“Bryan Daughtry?” I ventured.

“You’ll forgive me if I don’t dignify that question with a response.”

“Do you have any of the other letters that she received?”

“No, I never saw them. And I have no idea where she would have kept them. The first one was the only one she sent to me, when she wanted my advice. I don’t know if they’re at her home, or office, or in a safe deposit box. I felt you should know about them.”

She removed a fifty-dollar bill from her pocket and summoned the waiter to bring a check. “I’ll be at the hotel for a few days before going back home, if you need me for anything.”

“Under the name ‘Seven’?” I asked.

“Yes, of course.” She smiled. “Why, I suppose you tried to check up on me before we met, Ms. Cooper. It’s close enough to my real name-the Italian word for ‘seven.’ I used it briefly, almost thirty years ago, when I attempted a career on the stage. Did I stump you?” she asked, seemingly pleased by the idea.

“In fact, you did. We came up blank. Much too blank for someone of your means.”

“That is my name, in a fashion. I was actually born Marina Sette, in Venezia. My mother abandoned me when I was eighteen months old. Left my father and ran off with a very dashing American-Lowell Caxton.”

I suppose that I was unable to stifle a slight gasp.

“My father left Italy and came to the States, where his parents raised me while my mother raised her stepchild and had two more of her own with Lowell. She never glanced over her shoulder, not even to stop from being run over in that boating accident.”

I had grown up with the most loving mother on the face of the earth and could not comprehend how any woman could leave a child to take off with another man.

Marina Sette went on. “My father turned his automotive parts factory in Michigan into an integral part of the Ford Motor Company-Sette Moto-by the time I was six. If you can measure wealth in material ways-and believe me, I can’t-money has never been an issue.”

“But Lowell Caxton-surely he knew who you were.”

“Perhaps he’d have recognized me if I were as breathtaking as my mother must have been. But he never caught on. Not for a moment. Then, after the fireworks in England, when Deni was looking for every conceivable way to hurt him, she couldn’t resist telling him exactly who I was.”

“And his reaction?”

“I wanted it to be rage, of course. I wanted it to cause him to agonize over me-or at least, if he didn’t care about my feelings, he should regret the loss of my husband as a rather substantial client. As I should have expected, all I got was indifference.

“Surely you can understand why I thought Deni was on such a treacherous course with her pen pal. After all, there was no need to go outside the family.” Marina Sette removed her cigarette from the holder and crushed it in the ashtray on the table. “I could have killed Lowell Caxton myself.”

12

Laura stopped me on my way back to my desk, half an hour after I had left Mercer in front of the Four Seasons Hotel. It was almost three and I was making my first appearance of the day at the office. “McKinney was looking for you. He’s assigned someone to the investigation of the dead guy they found in the rail yards last night.”

“Tell him to listen to his voice mail. I called him this morning to tell him it’s part of my case. As nicely as you can say it, Laura, tell him to keep his hands off my corpses, okay? Boss back from Albany yet?”

“Rose said not to worry. He’s in a meeting all afternoon with some of the lawyers on that foreign bank scandal. They’re offering millions of dollars of forfeitures-Battaglia hasn’t even asked about your case since he returned. But you’ve got an unexpected visitor, Alex. Mrs. Braverman is back. I’ve had her in the waiting area since lunchtime, but she won’t leave and she won’t talk to anyone else. You’re the only one who can help her.”

“Tell Max to bring her in. I don’t think I’ve seen her in six months, have I?”

“Got that search warrant ready for me yet?” Chapman asked. I knew he’d come down to meet me when he had finished at the M.E.’s Office, but I hadn’t expected him to walk through my door quite so soon.

I lowered myself into my chair and groaned. “Slow down. I just walked in and I’ve got some social work to do. Just stand by for a few minutes. You’re about to meet my favorite witness.”

“Do not ever go to an autopsy of someone run over by a freight train. I’ve seen some pretty gruesome sights, but this was like chopped-”

“Spare me the details. The photographs will be more than I need to know.” It was mandatory for one of the assigned detectives to be present during the medical examiner’s autopsy proceedings on a possible homicide victim.

Max walked in, leading a very obese elderly woman on her arm. Mrs. Braverman was wearing a garishly colored sundress and a chartreuse straw hat with an enormous brim.

“Alexandra, darling, I’m so glad you got down here in time to see me.” The octogenarian dropped Max’s hand and waddled across the room to embrace me as I came out from behind the desk. “And who’s this handsome young man?”

“Michael Patrick Chapman, ma’am, Miss Cooper’s favorite detective,” he replied, giving her his best and brightest grin.

“Is he on my investigation now?” she asked me.

“He’s the man. I brought him in specially for you. He’s solved hundreds of these cases. What’s been going on since the last time you were here?”

She plopped into one of the leather armchairs opposite me, while Mike leaned against a file cabinet and listened to her story. “You were right about Christmas and New Year’s, Alexandra. They must have gone away for the holidays because I didn’t have any problems after I saw you. Then, of course, I went to Boca to be with my son and grandchildren for a few months. Now, ever since I’m back, they’re making life miserable for me.”

“Tell Detective Chapman who they are, Mrs. Braverman.”

“Extraterrestrials, son. In my day we used to call them Martians. But I’ve done a lot of reading up on this, and now I know they could be from anywhere out there.”

Mike kneeled by her side and looked her directly in the eye. “What are they up to this time?”

“They’ve moved into the apartment upstairs, where old Mr. Rubenstein used to live before his daughter shipped him off to a home,” she said, now slipping into a whisper as she talked to Chapman. “They’ve been flashing signals at me, beaming them through the ceilings and the walls. They’re trying to control my brain waves.”

“Are they doing it through the toaster and the television set, too?” he asked, with the same degree of intensity that I had seen him question murder suspects.

“Exactly!” she replied emphatically.

“I told you he was good, didn’t I?”

“Nobody in my family believed me, Mike-I could call you Mike, couldn’t I, sweetheart? The precinct wouldn’t do nothing about it. They sent me down here to see Alexandra after I told them about the time one of them fondled my breasts while I was napping. She’s been wonderful to me, really. I feel better every time I see her.” She cocked her head and looked over at me. “I try not to be a nuisance to her. Then, as soon as I saw her picture in the paper with this lady in the water, the rays became even stronger. I got worried that maybe the same people are after you, sweetheart.”

“We’re gonna solve this for you, Mrs. B.,” Mike said, rising up and pointing to my top desk drawer. “Coop, gimme a couple of boxes of clips, right away.”

“Clips, of course,” I repeated, sliding it open and removing two boxes of paper clips.

“Not those, the giant-size ones. Those ordinary ones don’t work with E.T.’s.”

I took two boxes of large clips out and Mike ordered me to make it four.