“Just don’t forget all that indebtedness.”

“I won’t. Jack, I really appreciate—” Gurney began. Then he noticed that the connection had already been broken.

After he resumed his journey, he followed the instructions of his GPS off the interstate and onto a series of increasingly rural byways until he came to the turn for Foxledge Lane. There, parked at the side of the road, he saw the red Miata. Kim waved, pulled out onto the pavement in front of him, and drove slowly up the lane.

They didn’t have far to go. The first driveway, flanked by impressive drystone walls, belonged to something called the Whittingham Hunt Club. The second driveway, a few hundred yards farther on, bore no identification or visible address, but Kim turned in and Gurney followed her.

Eric Stone’s home was at the end of a quarter-mile driveway. It was a very large New England Colonial. Everywhere bits of paint were beginning to peel. The gutters needed tightening and straightening. There were frost-heave cracks in the driveway. Debris from the recent winter littered the lawn areas and flower beds.

There was an uneven brick walk connecting the driveway with the three steps leading up to the front door. The walk and the steps were covered with rotting leaves and twigs. When Gurney and Kim were halfway along this path, the door opened and a man emerged onto the broad top step. It occurred to Gurney that the man was shaped like an egg. His narrow-shouldered, large-bellied physique was wrapped from neck to knees in a spotless white apron.

“Do be careful. Please. It’s a veritable jungle out there.” His theatrical delivery was accompanied by a toothy smile and anxious eyes that fastened on Gurney. His short hair, prematurely gray, was neatly parted. His small pink face was freshly shaved.

“Gingersnaps!” he announced cheerily as he moved aside to let them into the big house.

As Gurney stepped past him, the scent of talcum powder gave way to the distinctive, spicy-sweet aroma of the only kind of cookie he thoroughly disliked.

“Just follow the hall all the way to the back. The kitchen is the coziest spot in the house.”

In addition to the staircase to the second floor, the wide traditional center hall included several doors, but the patina of dust on the knobs suggested that they were rarely opened.

The kitchen at the back of the house was cozy only in the sense of being warm and full of oven aromas. It was huge and high-ceilinged and contained all the professional-commercial appliances that a decade or two earlier had become de rigueur in the homes of the well-to-do. The stove’s ten-foot-tall exhaust hood brought to Gurney’s mind a sacrificial altar in an Indiana Jones movie.

“My mother was a devotee of quality,” said the egg-shaped man. Then he added, with a startling echo of Gurney’s passing thought, “She was an acolyte at the altar of perfection.”