“Hello? . . . yes, I’d like to arrange for a car to the airport tonight. Six p.m . . . . Just one.”

She rattled off her address and her home and cell phones. I took notes on the phone numbers—you never know.

She hung up again, and dialed another number.

“Hello, is Duke in? . . . Do you know when he’ll be back?”

Evidently the answer was not to her liking. Her tone became so frosty it made the ice cubes rattling in her glass sound warm.

“Tell him to call Nadine Hanrahan ASAP. I want an update on the job he’s doing for me.”

She pressed a button and snapped the cell phone closed. I got the idea she’d have found a land line, where you could slam down the receiver, much more satisfactory at that moment.

After another sip, she pressed a couple of buttons. One of her speed dial numbers, apparently. She waited with the cell phone to her ear, tapping her foot in triple time, and finally spoke.

“Sandra? I was expecting to find you, at least, in the office today. Call me as soon as you get this.”

She stared at the phone for a few moments as if peeved with it. Then she pulled out her notebook again and began flipping through the pages, occasionally crossing something out or scribbling something in. It looked for all the world like me spending some quality time with my notebook-that-tells-me-when-to-breathe. I wasn’t sure I liked finding any resemblance between me and Nadine.

The resemblance was there, though. Like me, she seemed to find communing with her notebook soothing. That or the icy beverage she kept sipping. At first, her forehead was creased with a frown and she tapped her pen impatiently against the pages. But as time wore on, she stopped tapping and the frown began smoothing out, to be replaced by a faint smile.

Problem was, time was wearing on down at the playground, too. And given the innate contrariness of toddlers, if I tried to hurry Timmy away from the playground, odds were he’d cry and clutch one of the support poles with a death grip, begging to stay, but since I was hoping he would stay happily amused until I got back, odds were he was getting bored with it. How much longer was Nadine going to commune with her to-do list?

She finally drained the glass and went inside. I waited a few minutes before extricating myself from the bushes and creeping along the side of the house to the front, and then walking down the driveway. Act as if you belong, I reminded myself. Pretend you’re someone who lives here.

What I really wanted to do was pretend I was someone who jogged here, but I wasn’t dressed for it, so I forced myself to stay down to a walking pace. As soon as I was out of her yard and across the street, I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Chief Burke.