Eddie admired her certainty. Envied it, too. "I'm amazed you were able to get us an appointment with Sandra Lime."

"Eh," she said, like it was no big deal. "I told her secretary that you were Roger Lime's off-sh.o.r.e bookie, and you had dog track winnings to present to Sandra."

"What!" Eddie bolted up. He banged his head on the roof and crumpled in a heap on the back seat.

Bobbi snickered. "My gawd!" she said. "You Bourque brothers are gullible. I told Mrs. Lime that you were a writer working on her husband's biography, and you needed her help to write the ending."

"But that's not true, either," Eddie complained, unsure if she was kidding again.

"It's closer to true."

"Bobbi," Eddie said, pausing to calm down before he flung himself from the cab, "I'm a journalist. I can't lie to sources when I'm working on a story."

"You didn't-I did." She giggled. "See you at seven. Gotta go, I think that pasta salad is repeating on me."

"But..."

"Don't forget to have some cash on hand tomorrow to pay for our cab! Ta-ta!"

She hung up, leaving Eddie sputtering into his telephone.

General VonKatz woke Eddie twice in the morning.

The first time was shortly after daybreak, when the General trampolined off Eddie's chest on a running jump to the window. Eddie gasped awake, then groaned. The cat whined at whatever was outside. In a half-dreamy state, Eddie thought of the man in the ski mask, and then snapped awake. He listened. A gentle rustling outside quickly grew distant and disappeared. The General got bored and hopped down.

Eddie grumbled, "Noisy d.a.m.n racc.o.o.ns." He drifted toward sleep, close to where the subconscious takes over, when stupid ideas make perfect sense. He thought about how easy it would be to catch racc.o.o.ns with a giant pit trap in the front yard...

Maybe an hour later, General VonKatz stampeded Eddie and woke him again, when Bobbi slammed open the screen door at two past six.

She pounded the door. "Hoo! Hoo! Hoo! Little brother!"

Eddie squinted at the clock, failed to grasp the significance of the numerals, collapsed on the pillow and mumbled, "Too early."

"Oh Eddie!"

Giant pit trap...

Sharply Bobbi yelled, "Eddie! We gotta go!"

Her voice ripped Eddie from the happy warm palace of sleep and dumped him, cranky and fuzzyheaded, onto the dark tundra of consciousness, an unfriendly place at this time of day, before he had adjusted his perspective with caffeine.

"I'm up," Eddie yelled. He threw off the sheet and walked heavy-footed in his boxers to the front door. As he reached to unlock it, the door popped open. Bobbi stepped in, an American Express card in her hand. She wore white slacks, a floral print top with matching sheer scarf, and an oversized fabric pin in her hair, shaped like a dragonfly. She had an armful of loose newspaper.

"Some jerk threw your paper all over the lawn," she said.

"Bobbi, please don't force my door with a credit card," Eddie scolded.

She gave him a wide-eyed innocent look. "I was just letting myself in to save you the trip. What's wrong with that?"

Eddie knew there had to be something wrong with it, but he couldn't think of exactly what. He frowned. "Never mind," he said. "Just come in while I make some coffee."

"You going to put some pants on?"

"No," he said as he walked away. "I thought I'd try my luck with Mrs. Sandy Lime by showing up in my underwear. I hear she's loaded."

Bobbi laughed. "Somebody's b.i.t.c.hy in the morning."

"It's still night."

Eddie chose a potent bean from Zimbabwe for his morning quart of joe. While it dripped, he slid into his one good outfit: gray worsted wool trousers, white dress shirt, blue Brooks Brothers blazer with gold b.u.t.tons. After debating a moment, he chose his lucky necktie, a beige silk dotted with tiny blue circles, each with a red letter "B," the emblem of the Boston Red Sox.

The General bounced onto the piano keys and played a dark chord as he bounded to the top of the instrument.

"Your cat needs another piano lesson," Bobbi said.

