Pointy Glasses could tell we weren’t going to leave, and apparently the doctor decided against sneaking out without seeing us. When we’d been there forty-five minutes or longer, he appeared at the door into the examining area. Dr. Bowden was in his sixties, bald except for a gray fringe. He was one of those anonymous-looking men you’d have trouble describing. You could meet him six times in a row and you’d still have to ask his name.

“All right, I have a moment now,” he said. He preceded us into his office, a small room crowded with bookcases, papers, home-stitched framed needlework (“Doctors leave their patients in stitches”), and photographs of himself with a short, very plump woman and a boy. The boy grew up to be a young man in the photos, and then there was a wedding picture of the grown-up son with his own wife.

He settled himself behind the desk, giving a good impression of a busy and prosperous man who was sparing us a few minutes out of the goodness of his heart.

“My name is Harper Connelly, and this is my friend Manfred Bernardo,” I said. “I’m here about a death you certified eight years ago, the death of a woman named Mariah Parish.”

“I’d been warned you were coming,” he said, which startled the hell out of me. “I can’t believe you’d have the sheer effrontery to show up here.”

“Why not?” I said, completely at a loss. “If Mariah Parish was murdered, it completely changes a very complicated situation.”

“Murdered?” He looked as astounded as I was, now. “But I was told . . . I was told you were alleging that Mariah Parish was still alive.”

“No, I’ve never said that, and I don’t believe it. Who told you that?”

But the doctor didn’t answer. He looked very concerned, but not as hostile. “You aren’t here to dispute my filing a death certificate?”

“No. I know Mariah Parish is dead. I’m just wondering why you didn’t fill in the cause of death correctly.”

Tom Bowden flushed, and it didn’t look good on him. “Do you represent her family?”

“She didn’t have a family,” I said. “We represent the detective who’s looking for her baby.” Which, in a way, was true.

“The baby,” he said, and he aged five years in thirty seconds.

“Yes,” I said, very sternly. “Tell us about it.”

“You know how influential the Joyces are,” he said. “They could have ended my career; they could have sent me to jail.”

“But they didn’t,” Manfred said, his voice just as severe as mine. “Tell us.”

We had no idea what was going on, but it was good to look like we did.