catherine Hanover."

Glitsky gave him a startled look. Hardy looked back at him, shrugged, took the phone and said hello.

₁₂

"Dismas?"

Hardy was moving with the phone on the steps toward his bedroom upstairs. His face took on a quizzical expression at this unknown woman's use of his first name. But he had no doubt that she was a potential client, and didn't even stop to consider the unusual familiarity. Still, there was a question in his voice. "This is Dismas Hardy, yes."

"Dismas," she said again. "It's Catherine Rusk." Halfway up the stairs, he stopped still. "Catherine…?" "Hanover. Now."

Hardy found that he couldn't frame a response. The two or three seconds before he could speak felt like a very long time. "Catherine," he said. "How are you?" Then, still struggling for something to say. "How have you been?"

He heard a throaty chuckle that vibrated in some distant region of his psyche. "You mean this last thirty-seven years? I've been okay, although right at this moment I'm not too good, I'm afraid. I hate to contact you for the first time under these conditions, but I didn't know who else to call. I've thought about it a lot over the years, you know, calling you, but always thought that maybe we'd just run into each other again somewhere. It's not that big a city."

"No, it isn't. You've lived here all along?"

"Mostly, after college and then a couple of years back in Boston. I know you've been living here. I've seen you in the papers." He heard her sigh. "Anyway. I called you because I think I need a lawyer. Apparently I'm some kind of a suspect in a murder case."

"Yes, I know that."

"You know) Already?"

"I mean, I'd heard about Catherine Hanover, the name, but I didn't know she was you." The next words slipped out before he could stop them. "I thought you weren't ever going to change your name."

"I wasn't, but it seemed important to Will, so I guess when push came to shove, I abandoned my high principles and sold out my old feminist beliefs. And how about you? I thought you weren't ever going to work nine to five."

"Touche," he said. "I'm sorry."

"It's all right. You sounded just like your old self."

"Well… I'm still sorry. I have no idea where that came from or why it came out."

"It's okay, really." Again he heard the oddly mnemonic throaty chuckle. "You're probably still feeling guilty about how you dumped me."

"Maybe," he admitted, and again before he could think added, "that could be it." He wasn't quite sure what he was saying, since he hadn't consciously thought of her in years.

Frannie appeared below him at the flight of the stairs, looking up with some concern, mouthed, "Is everything all right?"

Nodding, Hardy gave his wife a smile, then turned and started up the steps again. "But now you're in trouble?"

"I think I must be. The police came by this morning with a search warrant and looked through my house and my car."

Hardy sat down in the reading chair in his bedroom. This was a new development that hadn't yet made the news. If they'd already served a search warrant on her, the case had progressed far beyond a casual suspicion based on a possible motive. Somebody in the investigation was already into evidence and causality. And it was not Abe, who surely would have mentioned this to him either last night or downstairs just a few minutes ago. That left only Cuneo, and the realization made Hardy's stomach go tight. "So you've talked to the police?"