Eve frowned and then looked at the desk between them, hands still folded in her lap, thinking his question over. “A woman,” she said. “A housewife with suspicions.” She looked down at her hands and then back up at Keegan. “I don’t like to think about it.”

Keegan nodded. He didn’t like to think about it either. “And who would that housewife rather meet coming through my door?” he said. “A woman who looks like her mother—or one who looks like her husband’s new steno girl?”

Eve sat straighter. “I see your point,” she said. There was a cool edge to her voice now. “Only—” But she didn’t finish the thought.

Keegan scribbled on the back of an envelope to get the pen’s ink flowing. Why did blue ink clot so easily? He jotted the date at the top of a pad of paper. “So, what brings you here, Miss Ormsby-Cutler?” he said.

She shook her head at him. “Please,” she said. “I asked you to call me Eve.”

“That’s for when we’re neighbors,” he said. “You’re in my office now, and you want my services. Best we keep it professional.”

Eve nodded without putting up a fight and slumped a little in her chair. She seemed both weary and wary. There was something haunted about her, Keegan thought, something that went deeper than this insomniac heat they’d all been enduring. Maybe it was the slant of light coming through the blinds, but she looked worn and tired now—nothing like the woman he’d sat across from in the shadow of Ormsby’s cypress trees, chatting over coffee and pastries.

“I think someone’s been lurking around my uncle’s house,” she told him. “I hear things out in the garden at night. I’ve found footprints in the flower beds.” She fixed Keegan with a questioning look, as if she was trying to gauge his reaction. “Uncle Nigel thinks I’m imagining things,” she said. “Perhaps he’s right.”

Keegan thought of Catling’s dark limousine slipping away from him as he stood on the baking Sixth Street sidewalk. “Perhaps he isn’t,” he said. “Tell me what you’ve seen.”

“Seen?” she said, as though he’d used the wrong word. “Nothing really.” She looked at the window blinds. “It’s just a feeling I get. And with Uncle Nigel going out of town—”

Keegan sat forward. Someone out there had Catling’s envelope of cash and the set of photographs—that much was certain. What might it mean for Eve to be left alone in that big house? “Where’s Nigel going?”

Eve gave Keegan a look, like she’d heard something worrisome in his tone. “Up to the mountains somewhere,” she said. “Some detective show they’re shooting. Why?”

“You’ll be alone in the house?”