“He was what?”

“If you didn’t know about that, then you must not have known about his affair.”

“Excuse me?”

I handed her one of Marguerite’s letters. She read a few words and crumpled it into a lavender-scented ball.

“So this is how you make your living?” she said. “Prying into the secrets of the dead?”

“I do quite a bit of business in this line—answering the questions that linger when a loved one dies. Nothing melodramatic, like ‘Did my daddy love me?’ or ‘Where did he bury his gold?’ but the little things, the important things, the questions that drive you mad. Learn a simple truth about a man who’s gone, and you will find a wonderful kind of peace.”

“And are you at peace?”

“Why shouldn’t I be?”

“You wear black. Who are you mourning? Did your simple truths bring you comfort?”

“No.”

“Then don’t push your lies on me.”

I smiled at her, the way one might smile at a leaping viper. She did her best to smile back.

“Miss Carr—I’m sorry, I assume it’s Miss? It’s been charming to encounter you here, rooting through my father’s private files. I would describe you as a novelty. But while I’m sure there are certain unfortunates on the Westside who enjoy having their grief interrupted by sweat-soaked pests, I am not one of them.”

“Then you never met Marguerite Fournier?”

“I have not, and I’m sure I should not want to. Galen Copeland was a mediocre businessman and an indifferent father, but I loved him. My mother, in her own pathetic manner, loved him as well. If he had secrets, they were his own, and they die with him. You are not and were never employed by Copeland Imports. If you cross this threshold again, I shall have you clapped into the Tombs. If you ever take another penny from my mother, I shall scrape those woolly eyebrows from your face.”

“Someone seems to have made a mess in here. Would you like me to stay and help clean up?”

“That will be all right.”

I nodded and left, hands in my pockets, clutching the rest of Copeland’s letters. I wondered if Madame Fournier sold leather gloves.

Just two blocks below the Borderline, West Twelfth Street was a no-man’s-land, and that is not a good place to run a business. A strip of blue sky sat uneasily between two rows of narrow, deserted warehouses. Above, it could have been noon, but on the sidewalk it felt like midnight. The temperature dropped twenty degrees when I crossed the fence, a chill as shocking as a summer fever.