Occam's razor

12

The three of us were in Sammie’s hosital room the next morning when Willy Kunkle walked in. We’d been kept overnight for observation-including Owen, under guard-to assure that our cold-water adventure hadn’t led to more than a craving for lots of hot coffee. Fortunately, it had not.

“Don’t you look cute,” Willy observed of our hospital gowns. “Sam, climb out of bed so I can see if that’s one of those tie-across-the-back models.”

Sammie still hadn’t regained her sense of humor since losing Tharp to a slippery stone. “Up yours.”

“How’s Owen?” I asked diplomatically.

Willy was unusually cheerful. “He’s fine, and getting VIP treatment, since he totally spilled his guts. He’s already in our lockup, waiting for arraignment.”

“He confessed?” Ron asked.

“Yup. Last night, after the docs let us at him. Described where he left the body, the knife he used, and where he threw it by the side of the road. J.P. and me checked his apartment and gave Judith the third degree-there’s a lovely woman, by the way-and she even handed over some bloody clothes she was going to get rid of.”

“Anything fitting the knee-print we found next to Brenda’s body?” I asked.

“Don’t know. J.P.’s hoarding it. All I saw was a jacket with a smeared cuff and a shoe with a couple of drops on it. Looked like Owen must’ve split before it got real messy.”

“The arraignment’s this afternoon?” Ron asked, always conscious of deadlines. “You been able to get the paperwork ready?”

Kunkle looked at him scornfully. “Scared you might be replaced, Ronnie? Actually, it was so easy I wonder why you make such a big deal out of it all the time. Job security, I guess.”

I cut him off as Ron’s face reddened. “Why did he do it?”

Willy perched on the edge of Sammie’s bed. “That part’s a little melodramatic, but then I think Owen’s a few bricks shy of a load. He says he had a girlfriend a couple of years back who died of some bad dope. He didn’t know it was Brenda then that supplied her, but when he found out, he got good and hopped up and went over to confront her. She told him to pound sand and he sliced-’n’-diced her-just like that.”

“Who told him it was Brenda?”

“No one. He said he discovered it for himself-that she’d poisoned the stuff.”

“He know about the kid in the back room?”

“Negative. Not that it matters. It’s a two-for-one sale, according to the SA-Felony Murder Rule.”

Thinking of the election later in the year, I asked, “The SA going to handle it himself?”

Willy smiled. “Nope. Your love-mate is, with him looking over her shoulder, of course.”

Gail?” I blurted out.

“Unless you switched partners. Derby wants to spend his quality time rallying votes. Rumor has it James Dunn wants the office back in November. Total bullshit, of course-everyone hates Dunn-but Derby’s got sweaty palms. Plus, he thinks if he lets one of his deputies handle it, it’ll show off the office’s depth-he’s fighting the image of being a headline hog as well as a micro-manager, just like Dunn used to be. Looks like the public defender’s office is going to assign Reggie McNeil from their side. Should be fun for Gail, given Reggie’s habits.”

McNeil had made a reputation of using anything and everything in defense of his clients-sometimes to the point of getting his wrist slapped by his boss, the defender general. This zeal did not endear him to anyone I knew in law enforcement.

“How do you know McNeil’s got it? Wouldn’t that happen at the arraignment?” I asked, surprised.

“Right after Owen fessed up”-Willy gave Ron a meaningful look-“which was right after we Mirandized him nice and legal-I guess he suddenly got cold feet. Maybe it was hearing himself out loud or something. Anyhow, he clammed up-a little late-and said he wanted a lawyer. Asked for McNeil personally. Not that that scum-bag isn’t a household name to every loser in town.”

“McNeil is such a jerk…” Sammie began joining in, but came to a full stop, her mouth half open and her eyes on the door.

We all followed her gaze and saw a tall, slim man with long dark hair, dressed in a thigh-length leather jacket. He had high cheekbones, a permanent five o’clock shadow, a strong chin, and penetrating eyes. To my jaundiced eye, he looked like a wannabe fashion model, touched by just enough cheapness to ruin the effect.

“Andy,” Sammie said in a slightly strangled voice.

Andy Padgett looked uncomfortably at the bunch of us, obviously caught unawares by our presence.

“Hey, babe,” he said cautiously, his voice muted.

Willy turned to Sammie in mock outrage. “You never let me call you that. How’s he get away with it?”

Sammie’s lips barely moved. “Fuck off, Willy.”

I got up and crossed over to shake Padgett’s hand, hoping to dilute the tension. Gail and Ron’s wife had dropped by to see us the night before, and we’d all had a good time. I felt badly now that Sammie’s chance at the same kind of comfort was being ruined. “Hi. I’m Joe Gunther. Glad to meet you. This is Ron Klesczewski. Willy Kunkle I think you already know.”

Padgett’s grip was brief. His eyes only briefly met mine. “Yeah. Hi.”

