Fourteen men were staring back at her, and they were all shifty-eyed, shiny-suited, and wore suspicious bulges under their armpits. Even the guy at the head of the table, a balding, cadaverously thin man with eyes the color of dust and the longest fingers she’d ever seen. And her mom taught piano.

Of course, on their date, he hadn’t been packing. But otherwise she recognized him immediately.

“You said this was about my ex?” Phillip King asked, standing at the head of the table.

“No, it’s about what you’re doing to your ex. Specifically, pumping all the shit from your hotel into her harbor. Well. Boston Harbor. But we know why you’re doing it.”

That ought to fix him, she thought, folding her bony arms across her chest. And right in front of his partners, too!

One of the shiny-suited men looked at King and said, “I thought you said there was no way to get caught.”

“Uh,” Fred said. “What?”

“There wasn’t,” King said, looking startled.

“I thought you said it’d be cheaper to just dump the stuff straight to the harbor—”

“It is.”

“—and nobody’d be able to tell it was us.”

“They can’t!”

That’s true, Fred thought. They didn’t have any hard evidence yet. Which might be problematic.

“Before you get any wise ideas,” she added, suddenly very glad there were two men on her side, and they were Thomas and Artur, “we told at least a dozen people about this today before we came over here.”

“Your hair is still wet,” King observed.

“Yeah, but—” She cast about for a convincing lie.

“Miscreant! You admit your wrongdoing? Then be prepared to pay the penalty!”

Which Artur completely ruined.

“You guys are way too mob chic,” Thomas said, staring at the men. “Don’t even tell me you got laundered crime money to help you build the hotel.”

“Of course I did,” King snapped. “Where else would I have been able to raise the money so fast? Get the building up so quickly? Get around certain pesky rules and regulations on waste treatment?”

“He’s only telling us this,” Fred explained to Artur, “because he’s going to try to kill us. Just so you know.”

“Is that a custom in your world? Talking, then killing?”

“Yeah, I’d say so—Thomas?”

Thomas nodded. “That’s the way we bipeds do it.”

“You three, go wait in my office. I want to hear more about my ex. And you guys—wait!” For all the other men were standing, getting coats, grabbing suitcases, and generally making the noise of men about to leave. “There’s no need to cut the meeting short. I’ve got charts that show just how profitable a whole Sleepytime chain, could be and there’s no reason why we can’t—”

“A chain?” Fred gasped, horrified.