“Sure. Thanks, you two. I owe you a lot.” He nodded and melted away into the woods without a sound.

“He’s getting good at disappearing,” I said, hoping he didn’t get too good at it. Because I was suddenly afraid that Thursday he’d be gone, headed for a lifetime of running and hiding.

“We’ll find the killer,” I said a little louder. “We promise.”

But the only response was the sound of the wind.

*   *   *

That evening I wandered into the Three Seasons kitchen with one main objective. Well, two, if you counted trying to convince Kristen to quit working until after the baby was born, but I’d pretty much given up on that.

“I mean,” I asked the room in general, “why waste my energy?”

Harvey, who was sorting tiny squares of something green into good piles (squares the same size and therefore worthy of plating) and bad piles (uneven squares and thus suitable only for cooking) flicked me a quick look and went back to the task at hand. “You got to pace yourself,” he said.

“Absolutely.” Misty, at one of the cooktops, nodded in my direction as she picked up a sauté pan and gave its contents a flip. “Life’s a marathon, not a sprint. Go all out now and you won’t have anything left for the end.”

“Good advice,” I said. “Any chance Kristen has hung up her chef’s hat for the day? Gone home, even?”

Two sets of eyes rolled simultaneously.

It had been a vain hope. I sighed, dodged a tray-wielding waiter, and headed back to Kristen’s office, where the woman herself was standing in front of the room’s tiny window, peering outside.

Since the window’s view was of the back corner of the parking lot, this seemed odd. I walked in and stood next to her. All I saw was what I’d expected to see: a slice of empty parking lot because this part of the lot only filled up in summer. Though Kristen, at almost a foot taller than me, had a different vantage point, there really wasn’t anything else to see.

“Um, what are we doing?” I asked.

“Thinking.”

She didn’t say anything else for about a year, so I eventually asked, “About what?”

For a long moment, she stayed silent. Then: “Do you realize I’m about to give birth?”

I glanced at her bulging midsection. “I’d gotten that impression.”

“Like any second now?”

Anxiety flared. “What? Did your water break? Are you having contractions? You called Scruffy, right? How far away—”

“Not that kind of ‘any second.’ ” She laid her hands on her belly. “Soon, but not that soon.”

I took a breath and let the adrenaline rush fade. “Oh. Good.”

Kristen turned. “Help me sit, will you? Sometimes the chair wants to roll out from underneath me.”