“Sammie’s said good things about you.”

He took a half step backward, still speaking in a murmur, obviously not buying my patter. “Great. She’s okay. Look, I don’t want to interrupt.” He raised his hand to her. “I’ll catch you later.”

Willy laughed. “Well, warm your hands up ahead of time. She’s a little frigid right now.” Sammie punched him in his bad shoulder. “You are such an asshole. I’ll see you at home, Andy. Thanks for coming.”

Padgett vanished as if a rope had yanked him clear of the doorway.

“Must’ve been late for another poker game,” Willy said, relentless to the end.

Sammie pushed him clear off the bed. “Get out, Willy. What the hell did he ever do to you?”

Willy moved to the door. Under the smirk, he was simmering. “Nothing yet. He better hope he doesn’t, either.”

“Jesus,” she exclaimed, but her target had already left.

A doctor filled the doorway instead, stopping dead in his tracks at the assembled hostile stares. He glanced at Kunkle’s departing back, invisible to us, and then asked generally, “Is everything all right?”

For some reason, we all looked at Sammie.

She was pale with rage. “Not hardly.”

“So-good news?” I asked him hopefully, my voice sounding loud in the quiet room.

He took my cue, ignoring the tension, and allowed that since we’d apparently survived the night with no obvious ill effects, we were free to go.

But back in the room I’d shared with Ron, changing into my clothes and preparing to leave, I found my thoughts weren’t on the weird three-way tug-of-war between Sam, Willy, and Andy Padgett. That, as I saw it, had been something they’d have to work out on their own. Instead, I was grappling with the abrupt end of an intense investigation, made all the more dramatic by Owen’s unexpected confession.

We’d still be involved in the case, of course. After the arraignment, both sides would retire to their corners, build up witness lists, read each other’s mail about evidence, and jockey around for advantage. And we’d be called to help in some of that-tying off the odd loose end. But as I tucked my few belongings under my arm and headed for the door, I still felt like I’d been left on the dock to wave a ship goodbye.

I should’ve known better.

With Gail anointed the lead lawyer in the prosecution against Owen Tharp, it was deemed a bad idea to have too many of my fingerprints on the case. While not married, we were a well-known couple, a connection which had come up in court before. It was obvious baloney-the police and the state’s attorney’s office were supposed to work in tandem-but on high-profile cases like this, it was best not to give the defense any more than we had to.

And it wasn’t as if I had nothing else to do-a point driven home as soon as I’d sat down at my desk.

Harriet Fritter, after asking about my health and telling me to act my age, dumped a thick pile of paperwork before me and informed me Stan Katz had been in hot pursuit by phone.

I held off calling him back for a while, digging through the pile instead-half wondering if Harriet hadn’t subversively set me up to do just that-when Ron appeared in my doorway.

“I heard back from New Jersey on Phil Resnick-the guy we’re hoping was our dead truck driver?”

I nodded to keep him going.

“Well, it’s a definite hit. They sent me prints, and one of them not only matches the finger J.P. found, but Waterbury just confirmed it through their data bank. It wasn’t on AFIS, but they used some other method. That’s why it took so long-that and the fact it was only one finger.”

“Phil Resnick,” I mused. “What else did New Jersey tell you?”

“That he was Mob-connected. Not family himself-with that last name-but more of a freelancer.”

“Trucking haz mat?”

“Yup,” he confirmed, “throughout New England.”

He handed me a grainy black-and-white facsimile of a photograph of a round-faced, ugly man, apparently trying to melt the camera lens with his eyes.

I studied the face for a few moments. “Makes you wonder if any other department up around here ever had dealings with him.”

Ron smiled. “I just finished putting it on the wire-every PD from Maine to upper New York State, including Massachusetts. God knows what we’ll hear back, or when, but it can’t hurt. Sounds like the guy’d been doing this for quite a while.”

That rang two bells in my brain. “According to Bobby Miller, the only thing disturbed in Jim Reynolds’s office was a cabinet filled with old files. And Gail said a few days ago that she wouldn’t put it past one of Reynolds’s old clients to want to get even with him, especially if he’d lost their case.”

Ron just looked at me, his eyebrows arched.

“Do me a favor,” I asked him. “Dig through the court records, back to when Reynolds started working here, and pull anything dealing with hazardous materials, illegal trucking, Phil Resnick, environmental offenses, and anything else like it.” I checked my watch. “Who’s going to the intel meeting this morning? We might as well give them a heads up, too.”

“I was planning to go,” he admitted, “but I don’t have anything to present. Why don’t you give them this while I start on Reynolds’s court records?”

Regional police intelligence meetings were held once a month in a conference room at Rescue, Inc., the area’s primary ambulance squad. They could have been held at our department, but the theory was to give all those attending a sense of neutral ground.

