“He was the preteen who vanished without a trace?” she asked.

“The same. There’s nothing on the phone that we’ve found yet, but the mere fact that it ended up in Don’s stolen car is intriguing enough. Sam and Lester are retracing Don’s travels to see if they can find out where he stole it from.”

“If he stole it,” she countered.

“True,” he conceded. “That was his job, though.”

“It might have been in the car before he came into possession,” she suggested.

He was familiar with her scientist’s reluctance to presume. “Granted. But that would imply it belonged to Lemuel Shaw, begging the question: Why would he be driving around with a keepsake like that? The car postdates the kid’s disappearance by years. Did he hang on to it like other people suspend family crucifixes from their rearview mirrors, moving it every time he bought a new set of wheels? Plus, it was found in the trunk.”

“You’re asking if human beings are capable of eccentric and inexplicable actions?” she asked.

“Fair enough. We are looking at Lemuel, or both Shaws, for other reasons. Their story about his whereabouts when the car was stolen has holes, as does Mrs. Shaw’s role in it. For one thing, we’re not sure he and Don Kalfus didn’t know each other beforehand.”

“This is sounding like a game of six degrees of separation.”

Joe put a delicate damper on that idea. “Well, only if that last part is true. We only know they had a fight at the strip club that suggests ancient history. Could be each of them was having a bad day and just lashed out. We’re keeping our options open. Between you and me? I think Don was a thief by nature and saw an opportunity to grab Shaw’s car. Pure and simple. Let’s not forget Shaw reported the loss to police pretty fast, immediately after trying to tidy up his appetite for barely clad female anatomies.”

“Poor Mrs. Shaw,” Beverly said.

Joe snorted. “Don’t go overboard there, either. It sounded like she reminded Lester of a hard-edged Wanda Sykes. Warm, cuddly, and vulnerable she is not.”

“Have you ever visited a club like that?” she asked him.

“Only professionally. Not to my taste.”

“I have,” she confessed.

He laughed hard enough to threaten his dinner and send Gilbert leaping for a calmer perch. “Really?”

“Yes. Rachel’s father thought it would be a good idea if we went.”

Rachel Reiling was Beverly’s daughter, now a reporter living in Brattleboro. Beverly and her husband, a high-powered Burlington attorney, had divorced many years earlier, and while each was loving and attentive to Rachel, neither kept in touch with the other. It had been, in the vernacular, a “civilized” parting of the ways. Joe had heard rumors that Mr. Reiling had always had an eye for women not his wife.

But mention of attending a strip club was a surprise nevertheless. “That must’ve been awkward,” he said, impressed if not surprised by her customary imperturbability.