“That’s what you say when the car breaks down, too.”

“Hmm.” I glared at the air conditioner for about twenty seconds and it remained silent.

“Call it foul names,” Angie said. “Maybe that’ll help.”

I turned my glare on her, got about as much reaction as I got from the air conditioner. Maybe I needed to work on my glare.

The phone rang and I picked it up, hoping the caller knew something about mechanics, but I got Eric Gault instead.

Eric taught criminology at Bryce University. We met when he was still teaching at U/Mass and I took a couple of his classes.

“You know anything about fixing air conditioners?”

“You try turning it on and off and then back on?” he said.

“Yes.”

“And nothing happened?”

“Nope.”

“Hit it a couple of times.”

“I did.”

“Call a repairman then.”

“You’re a lot of help.”

“Is your office still in a belfry, Patrick?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Well, I have a prospective client for you.”

“And?”

“I’d like her to hire you.”

“Fine. Bring her by.”

“The belfry?”

“Sure.”

“I said I’d like her to hire you.”

I looked around the tiny office. “That’s cold, Eric.”

“Can you stop by Lewis Wharf, say about nine in the morning?”

“I think so. What’s your friend’s name?”

“Diandra Warren.”

“What’s her problem?”

“I’d prefer it if she told you face to face.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll meet you there tomorrow.”

“See you then.”

I started to hang up.

“Patrick.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you have a little sister named Moira?”

“No. I have an older sister named Erin.”

“Oh.”

“Why?”

“Nothing. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

“See you then.”

I hung up, looked at the air conditioner, then at Angie, back at the air conditioner, and then I dialed a repairman.

Diandra Warren lived in a fifth-story loft on Lewis Wharf. She had a panoramic view of the harbor, enormous bay windows that bathed the east end of the loft with soft morning sunlight, and she looked like the kind of woman who’d never wanted for a single thing her whole life.

Hair the color of a peach hung in a graceful, sweeping curve over her forehead and tapered into a page boy on the sides. Her dark silk shirt and light blue jeans looked as if they’d never been worn, and the bones in her face seemed chiseled under skin so unblemished and golden it reminded me of water in a chalice.

She opened the door and said, “Mr. Kenzie, Ms. Gennaro,” in a soft, confident whisper, a whisper that knew a listener would lean in to hear it if necessary. “Please, come in.”

The loft was precisely furnished. The couch and arm-chairs in the living area were a cream color that complemented the blond Scandinavian wood of the kitchen furniture and the muted reds and browns of the Persian and Native American rugs placed strategically over the hardwood floor. The sense of color gave the place an air of warmth, but the almost Spartan functionalism suggested an owner who wasn’t given to the unplanned gesture or the sentimentality of clutter.