The door to the Rustic opened now and in barged Casey Zander in his Patriots hoodie and sweatpants, looking frazzled and agitated. Also not particularly happy to see Mitch and Rut.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded.

"You had a rough night, son," Rut responded soothingly. "You and your mom both. We'd like to buy you a beer. Have a seat."

"Not right now," Casey snapped, looking around the place. "Hey, Steve, where's Gigi?"

"She was here earlier, Casey. Went out."

"Who with?"

"No idea. Gigi goes her own way. You know that."

"Well, when's she coming back?"

"When she decides to come back," Steve answered patiently, as if he were speaking to a whiny, annoying child. Which he basically was. "Here she is now," he informed Casey as the door opened again. "Are you happy?"

Gigi Garanski looked as if she'd just wandered in from a Def Leppard video. She was an absolute vision of unloveliness in a torn denim jacket, hot pink spandex tights and snakeskin cowboy boots. Gigi had big, sticky-looking hair that was dyed a garish shade of yellow and she looked as if she'd applied her eye makeup with a trowel. She was pale and extremely skinny. Not a glam kind of skinny. A malnourished kind. Mitch doubted Gigi was more than twenty-five but she had a lot of hard miles on her.

Casey reached over and grabbed her. "Where have you been?"

"What do you care?" she answered in a raspy voice.

"I was looking all over for you."

"I was right here, asshole. Where were you? Told me you were going to take me out for breakfast."

"I had to hang with my mom on account of Hank."

Gigi made a face at him. "Your mom. With other guys it's their wife or their girlfriend. With you it's always your mom."

"Shut up about my mom!"

"Don't tell me to shut up. And let go of my arm, will ya?"

"Seems like a stable, mature relationship built on mutual respect," Mitch observed.

"And common interests," Rut agreed, nodding his tufty white head. "Politics, religion, the theater..."

Gigi moved away from Casey now and sidled over to the corner table where Tommy the Pinhead sat with Slick Rick. She bent over, taunting Casey with a defiant gaze, and gave Tommy a wet, slurpy kiss. Casey watched the two of them, red faced. When they were done sucking face, Tommy spoke to Gigi in a quiet voice. She nodded her sticky blond head, then made her way slowly back to Casey, Tommy watching her with cool-eyed detachment.

"How about we go for a drive someplace, babe?" she asked sweetly, cradling Casey's chubby cheeks in her pale, taloned hands.

Casey shrugged his shoulders. "Why not?"

"Hey, don't do me any favors."

"I'm not, Gigi. I want to go with you. Really, I do. Just give me a couple of minutes, okay? There's something I have to take care of first."

Gigi rolled her eyes at him. "Whatever."

Casey started toward the door, shooting a glance over at Tommy the Pinhead and Slick Rick. As he went outside, the two of them put their heads together and conferred. Then Tommy got his huge self to his feet and went out the door, too.

Gigi parked herself at the bar next to Mitch. Steve brought her a glass of white wine. She took a small sip, looking Mitch up and down with frank curiosity.

He smiled at her and said, "How are you?"

"Compared to what?"

"Is it just me or does Casey seem kind of antsy?"

"He's always antsy," she sniffed. "That one was born antsy." And with that she took her wine down to the other end of the bar.

"Nice girl," Mitch observed.

"Trust me, she's more popular around here than Casey is," Steve said.

"I can believe that." Rut drank down the last of his Guinness. "That boy is awful hard to warm up to."

"Does he place a lot of bets with Slick Rick?" Mitch asked Steve.

"Why are you asking?"

"When I was over at his place this morning I saw a ton of NFL stats lying around. Couldn't help wondering if he was a bit of a gambler."

"I wouldn't call what Casey does gambling," Steve said in a low voice.

"What would you call it?"

"A disease."

"He has a problem?"

"A big problem."

"Well, now," Rut murmured. "Ain't that a fine how do ya do?"

"I need to get something out of my truck," Mitch informed the old postmaster. "I'll be back in a sec, okay?"

"Okay by me." Rut tapped his empty Guinness bottle. "But it'll cost you."

"Another round, Steve. And it's my tab, okay?"

"In that case," Rut said, "I'll have another chili dog, too."

Mitch went out of the Rustic's front door, his eyes adjusting to the sunlight in the parking lot. Casey and Tommy the Pinhead were having words over by Casey's blue Tacoma pickup. Mitch inched his way over behind the fenced enclosure where Steve kept his firewood, snow shovel and sacks of rock salt. From there he could watch the two of them without being seen. Could even hear Casey's whiny voice, although he couldn't make out what he was saying.

