“She was forty-nine, so it was before her time, too, and it depends on where she got the compass or where someone did.” I check on the cat again. “An old compass, an old coin ring, and antique buttons sewn on the jacket she had on? Someone into history and collectibles, but who?”

“You go on in,” Machado says. “I’m going to wait and follow you home, just to make sure. I’d feel better.”

I head to the green awning over the entrance and go inside, rolling a cart to the aisle for pet supplies, where I find a litter box and scoop, and clumping litter, Wellness food and treats, and several toys. I find soothing oatmeal and flea shampoos and a nail trimmer, and when I return to my SUV and open the back door, Shaw is sitting on the backseat with her hind legs straight out, the way Scottish Folds sit, which is unlike the way any other cats sit.

“Come on.” I pick her up, conscious of Machado parked nearby with his headlights burning. “Let’s get you back in the towel and in my lap, okay?”

She doesn’t fight or resist me in the slightest as I drive home with Machado right behind me, and I wonder what he’s worried about. I can’t help but suspect he knows something he’s not saying, and maybe it’s related to Marino, but it seems impossible that Machado could think for even a minute that Marino has anything to do with Peggy Stanton’s death or a missing paleontologist. But it depends on what Machado’s been told, especially if Burke’s the one doing the telling.

I drive south, cutting over to Garfield, to Oxford, working my way toward Harvard’s divinity school, to Norton’s Woods, where the American Academy of Arts and Sciences is dark on its densely wooded acres. The pavement hisses wetly beneath my tires, Machado right behind me as I turn off Kirkland and onto Irving Street. Our three-story Federal-style house is white, with black shutters and a slate roof, and I can’t tell if Benton is home. I pull into our narrow brick driveway and park to one side of the detached garage, and Machado stops on the street and waits as I get groceries and Shaw out of my car.

I unlock the door of the glassed-in porch, and the alarm begins to beep. Entering the code, I step inside and shove the door shut with my hip as Sock’s nails click over hardwood from the direction of the living room. Benton isn’t here. I can feel Shaw tense up inside the towel as Sock appears along the hallway, and I can’t properly greet him.

“We have a visitor,” I talk to our rescue brindle greyhound, who has a graying muzzle and is never in a hurry. “And you two are going to be friends.”