"He plays better than I do."

Eddie poured coffee into a heavy crystal wine gla.s.s and gulped it black. Instantly, he felt his mood brighten. It was all in his head; there was no way the caffeine could enter his bloodstream that quickly. But what did it matter how it worked, so long as it did? He put the gla.s.s down with a hearty, "Ahhh!"

Bobbi picked up the bag of coffee beans and read the label. "From Zimbabwe? Is this a joke?"

"Everybody thinks the best java is South American," Eddie said. "But the African coffees can compete with the best from anywhere."

She dropped the bag on the counter. "Give me sweet tea and I'm fine." She opened Eddie's freezer and looked over the bags of beans. "Where do you get all these weird coffees?"

Eddie sipped his second cup. "The Internet-I buy everything on-line."

"Aren't you afraid of ident.i.ty theft?"

"My ident.i.ty they can have, it's my money I can't afford to lose." The caffeine was starting to thaw Eddie's brain. "I thought you were going to be here at seven."

She closed the freezer and opened the refrigerator. "No, we have to be there at seven. I'm here early to make sure you're awake for our cab. Are these sweet pickles?"

"I'm sick of cabs," Eddie said. "I'm going to call a buddy of mine for some transportation on loan, while I look for a car I can afford."

Bobbi opened the pickle jar and sniffed. She frowned. "Sour dills," she said, and put the jar back.

"Our strategy today should be simple," Eddie offered. "I lay out the truth for Mrs. Lime and then ask for her help. No con job, no lies."

Bobbi rolled her eyes. "That is soooo boring," she said. "And what will she think if we admit we're interested in her husband's abduction because it might overturn Henry's murder conviction? Won't she be insulted?"

"We don't have to say that part," Eddie said. Bobbi's eyes twinkled, and Eddie realized he had already nibbled away at his own his plan to tell Mrs. Lime the truth. He felt an uncomfortable heaviness in his stomach. "Now hold on a second-"

The telephone rang.

"Hold that thought," he said to Bobbi, and then answered the phone. "h.e.l.lo, this is Bourque."

"Eddie?" said a nasally voice. "It's Lew Cuhna."

"Lew?" Eddie was surprised. Cuhna had never called him before. He looked to Bobbi, shrugged, and then held up one finger, to ask for one minute of patience. She nodded and busied herself organizing Eddie's Washington Post on the breakfast table.

Eddie said, "How are you, Lew? Your paper has looked good the last couple weeks."

"Forget all that," Cuhna said. "I've left you messages just in case, but I can't take it anymore. We gotta talk, Ed."

"I haven't gotten any messages. Do you mean my cell phone?"

"No, no-it doesn't matter. I need to see you right away."

"I'm on my way out. How about this afternoon?"

"Fine, fine. At my office, two o'clock?"

Eddie grabbed a pencil and looked around for paper. There was none. He scribbled a note to himself on the countertop. "Your place at two. What's this about, Lew?"

"See you there." He hung up.

Eddie put the phone down.

"Sounds to me like you have a friend in trouble," Bobbi said.

Eddie rubbed the stubble on his chin. "Not exactly a friend."

A car pulled up outside, tires crunching on the sand at the side of the road.

Bobbi stood and looked out the window. "Our cab is early," she said. "Let's help your brother before you help anybody else."

As she walked past the piano, a little gray arm shot out and plucked the dragonfly from her hair. Bobbi grabbed her head. "He stole my pin!"

The General jumped down from the piano with his prey in his jaws. Eddie lunged for him, but the cat was ridiculously quick when he wanted to be. The General changed directions like a jackrabbit, flashed between Eddie's legs, and vanished into the bedroom. Eddie stumbled into the coffee table, knocked over his chess set and cracked his shin. The coffee table tipped on two legs, then slowly turned over and crashed to the floor. Eddie staggered over the up-turned table, lost his balance, tucked into a partially controlled somersault, and came to rest on his back, staring at the ceiling.

