"Do you feel you need protection?" Detective Lacey asked quickly. "Have you received any unusual messages or phone calls? Do you feel threatened?"

I raised my eyebrows, looked at my brother. "You scared, Tolliver?"

"I don't think I am," he said, as if he were surprised by the discovery. "Seriously," he said to Detective Young, as if we'd just been playing up till then, "Has there been any kind of anti-Semitic demonstration against the Morgensterns? I guess I kind of thought society was past that. I love the South, don't get me wrong; but it does lag behind the times in social developments. I'm sure I could be mistaken." We waited for her to answer, but she just looked at us, an all-too-familiar expression of deep skepticism on her narrow face. Lacey looked more disgusted than anything else.

"Detectives," I said, getting tired of the dance, "let me point some things out." We were on the love seat the Morgensterns had used yesterday, and the two detectives were in the wing chairs we'd occupied. Though Brittany Young was at least ten years younger than Lacey, and a woman, at the moment her expression was identical to his. I took a deep breath. "The Morgensterns hired me after their daughter had been missing for several weeks. Though I'd read the newspaper stories about Tabitha, I'd never met Diane or Joel or any other member of the family. I had no idea they'd call me to work for them. I couldn't have had anything to do with her disappearance, it stands to reason."

I thought the atmosphere eased a little.

Detective Lacey took the lead. "Who, specifically, called you? Felicia Hart? Or Joel Morgenstern's brother, David? Or maybe Joel's father? None of them will claim responsibility."

The direct question stopped me short.

"Tolliver?" I never talked to clients directly until we got to the site. Tolliver thought it added to my mystique. I thought it made me very anxious.

"That was a while ago," Tolliver said. He went into his room, came back with a three-hole binder filled with computer printout pages. He'd been messing around with his computer more in the evenings, I'd noticed, and he'd designed some forms for our little business, Connelly Lang Recoveries. He'd been going back and entering all our past "cases" into the new format. This notebook was labeled "Case Files 2004" and the first page in each file (a green page) was headed "First Contact."

He scanned the page, refreshing his memory. "Okay. Mr. Morgenstern senior called us, at the request of his wife, Hannah Morgenstern. Mr. Morgenstern…" Tolliver read the page for a couple of minutes, then looked up to tell the cops that the older Mr. Morgenstern had told Tolliver about his missing granddaughter, and had asked Tolliver if he thought his sister could help.

"I explained what Harper does, and he got kind of angry and hung up," Tolliver said. "Then, the next day, the sister-in-law called."

"You're saying Felicia Hart called you?"