Paul wrote it all down.

“Put down that I felt that an implied contract existed. And her old man made her sign that paper, so it didn’t count.”

“I understand that at one point, just before Mr. Wright collapsed, you were about to change your vote and vote for Mr. Markov.”

“Yeah. I just about did. Then Cliff went down. You should of seen his face. I’m thinking twice before I eat Chinese again.”

“Why were you about to change your vote, though?”

“Cliff went to work on me.”

“His arguments convinced you?”

Sonny stopped dancing with his head long enough to let out a snort. “He caught me at the morning break, said a few things that made me reconsider. I resisted as long as I did because I thought Markov just flat out lied on the stand. He had a shifty look I’ve seen a few times before. And were we supposed to believe the crud he said on the stand, about forgetting this and forgetting that?”

“What changed your mind?”

“Just before lunch Cliff started in on me in front of everybody else. Hey, he had a point about Lindy Markov. She was kinda pretty for such an old lady. Probably was messing around. He really needed my vote to win, and the three women weren’t about to shift over to Mike. So, I reminded myself how a guy like Cliff might turn out to be a better friend than enemy.”

“What did he say to you?”

Sonny looked irritated at the question. “Oh, maybe he’d get me a job or something.”

“He said that?”

“Let’s just leave it that he knew how to persuade people.”

“But after he, um, collapsed, you ended up voting for Mrs. Markov.”

“Well, old Cliff wasn’t in any position to help out anymore, was he? So I went back around to my original vote, like the judge said to do.”

“I’m curious,” Paul said. “Why would Cliff pressure people into his point of view? Do you think he had some special connection with Mr. Markov?”

“No,” Sonny said. “It had nothing to do with Markov. He was a power-tripper. He had to beat out the women, that was it. The mountain climber with the steel-shank shoes, the real-estate lady, and the cute little student. Courtney. He had to prove he was better than them, by winning the fight.”

“But why?”

Sonny looked pityingly at Paul, saying, “You know. Sure, let ’em win, let ’em cut your balls off. That’s what he said to me. Enough said?”

Paul shrugged and said, “Okay. Except you didn’t feel that way yourself.”

“That’s because I wasn’t concerned about those women doing anything I didn’t want them to do with my balls,” said Sonny.

“By the way, did you see the lunch as it was brought in that day?”

“We all did. We were hungry. It smelled good.”

“Did anybody go out in the hall before the lunch came in?”

“We had a break and everybody ran around, smoking, drinking, snortin’.” He guffawed. “What the hell do you care about our downtime?”

“Did any of the women go out in the hall before the lunch came in?” Paul asked insistently.

“I was busy, okay? Who knows and who the hell cares?”

Courtney lived with her mother in a big ranch-style family home in the Tahoe Keys. When she answered the door, Paul was surprised to see Ignacio Ybarra, another ex-juror, with her. He was holding her hand.

They talked for several minutes, but as Paul suspected, neither one shed any light on Cliff’s death.

“Can you think of anyone else who might have gone out into that hallway where the food was?” Paul said, right before leaving. “Anytime in the hour, say, before you broke for lunch?”

In unison, they said, “No.”

“Are you saying someone poisoned Cliff?” Courtney asked.

“Of course not. But, just for the mental exercise, if someone were going to poison him, who would it be?” Paul said.

“No one!” said Courtney.

“Diane,” said Ignacio.

Paul ate his lunch at a new Mexican restaurant that had just opened up at Round Hill Mall, then drove back into town wiping chile colorado from his lips. He wondered if he would know whether Diane Miklos had dropped something peanutty into the cartons the minute he saw her. Sometimes it worked out that way.

She lived in a chalet-style home on the hill going up toward Heavenly. Paul parked around the corner in a fine stand of ponderosa pine and reviewed his notes. Midforties, old for a climber. Genevieve had placed an article from a climbing magazine about Diane’s exploits into the file. Diane had come to the mountains late, spent a couple of years getting in shape and taking mountaineering courses at Jackson Hole and North Conway, both good places to go, and then climbed several Sierra peaks. She had acquitted herself well and headed for the Alps for a year, making a winter ascent of Mont Blanc, no mean feat, and apparently there hooked up with the climber, Gus Miklos, a man from Athens with a world-class reputation. They had married a few years back, and occasionally climbed together.

She had set her sights on the Seven Summits, a goal Paul could appreciate. The idea was to climb the tallest mountain on each continent, including, of course, Everest. Besides Mt. Elbrus, the European summit, she’d managed to bag the Carstensz Pyramid in Indonesia, Aconcagua in Argentina the previous year, and Kilimanjaro the year before that. Everest and the others, Mt. McKinley in Alaska, and Mt. Vinson in Antarctica were still in the future, if she lived that long.

Paul found all this very interesting. He hoped Diane Miklos hadn’t killed Wright. She must have real character to live out this particular dream.

She didn’t answer the door at first, so he rang again. She finally opened it and groaned when she saw him. “I forgot you were coming,” she said. “Do we have to do this?”

“I won’t keep you long. We really appreciate your time.”

“You may as well come on in, then. Don’t mind the mess.” She sat back down in the middle of the floor. The entire room was heaped with rucksacks, duffel bags, stoves, ropes, pitons and anchors and hooks, helmet, food packets, deep-loft parkas, maps, books, and boots. She picked up a piece of what looked like parachute cloth and went back to mending it. On the table lay a camcorder and boxes of film. “Well?” she said.

A small, well-built woman with narrow blue eyes and a firm mouth, she lifted her head to listen to him.

“Where are you headed?” Paul said.

“Everest.” All he could see of her was a bright haystack of hair and the busy, competent hands. “They had a cancellation. I got an unexpected opening. I’m leaving tomorrow.”

“Is your husband going?” Over on a buffet behind a rough oak dining room set, he saw a picture of a grinning, dark-haired man wrapped in red parka and ski glasses with nothing but blue behind him.

“He did Everest in ’94. So, no. I’m on my own, so to speak.”

“I’m impressed.” He was. He let it show in his voice.

“Wait till I make a successful summit for that.”

“I was in the Peace Corps in Nepal,” Paul said, “a long time ago. Trekked up to Base Camp, went up Kala Patar to see the big mountain. The jet stream was pluming off it and had blown all the snow off the summit. Any climbers must have been blown right off, although the sun blasted down so fiercely we were wearing T-shirts. Dark-blue sky, white mountains all around, and that squat black pyramid, up so much higher even from eighteen thousand feet.” He could picture it all. “You going to fly into Lukla?” he asked. “If so, I hope they’ve improved the airstrip since I was there.”

“Don’t try to scare me,” she said, but she caught Paul’s smile. She was thawing. “Usually the first thing people want to know is how much I am paying to have some hundred-twenty-pound Sherpa drag me up on a short rope, as if I haven’t been training and climbing for years, and as if my survival won’t be up to me at all.”

He could guess how much she was paying. He wanted to know where she got her money. “It is expensive.”