I uncorked the bottle.

"Same way you do therapy," I said.

"Which is?"

"Find a thread, follow it where it leads, and keep on doing it."

"Sometimes it leads to another thread."

"Often," I said.

"And then you follow that thread."

"Yep."

I ate a bite of my sandwich. Miracle Whip maybe was good in an egg salad sandwich. Susan nibbled on a cornichon. I sipped some Riesling. I liked Riesling.

"Like a game," Susan said.

"For both of us," I said.

Susan nodded. "Yes," she said, "the tracking down of a person or an idea or an evasion."

"Or fixing something that's broken," I said. "Like home repair."

"Or both," Susan said. "Except sometimes it's awfully hard."

"Part of its charm," I said.

"I know. I know. Can't win if there's no chance of losing. It's true," Susan said. "But not consoling in the moment."

"No," I said. "Not in the moment."

Susan gave Pearl another quarter of the extra sandwich she'd made. Pearl chomped it briskly and wagged her tail.

"Speaking of consolation in the moment," I said.

"She's easily consoled," Susan said.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR.

The seven of us met in a conference room down the hall from Quirk's office. Rita was there, and me, Belson and Quirk, a guy named Russo from Owen Brooks's office, and Mary Smith and Larson Graff. We were seated in gray metal chairs around a gray metal table. Larson sat on one side of Mary, and Rita was on the other. Rita had a yellow notepad in front of her. Russo had one in front of him. It was how they knew they were lawyers. There was a tape recorder on the table. Quirk turned it on and explained the date and the people in attendance.

"Spenser is here as Ms. Fiore's investigator," Quirk said to Mary Smith. "He has no police status."

"I think he used to be a policeman," Mary said.

Quirk ignored her. "Mr. Graff here also has no status in this proceeding."

"I don't see why..." Mary Smith began.

Rita put a hand on her arm and shook her head. Mary stopped talking.

"We have the weapon that killed your husband," Quirk said. "A forty-caliber Smith and Wesson semiautomatic pistol."

Mary smiled at him.

"OhmiG.o.d," she said. "I don't know anything about guns."

"It was taken by our friend Spenser here, from a man named Roy Levesque."

"Roy had it?"

"You know Roy Levesque," Quirk said.

"Sure, I mean of course, we went to high school together."

"When did you last see him?" Quirk said.

"Oh, I really, really... I see so many people. All the time. I'm really a people person, I guess."

"Levesque says you gave him the gun."

"Roy said that?"

"Yes."

"Why did he say that?" Mary said.

"Did you give him the gun?"

"Not to keep," Mary said.

Mary was confused. She turned and gazed at Larson Graff, as if maybe Larson knew and would help her out with the hard questions. Larson didn't look at her.

"Did you give him the gun? And tell him to get rid of it?" Quirk said again. There was no threat or anger in his voice. He seemed perfectly patient about it.

"I think maybe my client and I need to talk a little," Rita said.

Quirk nodded toward the door, and Rita took Mary outside and closed the door and stayed in the hall with her for maybe ten minutes. While we waited Quirk turned to Graff.

"So, Larson," Quirk said. "You think Levesque is telling the truth?"

"I really have no idea, Captain."

"So what was it you were doing here?"

"I came at Mrs. Smith's request."

"She take you everywhere?" Quirk said.

"There's no need for att.i.tude, Captain. Mary is much more at ease in any situation if I'm with her."

"You think she might have killed her husband?" Quirk said.

"My G.o.d, Captain. I don't know anything about that."

"Lucky she brought you," Quirk said.

No one spoke. Russo doodled on his yellow pad. Graff fidgeted, looking hopefully at the doorway through which Mary had disappeared. Quirk sat quietly looking at nothing. Belson watched Graff watch the door. The door opened after a while and Rita brought Mary back in. They sat. Quirk waited quietly.

"Are you planning to arrest my client?" Rita said.

"We might," Quirk said.

"We might be prepared to make a statement if there was something in it for us."

Quirk looked at Russo.

"What are you looking for?" Russo said.

"If, and this is hypothetical, in her statement Mrs. Smith admitted to a minor crime, she would not be prosecuted for it."

"How about the murder of her husband," Quirk said.

"If she made a statement, it would clarify that issue, and make it moot."

"The deal would depend on what she had to tell us," Russo said.

"If it is useful information, do we have a deal?"

"The deal being?" Russo said.

"No prosecution for any crime she might admit in her statement."

They then spent five minutes talking incomprehensibly about misdemeanors and C felonies and gobbledygook, while I looked at various parts of the room and found all of them equally uninteresting.

Finally Russo said, "Deal."

Rita nodded at Mary Smith. "Go ahead, Mary. Tell them."

"What should I tell them?" Mary said.

"What you told me in the hall."

"Can't you tell them for me?"

"I think they'd rather hear it from you."

Mary sat frowning. She looked at Graff again. He didn't look back.

"Well... please don't all of you look at me. I get really, really, really nervous if everybody looks at me."

n.o.body said anything. No one looked away. Mary licked her lips and looked at Larson again and then at Rita. Rita nodded encouragingly. I had known Rita a long time. I knew she wanted to jump up, take Mary by the neck, and shake her like a dust mop, but to the unpracticed eye Rita's nod looked supportive and kind.

"Well, I really... Nathan wasn't as rich as everybody thinks he was," Mary said.

She looked around at us. None of us spoke.

"Some kind of trouble at the bank, I think," Mary said. "And he would always tell me even if things got bad, I'd be all right because he had so much life insurance."

"How much?" Russo said.

"Ten million dollars."

"A lot," Russo said.

"And when I came in and found him."

"Found him?"

"Dead. Really, all I could think about was that insurance companies won't pay off on suicide."

"Suicide?" Quirk said.

"Yes. I thought, my G.o.d, I won't get a dime."

"Why did you think it was suicide," Quirk said.

"Well, I mean, really, there he was, the gun was right beside his hand."

"Gun?"

"Yes. That gun you were talking about, the forty-something or other. The one I gave to Roy."

"You found your husband dead?" Russo said. "With a gun by his side and you took the gun and gave it to Roy Levesque?"

"Yes."

"And you wanted him to get rid of it?" Quirk said.

"Yes. I didn't want the insurance company to know. I needed the money."