Donald McAfee’s office looked exactly like she’d imagined a private investigator’s office would look, especially if he didn’t have a maid. Almost empty as far as furniture went, but the piles of papers and folders made it seem like an overcrowded newsroom. Vivian went to sit on the only chair opposite the wooden desk and leaned her backside into a stack of papers and books that slid off the sides and front of the chair in a paper avalanche.

“Oh, mercy!” She sprang back to a standing position and then dropped to the floor, retrieving the stray pages. How did this man manage to find anything?

“It’s all right,” McAfee said in the deep voice that didn’t match the way he looked. “I’ll clean it up later.” He “cleaned up” by just scooping all the papers and files together and patting them into a sloppy light-colored leaf pile. It worked for him, and he knew where everything was, more or less. “Peppermint?”

The office was not as much of a surprise as Don McAfee had been. Vivian supposed she had expected to see Humphrey Bogart lurking in the library stacks. She hadn’t been able to hide her reaction to the slender, prematurely gray, almost delicate gentleman who’d held out a soft hand to her and given a confident, firm shake. You’d better believe she’d inspected his fingernails, which were cut evenly across the tops of his fingers, not gnawed down to the quick (like a Nervous Purvis), and she’d also made note of the fact that he did not wear glasses. Edward wore glasses. Why hadn’t she thought of that before? Shifty, beady eyes, hiding behind their glasses. LIAR, LIAR, LIAR!

She settled herself back into the now-empty chair with a tight smile, and held her pocketbook in her lap. “No, thank you,” was an automatic response to the peppermint candy. But her mouth felt like the bottom of the kitchen garbage bin, and she reconsidered after running her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “You know?” she said, before Don McAfee had a chance to sit down. “I will have one, thank you.”

“Well, Mrs. Dalton.” Mr. McAfee leaned across the piles on his desk and handed her a plastic-wrapped candy, then leaned back and placed a hand on the pile of documents directly in front of him. “I’m pleased you were able to find some time to meet.”

Vivian pulled her lips over her dentures in a nervous frown, wondering if he was scolding her for waiting this long.

“Per our code on the telephone, I did find what you had asked me to find.”

He picked up something that looked like a large negative of a photograph from the top of the pile and handed it to her. Vivian stared at what turned out to be a photostat copy of a marriage certificate from the year 1923. Fifteen years before she’d married Edward. Eyes frantically darting around the details, they landed on the name of the groom: John Edward Dalton.