"What connection?"

"We're friends, for one thing," she said with a shrug.

Score! "Right. Of course." I knew we were friends. I could now die happy. "And for another?"

"You're a PI. They probably thought you could set up a lunch with me and just ask me to hand over that information."

I snorted. "Crazy people. Who would think such a thing?"

"I wonder," she said, her expression deadpan. "I do need to report this, Charley."

"You can't. No cops, remember?"

"Sorry. I can't keep that kind of information to myself. If Brinkman's men are getting that desperate, we're getting close. We could use this to our advantage."

"What about my advantage? And my friend's advantage they are supposedly going to kill, though I'm beginning to think they don't really know who my closest friends are."

"Finish up," she said, nodding to my sandwich. "I'll need you to come to my office to make a statement."

"Sack! No way."

"I'll sneak you in through the back. You can leave your Jeep here."

Son of a bitch. "I'm sorry," I said, rising from the table, "but I can't risk it. If they get a whiff of an investigation where this is concerned, things could go very south very quickly."

Her expression changed to one void of all emotion. "I'll cuff you, Charley. I can arrest you on charges of obstruction of justice and hold you until you cooperate."

I sat back down. "And I thought we were friends."

"We are, which is why I'm going to get all the information on this that I can and investigate. It's what I do. Let me help you for once."

Surely I had smoke billowing out of my ears. "You've always trusted me in the past, and I've solved a couple of pretty big cases for you. Or have you forgotten?"

She rubbed her forehead. "Son of a Okay, here's what we'll do. I'll make a preliminary report stating there is a strong probability of an attempt on Emily's life. You have forty-eight hours."

I knew she'd let me do this my way. Hopefully things wouldn't go south.

"But if this turns south, we are doing it my way."

Sometimes I wondered if Sack could read my mind. Really good friends could do that.

11.

It's a beautiful day.

I think I'll skip my meds and stir things up a bit.

- BUMPER STICKER After convincing one of my best friends on the planet to give me some time on the Men in Black case, I headed over to the Fosters' house since I was on that side of town anyway. I was now as curious as Cookie about what they looked like. Were they fair skinned like their son? If so, how was Reyes so dark? So exotic?

One possibility that came to mind was, naturally, did he look like his real father? Did he look like Lucifer? If so, and he'd chosen the Fosters to be his human parents on earth, did he not consider their fair coloring when choosing a potential family?

Of course he did. Reyes was too smart not to.

I pulled up to an empty house that was for sale and pretended to be a potential buyer, looking this way and that before settling in and checking my phone. There was also a yard sale a couple of houses up, yielding a steady flow of traffic, so I blended right in. I knew Mrs. Foster would be home soon, so I sat outside, checking my e-mail and doodling in my memo pad. My doodles turned to words that eventually turned to names. Charley Farrow, I wrote, liking the feel of it, the look of it. Charley Davidson Farrow. Or should I hyphenate it? What were women doing these days? Mrs. Reyes Farrow. Farrow. I could get very used to that name.

I glanced up just in time to see a Prius pull into the Fosters' garage. The door came down before I could see her, just like before, but I'd see her soon enough. I took out the case file Agent Carson had given me, the one of the kidnapping almost thirty years ago.

I glanced at my sidekick and made a mental note to carve out some time to go see his wife, Mrs. Andrulis. The poor guy needed to be done with whatever it was he'd left unfinished. I couldn't have him running around naked forever. It just seemed wrong.

"I'm having a hard time not looking at your penis."

"I get that a lot."

I jumped in response to the voice coming from my backseat and slammed my memo pad closed. Reyes popped in, very hot and very... corporeal. He seemed more solid now than he used to be. Less incorporeal. The departed were always solid to me, but they didn't look solid. And while Reyes had always had more color than the actual departed, he was still incorporeal. Not quite flesh but not quite spirit. Something in between. Lately, however, he was leaning toward the flesh.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Nothing. I was going to a yard sale. I'm in need of a new yard and look! There's one for sale."

He looked across the street straight at the Fosters' house. "Okay," he said, and I felt a tinge of anger rise in him. "So, what are you waiting for?"

"I'm scoping out the situation," I said, hoping he'd believe me but knowing deep down inside I'd lost the game before it ever began. With my plans foiled, I decided to go to the yard sale anyway. I'd show him.

I climbed down from Misery and shut her door, leaving my nigh fiance in there to simmer and stew.

Three women who'd been arguing were still arguing when I walked up. Their disagreements seemed to center around the items in the yard sale. Two were dressed to the nines in mid-twentieth-century apparel. I guessed them to have died in the 1950s or '60s. The third one, and the smallest, was in a fluffy pink robe with a V embroidered on the chest and tiny house slippers.

"Oh, I remember that music box," she said, looking on as a young girl picked it up and opened the lid. "Daddy made it. He gave it to you, Maddy, on your sixteenth birthday."

"No, he didn't, Vera," the tallest of the three said. "He gave it to Tilda on her twelfth birthday." She gestured to the third woman, who nodded in agreement.

The first one, Vera, was having none of that. "Madison Grace, I remember that box, and I remember the day he gave it to you."

"He gave Maddy a picture frame on her sixteenth birthday," Tilda said.

"No, he gave me a picture frame on my fifteenth birthday."

"Was it your fifteenth?" she asked, looking skyward in thought. "I thought that was the year you were sent to your room for sneaking a kiss with Bradford Kingsley in the broom closet."

"I never kissed Bradford Kingsley," Maddy said, appalled. "We were just talking. And besides, he liked Sarah Steed."

