“He was driving slowly. And yes.” She sipped. “You said it exactly the way I meant.”

This investigator was far more intelligent than he looked and sounded. She wouldn’t want trouble from him. He was the sort who caught people without them ever having the slightest premonition, and it entered her mind again. What if he were an agent investigating terrorist funding or who knows what? And that’s why he was here?

“What time of day?” he asked her.

“Different times.”

“You’ve been home throughout the holidays. What about your family?”

The way he said it made her suspect he already knew she had two daughters who lived in the Midwest, both of them very busy and disingenuous when they were attentive.

Shrew replied, “My two children prefer I go see them, and I don’t like to travel, certainly not this time of year. They don’t like to spend the money to visit New York. Certainly not these days. I never thought I’d live to see the Canadian dollar worth more than ours. We used to make jokes about the Canadians. Now I suspect they’re making a few jokes about us. As I believe I mentioned, my husband was an accountant. I’m glad he’s not one anymore. It would break his heart.”

“You’re saying you never see your daughters.”

He’d yet to pick up on any comments about her husband and respond. But she felt sure the investigator knew about him, too. It was a matter of public record.

“I’m saying I don’t travel,” she said. “I see them now and again. Every few years, they come here for several days. In the summer. They stay at the Shelburne.”

“The place near the Empire State Building.”

“Yes. That lovely European-looking hotel on Thirty-seventh Street. Within walking distance of here. I’ve never stayed there.”

“Why don’t you travel?”

“I just don’t.”

“No big loss. Expensive as hell these days, the planes always late or canceled. Not to mention getting trapped in one on the runway and the toilet overflows. That ever happen to you? Because it happened to me.”

She had completely shredded the tissue and felt foolish as she thought about the Shelburne and imagined times in her life when it would have been wonderful to stay there. Not now. She couldn’t possibly get away from her work. And why bother?

“I just don’t travel,” she said.

“So you keep telling me.”

“I like to stay put. And you’re starting to make me uncomfortable, as if you’re accusing me of something. And then being friendly to break me down, as if I have information. I don’t. I don’t have any. I shouldn’t talk to you while I’m drinking.”

“If I accused you of something, what might it be?” he said in that rough New Jersey accent of his, his glasses looking right at her.

“Ask my husband.” Nodding at the recliner chair, as if her husband were in the room. “He’d look you squarely in the eye and with all seriousness want to know if nagging is a crime. If so, he’d tell you to lock me up and throw away the key.”