Bobo felt a certain measure of relief. She was a legitimate customer. She wanted something tangible. She wasn’t going to rip his throat out and feed him to the dogs. (Where had that image come from?) “Yes,” he said, hoping that this was the right customer. “I think the brooch you’re talking about is right here in the case.” The pretty one he’d been showing Arthur Smith, it had to be. Bobo found he was incredibly pleased to be behind a counter, which provided a handy bulwark between him and . . . “I’m sorry, I don’t know your name,” he said.

The thick gray brows rose. “And so you don’t,” she said. “You may call me Maggie.”

“Nice to make your acquaintance, Miss Maggie,” he said, and she actually cackled with laughter. He’d never heard anyone cackle before. It was as unpleasant as he’d always imagined. Bobo’s hands weren’t completely steady, but he managed to reach under the glass counter to extricate the brooch. He looked at the little tag Lemuel had attached to double-check his memory. “That’ll be twenty dollars, Miss Maggie.”

“Oh, that’s dear,” the hag moaned, shaking her head. (He thought she might say “Tut, tut,” but she didn’t.) “Oh, that’s such a price!” She cast a sly glance at Bobo to see if he was going to negotiate. He gave her a level stare. “However, Lemuel does wonderful work, and he’s such a sweet boy,” she said, seeing that Bobo wasn’t going to cave.

Lemuel had been a boy well over a century and a half ago, by Bobo’s quick estimation. The odds were good that Lemuel had been sweet to someone, at some point. “He’s repaired it,” Bobo said agreeably. “Worth every penny.”

She groped around inside her clothes for the money, a sight Bobo could have lived without. Eventually, she handed him twenty one-dollar bills, incredibly rumpled and soiled. She grasped the brooch as soon as he accepted the money, and she pinned it to her chest with fingers shaking with eagerness.

Suddenly, in front of him was a lovely, straight-backed woman in her forties, a woman wearing a dress with a tight bodice and full skirt. She was wearing heels, too, instead of the cracked flats Maggie had worn into the store. Her glossy brown hair was put up in a French thing—he couldn’t remember what his sister had called it—on the back of her head. There was a mirror propped against one of the columns in the store, and she sprang over to eye her reflection.

“I look lovely,” she said, and at least her voice was the same.

“Yes, ma’am,” he agreed. “You look great.”

She gave him a gleaming sideways look. “Oh, you’re just the cutest thing! If you weren’t off-limits, I would just eat you up.”