“‘Thing’?”

Dance was going to tell him that she’d first heard the expression when Maggie was talking to her friend Bethany on the phone and she said, “Yeah, Mom and Jon, it’s like a thing.” She instead told the detective: “Means, I think, it’s a phenomenon. More than what it seems. Significant.”

She wondered if he sensed the stumble and the overexplanation.

O’Neil said, “‘Thing.’ Better than ‘phenomenon.’ I’d worry that crept into my kids’ vocabulary.”

Dance laughed. Michael O’Neil wasn’t a chatterer. This was, for him, rambling.

Dance glanced down to the crime scene file. After a moment her eyes swayed his way. “Oh. Sorry we had to cancel the fishing.”

O’Neil lived for his boat, which he’d pilot out into Monterey Bay once a week at least. He often took his own children and Dance’s. She herself had been a few times but her inner ear and waves were bad coconspirators. If the Dramamine and patch didn’t kick in she’d end up hanging over the side, unpleasant for all involved. And the trip would be cut short. They’d talked about a day trip on the water last weekend but before plans had been firmed up she and Boling had decided to take the children to San Francisco. Dance had not told O’Neil the reason they’d canceled. She suspected he’d guessed. But he didn’t ask.

They talked for a few minutes about their children, plans for spring break. Dance mentioned Maggie’s forthcoming talent show at school.

“She playing violin?”

The girl’s instrument. Maggie was far more musical than her mother, who was comfortable with a guitar but didn’t have the ear for a fretless fingerboard. Dance told him, “No, she’s singing.”

O’Neil said, “She’s got a great voice. Remember, I took them to The Lego Movie. That song? ‘Everything Is Awesome’? She sang it all the way home. I know it by heart, by the way. Want to hear?”

A chuckle. “She’s doing that song from Frozen.”

“‘Let It Go.’ I know that one too.” Being a single parent with custody could take the edge off the hardest image of a tough major crimes detective. Then O’Neil studying her. “What’s wrong?”

Dance realized she’d been frowning. “She’s uneasy about the talent show. Usually you can’t keep her offstage but, for this, she’s reluctant.”

“She ever sung before in public?”

“Yep. A dozen times. And her voice’s never been better. I was going to start her in lessons but all of a sudden she decided she didn’t want to. It’s funny. They whipsaw, you know. Happy, sad. For a while Wes was in all sorts of moods and Maggie was flitting around like Belle. Happy as could be. Now it’s the other way round.”

She explained that it might be a posttraumatic reaction to her husband’s death.

He said softly, “I know Bill died around this time of year.”

O’Neil had known Bill Swenson well; they’d worked together occasionally.

“I’ve thought of that. But when they want to stonewall…”

O’Neil, whose children were close in age to Maggie, said, “Don’t I know. But: persistence.”