“Yes, of course. She’s an artist, quirky. Wonderful. I’ve been wanting to meet her for ages.”

Upon hearing Lily’s account, Georgia grimaces with disgust.

During dessert, we discuss the planning of the evening with Strad.

Georgia’s fear is that it will be tedious. “What will we do to kill time while we protect him?”

“You could ask him to play the violin for you,” Lily answers.

“Is he any good?”

“Not really. I think that’s why he recently decided to pursue acting.”

“Don’t make me listen to him perform a soliloquy. It will kill me.”

My cell phone rings. I answer it. I hear three beeps and then a hang-up. I stop breathing as a wave of nausea sweeps over me.

I look at my friends. “I got three beeps.”

“Oh my God,” Penelope gasps.

“Asshole!” Lily exclaims, slapping the table.

I call back the number, which has no name attached. It rings a long time, and then someone, to my surprise, picks up.

“Hello?” a man says.

“Did you just call me?”

“No.”

“Who are you?” I ask.

“Someone who answered a pay phone.”

“Where?”

“Uh . . . Forty-Seventh Street and Second Avenue. In Manhattan.”

“Outdoors? On the street?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see who just called me a minute ago?”

“No.”

“Is there anyone unusual standing around? Or anyone looking at you?”

“Uh . . . no, not really.”

“What corner of the intersection is the phone on?” Not that it matters. Not that there would be any point in rushing over there right now. I’m just being thorough because you never know in life what details will come in handy.

“Uh . . . Northeast corner.”

“Thank you.”

We hang up.

My friends all glance at one another, undoubtedly trying, as I am, to decipher who among them is the killer.

I look at Jack, yearning for his help, but uncertain he’s innocent.

I say, “I guess one of you asked someone—or hired someone—to make this phone call?”

I find the concept of someone being hired to make this phone call terrifying. It makes the whole thing seem like a bigger, more serious production: there’s personnel involved—staff! Who knows, maybe the killer has hired an assassin as well, or many, to do the dirty work. And to think that all this is being orchestrated by someone in this room, someone who is looking at me right now with affectionate eyes and a familiar face—a beloved friend. Unimaginable.

“Probably,” Jack says.

Georgia nods.

“I don’t appreciate what you’re doing,” I say to the mystery killer among us. “Don’t you care that you’re making our lives miserable, devastating our group, probably even destroying it? And don’t you care about how much you would hurt Lily, perhaps even ruin her life, if you killed Strad? Assuming she’s not the killer.”

I doubt my words are persuasive. I’m sure the killer was aware of these risks when he/she made the decision to kill Strad, and yet must have concluded Lily would still be better off if Strad were dead.

LUNCH IS OVER and we each go home. When I arrive at my building, Adam the doorman has his hands in his pockets. When he sees me, he opens his jacket and flashes me his white T-shirt on which is written “Bitch” in big red letters.

I look around. Lucky for him, no one saw him.

I spend the afternoon making preparations for the evening of Strad’s possible death, four days away. (“Evening of Strad’s death” is what we got into the habit of calling it. This isn’t a sign of resignation—it’s simply shorter than including the word “attempted,” or “possible,” but now that I think about it, calling it “Friday” would have been even shorter.) I start making things safe.

I must anticipate every trick the killer might pull.

My apartment, since yesterday, has been off limits to my friends.

This morning I placed an ad on the NYU website, looking to hire a few students to help me search my apartment for any weapons the killer might have already planted there.

I will, of course, frisk my friends when they arrive on the night of the dinner.

My brain is so muddled from stress that I haven’t been able to focus on anything except getting things safe for the dinner. My work has suffered. I’m supposed to be creating a hat that goes with the quirky green velvet outfit I finished two days ago. Ordinarily, I’d be able to come up with an original hat concept in less than twenty minutes. But now my mind has deteriorated almost to the point of asking myself, “What’s a hat?”

I take a walk down Fifth Avenue to Washington Square Park, trying to imagine every weapon the killer might think of using, and I dismiss the ones I assume I don’t need to worry about, such as a gun—which frisking would detect—and a vial of poison—which I plan to guard against by keeping my friends away from the food until it’s served. A wire to strangle Strad would be easy to smuggle in but does not worry me because getting strangled takes a couple of minutes and we’d have more than enough time to pull the killer off Strad. More dangerous are the weapons that can be used in a split second, such as blades, especially razor blades. They’re simple to sneak in and they’re quick. But perhaps most importantly, a blade was the killer’s weapon of choice the first time around.

AT NIGHT, I wake up in cold sweats. My friends are not the types to do anything very bad, much less kill someone, but I’m aware we don’t always know people as well as we think we do, and Gabriel is not the type to lie. So I try to figure out, yet again, which of my friends murdered the man from the bar.

Jack is, of course, the most obvious, mainly because he has killed before. He killed two men in the shootout with Penelope’s kidnappers, the same shootout that left him limping. In addition, he’s still very strong despite his injuries. He would certainly be capable of slitting a man’s throat if he wanted, probably far more easily than Georgia, Penelope, or Lily, at least on a physical level. On a psychological, emotional, and moral level, that’s another matter. I think back on when he first got his part-time job at the senior center, which he took soon after rescuing Penelope, when he realized he’d never be able to get back on the police force due to his limp.

After a few weeks of serving meals and asking after grandchildren at the senior center, he was feeling depressed, missing the kind of work he’d done as a police officer. That was when the seniors started getting into frequent fights—a couple of them a week. Jack broke up the fights. He thought it was strange that the fights were so numerous, but the truth was, he didn’t mind. He felt more useful and less depressed this way.

Jack had broken up six fights in the three weeks since the fights had begun. He decided to ask the director of the senior center what was going on.

“Thank you for keeping the peace and breaking up the fights,” the director said to him.

“No problem.”

“The fact that the fights are fake should not in any way diminish your sense of accomplishment.”

“The fights are fake?”

“Yes. The seniors were excited to have a hero such as yourself working here, but they were worried you would not be happy merely serving them lunch if your special skill—of keeping the peace—wasn’t used. That’s why they took it upon themselves to stage fights. It’s very touching.”

“I’m touched and humiliated at the same time. I don’t think I can continue working here, now that I know this. And I’m not sure why you told me.”

“I told you because I was afraid you’d figure it out yourself and decide to quit the job before giving me a chance to explain how important it is that you continue.”

“Continue serving lunch?”

“And breaking up fights.”

“Fake fights.”

“Yes. The seniors have never been happier. You’ve given them a sense of purpose. They think they’ve given you a purpose in life and that without them you’d be falling apart.”