“I don’t agree with you there,” Desmond said. “Her records were brilliant. Some of them, anyway. It took talent to express all that heart.”

Margo handed him her coffee mug and told him to set it on the floor. Milk! she sneered. What did they think she was, a g.d. baby? “Pauline had no training, couldn’t control her voice. No technique.”

“Yes,” Desmond said, “but she had—”

“Come here, buster. Your ears don’t work. She had nothing. Except . . . Michael. That lousy son of a bitch was the inspiration for everything. How come you don’t know that?”

“I’ve read all of her letters,” he said.

“Every song was about loving Michael. He dies—no talent, no technique, no inspiration, no nothing. So why bother? Some things you can’t fake.”

“But they didn’t have a close marriage,” Desmond said. “Michael didn’t encourage her. Michael wasn’t—”

She leaned forward in her chair and swatted her hand at him. “Michael . . . was the key . . . to everything. What kind of biographer are you? Go get me some more milk and those cookies, before the wind blows the roof off this crate. Are we in a house?”

Are we in a house?

The overhead lights went on. “What on earth are you doing out here?”

Desmond leapt up from his chair. “The cameras,” he started to explain, and then realized Lorna wasn’t talking to him.

“You told me you were going to stay in the bedroom. This room isn’t air-conditioned, there’s a storm out there, and there’s a live oak right over the roof of this porch.”

Jane was standing in the doorway, holding a glass of milk in one hand and a cookie in the other. She was looking at Desmond for explanation, but all he could do was shrug. He didn’t want to irritate Lorna, and have her cut off the conversation. “I was suggesting she move into the house,” he said. “She told me she was more comfortable out here.”

“We were talking about Pauline,” the old woman laughed. “He liked her records. Dummy.”

Lorna took the old woman’s arm and lifted her up out of the chair. The two of them shuffled to the end of the porch, up over the doorstep, and into the living room. Jane offered him a piece of her cookie. “Is that the sister?” she asked. They could hear bickering in the other room, something about tuna-fish sandwiches.

“I’m not so sure.”

Lorna reappeared in the doorway and told them, pointing to the pile of equipment, that she’d given them ten minutes and they’d been there for twenty already. It was time for them to go.