Her head made a tiny side-to-side motion. “I don’t see that that’s necessary. I’m interested in engaging your services, and it’s not important for you to know all the details. Although I can tell you that Gloria is almost more a daughter to me than a niece. She came to live with me when she was a teenager, so our relationship is . . .”

I was waiting for her to say “closer.”

“Complicated,” Ms. Plimpton said at last.

“I don’t know what service it is you expect me to perform,” I said.

“I want you to protect Jeremy.”

“What do you mean, protect? You mean you want me to be his bodyguard?”

“Yes, I suppose that would be part of it. I’d want you to assess his security situation and, as you say, perform bodyguard duties.”

“I’m not a bodyguard. Maybe what you need is a bouncer.”

Madeline Plimpton sighed. “Well, perhaps you don’t think of yourself that way, technically. But you are a former policeman. You’ve dealt with criminal elements. I would think that being a bodyguard really wouldn’t be straying all that much from what you actually do. And I’m perfectly prepared to pay you round-the-clock for as long as your services might be required. One of the reasons I chose you was because I understand you have—I don’t mean to be insensitive here, Mr. Weaver—but I understand you have no family. It wouldn’t be disruptive in ways that it might be to someone else.”

I wasn’t sure I liked Madeline Plimpton. But then again, in my line of work, if you only worked for people you wanted to be friends with, you wouldn’t eat.

“How old is Jeremy?” I asked.

“Eighteen,” she said.

“And what’s his last name?”

She bit her lip briefly. “Pilford,” she said, almost in a whisper.

I blinked. “Jeremy Pilford? Your grand-nephew is Jeremy Pilford?”

She nodded. “I take it that you are familiar with the name.”

The entire country was familiar with the name.

“The Big Baby,” I said.

Madeline Plimpton winced more noticeably this time. She looked as though I’d poured my hot tea over her veined hand.

“I wish you hadn’t said that. Those words were never used in his defense. That was something the prosecution came up with and the press ran with, and it was insulting. It was demeaning. Not just to Jeremy, but to Gloria, too. It reflected very badly on her.”

“But it came out of the defense strategy, didn’t it, Ms. Plimpton? It’s basically what Jeremy’s lawyer was saying. That was the argument. That Jeremy had been so pampered, so excused from ever having to do things for himself, from ever having to accept responsibility for any of his actions his entire life, that he couldn’t imagine that he was doing anything wrong when he—”

“I know what he did.”

“When he went out partying, got behind the wheel totally under the influence, and killed someone. With all respect, Ms. Plimpton, that’s not what I would characterize as a traffic mishap.”