“I’m sure that’s the real reason you have the helicopter up. In case I try to escape from my own property. That sounds like the FBI’s brilliant thinking.” Lucy has a way of sounding bored when she’s contemptuous.

“A glib remark. I said it lightly. Tongue in cheek.” Erin’s clever humor comes across as haughty. “Of course you wouldn’t be so silly as to run off. I was teasing.”

“Let me guess who’s flying.” Lucy looks up at the military black twin-engine bird. “John, six-five with a three-ten steroid body. Big John who has the light touch of a Mack truck. You should have seen him setting down on the dolly the other day at that hangar your people use at Hanscom. Oh I’m sorry. Did you not know it’s common knowledge the FBI has a secret special ops hangar at Hanscom Air Force Base? That big tax-dollar-subsidized recently refurbished hangar next to MedFlight?

“Anyway”—Lucy continues to needle her about the FBI’s not-so-secret hangar just outside of Boston—“it took Big John three tries to get your bird centered on the dolly, skids all whackadoo, one of them touching down and bouncing off like a wobbly puppy feeling for the next step when it’s learning to do the stairs. I can always tell when it’s Big John on the stick. I could give him some pointers about overcontrolling. You know, think-it-don’t-touch-it. That sort of thing.”

I can see thoughts racing behind Erin’s eyes. She’s incensed and trying to figure out her best comeback. I don’t give her the chance.

“I’d like to enter my niece’s house.” I look past her into a vast open space of timber and glass soaring over the water.

“Perfect,” Erin says without stepping aside. “Because I need to ask you a few questions.”

I TAKE IN the dusty footprints all over the deep red cherry floors, the stacks of white Banker Boxes against a wall.

Inside the living room the lamps are missing their mica shades, and the mission-style furniture has been carelessly rearranged, the cushions sloppily replaced. I notice the take-out coffee cups and crumpled food bags on top of tables and scattered over the hand-carved African mahogany fireplace mantel. Empty sugar packets and stirring sticks fill an art glass bowl I bought for Lucy in Murano. In the space of two short hours it looks as if a small army has been tromping through her Architectural Digest spread. The FBI is giving her the finger back. More precisely her former dorm mate is.