Leland sat down and turned toward her. Her eyes, her lashes and brows, were very dark but clearly defined, so that they contrasted sharply with the finely pitted texture of her skin. Her lips were thin, her teeth small and white: she did look like a child. She was sitting very straight, prepared—or even braced. Leland said, “Miller told me that you were the one to first mention my name. Why did you bring him here with you?”

“I didn’t.” She tugged at her skirt. “He wanted to come.” She wasn’t satisfied with that answer. She looked up at Leland. “He had met you, he thought he could make things easy. I don’t think he was wrong, really.” That did justice to Miller. She sat back.

“Why did you want me?” Leland asked.

“At one time, my husband knew you.” She watched him, trying to measure his reaction, whatever it was. Leland felt one, something physical, like the wrench of a parachute when it caught the wind. “You wouldn’t remember,” she said quietly. “He told me that he himself might have forgotten, if your name hadn’t come up in the papers.”

“When was this—when he knew me?”

“During the war. He was in the One hundred and sixty-first Fighter Squadron, too. He didn’t speak of it often, but when we were first going out, when he was trying to identify for me where he had been and what he had done in the war, he said that the One hundred sixty-first had been your squadron. He arrived ten days before you went home and someone introduced him to you. You shook hands. He knew that I would remember you because I have a memory for things I’ve seen in the papers. For instance, when I had to, I remembered the item I saw in the Examiner about you opening this agency. That was two weeks ago, just before I called Mr. Miller to find out more about you.”

“Does Miller know that your husband knew me?”

“I know that he doesn’t,” she said. “On his office wall he has a letter from you, thanking him for something he did in connection with a fraud against the insurance company. Colin saw it one day and told me about it. This was when we were married, after he had told me about being in the same squadron with you. I asked him if he talked to Mr. Miller about that, and he said no. I thought that was strange, but after I met Mr. Miller, I understood. Colin never would have heard the end of it.”

“Your husband could have taken his business elsewhere if he felt that strongly about Miller.”