The offices of Dinner Conversation were on the second floor of the building. In the outer room, two men and a woman—all looked young enough to be Deerforth students—were clustered around a computer. The young woman was a dark beauty with a Lady Godiva mane of curly hair, dressed up in a bell-bottomed pants suit. She looked up at Jane and bit her lip anxiously, as if she’d spotted blood rushing from Jane’s forehead.

“Chloe, Carl, Otto—Desmond. Any disasters I should know about?”

“Everything’s on track,” Chloe said “Dershowitz called earlier to cancel for next week, but I talked him into coming on.”

“You should have asked me,” Jane snapped. “What makes you think I wouldn’t have welcomed his cancellation?”

“You’re the one who invited him.”

“That isn’t the point, Chloe, and you know it.”

The point, it was obvious, was some kind of rivalry, but rather than pout over what was clearly an unfair accusation, Chloe apologized. One of the boys moved away from the computer screen, and Desmond could see a garish color photo of a naked woman. “We were just trying to figure out if this is really Courteney Cox’s body,” he said to Jane. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s not her body even if it is. If anyone comes in, tell them I’m still out. Desmond and I have a meeting with David in fifteen minutes, so I don’t want any interruptions.”

Chloe tilted her head to one side and all that lush hair—or whatever it was—slithered over her shoulder. “Good luck, you guys,” she said in a voice so drenched with sympathy they might as well have been headed straight to the ER for heart surgery.

4.

David was a short man who was letting himself go physically. When he stood up to shake hands, Desmond couldn’t help but notice that his stomach was pressing against the bottom buttons of his pink shirt and his thighs straining against his chino pants. He had a round, meaty face and a small goatee that was being used to compensate for an absence of chin. Something in his look of exhaustion suggested a man who’d lost his appetite but was resigned to eating everything on his plate. There was a certain weary dignity to men like this, the ones who were determined to pay their dues and make good on their promises, especially if they didn’t lose it completely and end up with blood on their hands and a body or two stashed in the basement somewhere.

“You got the copy of Desmond’s book I sent up?” Jane asked.

David pointed them toward a couple of chairs in front of his desk and took a cursory glance around the office. “Ummm . . .”

“Maybe Chloe forgot to send it up. I’ll have her get on it this afternoon.”