“For the life of me,” sniffed Mrs. Sexton, “I don’t see how someone expects to host anybody without a drop of sherry in the house. No pun intended.”

Henry announced that he was running over to McDonough’s package store to buy a bottle of Dry Sack, but James Ervin, the heavy-jowled old cop that Penn had hired to watch over them, told him they’d better make do with what they had. After Henry got his mother to accept some Chardonnay, Ervin led him and Sherry into the guest room to give them a quiet refresher course on handling her shotgun. Unlike 98 percent of the boys he’d grown up with, Henry had little experience with guns, but the 12-gauge Ithaca was pretty simple to operate, and after some dry-firing, he felt he could repel an intruder if necessary. The wisest course in that circumstance, Ervin suggested in a kindly voice, would probably be to let Sherry handle the shotgun.

Once the ladies had settled into an uncomfortable truce, Henry retreated to the kitchen, took out his Moleskine notebook, and pretended to work on an article at the Formica-topped table. The fact was, he could barely keep his thoughts in any kind of order. The knowledge that Glenn Morehouse now lay on a slab in the hospital morgue, after they’d talked intimately only hours ago, was disorienting enough; but to be nearly certain that his interview had triggered the old man’s murder had given Henry a far more visceral appreciation of the dangers of his quest.

While Sherry guessed answers on a game show in the den, he opened his briefcase and removed an envelope containing several photographs. One was the original photo of Tom Cage with Brody Royal and his cronies in the fishing boat. But another Henry had decided against showing Penn, at the last moment. He slid it out now, keeping one corner under a page in his notebook so that he could easily cover it if someone entered the kitchen.