Now Iris grinned. “Oh, I noticed that much,” she conceded. “No foreign titles of nobility. That’s one of the reasons why I stayed here—that, and your father.” Her smile slipped. “Never could understand what the people here see in kings and queens, either the old hereditary kind or the modern presidential type. All those paparazzi, drooling after monarchs. I like your line of work. It’s more honest.”

“Harder to keep your job when you’re writing about the real world,” Miriam brooded gloomily. She struggled to sit a little straighter. “Anyway, I didn’t come around here to mope at you. I figure I can leave job-hunting until tomorrow morning.”

“Are you sure you’re going to be all right?” Iris asked pointedly. “You mentioned lawsuits—or worse.”

“In the short term—” Miriam shrugged, then took a deep breath. “Yes,” she admitted. “I guess I’ll be okay as long as I leave them alone.”

“Hmm.” Iris looked at Miriam sidelong. “How much money are we talking about here? If they’re pulling fake lawsuits to shut you up, that’s not business as usual.”

“There’s—” Miriam did some mental arithmetic—“about fifty to a hundred million a year flowing through this channel.”

Iris swore.

“Ma!”

“Don’t you ‘Ma’ me!” Iris snorted.

“But—”

“Listen to your old ma. You came here for advice, I’m going to give it, all right? You’re telling me you just happened to stumble across a money-laundering operation that’s handling more money in a week than most people earn in their life. And you think they’re going to settle for firing you and hoping you stay quiet?”

Miriam snorted. “It can’t possibly be that bad, Ma, this isn’t goodfellas territory, and anyway, they’ve got that faked evidence.”

Iris shook her head stubbornly. “When you’ve got criminal activities and millions of dollars in cash together, there are no limits to what people can do.” For the first time, Miriam realized with a sinking feeling, Iris looked worried. “But maybe I’m being too pessimistic—you’ve just lost your job and whatever else, that’s going to be a problem. How are your savings?”

Miriam glanced at the rain-streaked window. What’s turned Ma so paranoid? she wondered, unsettled. “They’re not doing badly. I’ve been saving for the past ten years.”

“There’s my girl,” Iris said approvingly.

“I put my money into tech-sector shares.”

“No, you didn’t!” Iris looked shocked.

Miriam nodded. “But no dot-coms.”

“Really?”