“So all you wanted from Eleanor was a lead on Nicola’s private life. I’m sorry we can’t help you with that.”

“Woman worked for you what—two years?—and you know nothing about who she saw on her days off, but in one afternoon you nail down my whisky preferences? I think you care more about your children’s welfare than that.”

He chuckled. “Maybe you’re more interesting to me than a diaper–changing immigrant.”

“She seemed to make a deep impression on your son. That didn’t concern you?”

Again his mouth twisted in slight distaste. “Robbie cried when the cat caught a bird. Then he cried when the cat had to be put to sleep. Everything makes a deep impression on him. Military school might help cure that.”

Poor kid. I wondered if he knew that lay in his future. “So what did you want with me that entailed my making the journey all the way out here?”

“I wanted to see whether you would make the trip.”

I nodded but didn’t say anything. His point: to prove he was big and I was small. Let him think he had made it successfully.

“You’ve been an investigator for sixteen years, Vic.” He shifted deliberately to my first name: I was small, he could patronize me. “What keeps you going when your annual billings barely cover your expenses?”

I grinned and stood up. “Idealism and naïveté, Bob. And curiosity, of course, about what happens next.”

He leaned against the padded leather of his armchair and crossed his hands behind his head. “You’re a good investigator, everyone agrees with that. But they say you have a funny kink in you that keeps you picking up stray dogs and that stops you from making a success of yourself. Haven’t you ever thought about giving up your solo practice and coming to work for—well, an outfit like mine? You wouldn’t have to worry about overhead. You’d even have a fully funded retirement plan.”

“This isn’t a job offer, by any chance?”

“Something for you to think about. Not an offer. What would you do if outfits like Continental United stopped tossing you their small jobs? We handle their big ones already; they might agree to roll everything into one package with us, after all.”

My constant nightmare, but I made myself laugh, hoping the smile reached my eyes. “I’d cash in my CD’s and go live in Italy for a while.”

“You don’t have enough CD’s to live on.”

“Your people have been thorough, haven’t they? I guess I’d hang out in the alley and share a bone with the rest of the strays. Maybe chew on your old shoes—you know, if you’ve got a Ferragamo loafer missing its little tag and you’re thinking of throwing it out anyway.”