When she reached us, I said, “Good. You got my message.”

She looked at me blankly. “What message?”

“The one I left an hour ago.”

“I just stopped by the house and there wasn’t anything on my machine. What was the message?”

“That I’d be here and if you were up for it, I’d buy you a drink. Isn’t that why you came?”

Henry stood and pulled out a chair for her.

She said thanks and sat down. “I came looking for you. I thought you were always here. When I drove past your place and saw the lights were out, I made a beeline.”

“Why were you looking for me?”

“Being alone in that house has been giving me the creeps.” She turned in her chair, looking around with interest. “Has this place changed hands? I remember beefy guys in baseball uniforms, spilling beer and smoking cigarettes. The quiet is lovely.”

“The sports enthusiasts have moved on and now we have off-duty cops, which is better from my perspective.”

Henry said, “Can I buy you a drink?”

“Vodka martini. Three olives. Thanks for asking.”

“What about you, Kinsey?”

“I’m fine for now.”

“I’ll be right back,” he said. Ruthie watched him cross to the bar.

“How old is he?”

“Eighty-nine.”

She studied him. “He’s cute. Really, he doesn’t seem old to me. Does he seem old to you?”

“Knock it off, Ruthie. I got dibs on him.”

We chatted about nothing in particular, and it wasn’t until Henry returned carrying her martini and a Black Jack for himself that she brought up the subject of the box.

“So how’d it go?” she asked.

“The search was a bust, which was also part of the message you missed.”

“You didn’t find anything?”

“Nope.”

“Too bad. I was hoping you’d provide me with ammunition.”

Henry sat down and carefully placed Ruthie’s martini in front of her. “Ammunition for what?”

“Hang on,” she said. She held up an index finger, and I watched her lift the icy vodka to her lips and take a sip. She made that sound that only a vodka martini seems to inspire among connoisseurs. “That is so fine.”

I answered on her behalf while she savored the alcohol. “She has an appointment with the IRS tomorrow, trying to sidestep an audit. She was hoping I could provide documentation, but no such luck.”

“Oh well,” she said. “What are they going to do, put me in jail?”

I said, “Actually, I found something else. It probably won’t help, but it’s interesting.”

I leaned to my right and plucked the piece of graph paper from the outside pocket in my shoulder bag. I unfolded the page and put it on the table in front of her, then pointed to the grid of numbers. “You have any idea what this is?”

I watched her eyes take in the numbers on the page. “Looks like gibberish, but it’s Pete’s handwriting. No doubt about that,” she said. “He loved graph paper and he was a big fan of those technical pens. He kept dozens on hand.”