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"Is there something you want me to do?" she asked me finally.

"No. Give me more time. I'll try, Eve. I know how important it is; that's why I didn't push Ginny when I saw her tonight. I wanted to talk to you first. If there's any way I can keep it from coming out, I will. But I wanted you to know."

Eve was silent. Dragged by the wind, branches scraped across her roof. The approaching storm weighed on the air.

"All right," she said, standing. "If things have to change, will you tell me first?"

"I promise."

She looked at me for a few moments. Then she walked back around the couch, over to the stove. Leo jumped to his feet, followed her. I stood, too.

"Trouble or not," she said, "there's still beef stew. Why don't you pour more wine?" She put the enameled pot on the table. "And you can change the music, or turn it off, if you want. I should have said that before."

The nocturnes had given way to Chopin mazurkas. "No," I said. "It's fine. I haven't heard these pieces in a long time."

"You know this music?"

"Yes."

She smiled. "I'm intrigued. I suppose I always thought of the detective business as rather sordid."

"It is. But I'm not sure it's any dirtier than cows and chickens."

She brought a round, crusty loaf out of the oven, set it on the table next to a dish of butter flecked with herbs. "Cows are much more decent than people," she said.

"Well, maybe. But not chickens. My grandmother kept chickens in our backyard in Louisville. I know all their secrets."

"Is that where you grew up? Louisville?"

"We left there when I was nine, but yes, until then."

"Where did you go then?"

"Thailand," I said. "South Korea, West Germany, the Philippines, Holland. My father was an army quarter master. We lived in a lot of exotic places; when I was fifteen we moved to Brooklyn."

She nodded. "Exotic."

The last thing she did before sitting was to feed two more logs into the iron stove on the hearth.

"Well, it's not fancy," she said. "But you won't be hungry."

It wasn't fancy, but it was great. The stew was thick with beef, and the beef was tender. Chunks of carrots, potatoes, onions, and stewed tomatoes glistened in a garlicky broth. The bread was dense and slightly sour, the butter sweet.

Eve Colgate and I drank more wine, and we talked, and in the silences we listened to Chopin and to the wind.

I admired her house, the spare completeness of it.

"I've been here thirty years. Things get completed, over time."

"Not always."

She poured wine for me, some for herself. "Where do you live, when you're in the city?"

"Downtown. Laight Street."

"What's it like?"

"The neighborhood? Changing."

"Your place, I meant."

"A friend of mine owns the building, and the bar downstairs. Years ago I helped him fix up the bar and the two upstairs floors. He has storerooms and an office on the second floor and I live on the third."

"You have no neighbors?"

"It's better that way."

"Why do you come here?" she asked me.

I sipped my wine. "Even fewer neighbors."

That was true, and in some ways the real reason; and in some ways, about as evasive an answer as I'd ever given to any question. Eve looked at me. She smiled, and in her smile it seemed to me she understood both the truth and the evasion.

I buttered a last piece of bread. "Why did you choose this place, Eve? When you left New York, why come here?"

She didn't answer right away. "Henri and I had come here for three summers, renting a cabin, the way you did Tony's father's. I suppose I wanted to be where I'd been happy. With him."

She rose, went to the kitchen, put water on for coffee. I started to clear the dishes. "I'll wash," I said.

"No," she said. "There's almost nothing. I'll do it later."

"It's my only domestic talent. Let me exercise it."

"I doubt that that's true. I think you're capable of being quite domestic, in your way."

"In my way," I agreed. I did the dishes.

We drank coffee, ate pears and some Gorgonzola cheese that looked older than I was. We talked some more. Then the Chopin was over, and the coffee was gone, and I had work to do.

I called Lydia before I left. It must have been both my night and not my night: she answered the phone herself.

"Where's your mom?" I asked her.

"Playing mah-jongg at Mrs. Lee's. Don't try to make up by being solicitous about my mother."

"Still mad?"

"Why wouldn't I be? Has something changed? Are you about to tell me what's going on?"

I looked over at Eve putting dishes in cabinets. "Not here," I said. "Not now."

"Uh-huh. Well, good-bye. I have to go to the Port Authority to collect your package. I assume I still work for you?

"God," I said. "Yeah, uh-huh, sure. And there's something else I want you to do."

"You're lucky I don't have another case right now But I'm raising my rates."

"I'll pay anything." I had a feeling that was truer than I knew. "You know Appleseed Baby Foods?"

"Baby food's not exactly my specialty. Is that the one with the babies and fruits all over the label?"

"Yes. It's owned by a guy named Mark Sanderson. He lives up here; I'm not sure where. The Appleseed plant is up here, too," I added, realizing she probably didn't know that. "I want dirt. Get a skip tracer, someone with a computer who can chase paper for us." "Us?"

I let that one drop. "Get Velez, he's good."

"Are we looking for anything specific?" she asked.

"No, and there may not be anything at all. It's just a hunch. But whatever there is, I want it. Tell Velez sooner is better than later. You have anything new on the other thing?"

"The paintings? I would have told you if I had," she said. "You're sure they were stolen? You're sure they exist?"

The woodstove clanged as Eve opened it, fed another log into the fire. "Yes," I told Lydia.

"Well, I'll keep looking. But if they do, I think they're on ice."

"I think you're right. I'll call you in the morning."

"Lucky me."

We both hung up. Eve brought my jacket and shoulder rig in from the hook where I'd left them. "What are you going to do now?" she asked.

"I'm going to talk to Ginny Sanderson again."

"At her father's?"

"No, she's not there. He told me this afternoon she hadn't been home for a few days. But Grice lives in Cobleskill. I'm going there."

She caught my eyes with hers. "If these people are what you say, if they're involved in murder ... Be careful, Bill. My paintings aren't that important."

"To you they are."

"Not that important."

We walked together across the porch, down the steps. "Thanks for dinner," I said.

She smiled. "I don't have guests very often. I'm glad you came."

Leo bounded down the steps and sniffed circles in the driveway. The cold wind tossed the tops of the trees around as yellow light spilled from the windows of the house. I took her hand, squeezed it lightly; then, feeling suddenly unsure, I let it go. I turned up my collar against the wind, walked down the driveway toward my car.

Chapter 12

I headed along 10 in the direction of Cobleskill, but I didn't get that far.

After the driveway there was a wide curve around the wooded slope where Eve's land came up to meet the road. The other side of the road was flat farmland, and my eyes traveled restlessly over the fields and down the slope, for no reason I could name. In the deep emptiness of the wind-swept night there was nothing to see.

But there was: off to my right, way down the slope, lights. Headlights, double, one set white, one piercing yellow, spaced widely, the way they would be on a truck. And near them, a paler glow, light through a window.

I stopped the car. This was Eve's land. Her studio stood at the end of a road, a road from the valley. I wasn't sure that clearing was what I was looking at now, but as I watched the headlights swing around and start to move off, it suddenly seemed like something I wanted to know more about.