Kit leaned forward. “I was in one of the seminars with Georgina today. She seemed normal enough but was quiet and didn’t ask questions. But then after she’d had a drink at the cocktail party she was more aggressive. On the way over to the comedy club it seemed like she was getting a little manic.”

“And if she kept on drinking who knows what her state of mind is now,” Regan said.

Below Fourteenth Street, on the Lower East Side, they slowly rode up and down the streets. On Second Street between First and Second Avenues they discovered an old cemetery that took up about half the block and was protected from intruders by a tall black wrought-iron fence. The entrance was chained shut.

“This is the kind of isolated place where Georgina would want to be with Chip,” Regan said as she stopped the car.

“I was thinking about doing some jokes about a guy who visits a cemetery,” Billy said, “and I started to do some research. A law was passed in 1852 that made it illegal to bury a body in Manhattan. This is one of the only cemeteries left and it’s landmarked.”

“My father’s a funeral director in New Jersey,” Regan said. “I didn’t know that.”

“They passed the law after two cholera epidemics—one in the early 1830s and the second in 1849. So many people in Manhattan died that they were running out of land to bury the dead. People were also afraid that the drinking water was being diseased by water that washed down from the gravesites. They passed the law and actually exhumed thousands of skeletons from Manhattan and moved them out to Queens where the cemetery business was just getting started. For the first time you had to pay to bury your loved ones. So many cemeteries were opened in western Queens that it became known as the Cemetery Belt.”

Kit just looked at him. “Really?”

“Don’t worry. I didn’t make any jokes about it. It’s amazing what you can discover online.”

“I wonder if Georgina’s grandmother is buried in Queens,” Regan mused.

“If she was, do you think Georgina might have taken Chip out there?” Kit asked.

“Highly unlikely,” Regan answered. “First she’d have to get a car or cab to take them out and drop them off near the cemetery, since she can’t exactly say that’s where they were going. I doubt she’d find any driver interested in taking the trip during this blackout. Second, I don’t think Chip would have left Manhattan willingly. If he were already knocked out, any driver she might have found should have gotten suspicious.”

“That reminds me of a story!” Kit exclaimed.

“I think I know the one,” Regan said, raising her eyebrows.

“A woman met a guy online,” Kit continued for the benefit of Billy and Melanie. “They had a date that must have gone well. He told her he wanted to introduce her to his parents. She agreed. So one night he picked her up for what she thought was going to be a pleasant dinner with Mom and Pop. He drove her to their gravesite.”