"It's come up a couple of times lately. No one seems to know where it's gone to."

The fact seemed to strike Mary as odd, and her face clouded briefly, but by then Hardy was getting to his feet. Two minutes later, the two of them shook hands outside in the cold night at her front door, she closed it behind him, and Hardy jogged down to where he'd parked.

In his living room, at his reading chair, the lone light in the house on over his shoulder, Hardy reviewed his notes on talks he'd had long ago with Catherine's family. He was happy to see that his memory hadn't completely deserted him. From the outset of this case, he'd realized that every member of the Hanover family had the same motive to kill the patriarch, so he'd questioned Mary, Beth and Will as to their whereabouts at the time of the fire.

Will, of course, had been out on the ocean somewhere off the coast of California, with or without Karyn Harris. Beth, a consultant with an environmental insurance firm, stayed at her office crunching numbers with a team of four other colleagues until nearly eight thirty. Mary worked in investment banking downtown, where she'd taken Catherine's call. She'd checked her calendar and found that her husband had picked her up from work at quarter past five, and the two of them had gone together out to Golden Gate Park to take in their son's six o'clock soccer game.

At the time he'd done these interviews-early in the process, late last summer-Hardy hadn't fully appreciated the degree to which Theresa remained involved with her offspring and with the lives and futures of their kids, her grandchildren. Still, to date, he hadn't ever talked to Theresa about what she'd been doing on the night of May 12. Among the various other dudes he'd considered, she'd somehow never made the list. She was merely Paul Hanover's ex-wife, long estranged from him. But evidently still connected enough, either to him or to his memory, to become enraged about the size and expense of his new fiancee's engagement ring. And what Hardy did finally know, now, again thanks to his conversation with Mary tonight, was that Mary had called her mother right after she'd heard from Catherine, in the late afternoon of the day Paul and Missy had been killed, about three hours before the fire started.

Hardy closed up his notes binder, turned off the back light and walked to his little tool room behind the kitchen where he kept his maps. There, he looked up Theresa Hanover's address, which was on Washington Street at Scott, in Pacific Heights.

Fifteen blocks in a straight line from Alamo Square.

₂₃

Hardy was up at five o'clock, showered, shaved and dressed in a half hour. Opening the door to his upstairs bedroom, he was surprised to see light from the kitchen, more surprised to see his daughter, Rebecca, up and dressed for school. She sat writing at the dining room table with her schoolbooks spread around her. Looking up at him, she smiled. "Howdy, stranger." "Not you, too."

"What?"

"You know what. I'm in trial. It's how I support us financially, and unfortunately it involves putting in long hours once in a while, which is not something I enjoy as much as everyone here at home seems to believe. Have you eaten?"

"No." "Plan to?"

She shrugged.

"I could make you something." "What are you having?" "Just some coffee." "I'll have that, too."

"No food? You know, protein to see you through those grueling school hours."

She stopped writing, smiled up at him again. "Are you having any?"

"I'm an adult," he said. "I have no needs."

"Well, I'm eighteen."

"I'm vaguely aware of that. I was there for your birth. But what's your point?"

"Just that I'm an adult, too. In many states."

"But here, as a full-time student with energy needs, you still need food."

"But not breakfast."

"It's the most important meal of the day." "That's what everybody says, but if I eat it every morning, I'll get fat."

"You'll never get fat. You work out every day." "I might stop."

"When you do, you can stop eating."

A pause. "Okay, I'll have something if you do."

Hardy felt his shoulders relax. He walked over and planted a kiss on the top of his daughter's head. "The way you argue, you ought to be a lawyer. I'd hate to face you in court."

Abstractedly, she reached an arm up and put it around his neck. "I love you, you know, even when you're gone a lot. But I do miss you."

"I love and miss you, too. But it can't be helped. I'm going to make hash and eggs."

She gave him her arch look, held up three fingers, then turned her hand sideways. Still three fingers out.

Hardy, translating the sign language, effortlessly picked up the "W" and the "E" and, proud of himself, said, "Whatever."

An approving glance. "Not bad," she said.

Hardy shrugged. "For an adult."

While breakfast cooked in his black pan, he went out to the front porch, down the front steps and out into a steady dark rain. He picked up the Chronicle out by the gate, then hurried to get back inside. In the kitchen, he shook the paper out of its plastic wrap and checked under the lid of his pan, where the eggs hadn't quite set.

Thinking he'd give them another minute or two, he dropped the paper on the counter and opened it up. Though the trial had provided a great deal of sleazoid fodder for the tabloid press, as well as a steady if less-than-sensational flow of ink as local hard news, it hadn't been getting front-page play to date in the local newspaper, so the headline on the front page stopped him cold: conspiracy alleged in Hanover trial. Then, in smaller but still bold type: mayor's ties to defense team questioned.

Leaning on the counter with his hands on either side of the paper, Hardy read: "The double homicide trial of Catherine Hanover took an unexpected turn yesterday when one of the prosecution's chief witnesses and the lead inspector on the case, homicide sergeant Dan Cuneo, testified that Mayor Kathy West personally enlisted the aid of Deputy Chief of Inspectors Abraham Glitsky to direct and perhaps obstruct the police department's investigation of the murders of lobbyist/socialite Paul Hanover and his fiancee, Missy D'Amiens.

"Questioned after his appearance in the courtroom yesterday, Sergeant Cuneo expanded on the conspiracy theme, saying that Glitsky and, by extension, Mayor West herself had repeatedly undermined his efforts to apprehend his chief suspect, Catherine Hanover, in the slay-ings last May. 'They cooked up sexual harassment charges against me, they told me to keep away from her, told me not to do any more interviews, tried to direct me to other potential suspects. It was a full-court press.'

"Several groups in the city have already expressed outrage over the allegation, although the mayor herself has thus far declined to comment. Marvin Allred, spokesperson for the Urban Justice Project, a police watchdog group, has called for a full-scale investigation into the mayor's relations with senior police officials. 'The mayor's arrogance and sense of entitlement undermine the very basis of our system of justice. This peddling and trading of influence in our political leaders is a cancer on the body politic of this city and has to stop,' he said."

Another half dozen quotes spun the story the same way. It wasn't just an accusation anymore. Strongly implied was proof of a conspiracy.

"Cuneo's allegations also implicate Catherine Hanover's defense attorney Dismas Hardy, whose cozy relationship with top cop Glitsky and the mayor has long been a subject of conjecture and discussion among Hall of Justice regulars. Cuneo went on to say that 'Everybody knows that he dated Catherine Hanover when they were both in high school. They've been friends since they were kids. When it was obvious that she would be my chief suspect, he went to his friend the mayor and asked her and their friend Glitsky to use all of her influence to keep me away from her. Luckily, it didn't work.'