“Thirty-five? Darling, I could tease for sixty and do no more than peck his cheek.”

Frances rolled her eyes. “Sixty? Remember that Swede? In Atlanta? If I hadn’t—”

“I’m sure Dee and Evie didn’t come to hear us reminisce,” Maggie said. “How may we help you ladies?”

“We need to talk to someone who would have been with the Nikolaev family in the seventies. You still keep up with Peter, don’t you?”

“We’re going down to Florida next month to see him and Chance.” She frowned at Frances. “Is it Chance? Or Enrico?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Frances said. “Since Ivan died, it’s a new Chance or Enrico every time we meet him. Eighteen-year-old pool boys. Some men hit a certain age—straight or gay, it doesn’t matter—they’ll empty their wallets on the first flat stomach that comes along.”

“But we don’t need to call Peter to find you a Nikolaev contact,” Maggie said. “Little Joe is in an old-age home outside Detroit.”

“A retirement home?” Evelyn said. “Little Joe is Boris Nikolaev’s brother, isn’t he?”

“Hell of a thing to do to your own brother,” Frances said. “But Boris never had much use for Joe. Not that I blame him. There was some scandal a couple of years back, Joe flapping his gums when he shouldn’t have. Boris shipped him off to a fancy rest home. Joe was never the sharpest tool in the family shed, but if you’re looking for someone to talk, he’ll talk all right. Problem always was getting him to shut up.”

“Will there be a problem getting in to see him?” I asked. “They’ll have him under security still, won’t they?”

Frances shook her head. “When the family puts someone out to pasture, he’s persona non grata. They’ll visit him, keep up appearances but, as far as they’re concerned, he’s out of the business. They won’t tell him anything, so there’s nothing he can tell anyone else. On current events, that is. The past? Well, no one cares much about the past these days.”

Frances searched the Internet for private rest homes in the Detroit suburbs until she found the one that tweaked her memory. Then we took our leave and prepared for a trip to Michigan.

“He’s an old man,” Evelyn said as she pulled into a mall parking lot. “Flash him some T and A, and he’ll tell us everything we want to know.”

“Great,” I said. “We’ll find you a push-up bra and miniskirt.”

She pinned me with a look. “After a certain age, all the push-up bras in the world don’t help, as you’ll discover. With a man like Little Joe, the horseflesh has to be young and it has to be firm.”

“Did I mention I don’t do Mata Hari?”

“Dee…”