Casey opened the door to his Tacoma and removed a pair of large, heavy shopping bags with handles. Tommy took them from him and headed over toward a beat-up old black Pontiac Trans Am. He popped the trunk and deposited the bags in there. Casey followed him, yapping all of the way. Now he was holding a fat, letter-sized envelope out to Tommy. Tommy took it and said something to Casey, smiling broadly at him. Then he punched Casey in the stomach really hard. Casey doubled over in pain, his eyes bulging, before he proceeded to gaack up his entire breakfast of Cocoa Puffs. Not a pretty sight.

Okay, that settles it. I have officially eaten my last bowl of Cocoa Puffs.

Casey fell to his knees, gasping and heaving, then toppled slowly over onto the slushy gravel, a low, animal moan coming from him.

Tommy was not without mercy. He helped Casey back up onto his feet, patting him gently on the shoulder. Then he steered him back toward the front door of the Rustic, Casey looking none too steady on his feet.

Mitch stayed where he was, safely hidden behind the woodpile as they made their way inside. He continued to stay there, waiting. Sure enough, Casey came back outside a moment later-this time with Gigi clutching him by the arm. He still wasn't moving real well. The two of them got into his Tacoma, Gigi behind the wheel, and started out of the parking lot. Mitch wanted to see which way they turned when they pulled out of the driveway. As he stood there, waiting, a shadow fell across his face. Then he heard a flurry of movement. He started to turn around but wasn't nearly fast enough-something had already smashed him on the back of his head.

And then everything went black.

CHAPTER 15.

GRISKY WAS PACING THE conference room and flexing his biceps. Pacing and flexing. The G-Man was impatient. The G-Man was amped. Partly, this had to do with his sacred Christmas travel plans. "Every damned flight out of JFK tomorrow night has been scrambled because of the damned blizzard," he blustered. Mostly it had to do with the fact that Postal Inspector Sam Questa had failed to show up on time for Grisky's two o'clock quarterbacks meeting.

Yolie and Toni were there. Des was there. Capt. Joey Amalfitano of the Narcotics Task Force, aka The Aardvark, was there. The sandwiches and coffee from McGee's Diner were there. But Questa was a no-show. And would be one, Des felt certain, until precisely 2:17. Grisky would be kept waiting the same exact number of minutes that he'd kept Questa waiting earlier that morning. Boys. They could be so pissy.

"Do you realize I may actually have to spend Christmas here instead of in Cancun?" Grisky raged on, pacing and flexing.

"Boo-freaking-hoo," Yolie growled.

Des glanced at her watch. It was 2:16.

Sam Questa came bustling through the door ten seconds later-smack-dab on pissy man-time. Questa removed his coat and sat down at the table, reaching for a sandwich and a container of coffee. "Sorry I'm late," he said, biting into his sandwich. "Got held up in an interview."

Grisky narrowed his gaze before he sat down, too. "Okay, let's see where we're at," he said, rubbing his hands together briskly. He really liked to do that, and it was really starting to get on Des's nerves. "Resident Trooper Mitry? The ball's yours."

"Pat Faulstich's story didn't exactly check out," she reported. "Lem Champlain didn't send him to plow those driveways on Kinney Road last night."

Grisky shook his head at her. "And this is important because?..."

"Everywhere I go I keep tripping over him. He's clean, but he has an older brother, Mickey, who's doing a nickel at the Baskerville Correctional Center in Mecklenburg County, Virginia, for transporting three hundred pounds of marijuana. And he's a Rustic Inn regular, same as Casey Zander."

The Aarvark shifted uncomfortably in his chair at her mention of the Rustic, though he said nothing.

"What does all of this add up to?" Grisky demanded.

"Maybe something, maybe nothing. But I'm keeping my eye on him."

"Fair enough. Snooki, you're next."

Toni the Tiger stared across the table at him in silence.

He tilted his jarhead at her curiously. "Snooki?..."

"My name is Toni," she said to him between gritted teeth. "I also answer to Sargeant Tedone. But if you call me Snooki one more time I am going to make a bow tie out of your balls. Got it?"

Grisky held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. "Got it."

