“When was the last time you saw him?” Willy asked.

“I don’t know. A couple of weeks ago?”

“How did he seem?”

The shrug again. “Normal. He’d landed a part-time job as a bouncer someplace. Nothin’ steady, but he thought it was funny. It was, too. He didn’t look like no bouncer.”

Willy couldn’t argue with that. “Where?”

“Keene, someplace. I don’t know where.”

Ron spoke again. “He talk about any big haul in the planning?”

“Not to me,” she stressed. “We weren’t partners. What d’you think? I helped him with this? I told him it would get him killed someday.” She angrily crushed her cigarette into the tabletop before flicking it to the ground, where it vanished amid the undergrowth.

Willy kept at her. “Speaking of partners, who were his friends?”

“He kept them away from here.”

“How ’bout a girlfriend? He have one of those?”

“Robin Whiteman,” Cheri said. “They been together a few months, I guess.”

“What’s she like?”

“Wouldn’t know. Never met her. Like I said.”

Sammie checked her vibrating cell as she and Lester followed Lemuel Shaw down a hallway wide enough for an airport terminal. “From Joe,” she apprised her partner. “They located the owner of that unlocked iPhone in Keene.”

“Joe okay?” Lester asked.

“Apparently. The other guy’s in the hospital. Did a flyer out the window.”

“Ouch. How’s Willy doing on his end?”

Sammie let out a snort. “Willy? Send me an update? Do you know the man?”

At last, the three of them reached the end of the corridor and a pair of carved double doors. Shaw stood to one side and announced, “My lady’s chambers. I’ll let you have the honors, as requested.” He turned the knob, pushed the door open, and retreated whence they’d come. “You know where to find me,” he added, not looking back.

“Not without a map,” Lester said under his breath.

“We just walk in?” Sam challenged Shaw from a distance.

He kept speaking straight ahead. “Trust me. It’s how she likes to hold court.”

The room they entered was high-ceilinged, thickly carpeted, and completely done up in gold and white. Chandelier, furniture, pillows, wall hangings, even the cat, were one color or the other. The only standouts were the view out the wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling windows, displaying a thirty-mile stretch of woods, fields, and mountains, and the face of the woman clad in white, who was propped up like a royal bauble on a pile of pillows at the head of an enormous king-sized bed. Of the two, the view was the more naturally accessorized.

“Sorry to barge in,” Lester began.

“Not at all,” the woman interrupted. “I’m Lucy Shaw. You look like you’re from the police.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sam said.

“Lucy, please. Call me Lucy. I’m old and in denial. Sit and make yourselves comfortable. I hope Lem offered you coffee.”

Lester reassured her. “He did.”

He and Sam sat uncomfortably on a white love seat placed beside the bed, apparently positioned for petitioners awaiting an audience.