“And then it dawned on me: Adeline’s musical portrait of herself began with her own name. A-D-A-H-E-A-D. Being a music student, she had probably been told more than once that her name could be spelled out with musical notes. Unfortunately for you, Gail, that name also occurred in the Swing code, when it referred to the ‘Alameda Defense Administration, henceforth ADA headquarters.’ ” I hummed the musical phrase that had begun and ended Ada’s Self-Portrait. “She’d been hearing that little sequence of notes for years. It was ‘hers.’ Yet when she got to play your winning composition, Gail, she heard her musical name in Swing several times, and recognized the melody even though it was in a different key. Having accidentally broken the code by transposing the original piano music so that it correctly spelled her name, she spotted other words that needed no further deciphering, just as I did: beachhead, cache, facade. I looked down at Gail. “Ada confronted you with this, didn’t she? So you told Martha and Russ she was on to you, and they said they’d take care of her.”

Gail’s hands were agitated. “No, Ray, no, listen, I had no idea anyone was going to die. I made a deal with Ada, I told her I’d pull my work out of the competition if she’d just let the band play Swing one time in rehearsal, so that they’d get possession of the music. I told her the coded information was for a Japanese construction company that wanted to underbid the competition. She may not have believed me, but I don’t think she really cared about anything as long as she won. I admit, okay, I did have to tell Russ and my mother what I’d agreed to, because it would change our plans—”

“Oh, Gail, did you really think they’d ever let Ada walk around knowing what she knew?” I raised my eyes to the heavens, or at least to the cracked plaster ceiling of the bungalow, hoping that her naïveté was genuine. “They had to silence her before she could talk to anyone about what she’d learned.”

Gail pleaded with me. “I swear I didn’t know what they were going to do. I wasn’t a part of that in any way!”

I remembered the afternoon she’d supposedly spoken with Adeline Head. “Really? Then why did you have a telephone conversation with a dead girl?”

Gail looked stunned yet again. She turned hurriedly, maybe even fearfully, to Martha. “I never told him a thing you didn’t want me to tell him, you have to believe me. I don’t know how he knows so much, but I promise you, he didn’t hear it from me.”