He didn't move.

"Are you hurt?" Bobbi asked.

He pointed. "I'm noticing some cobwebs up there."

Sandra Lime lived in a low, sprawling modern home, behind a chest-high stone wall of such meticulous construction that there wasn't a crack between the stones big enough to stick your thumb in. Two white concrete lions guarded the driveway. Behind the walls, the yard was landscaped minimally with dogwoods, white pine, and clumps of fern. There was a kidney-shaped putting green in front of the house with six practice holes marked with flagsticks.

Eddie pounded the knocker three times. After a few moments, the chain and deadbolt began to rattle from within, and Eddie whispered to Bobbi, "I do the talking, and we tell the truth."

Her eyebrows shot up.

"Most of the truth," Eddie corrected himself.

The gigantic doorman looked like a professional football player moonlighting for extra cash in the off-season.

They followed him to a sunroom, where Sandra Lime was waiting. She was short and pet.i.te, maybe five foot four, with a pointy chin and thin, colorless lips. Her skin was smooth and perfect, her eyes a striking deep brown. Her hair was speckled with gray, and cut as short as Eddie's. The style might have looked too boyish on a less attractive woman, but on her, it worked. She wore a tailored grey pants suit, over a white blouse and a simple string of pearls.

"You're the writer," Sandra Lime said to Eddie. Her voice was ragged, too old for the rest of her.

Eddie nodded. "Yes, ma'am."

"Ma'am is for old ladies," she said. "Call me ma'am again and I'll sic Vincent, my doorman, after you." She didn't smile.

Was that a joke?

"And you're the a.s.sistant," Sandra Lime said to Bobbi.

"I am," she said. "But you must be Sandra's daughter. Is your mother available?" She smiled sweetly.

"You I like," Mrs. Lime said in the same sharp tone. "Follow me. We'll talk in the den." She spun and marched off.

Bobbi turned to Eddie, flashed a smile full of teeth and followed Sandra Lime. Eddie came last, taking his time, peeking into a room with greenhouse-style windows, a library with rows of built-in bookcases and a bathroom that smelled like strawberries. The den was a pine-paneled room crammed with burgundy leather furniture, a liquid plasma television hung like a painting, and a six-sided poker table covered with red felt. Original watercolors of yachts and seash.o.r.es decorated the walls.

It had the feel of a hunting lodge, comfortable but not over-the-top. Eddie recalled Roger Lime's biography-he had grown up a street hockey player in the middle-cla.s.s Lowell Highlands neighborhood; his wealth was earned, not bred into him. And despite his reputation as a hard businessman, many people who knew Lime insisted that the bank president didn't take himself too seriously.

"I want a chamomile," Sandra Lime announced. She put her hands on her hips.

Eddie couldn't decide if she was offering a round of tea.

"Milk and three sugars in mine," Bobbi ventured.

"Nothing here," Eddie said.

Sandra left without another word. When Eddie was confident she was out of earshot, he leaned to Bobbi and said, "This is strange."

"She's a little strict, maybe, but I wouldn't say strange."

"No, I mean look at this place-obviously her husband's game room, yet there are no pictures of him anywhere."

Bobbi glanced around. "I hadn't noticed."

"There were no pictures of Roger Lime in the hall, or any of the other rooms we pa.s.sed, either."

"Maybe she put them away because they were too painful to look at."

Eddie was about to argue the point, but stopped when Sandra Lime returned with a tall chrome teapot on a silver tray, and two clear gla.s.s mugs.

"Fix it how you want it," she told Bobbi.

They reclined on leather. Sandra Lime sipped clear tea, and then got to the point. "I don't know what you're writing about my husband, Mr. Bourque, and I don't care. I would only caution you that the final chapter has not been written, and if you publish a piece prematurely, you are sure to be embarra.s.sed."

Eddie took out his notebook. "How do you mean?"