“Tell me something about our client.” I had a death grip on the armrest in the pre-crash position I always assumed when Moses was piloting the Fairlane. He hurtled through the stop sign at Spring Grove with the casual confidence of an ex-cop who never expected to be arrested and I reflected that if we were going to be flattened by a semi, this would make a convenient spot, with the vast expanse of Spring Grove Cemetery to our left.

Caught up in this story, I was tempted to ask whether this relationship had lasted for nineteen years and how it had ended, but I was afraid that if I followed that particular red herring, we’d never get back to the case.

“You know, Mom, you keep calling Leila a ‘girl,’ but she wasn’t a girl, really, was she? She was sixteen.” I was baffled. “What should I call her?” “A woman. She was old enough to be sexually active.”

“What bothers me most is not what we found but what we didn’t find.”

Reluctantly, I spent some time that night on my taxes and concluded that I should have sampled the magic brownies myself.

I snoozed a little after that, which is my preferred way to travel when Moses is at the wheel: unconscious.

The main reason that noir detective stories are so noir is that most of the world is at work during the day and not available to be interviewed or spied on or followed. We detectives need to take advantage of prime time if we want to reach anybody.

I considered suggesting that she cheer herself up with a few slices of bacon, since I often find that food with a high fat content does wonders for a funk, but I thought my suggestion might not be appreciated, practical though it was, so I didn’t say anything right away.

My first impulse was to drive to the library downtown. My first impulse was always to drive to a library.

Moses called again later when I was reading in the recliner with a cat on either side and one in my lap. Since the cat in my lap objected to being a book rest, I had been forced to hold the book awkwardly, but I figured I was exercising my biceps and triceps in the process. If you added the lifts of a G&T glass, I was burning quite a few calories.

“Wanna make some big money tonight?” Caroline looked up from her history textbook. Nicole stood next to the desk, wearing the cheeky grin that meant she was planning something fabulous or something twisted. Or both.

Madeleine said most men didn’t just want sex. They wanted to feel like they were on a real date—the best date ever. You had to make them feel witty and charming: chat, laugh, really listen. Engage.

Delivering fantasies. It was the core of the business.

Caroline remembered Nicole’s theory of men. Regardless of age, race, IQ, or jock size, they fell into two simple categories: those who tipped and those who didn’t.