“Grab a seat, Mr. Gunther,” she said. “I just have to find one thing before I forget about it entirely. Bear with me.”

“Take your time,” he said, choosing a chair by the sliding glass doors.

Less than a minute later, the woman rose, triumphantly brandishing a file, circled the desk, and proffered her free hand in greeting.

“Mr. Gunther. Pat Glowa. Nice to meet you.”

She had short, white hair, a great handshake, and was dressed in jeans, which he hadn’t expected—not that he harbored many predictable expectations anymore.

She cleared a seat opposite him, plopped the file down on the crowded desk beside a forlorn plant, and blessed him with a radiant smile. “So,” she said. “Lucy Shaw. What would you like to know?”

He raised an eyebrow. “No opening disclaimers about patient confidentiality?” he asked.

“The woman’s dead. I’m a pragmatist.”

“You are a medical doctor, though, correct?”

She waved a hand vaguely. “I can dig out my degrees if you’d like. Might take a while. But yes, I was Lucy’s personal physician, and I am an M.D. This mess around us is because I’m segueing away from clinical medicine and pursuing a new ambition that I’ve aspired to for decades. I won’t bore you with the details, but it involves public health and consulting with state and local government on how to improve policy. There’s much more to it, but as I said…”

“You don’t want to bore me,” he finished for her. “I’d probably be a terrible audience anyhow. Can I start right off and ask if you attend the wakes of all your deceased patients?”

“In a moment, you can,” she replied, crossing her legs and adding, “I would have offered you something to drink, by the way, but I don’t have anything set up yet, and I don’t even know if the building has a soda machine.”

“I’m fine, thanks.”

“Excellent. First, I have a question for you, Mr. Gunther—”

“Joe,” he interrupted.

“Joe—all you said on the phone is that you were a policeman investigating Lucy’s death. Could you perhaps give me a bit more than that, without crossing any lines? I know you folks value confidentiality as much as we do.”

“Sure.” He removed his credentials from his pocket and showed them to her. “I work for the Vermont Bureau of Investigation, and I’m temporarily assigned to a federal task force, working on a case spanning both Vermont and New Hampshire.”

“And Lucy’s a part of that?”

“We think so. The tricky part in these things is that names crop up all over the place, and we have to figure out how, if, and where they fit.”

“Persons of interest.”

“Right,” he confirmed. “That’s what she is right now.”

“Did any of that play a role in her death?” Glowa asked.

Joe showed his surprise. “You don’t think she died of natural causes?”

“I don’t know. She could have. She certainly had the right preconditions.”

Joe frowned. “We heard her PCP had filled out her death certificate, which is why we almost missed having an autopsy.”