“He thought it was insane. Guess we can reach a consensus there.”

We checked with the crime scene techs. Short said, “Nothing so far, Lieutenant. It’s been wiped down super-carefully.”

Milo said, “Any sign of cooking?”

Tall said, “Not for a long time. I had a place like this, I’d be dishing up barbecue every Sunday.”

Short said, “You had a place like this, you’d have someone cook for you.”

“Nope,” said Tall. “Rich doesn’t have to mean lazy.”

“Who said that?”

“I just did.”

“Great,” said Short. “Here I was, thinking I’d learn something today.”

Back at the cars, I said, “I’d still try to find out if Kathy Hennepin was ever in that office building.”

Fishing out his phone, he called the Grosses’ accounting firm, got voice mail, hung up. “Too complicated to leave a message. Anything else?”

“Hennepin’s chef boyfriend—Kleffer—was alibied solidly, but now we’ve got two dinner scenes.”

“Darius the Elusive returns? Not ever talking to him was sloppy, huh? Maybe I’m slipping.”

He grabbed my hand, shook it vigorously. “Thanks.”

“For what?”

“I slip, I could fall. Sometimes you supply a net.”

CHAPTER

10

The following morning Milo called and asked if I’d take another look at the Hennepin murder book. I said, “Sure,” and six minutes later, Sean Binchy was at the door delivering the blue folder.

The request, just a formality. I supposed that defined friendship.

I went to my office and read after Robin had gone to her studio, concentrating on linking Katherine Hennepin to Ursula Corey any way I could.

The only thing they seemed to share was death followed by creepy culinary displays. I gave the files another try. By the fourth go-round, I might as well have been reading Sanskrit.

When you hit a wall, take another route. I refocused by stepping away from the details.

Milo’s initial reaction to the dinner scene at Ursula’s was to take it personally. Understandable response to surprise and frustration. But what if he was at least partially right and the killings were a power play against authority?

Making fools of the cops by setting up crime scenes designed to misdirect, because detectives play the odds. We all do.

Spot an eighty-year-old woman hobbling your way down a dark city street and your blood pressure, pulse, and respiration are unlikely to spike.

Switch the scene to a husky young male swaggering toward you and your sympathetic nervous system jams into high gear.

Sure, it’s profiling and sure, it’s imperfect. Get close enough to that old woman and realize she’s a guy in drag whipping out a gun and you’ve lost out to limited thinking. But for the most part, things are what they seem and we all bank on that.

Try living randomly and see how far it gets you.