“Once he sent a Vermont teddy bear with chocolates, and the last time he went away you got pastries from that 96th Street bakery that you like so much,” said Don. “It’s very romantic.”

Zoe took the large plant box from the doorman and she and Sean got on the elevator.

“I wish I could find a guy who did that for me,” said Sean, eyeing the package covered in green tissue paper as the elevator doors closed.

“You will, but you have to stop going out with anyone who asks,” she said, handing him the plant so she could unlock her front door. “You need to be more selective and only go out with the best, because that’s what you deserve. That’s how I found Conner.”

Sean nodded as the two entered Zoe’s place and shut the door behind them.

Unwrapping the plant, Zoe texted her husband. When their brief text exchange concluded, she gave Sean a pump of hand sanitizer and one for herself and they moved into the dining room, sitting at opposite ends of the large mahogany table.

“Can I take my mask off now?” said Sean.

“This is a fourteen-foot table. We should be good,” said Zoe removing hers as she got up to open another window and then went into the kitchen to get glasses of ice tea for them both.

“Ahhh, that’s better,” said Sean, letting out a breath as he took off his mask. “I don’t know how doctors and nurses wear these things all day. I feel like I’m suffocating all the time.”

“Let’s focus on our case now. We both agree, the police aren’t going to do anything about our murder plot, right?” said Zoe, sitting down at the table and tapping her pen several times. “The detectives said they would ‘look into it’, but I don’t think they meant it. It’s up to us to save that man from being killed.”

“To be fair, we gave the police rather vague and not terribly useful information,” said Sean.

“Don’t defend them,” said Zoe, aghast. “We’re taxpayers, not lunatics. We did our civic duty. We went into that police station like good citizens to report a potential murder and they blew us off.”

“We are in the middle of a pandemic,” said Sean. “But you’re right, they’re probably not going to do anything.”

“Exactly.”

“Let’s go over what we know for sure,” said Sean. “You’re absolutely certain you saw a murder-for-hire exchange on the masked woman’s phone?”

“You don’t believe me now?”

“I believe you, it’s just that sometimes you get carried away and you had been drinking and taking sleeping pills the night before and—”

“I was a hundred percent cold sober when I read that woman’s texts.”

“Okay, I’m sorry,” said Sean. “I’m on board. What have we got so far?”