Susan put her sunglasses up on her head when we sat down. She had on a black short-sleeved blouse and white pants, and a little black choker necklace. Her throat was strong. Her arms were slim and strong. I knew her thighs to be firm. She sat beside me, leaving the opposite side for Sherry.

Hippies are not slaves to the clock. Sherry arrived at eight-fifteen. We had already drunk two cups of coffee, and the waitress had begun to hover around us with the menus. Sherry's gray-blond hair was twisted into a single braid that hung to her waist. She wore a folded red bandana as a headband, and what looked like an ankle-length, tie-dyed T-shirt. It was unfortunately apparent that she was braless. I stood up as she approached the booth.

"Sherry Lark," I said. "Susan Silverman."

They said hello and Sherry slid into the booth across from us. I sat down.

"Thank you for coming," I said.

"If it's about my girls, I'm always there," Sherry said.

The waitress pounced on us with the menus. We were quiet while we looked. I ordered scrambled eggs with onions. Susan ordered a bagel, no butter, no cream cheese. Sherry ordered waffles. Susan was watching her with a pleasant expression, but I knew her well. The pleasant expression meant she was registering that Sherry had no makeup, no bra, no socks, remarking that Sherry was wearing a long T-shirt and sandals. Susan was already sensing how seriously Sherry took herself, and smiling inwardly. The waitress brought Sherry herbal tea, and freshened up Susan's coffee and mine.

I said to Sherry, "Odd things are going on in Lamarr."

"Lamarr is odd," she said. "Stifling to the spirit."

"How so?" I said.

"All that rampant machismo, all that rancorous capitalism."

"Of course," I said.

"You know that the two are really mirror images of each other," Sherry said.

"Machismo and capitalism," I said.

"Absolutely. You're a man, you probably don't understand it."

She turned to Susan. "But you do."

"Yes," Susan said. "Naturally. Money is power, and power is all men ever care about."

Sherry nodded, approving of Susan's intelligence. She put a hand out and patted Susan's forearm.

"And they don't even know it."

Susan looked at me and I could see something glinting in her eyes.

"Duh!" she said.

"Lucky I have you," I said.

"It certainly is," Susan said.

"When's the last time you talked to one of your daughters?" I said to Sherry.

"Well, of course I talked with all of them at the funeral," she said. "And I talked with Penny about two weeks afterwards."

"About what?" I said.

"We…"

The food came and we were silent while the waitress distributed it. Sherry got right to her waffles. When she stopped to breathe, I said, "We…?"

"Excuse me?"

"You started to say what you and Penny spoke of two weeks after the funeral."

"Oh, yes. Well, can you believe it? Walter left me without a dime."

"No," I said.

Susan still had the glint in her eye as she broke off a small piece of bagel and popped it into her mouth.

"I told Penny that I thought that wasn't right. I made him a home, and gave him three lovely daughters. I felt I deserved better."

"And Penny?"

Sherry chomped some more of her waffles. I wondered if she'd had a good meal lately.

"Penny has always been cold," Sherry said.

"Really," I said.

"Like her father," Sherry said. "I'm the imaginative one. The artistic one. I'm the one whose soul has wings. Penny is very… earthbound. Since she was a small child. She has always known what she wanted and has always done what was necessary to get what she wanted."

"She's practical," Susan said.

"Oh, hideously," Sherry said. "So practical. So material. So… masculine."

Susan nodded thoughtfully. I knew Sherry was annoying Susan. But I was the only one who knew her well enough to tell.

"You get along with Penny?" I said.

"Of course-she's my daughter."

Susan blinked once. I knew this meant more than it seemed to.

"But she's not sympathetic to your needs in this case," I said.

"Oh God no," Sherry said. "Penny is not the sympathetic sort."

"How about the other girls?"

"Stonie and SueSue are much more like their mother."

"Sensitive, artistic, free-spirited?" I said.

"Exactly."

"Did you know that they have separated from their husbands?"

"Both of them?"

"Yes."

Sherry chewed her last bite of waffle for a time, and swallowed, and turned her attention to the herbal tea.

"Well," she said finally, "they weren't much as husbands go, either one of them."

"All three of your daughters seem to have withdrawn," I said. "They don't go out, and people are prevented from visiting."

"Solitude can be very healing," she said.

"You think it's grief?"

"Their father provided for them very well."

"Do you have any theories why both Stonie and SueSue separated from their husbands at this time?"

"As I said, they weren't first-rate husbands."

"They never were," I said. "Why now?"

"Perhaps Walter's death."

"How so?"

"Well, now that Walter's gone, Penny is in charge."

"And?"

"And she's always been a puritan."

"You think she forced the separation?"

"Even as a little girl she was full of disapproval."

I nodded.

"I was supposed to clean and cook and sew dresses," Sherry said. "As if I could reshape my soul to her childish materialism."

"You think she could have forced her sisters to give up their husbands?"

"I don't think her sisters would have fought very hard," Sherry said.

She signaled the waitress, and ordered two Danish pastries.

"They didn't love their husbands?"

"They married to please their father," she said, and took a large bite from one of her Danish. "They married men their father approved of, men he could control."

"How come Penny hasn't married?"

"She's young. And frankly, I think she frightens men. Men like pliant women. I find men are often frightened of me."

"You're not pliant," I said.

"No. I am fiercely committed to beauty, to poetry, to painting, to a kind of spiritual commingling that often threatens men."

"If Susan weren't here, I'd be a little edgy," I said.

Sherry smiled at me.

"Irony is so masculine," she said. "Isn't it, Susan?"

"So," Susan said.

She still had half a bagel to go. Sherry polished off the rest of her second Danish.

"Is it possible that Dolly Hartman had an affair with your husband twenty-something years ago?"

"The whore? Certainly she's capable of it, but twenty years ago? No, Walter and I were very close at that time. The girls were small, Walter was not yet the big success he became. No, we were a happy little family then."

"Dolly claims that she did."

"Well, she didn't."

I saw nowhere to go with that.

"What do you know about Jon Delroy?" I said.

"Very little. Jon was on the business side of things. I never paid any attention to the business side of things."