“It’s Sol. Go in the bedroom, lock the door, stay there. Don’t make a sound.” Velvet fled without argument. Robby waited until she heard the click of the bedroom door, then began unlocking deadbolts.

Sol’s smile looked worn razor-thin by the time she swung the door open for him. When she stepped aside, he sauntered in and looked around like a landlord.

“Nice,” he said, and shrugged off his coat to hand it to her. “Hang it up. I don’t like wrinkles.”

She resisted the urge to throw the damned thing in a heap on the floor, found a hanger and put it in the hall closet. When she returned, he was sitting at ease on the sofa, feet up, flipping channels on her TV. The sound was too loud.

“Cable,” he said approvingly. “Great. I like those pirate shows on—what’s it?—the Discovery channel. And those mysteries. Good mysteries. And that ‘American Justice’ show.”

He settled on ESPN, the roar of a hockey match. Robby sat on the edge of the magenta chair, waiting, ready to move if he came at her. Would he be that crude? Was she giving him too much credit for subtlety?

“Robby,” he sighed, and shook his head. “Here I am, a guest in your house, and you don’t offer me anything to drink? Where’d you grow up, a barn? Some wine, if you have some. Red. And some crackers, pretzels, something like that.”

She went to the kitchen and opened a bottle, poured two bubble-fragile glasses full. The hockey game continued to rage in the living room. She paused to stare at the wall phone next to the counter. Jim’s number was on speed dial, as if it would do any good, as if he’d ever cross Sol.

Sol took the glass with evident relish, sniffed the woody scent of the beaujolais, swirled the wine, and sipped. Robby put hers aside untasted.

“Young,” Sol said with a prissy twist of his thick lips. “A little nosy. Peppery.”

She had no idea what he was talking about, and suspected he didn’t, either. She waited until he’d drained the glass.

“Anything I can do for you, Sol?” she asked. He tilted his empty glass suggestively; she fetched the bottle and poured him a second. No shilly-shallying about tasting, this time. He guzzled it. She put the bottle on the coffee table in front of him. “Is something wrong?”

“Something’s got to be wrong for me to visit you? What if I just like your company, sweetheart?” His eyes looked like black glass, full of pupil. The suspicion came to her too late that he was on something, that she’d lost her chance to call Jim and might never get another. There was a phone in the hall bathroom; she might be able to plead indisposition … “Robby, Robby, I like you. Why do you have to double-cross me?”