It doesn’t count, Alex, I silently said to the disappearing car. This morning doesn’t count. It wasn’t a rough act of passion, adultery, if you will. It was the only way to stop my hands from shaking.

Joanne, Danny, and I looked at each other. A cop, a lawyer, and a P. I. We could be a TV series. Except none of us looked plastic enough.

“Get to bed, Mick,” Danny said. “No one wants to see your face around here.”

“Good morning to you, too, dear Danno,” I answered.

“Anything going on?” Joanne asked, with a nod of her head in the direction of the thicket where the dead woman lay.

“They carted her away almost an hour ago,” Danny said. “The police are combing the woods. Looks like some mother’s going to know for sure what happened to her daughter.”

Joanne nodded somberly.

“Not much really for us to do. Emma Auerbach can handle these guys,” Danny continued.

Joanne and Danny didn’t need to stay. I knew they were doing it out of friendship.

“Let’s see if we can find some coffee,” I said, leading the way to the kitchen. I left Joanne and Danny there while I went to change my clothes. That would make it less obvious that I had been up all night. After scrubbing my face and brushing my teeth, I headed back to the kitchen. More people were there, some of the policemen, most of the college kids. Rachel was fixing coffee.

Conversation was tired and inconsequential. No one wanted to talk about why we were gathered in the kitchen. The guests that hadn’t left last night were going now.

The aftermath of death can be so banal. Coffee, food, getting home, the weather. Or perhaps it is death that makes the details that follow seem so minor.

Most of the police left sometime late in the morning. Joanne and Danny soon followed them. I spent the day working with the college kids, cleaning up the remains of the aborted party. None of us went near the woods.

At around five, Rachel told me to go see Emma in her study. When I got there, she was tearing a check out of her checkbook and handing it to one of the college students. She motioned for me to sit while she finished paying the last two of them.

I suddenly realized how tired I was as I sat waiting for her. I looked around the room, attempting to keep myself from nodding too obviously. Then I noticed a check on Emma’s desk with a signature I recognized. Cordelia James, it said. The check was made out to the pro-choice group that Emma worked with. According to Rachel, Emma’s mother had known Margaret Sanger. Working for reproduction rights was a family tradition. Of course Cordelia would be donating to pro-choice with her clinic picketed as it was. She could afford it.

Rhett startled me by saying good-bye. I shook his hand and mumbled some appropriate farewell (I hope).

The students left, leaving me with Emma. Her head was bent over her checkbook, writing what I presumed to be my check.

She looked up, tearing out and handing the check to me in one swift motion. I put it away without looking at it.

“Did you get any sleep last night?” she asked.

“A little,” I hedged.

“Do you want a ride back? Rachel and I decided that we would leave today. No one feels like staying here. I could get one of the students to drive your car back.”

“No, that’s okay. I’m fine,” I lied. I didn’t want Emma to know how tired I was. I stood up to go, before my nodding head betrayed me.

“Micky,” she called as I started to leave. “Thank you for all you’ve done.”

“It wasn’t much.”

“Still…I do wish we had gotten a chance to talk.”

“Yes, so do I,” I said. “I’ll see you in the city, sometime,” I added as my farewell.

“I’d like that.” Emma’s voice trailed me into the hallway.

I went to my room, moving quickly to keep my weariness at bay. I threw my clothes into a suitcase and without even a final glance around, I went out, stopping only for a hasty good-bye to Rachel.

Then I was in my car and heading back to the city. I don’t know how I managed to stay awake driving over the Causeway. The only thing I distinctly recall was driving on Elysian Fields and being struck with the incongruity of the name, with a dead body so close in my memory. Was there a paradise waiting for her? And how had she ended up so close to where I had stood only a few hours before? What had I almost seen?

I was too tired to think about it.

Chapter 6

The image of the dead woman continued to haunt me. I had stayed with her too long on that night to let go of her easily. I needed something to distract me. Bars and casual sex came to mind, but I talked myself out of it, wanting to be sober when Joanne called to tell me what had happened to the young woman.

On Thursday I got my distraction. A phone call from Cordelia. Rather a message on my machine, asking me to call her. Her work number, I assumed, since I didn’t recognize it. I had stared at her home number, unable to call, so many times that I had it memorized. Even though it was evening, I called the number she had left. I let it ring ten times before giving up.

I wasted a considerable amount of time trying to decide whether or not to call her at home. I finally, after chastising myself for being an indecisive wimp, convinced myself to wait until tomorrow and call her at the number she had left.

I called the next morning, at what I hoped was early enough to be professional, but not so early as to seem anxious.

Dr. James was with a patient. I left my name and number. Then I debated as to whether I should stay around my apartment or deliberately not be there for her call. If this was love, maybe I was fortunate to have avoided it for so long.

The phone rang. I started to grab it, then stopped and let it ring three full rings before I picked it up.

“M. Knight, P.I.,” I answered, trying to sound cool and businesslike.

“Hi, Micky. Cordelia.”

“Hi, how are you?”

“I’m—” Then she broke off, talking to someone in the background. It sounded like a discussion about medication.

“Busy, I gather,” I said when I heard her back on the line.

“Yes.” Then there was an awkward pause. She continued, “I need a private investigator.”

I almost said, “And you’re hiring me?” What I did say was, “Why?”

“Can we meet? I’d prefer not to discuss some things over the phone.”

“All right. When and where?” I was hoping she would say tonight, my place.

“How about Monday? Here at the clinic?”

“Is that what this is about?”

“More or less,” she answered. “I’ll fill you in on Monday. Is that okay?”

“Sure,” I replied. There was nothing else to say. We set a time for Monday and she gave me directions. And that was that.

I stared at the receiver and wondered what Cordelia wanted me for and how to pass the time until I found out. Monday. I put the receiver down.

If I didn’t figure out some way to keep occupied, I knew I would convolute myself into a knot trying to guess what she wanted. And by Monday afternoon have landed on every possibility, but the right one.

I could do bills and other boring detective stuff, but that’s never been my ideal way to spend the day. I did manage to get part of the expense report for my last job completed. But something more distracting than routine paper work was required.

Books. I made the long, arduous trek to the library, trusting in divine faith that my card wasn’t expired. I picked up an assortment of Dorothy Sayers. Some of her Lord Peter Wimsey books, not so much for detective ideas, but for dating tips. How did Lord Peter get Harriet Vane to marry him? Also, to the amazement of the librarian, the Sayers translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Hell, the fun one. I wanted to keep all parts of my mind occupied.

By late afternoon, I had ascertained via Lord Peter that the method for making a woman fall in love with an offbeat detective was to save her from the gallows by proving her innocent. Somehow that didn’t seem to have much bearing on Cordelia and myself.