“I only get a true reading now and then,” he admitted. “But I got one for you. So treasure it.”

Manfred had a hundred questions he would have liked to ask Olivia, but now was not the time. There might never be a time. Somehow, he felt weirdly fonder of Olivia now, though he knew she was a killer. It was an unsettling feeling, somewhat like wanting to scratch a Bengal tiger behind the ears.

“Here’s what happened at the house,” Olivia said abruptly. “And by the way, good job on the floor plan.”

Manfred felt absurdly pleased at the compliment. He nodded. “I have a pretty good memory,” he said. “So you made it up to the second floor?”

Olivia told him about her first venture into the Goldthorpe mansion and her return trip that night.

“The guy was there to bring you to your dad? Or this McGuire?”

“He called Ellery McGuire, not my dad. It’s possible my dad said something like, ‘Find my daughter and bring her to me.’ My dad is the man who causes things to be done. He’s not picky about the method. Everyone takes cues from that. So I guess those were Ellery’s orders. Otherwise, the guy could have killed me right off, and no one would have known. Being dead would be better than going back to my father.”

“To you, being captured is the equivalent of being killed?”

She looked at him, surprised. Then she gave a short jerk of the head. “You’re right,” she said. “Or close enough.”

“And Lemuel found you?”

“He’d already been to the house and back by the time I got to the motel,” she said. “He rearranged the body, rather than trying to get rid of it. There was no way I could have taken the time to do that. For one thing, I wasn’t sure Falco was alone.”

“You thought there might be more than one guy there?”

“He was alone, but he could have had a team circling the block or parked nearby.”

“So we’re back where we started, at least as far as finding the jewelry I supposedly stole.”

“Yeah.” Olivia slumped in her chair, which made her look younger and less in control. Manfred much preferred Olivia the other way. He knew that competent, cold Olivia better.

After a moment or two, she said, “I think this means that sooner or later they’re going to come check you out. They don’t know why I was at the Goldthorpes’, they just know I was at the hotel, but sooner or later my father’ll think of looking at you.”

“Should I be worried about that?” Manfred asked, trying to sound like he wasn’t anxious already.