All three heads dropped in unison, apparently remembering their friend fondly.

"Poor girl," Vera said. "She had such bad breath."

They all nodded sadly before Tilda added, "If only she could've outrun that rooster, she and Bradford may have eventually married."

I watched the three reminisce with no one the wiser. The tiny one, Vera, seemed to be the oldest, with Tilda second and Maddy bringing up the rear. Watching them was kind of like watching a sitcom. And since I rarely had time for TV anymore, I stood back and took complete advantage of the entertainment.

They started arguing again about a paint set as the little girl took the box she'd found to her mother. The woman's eyes sparkled with interest. "How much is this?" she asked a man sitting in a lawn chair.

"I'll take two and a quarter."

"Two and a quarter?" Vera yelled, rocketing out of her melancholy. She shook a fist at the man. "I'll give you an even five square in the jaw. How's that?"

"Don't get your hackles up," Maddy said, eyeing her elder sister.

Vera cupped her ear and leaned forward. "What?"

"Oh, for heaven's sake, Vera Dawn, you can hear me just fine, now. We're dead."

"What?"

Tilda shook her head and looked over at me. "She does that to annoy us."

I laughed softly and scanned the small crowd to make sure no one was paying too close attention. "Would you like to cross?" I asked them.

"Goodness, no," Maddy said. "We're waiting for our sister. We all want to cross together."

That was new.

"That sounds nice. You know where I'll be when you're ready."

"Sure do," Vera said. "You're kind of hard to miss."

I spotted an old piece of equipment sitting lopsided on a card table. "What is that?" I asked, my eyes glossing over in fascination.

"Not really sure," the man in the lawn chair said.

"Maddy, your grandson always was a dirty scoundrel." She looked at me. "His poor mother hasn't been in the nursing home a week, and he's selling everything she ever owned."

"Everything any of us ever owned," Tilda said. "And that's a lie detector. Our father worked for Hoover, don't cha know."

"That Hoover was an odd man," Vera said, her nose crinkling in distaste.

Maddy frowned at her. "How come you can suddenly hear?"

Vera cupped her ear again. "What?"

I stifled a giggle. "A polygraph machine? For real?"

"What?" This time it was the dirty scoundrel of a grandson who'd asked.

"Does it work?"

"No idea," he said before lifting a beer.

"Does it work?" Maddy asked as though I'd offended her. "It works like a dream. I used it on Tilda once when she went out with my boyfriend behind my back."

"That wasn't me, Maddy. That was Esther. And because you had no clue what you were doing, the results were inconclusive."

"How much?" I asked the man.

He shrugged. "I'll take twenty for it."

"Sold."

"Twenty? Twenty dollars? That should be in a museum, not in a yard sale. That boy needs his hide tanned something fierce."

I paid the guy, then walked back over to them. "I agree. If this is original FBI equipment, I bet I can get it to the right people."

"You can do that?" Maddy asked.

"I can try," I said with a shrug.

"Thank you," Vera said.

I nodded and took my prize.

"I did too know what I was doing," Maddy said as I walked off. "I just chose to be the bigger person."

Tilda snorted and the arguments began again. I almost felt sorry for their sister Esther. She had a lot of baggage waiting for her when she passed.

I decided to drop off the polygraph machine at home before checking in at the office. If Agent Carson and I were still friends, I would give it to her with explicit instructions to get it to the right people. Surely there was an FBI museum somewhere, and it could earn me brownie points. I was a firm believer in brownie points. They were like Cheez-Its. And Oreos. And mocha lattes. One could never have too many.

As I was driving home, however, an elderly woman appeared out of nowhere in the street ahead of me. Reflexes being what they were, I swerved to the right, narrowly missing a herd of parked bikes and sideswiping Misery against a streetlamp.

I screeched to a halt, hitting my forehead on the steering wheel The woman had been in a paper-thin nightgown, both the gown and her hair a soft baby blue. Though I'd only seen her a second, it was enough to register the fear on her face, in her fragile shoulders. She looked nothing like Aunt Lil, but I couldn't help but compare the two. If Lil was scared and lost, I would search the world over for her. That was the impression I'd gotten from this woman.

Thankfully, the area I was in at the moment wasn't super busy. No one noticed my little mishap. I glanced over to check on Mr. Andrulis. He was still staring straight ahead, nary a care in the world, so I scanned the area for the woman. She was gone.

Left with no other choice, I pulled back onto the street and started for home again, only to have the woman appear again. In the middle of the road.

It took every ounce of strength I had to curb my knee-jerk reaction and slam on the brakes. Swerve to the side. Hit something. I bit down and braked slowly as we drove through the woman. After checking traffic, I pulled into an empty parking lot and got out. She was gone again.

No way was I playing this game all day. I'd kill someone at the rate I was going. So I crossed my arms, crossed my ankles, and leaned against Misery in wait. After another minute or two, the woman appeared again. She materialized right in front of Misery, looked around as though trying to gain her bearings, then disappeared again. I rounded the front of my Jeep and waited. This time when she appeared, I gently took hold of her arm.

She blinked, then furrowed her brows, squinted her eyes, presumably against my brightness, and looked up at me.

"Hi," I said softly about a microsecond before she hauled her foot back and kicked me in the shin so hard, it brought tears to my eyes. I let go of her, took hold of my shin, and hopped around, cursing under my breath. After gathering myself, I turned and glared at her. "That had to hurt your toes." She was barefoot, after all. "Please tell me that hurt your toes."