Jack didn’t have to tell the cabbie to take it slow past the house. Thirty-eighth Street was barely crawling.

“Thar she blows,” he said.

The security car with the two guards was still parked out front.

He noticed that Alicia didn’t even glance out the window. She sat with her arms laced tightly across her chest.

“When do you figure you’ll make your first search?” she whispered.

The cabdriver’s English had seemed pretty shaky, and Jack doubted he could hear much on the other side of his Plexiglas partition, but whispering wasn’t a bad idea.

“For what?”

“For whatever they think is so valuable.”

“Which is…?”

“That’s the zillion-dollar question.”

“Exactly. I’m sure your brother has tossed the place but good behind those boarded-up windows. Obviously he didn’t find it. So how am I supposed to find what he couldn’t find when I don’t even know what I’m looking for?”

She mulled that a moment. “Maybe it isn’t something in the house—maybe it’s the house itself.”

“Very possible. But when it’s time to search, it won’t be just me, it’ll be we.”

“Oh, no. I’m not setting foot in that house ever again.”

“Yes, you are. You grew up there. You know every nook and cranny of the place. Be crazy for me to stumble around in there alone when you could be my guide.”

Alicia seemed to shrink inside her coat as she tightened her crisscrossed arms.

What happened to you? he wondered. What went on in that house that you won’t even look at it?

He decided not to push her any further now.

“But search talk is a little premature now anyway,” he said. “We need lots more information before we do anything like that.”

She visibly relaxed. “Like what?”

“Like who’s backing Thomas. Finding out what they’re into may move us a long way toward figuring out what this is all about. You said this is a big expensive law firm?”

She nodded. “Hinchberger, Rainey and Guran. Leo—my dead lawyer—told me HRG is mainly into international business law. He was flabbergasted that they were handling a will dispute. Said it was like having F. Lee Bailey handle a traffic ticket. And I believe him. You should see their offices.”

“You been there?”

She nodded. “Leo and I had a meeting with Thomas’s lawyer in his office early on. It didn’t go well.”

“Where are they?”

“West Forty-fourth, just off Fifth.”

Jack had an idea. “Then that’s the place to start.” He tapped on the cab’s Plexiglas barrier. “West Forty-fourth.”

“Nobody’s going to be there now.”

“I know. But I want to get a look at the place. And I want to start work on getting a list of their clients.”

“You mean, besides Thomas?”