“Please forgive my daughter,” she said in that accent I hadn’t been able to place. “She has an idiosyncratic sense of humor that strikes many people as rude. Her father and I did our best to tame it, but whatever authority I had as a parent is long gone.”

“And please forgive my mother,” said Bibi, “for believing wealth excuses condescension.”

Mariëtte’s shoulders were broad in the manner of someone who had swum competitively and still did hundreds of laps in the pool. She projected more vitality than people half her age, her daughter included.

“I am hardly condescending to the warden.”

“You’ve dialed up the eccentricity pretty high, Mother. We both know that’s one of your stratagems when dealing with strangers. Mainers in particular. Befuddling them with your foreignness.”

“And we both know that your defiance is just as calculated.”

Bibi failed to suppress a smile. I suspected I wasn’t the first stranger to watch one of their performative squabbles.

The mother nodded at me. “Warden Investigator Bowditch, I am Mariëtte Chamberlain, née Van Rooyen. I’d like to thank you for making the drive here. I am sure you thought me rude, but I have learned that a woman needs to risk being thought a bitch if she hopes to get anywhere in this world. This is my daughter Bibi.”

“We’ve met,” said the young woman. With her Goth makeup and her crude piercings, she’d gone to elaborate lengths to camouflage her own natural beauty.

“Take the man’s coat, bokkie,” Mariëtte said.

As I removed my parka, Bibi Chamberlain appraised the gun on my belt. “Is that a SIG Sauer perchance?”

Few civilians, in my experience, could identify the make of a handgun at a glance.

“Yes, it’s a P239.”

“I thought I recognized the slide and beavertail. Weren’t the P239s discontinued? I have a secret fetish for firearms. Grandfather taught me to shoot with a Pistolet automatique modèle 1935A. It was a trophy his grandfather brought home from the War That Failed to End All Wars. If you have time, I can show you Eben’s gun cabinet later.”

“I’d like that.” An interest in antique firearms was another of my weaknesses.

“Enough gun talk, I think.” Mariëtte took my arm and turned me toward the hall with even greater strength than I’d anticipated. “We’re having coffee and biscuits in the back parlor. I assume you’re not allergic to dogs. I doubt a game warden would be.”

The back parlor was, in fact, a winterized porch, with a view of white fields rolling a hundred yards to the river. The low-ceilinged space was warmed by a potbellied stove on which a dented pail was boiling fiercely. The water seemed to contain the spices I had smelled upon my entrance. There was, in other words, no actual baking in progress: just the false odors of home.