After she’d put the phone down, Miriam pondered her motives. She and Paulette had worked together for three years and had hung out together in their off-hours. Some people you met at work, socialized with, then lost contact after moving on; but a few turned into friends for life. Miriam wasn’t sure which Paulie was going to turn out to be. Why did she turn the reemployment offer down? Miriam wondered. Despite being shell-shocked from the crazy business with the locket, she kept circling back to the Monday morning disaster with a rankling sense of injustice. The sooner they blew the lid off it in public, the sooner she could go back to living a normal life. But then the locket kept coming back up. I need a sanity check, Miriam decided. Why not Paulie? Better to have her think she’d gone nuts than someone whose friendship went back a long way and who knew Iris. Or was it?

An hour later the doorbell rang. Miriam stood up and went to answer it, trying to suppress her worries about how Paulette might be coming. She was waiting on the doorstep, impatiently tapping one heel, with a large shopping bag in hand. “Miriam!” Paulette beamed at her.

“Come in, come in.” Miriam retreated. “Hey, what’s that? Have you been all right?”

“I’ve been worse.” Paulie bounced inside and shut the door behind her, then glanced around curiously. “Hey, neat. I was worried about you, after I got home. You didn’t look real happy, you know?”

“Yeah. Well, I wasn’t.” Miriam relieved her of her coat and led her into the living room. “I’m really glad you’re taking it so calmly. For me, I put in three years and nothing to show for it but hard work and junk bonds—then some asshole phoned me and warned me off. How about you? Have you had any trouble?”

Paulette peered at her curiously. “What kind of warning?”

“Oh, he kind of intimated that he was a friend of Joe’s, and I’d regret it if I stuck my nose in any deeper. Playing at goodfellas, okay? I’d been worrying about you…What’s this about a job offer?”

“I, uh—” Paulette paused. “They offered me my job back with strings attached,” she said guardedly. “Assholes. I was going to accept till they faxed through the contract.”

“So why didn’t you sign?” Miriam asked, pouring a mug of coffee while Paulette opened the pizza boxes.

“I’ve seen nondisclosure agreements, Miriam. I used to be a paralegal till I got sick of lawyers, remember? This wasn’t a nondisclosure agreement; it was a fucking straitjacket. If I’d signed it, I wouldn’t even own the contents of my own head—before and after working for them. Guess they figured you were the ringleader, right?”