The two men laughed again. “My wife is completely obsessed with my job,” said Conner. “I’ve caught her looking through my work stuff under the guise of cleaning. Trouble with her cover story, she doesn’t clean—ever. My apartment is in a permanent state of chaos. When I bring my bag home from the office, suddenly she wants to clean. I can’t take anything home that’s confidential.”

“I hear you. It ain’t easy.”

“You don’t understand, my wife takes things to a whole other level,” said Conner, glad to have someone to talk to. “She goes to the hairdresser and comes home convinced the owner of the salon is running an international gambling operation out of the back room. In our apartment building, she got it in her head that this nice old man in a wheelchair who lives on the fifth floor can actually walk. She thinks the wheelchair is a cover.”

“Did she see him walking?”

“No. She just thinks he can,” said Conner.

“She’s a little like a conspiracy nut—” said Peter who then stopped himself. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say nut.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it, some of her behavior is way out there,” said Conner. “It got so bad last year that we couldn’t go anywhere without her suspecting somebody of something. The Uber driver looked like a terrorist, the woman on the bus was spying on us and recording our conversation. She thought our dentist who is Swiss, didn’t sound Swiss. She decided he sounded Russian and that he might be a double agent.”

“Did he sound Russian?”

“Not even a little.”

“Your wife sounds challenging.”

“Tell me about it. Last year, I made her go to a therapist after an unfortunate incident with the Peruvian embassy. I even went to therapy with her a few times to make sure she didn’t downplay things,” said Conner as he waved to the waiter to bring them each another beer.

“What did the therapist say?” said Peter as he took a sip of his drink.

“She said my wife had a very active imagination and her fantasies sometimes register as fact. She told Zoe to take a deep breath when she had one of those thoughts and to ask herself if it made logical sense.”

“Did the therapy work?”

“For a while. Don’t get me wrong,” said Conner, “My wife is a really sweet person but sometimes her imagination runs wild. It gets us both into trouble. I can’t have that while I’m working for the bureau.”

“Did something happen recently?” said Peter, reaching for his personal bowl of peanuts on the table and popping a few into his mouth.

“Our call tonight,” said Conner, “started out as a normal conversation until she told me she thinks the bookkeeper where she works might be embezzling money—because the woman cuts her sandwiches into nine pieces.”