The more I thought about it, the less I knew, but the traffic swirled around me in its soothing homicidal patterns, and by the time I got to Rita’s house I had almost convinced myself that there was really nothing to worry about.

Rita, Cody, and Astor were already home when I got there. Rita worked much closer to the house than I did, and the kids were in an after-school program at a nearby park, so they had all been waiting for at least half an hour for the opportunity to torment me out of my hard-won peace of mind.

“It was on the news,” Astor whispered as I opened the door, and Cody nodded and said, “Gross,” in his soft, hoarse voice.

“What was on the news?” I said, struggling to get past them and into the house without trampling on them.

“You burned them!” Astor hissed at me, and Cody looked at me with a complete lack of expression that somehow conveyed disapproval.

“I what? Who did I-”

“Those two people they found at the college,” she said. “We don’t want to learn that,” she added emphatically, and Cody nodded again.

“At the-you mean at the university? I didn’t-”

“A university is a college,” Astor said with the underlined certainty of a ten-year-old girl. “And we think burning is just gross.”

It began to dawn on me what they had seen on the news-a report from the scene where I had spent my morning collecting dry-roasted blood samples from two charred bodies. And somehow, merely because they knew I had been out to play the other night, they had decided that this was how I had spent my time. Even without the Dark Passenger’s strange retreat, I agreed that it was completely gross, and I found it highly annoying that they thought I was capable of something like that. “Listen,” I said sternly, “that was not-”

“Dexter? Is that you?” Rita yodeled from the kitchen.

“I’m not sure,” I called back. “Let me check my wallet.”

Rita bustled in beaming and before I could protect myself she wrapped herself around me, apparently intent on squeezing hard enough to interfere with my breathing. “Hi, handsome,” she said. “How was your day?”

“Gross,” muttered Astor.

“Absolutely wonderful,” I said, fighting for breath. “Plenty of corpses for everybody today. And I got to use my cotton swabs, too.”

Rita made a face. “Ugh. That’s-I don’t know if you should talk like that around the children. What if they get bad dreams?”

If I had been a completely honest person, I would have told her that her children were far more likely to cause someone else bad dreams than to get them, but since I am not hampered by any need to tell the truth, I just patted her and said, “They hear worse than that on the cartoons every day. Isn’t that right, kids?”

“No,” said Cody softly, and I looked at him with surprise. He rarely said anything, and to have him not only speak but actually contradict me was disturbing. In fact, the whole day was turning out to be wildly askew, from the panicked flight of the Dark Passenger this morning and continuing on through Vince’s catering tirade-and now this. What in the name of all that is dark and dreadful was going on? Was my aura out of balance? Had the moons of Jupiter aligned against me in Sagittarius?

“Cody,” I said. And I do hope some hurt showed in my voice. “You’re not going to have bad dreams about this, are you?”

“He doesn’t have bad dreams,” Astor said, as if everyone who was not severely mentally challenged ought to know that. “He doesn’t have any dreams at all.”

“Good to know,” I said, since I almost never dream myself, either, and for some reason it seemed important to have as much as possible in common with Cody. But Rita was having none of it.

“Really, Astor, don’t be silly,” she said. “Of course Cody has dreams. Everybody has dreams.”

“I don’t,” Cody insisted. Now he was not only standing up to both of us, he was practically breaking his own record for chattiness at the same time. And even though I didn’t have a heart, except for circulatory purposes, I felt an affection for him and wanted to come down on his side.

“Good for you,” I said. “Stick with it. Dreams are very overrated. Interfere with getting a good night’s sleep.”

“Dexter, really,” Rita said. “I don’t think we should encourage this.”

“Of course we should,” I said, winking at Cody. “He’s showing fire, spunk, and imagination.”

“Am not,” he said, and I absolutely marveled at his verbal outpouring.

“Of course you’re not,” I said to him, lowering my voice. “But we have to say stuff like that to your mom, or she gets worried.”

“For Pete’s sake,” Rita said. “I give up with you two. Run outside and play, kids.”

“We wanna play with Dexter,” Astor pouted.

“I’ll be along in a few minutes,” I said.

“You better,” she said darkly. They vanished down the hall toward the back door, and as they left I took a deep breath, happy that the vicious and unwarranted attacks against me were over for now. Of course, I should have known better.

“Come in here,” Rita said, and she led me by the hand to the sofa. “Vince called a little while ago,” she said as we settled onto the cushions.

“Did he?” I said, and a sudden thrill of danger ripped through me at the idea of what he might have said to Rita. “What did he say?”

She shook her head. “He was very mysterious. He said to let him know as soon as we had talked it over. And when I asked him talked what over he wouldn’t say. He just said you would tell me.”

I barely managed to stop myself from the unthinkable conversational blunder of saying, “Did he?” again. In my defense, I have to admit that my brain was whirling, not only with the panicked notion that I had to flee to some place of safety but also with the thought that before I fled I needed to find time to visit Vince with my little bag of toys. But before I could mentally choose the correct blade, Rita went on.

“Honestly, Dexter, you’re very lucky to have a friend like Vince. He really does take his duties as best man seriously, and he has wonderful taste.”

“Wonderfully expensive, too,” I said-and perhaps I was still recovering from my near-gaffe with almost repeating “Did he?” but I knew the moment it was out of my mouth that it was absolutely the wrong thing to say. And sure enough, Rita lit up like a Christmas tree.

“Really?” she said. “Well, I suppose he would, after all. I mean, it most often goes together, doesn’t it? You really do get what you pay for, usually.”

“Yes, but it’s a question of how much you have to pay,” I said.

“How much for what?” Rita said, and there it was. I was stuck.

“Well,” I said, “Vince has this crazy idea that we should hire this South Beach caterer, a very pricey guy who does a lot of celebrity events and things.”

Rita clapped her hands under her chin and looked radiantly happy. “Not Manny Borque!” she cried. “Vince knows Manny Borque?”

Of course it was all over right there, but Dauntless Dexter does not go down without a fight, no matter how feeble. “Did I mention that he’s very expensive?” I said hopefully.

“Oh, Dexter, you can’t worry about money at a time like this,” she said.

“I can too. I am.”

“Not if there’s a chance to get Manny Borque,” she said, and there was a surprisingly strong note in her voice that I had never heard before except when she was angry with Cody and Astor.

“Yes, but Rita,” I said, “it doesn’t make sense to spend a ton of money just for the caterer.”

“Sense has nothing to do with it,” she said, and I admit that I agreed with her there. “If we can get Manny Borque to cater our wedding, we’d be crazy not to do it.”

“But,” I said, and there I stopped, because beyond the fact that it seemed idiotic to pay a king’s ransom for crackers with endives hand-painted with rhubarb juice and sculpted to look like Jennifer Lopez, I could not think of any other objection. I mean, wasn’t that enough?