He scanned the room again then sat back down and bowed his head. Seated next to him was a young Asian American woman with tears flowing freely down her cheeks. A minute later, a large, fleshy, red-haired woman got to her feet and cleared her throat. “Robin used to always ask me how Pepper was doing. Some of you know Pepper got hit by a taxi in August. You can still tell when I take him out for his walks. His hips aren’t right anymore. He walks funny. It was the best they could do at the hospital. I mean the animal hospital. Anyway, um, Robin, she always asked about him. It was real…It was nice of her.”

She began to blush, and she sat back down. Only a few seconds passed before another person stood up and muttered a few sentences about God knowing more than we do. Others followed. Most of the messages were brief. A thought. An aphorism. A prayer. One middle-aged man stood up and started to tell a story about him and Robin rushing around the neighborhood getting donuts before one of the meetings. There didn’t seem any real point to the story, and midway through it, the man’s voice cracked and he sat back down.

A long silence followed, and I found myself-as I’m sure others were doing-staring once more at the photograph taped onto the pew. I didn’t want it to happen, but as I sat looking at the picture, the crime-scene photographs I’d seen in Joe Gallo’s office-the cruel, garish, mindless damage-shimmered into focus in my head, interfering with the simple solemn face in front of me. Sometimes I hate my job.

At the conclusion of the meeting, a coffee-and-pastries reception was held in a small gymnasium in the adjoining building. The red-haired woman who had spoken about her dog was standing behind one of the folding tables, feeding pastries onto several plastic trays. As I took one of the Styrofoam cups of coffee, she gave me a sugary smile.

“Hello. I don’t know you. Are you new to meeting?”

“I’m…Yes. This is my first time.”

“First time at all or first time here?”

“First time at all.”

She asked, “Were you a friend of Robin’s? We expected some of her friends might show up this morning.”

“I knew her, yes,” I said.

She shook her head sadly. “Isn’t it awful? I just can’t believe she’s gone.”

An elderly couple angled in for some pastries, and I moved over to give them room.

“What about you?” I asked. “Did you know Robin well?”

“Me? Not really. I mean, not outside of meeting or anything. There was one time Robin and I did end up at the same brunch afterward. But, you know. By coincidence.”

I indicated the people milling about. “What about some of the other people? She must have had some close friends here?”

The woman smiled again. “We’re all close Friends.”

I got her meaning. “Right. Of course. I don’t mean strictly in the Quaker sense.”

Other people were coming in for the sweets and coffee. I was still blocking access, so I slipped around behind the table. The red-haired woman handed me a box of pastries. “You just volunteered. I’m Martha, by the way.”

“Fritz.”

I laid out the pastries on one of the plastic trays just as a large lumpish man came by. He moved like a lava flow, nabbing three pastries at once and continuing on without a word. “Lots of people here were very fond of Robin,” Martha continued. “I guess you could tell that. The community really rallied around her when all that horrible trial stuff began happening. Except we didn’t see a lot of Robin during most of that. She wasn’t going out much, it was too big a hassle for her. The way she was being hounded. But we’d get word how she was doing from Edward.”

“Edward?”

“He’s the elder who spoke about Robin in meeting.”

“The guy with the mustache?”

“Yes.”

I scanned the crowd and found the man in question standing in conversation with the Asian American woman who’d been crying off and on during the meeting. Another man was standing just behind them, leaning against the wall with his thumbs hooked into the belt loops of his faded jeans, as if hoping to be mistaken for James Dean. He was about my height and build, with longish stringy blond hair, a narrow nose and a noticeably small mouth. There was a slightly rodentlike quality to his face, and he appeared to be following the conversation closely, though I couldn’t tell if he was part of it or merely eavesdropping. The man named Edward was impassioned, punctuating his words by slapping the back of one hand down into the other, over and over.

“You say he’s an elder?” I asked Martha. “Obviously you’re not talking about his age. Does that mean he’s a muckety-muck in the Quaker hierarchy?”

She laughed. “I guess you could put it that way. Edward is one of our leaders. We call them elders.”

“And you’re saying that he stayed in touch with Robin while she was going through her difficulties?”

“We’re a community. We’re a family. That’s part of the role of the elders, to be available to members of the family who are in distress.”

“Does Edward have a last name?”

“Well, of course he does. It’s Anger.” I gave her a look. “No, I’m serious. That’s his name.”

“Ed Anger?”

“Edward Anger. You say it enough times, it sounds completely normal.”

I looked over again at Edward Anger. He’d taken the young woman’s hands between his. “Who’s the woman?”

“Oh, that’s Michelle,” Martha said. “Michelle Poole. She’s a friend of Robin’s.”

Edward Anger released the woman’s hands and steered himself into the crowd. I turned to Martha. “Permission to unvolunteer.”

She gave me a peculiar look, then laughed. “Oh. Sure. Thank you for helping. It was nice meeting you, Fritz.”

“Same.” I swung around from behind the table and made my way across the room. The rat-faced James Dean was on his way to the food table. Our shoulders bumped by accident, but only one of us murmured, “Sorry.” Not him.

I stepped over to Robin’s friend. “Michelle?”

“Yes?”

“Hi. My name is Fritz,” I said. “I understand you were a friend of Robin’s.”

Her face could have been a piece of porcelain. Not a blemish to be found. Her jet-black hair was cut in one of those forever-mussed styles-in Michelle’s case, an “I might look like I just rolled out of bed but don’t I look great” look. Her eyes were quite large, particularly for a person of Asian extraction, her mouth was small, her cheeks liable to cause riots among women of weaker bones. She was wearing a stylishly ripped T-shirt, one side way down off the shoulder, over a black leotard and a pair of faded blue jeans that might as well have been wrapped around two pipes as a pair of human legs.

She eyed me with caution. “Yes.”

“I was wondering if we could talk.”

The caution melded into clear suspicion. “About Robin?”

“I’m a private investigator. I’m looking into what happened to Robin. It would be wonderful if-”

She interrupted me. “I know who you are.”

“You do?”

“You’re the detective. You live across the street from Robin’s.”

“I don’t actually live there.”

“But it’s you. Robin talked about you a lot. She said you were a real calming influence. That’s a quote.”

I asked, “Could we sit somewhere?”

“Sure.”

I followed her over to a bench near the door, and we took a seat. She crossed one pipe over the other and shifted around to face me.

“Yeah. She liked you. I mean, this whole past year it’s like everyone was always trying to get a piece of her. First that asshole Fox, then all the magazine and TV people. Those creeps who were calling her up and writing to her. Who could blame her for getting all paranoid about people? All Robin wanted to do was crawl into her bed and put her head under the pillow. She said you seemed different. Like you really cared. It’s really cool to get the chance to meet you. But, I mean, well, not under the circumstances.”

“I’m sorry about what happened.”