“Don’t know yet. Intuition says yes, but that remains to be seen. Meanwhile, it strikes me the two of us do much the same job. We study people’s lives, determine what went wrong, and try to make it right. That lawsuit was ten years ago. What harm could it do if you talked about it now?”

“That whole subject still makes me squirm because I blew it. It’s embarrassing to admit this, but I made every mistake imaginable. Starting with my attorney.”

“What was wrong with him?”

“He was kind.”

“Oh, boy.”

“Really,” she said. “I was an emotional mess, and he seemed so sympathetic. The minute things got rough, he gave up.”

“So how much was the settlement?”

“I signed a confidentiality agreement, which I’d be violating if I revealed the terms. It was an ugly business. I’ve had to put it behind me and move on with life. I will say the settlement allowed me to finish my degree with enough left over to set up the office I’m in.”

“Doesn’t sound like such a bad deal.”

“It wasn’t. More importantly, I made my peace with it. End of story. Until Pete showed up.”

“To do what?”

She thought about that briefly. “Look, I’m not unwilling to help, but I have to protect myself. If you’ll give me your phone number, I’ll get back to you when I’ve decided what to do.”

“Works for me,” I said. I pulled out a business card and handed it to her. “I hope you’ll see your way clear.”

14

I left my car parked on the street and crossed to Sneaky Pete’s. The meeting with Taryn Sizemore had been promising, but she’d have to decide how far she could trust me before we could continue our conversation. I didn’t object to her wrestling with her conscience as long as she ponied up in the end. In the meantime, I wasn’t going to pass up the consolation of a hot, gooey spiced salami sandwich.

The place was sparsely populated, a mere sprinkling of patrons. The jukebox was dark and the television set turned off. I’d hoped to run into Con Dolan, but there was no sign of him. The bartender was reading the paper, which he’d laid flat on the bar in front of him. I ordered a sandwich and a Diet Pepsi. He conveyed the food order to the kitchen and then popped the top on the Pepsi can and passed it across the bar to me along with a glass of ice. I carried both to a two-top near the front window. I took out a pen and my index cards and took notes on everything I could remember from the conversation with Ms. Sizemore. I took out the sheet of graph paper on which Pete had meticulously encoded the list of names. I put Henry’s breakdown beside the original and studied the number-to-letter translation. Taryn had identified two names on the list: Lenore Redfern, Ned’s first wife, and Phyllis Joplin, his second. She was apparently acquainted with the name Shirley Ann Kastle, though she hadn’t trusted me sufficiently to fill me in. When the sandwich arrived, I set my pen aside and ate with full attention to the gustatory joys at hand.