"Good," she said, slamming the door on what had to be the shortest crush on record. There truly was hope for this girl-even if she was a Tedone. "I've just spent several hours at the Headmaster's House with the geek squad looking into Josie Cantro." Toni leafed through her notepad. "Our local life coach has what I'd classify as a lively bio. For starters, her birth name isn't Cantro. It's Hoyt. Josie Ann Hoyt was born on August 1, 1981 in Augusta, Maine. Cantro is her mother's maiden name. We found this out when we deepened our search into the details surrounding her father's shooting death."

Des blinked at her in surprise. "Josie's father was shot to death?"

Toni nodded. "When Josie was twelve. Officially, it was closed out as a hunting accident, shooter unknown. Unofficially, the Maine State Police didn't view it as an accident. The shooting took place in a wooded area less than a quarter mile from Hoyt's home. No hunters admitted to being in the area at the time. And Hoyt was shot from close range."

"How close?" Grisky asked.

"Less than ten feet."

"Yeah, down here in the Nutmeg State we don't generally call that a hunting accident," Yolie said. "We call it murder."

"They looked very hard at Josie's mother for it," Toni said. "It was commonly known that he'd been beating the crap out of her for years. But they had no weapon, no witness, no case. So they wrote it off and moved on. The next time Josie pops up on our radar screen is six years later in Lewiston when she applies for a Maine driver's license as Josie Ann Cantro, age eighteen. Her life on paper officially starts here-Social Security records, credit cards and so on. She rented an apartment in Lewiston. To support herself Josie Cantro was employed at the Down East Bar and Grill and at a Snap Fitness Center. Meanwhile, under the name Adele Slade, she was also employed as a pole dancer at a club called the Matrix, where she was arrested on numerous occasions for soliciting prostitution and lewd public behavior."

"Girl, you haven't lost your edge," Yolie said to Des admiringly.

"What edge?" Grisky asked.

"The Resident Trooper told us last night that Josie smelled wrong."

"She never served any time," Toni pointed out. "Just got slaps on the wrist. I spoke to an old-timer on the Lewiston PD who remembers her. He told me she'd been out on the streets, hooking and using drugs, ever since she was sixteen. But that she was a smart, scrappy kid who cleaned up her act. She even enrolled at Bates College. Studied there for one semester, according to her transcripts. Then she left town one day and was never heard from again. According to her Social Security records, she relocated to Castine, home to the Maine Maritime Academy, where she worked as a waitress and chambermaid at the Castine Inn. She lived on the premises until 2005 when she filed for a change of address to the home of one James Allen Miller-better known as J.A. Miller, the author of a series of bestselling science fiction novels featuring someone called Torbor the Reclaimer. Do we have any sci-fi fans in the house? No? Anyway, Josie was twenty-four at the time. Miller, age fifty-six, was a widower with two children who were both older than Josie. I spoke to someone on the local PD. It seems that Miller used to eat dinner at the Castine Inn every night. He and Josie struck up an acquaintanceship and eventually it led to something more. He taught marine systems engineering at the academy before he became a bestselling author and bought himself the historic waterfront home that he invited Josie to share with him." Toni paused to gulp down some coffee. "James Allen Miller died of an overdose of the prescription sleep aid Ambien in 2007. A therapist had been treating him for anxiety-related depression. They closed it out as a suicide."

"Damn, this is starting to sound familiar," Yolie said. "Did the local PD have any reason to suspect it wasn't suicide?"

"None. Miller was seeing a therapist, like I said. Had been increasingly despondent in the days leading up to his death, and he left a suicide note."

"What did it say?" asked Des.

"It said, 'Forgive me, Torbor.' But guess what Miller did two weeks before he died: He changed his will. Left his waterfront home to Josie instead of to his two kids."

Des shoved her heavy horn-rimmed glasses up her nose. "God, maybe she is a black widow."

"What's a black widow?" Sam Questa wanted to know.

"An attractive young woman who snags rich, lonely men, picks them clean and kills them before she moves on."

"I never heard of one of those," The Aardvark said.

"Maybe they only exist in the movies," Des conceded.

"Maybe not," Yolie said.

"Miller was well liked in Castine. Josie was regarded as a scheming little tramp. His children contested the will. Threatened to fight her in court if they had to. She accepted a cash settlement of $100,000 and left town." Toni glanced down at her notes again. "She shows up briefly on our radar screen next in Portland, Maine, then in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she rented an apartment for a few months before she moved to New Haven. When she got to New Haven she enrolled in an online life-coach program. After that she rented a cottage here in Dorset, set up her practice and eventually met Bryce Peck. You know the rest."

"That's good work, Sergeant," Yolie said.