“Coffee, please.”

“It’s bad for you,” she said as she left the room.

“Oh, hell, “I muttered irritably as I pulled the books and poem out of the bag and red fluorescent powder got all over my hands and clothes.

Neils Vander had done his usual thorough examination, and I had forgotten his passion for his new toy. Several months ago he had acquired an alternate light source and had retired the laser to the scrap heap. The Luma-Lite, with its “state-of- the-art three-hundred- and-fifty- watt high-intensity blue enhanced metal vapor arc lamp,” as Vander lovingly described it whenever the subject came up, turned virtually invisible hairs and fibers a burning orange. Semen stains and street drug residues jumped out like solar flares, and best of all, the light could pick up fingerprints that never would have been seen-in the past.

Vander had gone the gamut on Jennifer Deighton’s paperback novels. They had been placed in the glass tank and exposed to vapors from Super Glue, the cyanoacrylate ester that reacts to the components of perspiration transferred by human skin. Then Vander had dusted the slick covers of the books with the red fluorescent powder that was now all over me. Finally, he had subjected the books to the cool blue scrutiny of the Luma-Lite and purpled pages with Ninhydrin. I hoped he would be rewarded for all of his trouble. My reward was to go into the bathroom and clean up with a wet washcloth.

Flipping through Paris Trout was unrevealing. The novel told the story of the heartless murder of a black girl, and if that was significant to Jennifer Deighton’s own story, I could not imagine why. Seth Speaks was a spooky account of someone supposedly from another life communicating through the author. It did not really surprise me that Miss Deighton, with her otherworldly inclinations, might read such a thing. What interested me most was the poem.

It was typed on a sheet of white paper smudged purple with Ninhydrin and enclosed in a plastic bag: JENNY

Jenny’s kisses many

warmed the copper penny

wedded to her neck

with cotton string.

It was in the spring

when he had found it

on the dusty drive

beside the meadow

and given it to her.

No words of passion

spoken.

He loved her

with a token.

The meadow now is brown

and overgrown with brambles.

He is gone.

The coin asleep

is cold

down deep

in a woodland

wishing pond.

There was no date, no name of the author. The paper was creased from having been folded in quarters. I got up and went into the living room, where Lucy had set coffee and tea on the table and was stirring the fire.

“Aren’t you hungry?” she asked.

“As a matter of fact, I am,” I, said, glancing over the poem again and wondering what it meant. Was “Jenny” Jennifer Deighton? “What would you like to eat?”

“Believe it or not, steak. But only if it’s good and the cows haven’t been fed a bunch of chemicals,” Lucy said. “Is it possible you could bring home a car from work so I could use yours this week?”