“No bother, I’ll do a one-dish,” she said. “How about pasta with leftovers? Those bigoli things you liked the last time and whatever I excavate in the fridge … okay, here we go, there’s some pastrami from the weekend. I’ll toss in eggs, a little bacon, do a riff on carbonara.”

“My bella signorina. If you’re up to it, sounds great.”

Milo said, “What does?”

“Homecooked meal.”

“Yes yes yes.”

Robin heard that and laughed. “Darling, I talk to wood all day. Your handsome face combined with his appetite will make me feel valued. Plus I’m celebrating.”

“What?”

“I just spoke to you-know-who, told him I wouldn’t be making replicas for him or anyone else. Surprisingly, he was a gentleman. Maybe it’s ’cause he’s just out of rehab. And uncharacteristically lucid. Whatever the reason, I’m feeling free.”

The food was on the table when we arrived. Huge batch of spaghetti, three times as much as we usually prepared.

Robin drank wine, Milo and I stuck with water followed by coffee. Blanche positioned herself strategically to the right of Milo’s chair, just out of Robin’s view, sucking up the not-so-occasional strands he dangled near her flews. Anytime Milo reverted to feeding himself, her head rubbed against his leg. If he rubbed back, she did her cat-purr thing.

Robin said, “Intense goings-on under the table.”

Milo said, “Animal magnetism.”

Over a final dose of coffee, she said, “May I ask what you guys hope to learn up there?”

Milo said, “At this point, anything.” He summed up.

She said, “This Williams character did his own killings for fun but Corey’s wife was a business deal?”

I said, “More like mixed media. He got paid but she was his biggest trophy because she was out of his league.”

“Stealing the boss’s bit-of-fun? That and getting rid of an ex I can see,” she said. “But a father going after his own kids?”

Milo said, “They stand to inherit Ursula’s half of the business.”

“He’s big-rich already, he would murder his only children for more?”

I said, “In this case, more means huge money but it’s beyond that. The girls represent his old life and he craves a new one. In a single day he had their childhood home stripped bare and shipped their horses off to slaughter. Luckily for the girls, he lacks subtlety and acted strangely enough to scare them clear up to Canada.”

“Taking a girl’s horse,” she said. “That’s sure letting her know her fantasy is over.”

“At this point, his fantasy is all that counts.”

“What a bastard. Two bastards. You think they just happened to get together?”