“I know how that is. I don’t even own a cell phone.” Carlo took the scrap of paper, and with a pen that was lying on the table between the men next to a pad where they’d been making notes, he wrote down his landline number. “Call soon, while the moon is new,” Carlo said.

Without asking what the hell that even meant, Beaufort tucked the phone number back in his wallet and disengaged himself with thanks for the company. Harold Maas, who had sat quietly looking bored for most of the time, now said a cheerful good-bye. Beaufort remembered that he should buy at least what was in his basket, and went through the checkout line.

Patting himself on the back for getting the man’s phone number without giving up his own so that Gloria couldn’t get wind of what he was doing, he got back to the house, fired up Gloria’s computer, and googled FBI. But useful as this internet was, there was no way to tell when Brigid Quinn had been an agent, or which office she had worked for, whether Tucson or someplace else. So he wrote down the number of the nearest FBI office, which seemed like a likely place to go, and called them.

“Hello,” he said, using that airy-old voice that had worked before, “I’m looking for an agent. Brigid Quinn.”

“I’m sorry,” the woman at the other end of the line said, “there’s no agent here by that name.”

“Golly,” he says, “I’m trying to connect with her about my missing granddaughter. I’m told she’s an excellent private investigator now and is still in the area.”

The woman excused herself for a moment, and then a man’s voice came on. “Hello, Mr.…?”

Beaufort was using Gloria’s landline, and he knew that the office he was calling would probably have caller ID. “I’m Frank Bentham? Staying at my sister’s place in Tucson.” Beaufort repeated the business about wanting Quinn’s aid in locating his granddaughter. He embellished a bit about her having run away.

“Well, Mr. Bentham, I can’t tell you her whereabouts now, but I can say that she did work with the Arizona Bureau. Perhaps if you checked directory assistance you could find her.”

“Thank you so much!” Beaufort let a little quaver seep into his voice. “You’ve helped an old man to hope.” Beaufort hung up the phone. So the men weren’t kidding, his target was married to an actual FBI agent who apparently still had some balls.

Switching to his approved cell, he called Yanchak.

“Brigid Quinn? Never heard of her,” Yanchak said.

“Can you check around? You’ve got connections all over the place.”

He could almost feel Yanchak glowing with the compliment from two thousand miles away. Beaufort knew he knew how to play people.

“What do you want to know about her? What business do you have?”