My farmhouse visit had been Friday and yesterday was a day of prep, for what I faced tonight. The only development on Saturday had been the press reporting that the Ulster County Sheriff’s Department, operating on an anonymous tip, discovered four bodies in a farmhouse, carnage that appeared to be the result of a falling-out among thieves.

The spate of bank robberies in upstate New York was being tentatively tied to this event, according to unnamed sources within the PD, and the whereabouts of the rented farmhouse’s occupant, Harold P. Strutt, were not known. Meanwhile, New York State Police were looking for Strutt, who had a criminal record and whose 1978 white Camaro’s license number was included in the All Points Bulletin seeking him and it. Identification of the other fatalities was being withheld, but registration of vehicles at the property matched identification on the bodies of the shooting victims. No fingerprints were found at the scene other than those of the victims and the missing occupant.

Velda, reading the Daily News in her pink terrycloth robe at her kitchen table over a breakfast I’d cooked, gave me an arched eyebrow. “Sounds like you had fun last night. You got in at what…four?”

“What you don’t know can’t hurt you.”

“Risk it.”

So I filled her in. I hated making an accessory out of her, but it couldn’t be helped—I would need her with me on the next phase of the job.

Nibbling at a naked slice of toast, she said, “Then it really is Vincent Colby who’s our killer. It’s not a frame job.”

“Not a frame job, no.”

She gestured with a crust, fairly insistently. “What I don’t understand is…why? Does Silver Spoon get his kicks out of murder? Is he some uniquely twisted spin on the serial killer concept? And why would he stage his own hit-and-run?”

I shrugged as I chewed my toast with its butter and strawberry jam. Politely swallowed before saying, “There’s method to his madness, doll. Vincent Colby worked out at that Yuppie gym with sensei Sakai, got himself fit and learned some moves. He trained with a stunt man until he knew just how to roll with that Ferrari’s punch. No, he knew just what he was doing.”

“Fine. But, damnit, Mike—again…why? ”

I smiled; the jam was sweet. “I think I know. Won’t be easy to prove, though.”

“Since when do you need proof?”

“Since I promised Pat.”

She nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I get that. Casey Shannon was Pat’s friend. And you owe the guy that much. So how do we make that happen?”

I told her.

Her eyes seemed to have forgotten how to blink. “That’s a little out there, isn’t it?”

“Open to suggestions.”

She had none.