STONE JOGGED QUICKLY AROUND THE BLOCK, looking at every person he passed, hoping to see the frizzy-haired perpetrator. Finding the house was easy; two black and whites were double-parked outside, their flashers working. A uniformed cop stood guard at the top of the house’s steps. Stone flashed his retired officer’s ID and was admitted to the house.

He could see by the mailboxes that the original town house had been divided into apartments; the door to the ground-floor unit stood open, and he walked in, breathing hard. Two uniformed patrolmen stood in the entrance hall. “Is Lieutenant Bacchetti upstairs?” Stone asked, flashing his ID.

“Yeah,” one of the men said.

Stone ran up the stairs. He was met by another uniform and by the two detectives he had met at Susan Bean’s, Andy Anderson and Michael Kelly.

“What are you doing here?” Kelly demanded.

Stone ignored him and walked toward the rear of the house. He was on the upper floor of a ground-floor duplex, handsomely decorated. He emerged from a hallway toward the woman’s bedroom. Her body lay on the floor in the doorway, uncovered, her skin dead white, her throat gaping.

Dino looked up. “It’s a lot like the way Susan Bean was done,” he said to Stone. “Right-handed perp, knife drawn from left to right, very deep.”

“Any luck on finding him?” Stone asked. “He didn’t come out the back, and I didn’t see him on the street on the way over here.”

“No,” Dino said, picking up the dead woman’s handbag from a chair and stepping over the body into the hallway, taking care not to step on the blood-soaked part of the pale carpet. “Come in here for a minute,” he said, leading the way down the hall and into a study. The room had bookcases on one side and was hung with good pictures on two other walls. An antique desk faced the second-story windows, looking out onto the street. “Sit down,” Dino said, opening the handbag.

Stone took a seat. “What’s her name?” he asked.

Dino was looking in her wallet. “Miranda Hirsch,” he said, handing Stone her business card. “Executive VP in charge of loan operations at the Manhattan Bank.”

“Big job,” Stone said, looking at the card.

“Did you know her at all?”

“Only what I’ve seen of her through the window,” Stone said.

“While you were playing Peeping Tom, did you ever see a man in the place?”

Stone shook his head. “Not until tonight. After the performance with the vacuum cleaner, she always closed the curtains.”

“Downstairs, too?”

“Yes.”

“How many times did you watch her undress?”

“A dozen, fifteen, I guess.”

“You’re lucky I was with you tonight,” Dino said, “or Kelly and Anderson would be pulling you in, making a case for how you were overcome with passion by her performance.”