"Well, let's do a little digging."

"You got a lot of balls in the air, Coop, and some of them are loaded with dynamite."

"I'll tell you what," I said. "If the Tripping plea actually goes down on Wednesday, I'm going up to the Vineyard to sit out the storm. Roaring fire, lobster dinner-"

"Jake?" Mike asked.

"Or no Jake. You're all invited."

"You'd fly in this weather?" Mike asked, revealing one of his few phobias.

"If the pilots go, I go with them. When they know enough to stop, I'm grounded. I've got to close up the house. My caretaker's going off-island, to his brother's wedding, and I can make sure the house is all tight. Think about it, guys. We could start off the fall season with a country weekend together." It would relax me to be there even in foul weather.

"Talk among yourselves," Mike said, digging into the veal.

"First," said Mercer, "we've got to figure whether this little encounter of yours is related to Paige Vallis-"

"Or Queenie," Mike said.

"Or one of my endless stream of attractive miscreants. It's a big fan club."

"Did you notice whether the guy was in the church during Paige's service?"

"No. I didn't see him until I came out onto the street. Actually, all I can say is that I didn't see anyone dressed like him."

Mike was picking at the marrow in the bone shank with a tiny fork. "Maybe he followed you downtown from the courthouse."

"She would have noticed."

"Coop? She wouldn't have had a clue if some mope was walking behind her on a rainy night while she's got her head stuck under a big fat golf umbrella. If he followed her from Centre Street, it explains the uniform pants, and why someone would have known where to wait for her," Mike said.

I chewed on a breadstick and sipped my scotch. Lumi had brought out a small bowl of risotto and I was making a dent in it, giving in to my emerging hunger pangs. "You know what I'm going to do tomorrow? I'm going to get Battaglia to sign off on a FOIA request to the CIA."

"Don't you love it when she thinks, Mercer?" Mike stopped eating and sniffed the air. "Hot little brain waves firing on all cylinders beneath those peroxide streaks while I just sit here enjoying a good meal. What are you talking about?"

"Freedom of Information Act request. There's got to be some connection among all these players that has to do with the CIA and the Middle East. We ask for the files of Victor Vallis and Harry Strait. Who knows? They might even have one on McQueen Ransome."

It made such a difference to have some kind of paper history of an individual, some written record of what he or she did to create a picture for us and retrace old paths.

"Don't think J. Edgar didn't keep Queenie's file at home. He probably had a hankering to try on some of her snazzy costumes-satin gowns, harem pants, over-the-elbow gloves," Mike said.

"And King Farouk," I said to Mercer. "You know the government must have kept some kind of dossier on him. There's got to be a way to find a nexis between these two murders."

"What other themes have come up more than once?" Mercer asked.

"Pornography. Queenie had it, Farouk collected it. And antique weapons," I said. "Farouk collected them. So does Andrew Tripping. And rare coins. Both Spike Logan and Graham Hoyt mentioned them."

"What were all those coins that we saw on the floor of Queenie's closet?" Mike asked.

"Just miscellaneous change, I think. I didn't look closely."

"Are they still there?" Mercer asked.

"After Mike and I found the inscribed first-edition Hemingway, we asked them to seal everything so the place could be inventoried."

"Yeah, well, that didn't stop Spike Logan from climbing inside."

"Tell you what," Mercer said. "Mike'll make sure you don't get re-arrested for anything before you get snug in your apartment tonight. I'll pick you up at seven, and we'll make another sweep up at Queenie's to see about those coins and anything else we might have overlooked."

We said good night to Mercer and finished our drinks. Mike's car was parked down the block, closer to my building, so we walked home and into my lobby. There was no point objecting to his plan to make sure I got safely inside and that there were no weird or threatening messages waiting for me on my machine.

I flipped on the lights and we walked in. It was obvious I had come home to an empty nest. "Nightcap?" I asked.

"Nah. You got an early wake-up call and I got somebody keeping the bed warm back at my place. You got any unhappy campers on the line?"

I checked the phone next to the bed and returned to the living room. There had not been a single caller. I dropped onto the sofa and stretched out, hoping Mike would stay and talk to me. Something about the dynamic of our relationship was changing, and I wanted to recapture the friendship that had always been so natural.

"Let me hear you turn that dead bolt when I walk out, Coop," Mike said, kissing the top of my head and walking to the door.

I got up and followed him, locking the door and putting the safety chain across. I took a long bath, then massaged my shoulder with Tiger Balm before climbing into bed, too exhausted to read or even relive the evening's chase.

The next morning Mercer and I rode up to McQueen Ransome's apartment and let ourselves in. It looked pretty much as it had when I was last there. The closet door was still ajar, wire hangers still displayed a few cotton housedresses, and dozens of silver coins were spread out over the floor.

Mercer and I put on rubber gloves. He had a pack of plastic evidence envelopes that he stacked next to us, and we both kneeled to gather the coins.

"Anything unusual about these?" I asked.

"So far, they all look American," he said, examining them front and back before bagging them. "Different denominations, but nothing too unusual, it seems to me."

"I don't know about your pile, but everything I've got is old," I said. "There's nothing here minted after 1930."

"I see what you mean. There's about ten of them here from 1907."

"We'd better take them to an expert, who can give us an idea of their value."

Mercer scooped up a handful and reached back to the floor to retrieve a small white piece of paper that looked like some kind of ticket stub. He examined it before speaking. "I know he had an appointment here with McQueen Ransome, but I hardly think that would have required him to crawl around on her closet floor-especially if it was after he'd found out she'd been killed."

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

Mercer held out the piece of paper to me. "Spike Logan said he drove here from Martha's Vineyard, didn't he? Well, he must have dropped his ferry ticket stub when he was in here yesterday. Guess he wasn't too despondent to be searching for something that belonged to Queenie."