The principle behind the meetings was simple: to get as many representatives from as many diverse agencies as possible into one room every four weeks to present, update, and exchange information. Depending on the time of year, and the luck of the draw, attendees could number from as few as five to as many as twenty. They were sheriff’s deputies, federal agents, state police from Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, municipal cops from any one of dozens of surrounding communities, parole and probation officers from the Department of Corrections, investigators from state’s attorney’s offices, and people from liquor enforcement, the Agency of Natural Resources, and even outfits like the National Guard. The organizations they represented ranged from departments with a few officers to the United States government, and the topics discussed from stolen tires to foreign terrorists threatening to poison whole cities. Nobody was treated differently from anybody else, and all information received equal attention. Sending a bulletin out to surrounding departments-as Ron had just done concerning Phil Resnick-was worthwhile and routine, but it was hard to beat a direct sell if you wanted to have your message clearly heard.

Pure chance had timed the monthly meeting for today. And by going, I could stave off talking to Stan Katz that much longer.

There were about ten of us by the time we settled down, having turned the parking lot into a convention of squad cars and suspiciously bland sedans, all sprouting antennae, and all precariously huddled next to towering eight-foot snowbanks.

Henry Roberts of the Windham County Sheriff’s Office-polite, precise in manner, and always immaculately turned out-ran the meeting, having each of us speak in a clockwise rotation around the table while desperately keeping notes on a laptop computer.

By the time my turn came, we’d all received Xeroxed mug shots of a check kiter, a car booster, and a welfare defrauder, had been asked to keep an eye out for a suspected coke dealer, a religious right-wing gunrunner, and a two-brother team of bunco artists, and had covered our notepads with lists of names, birth dates, known associates, license plate numbers, and vehicle descriptions.

“Sorry I don’t have anything quite as lively as everyone else,” I began. “My suspect’s not only dead but missing a head and both hands.”

“The railroad bum?” one of them asked.

“Yes and no,” I answered. “We had doubts he was a bum from the start. Now we’ve found out he was a New Jersey-based truck driver with Mob connections named Philip Resnick.” I passed around copies I’d made of Ron’s fuzzy photograph. “Date of birth 4/8/51. His past accomplishments are listed below the picture. We’re pretty sure he was transporting a haz mat cocktail that he dumped at Norm Blood’s farm just before his truck broke down and he had to abandon it near Bickford’s. My first question is: Has anyone here ever seen him or heard about him?”

There was a momentary pause around the room: “Any local connections other than Blood?” someone finally asked.

“Not really,” I answered. “The truck was leased from Timson Long Haul near Leverett, Massachusetts, but the guy we talked to there couldn’t find his paperwork and wasn’t inclined to look. Supposedly, Resnick was just one of several people who’d leased the same rig recently, so we’re thinking Timson might be a dead end. If the Mob is tied into this, it’s unlikely they’d make it that easy for us to find them.”

A plainclothes state trooper from Massachusetts named Peter Manning disagreed. “We’ve had dealings with Timson before,” he said. “He’s definitely crooked, but he’s also probably a pure freelancer-he’s never appeared on any of our Mafia watch lists. He makes a profit, though. Leverett’s hardly the place for a trucking company, and his place is a dump, but he keeps plugging along year after year, like he was located in downtown Boston. You want to give him a visit, I’d be happy to ride shotgun. The only thing we’ve caught him red-handed at over the years is either routine vehicle maintenance shit or some minor book cooking. But his name keeps coming up with this haz mat stuff, and I’d love to let him know we’re still watching.”

I nodded my thanks. “You got a deal. I’ll call you in a few days.”

Later, back in my office, I stared dolefully at yet another pink phone message from Katz, the latest in a stack of four. I didn’t know what he was after, but it didn’t really matter. It was the general predictability of our conversations I dreaded more than their actual content.

This time, however, he surprised me.

“You at your office?” he asked right after I’d identified myself.

“Yeah.”

“We have to meet-now-somewhere neutral.”

There was an edge to his voice I’d only rarely heard before. “If by neutral you mean private, how ’bout past where Corrections hang their hats? The snowplows have a turnaround just beyond their parking lot.”

“I’ll see you there.”

Katz was hyperactive by nature. It had helped make him the journalist he was, which, in all fairness, was honorable-if as irritating as a canker sore. But the level of energy I’d just heard on the phone was several notches above his norm, so I set out to meet him with some real curiosity.

The Corrections Department’s parole and probation offices occupied the basement of a flamboyantly pink office building that had once housed a chocolate factory. It was located on a flat strip of land between the high bank supporting the Putney Road and the same Retreat Meadows floodplain where Ed Renaud and I had shared our meditative chat in the fishing shanty.

The building is almost the last structure on a dead-end road, and as I’d pointed out to Katz, the snowplows have turned the area just past its parking lot into a round amphitheater of piled-up snow, visually isolated from any neighbors but with a view of the frozen Meadows.

As a result, when we met there ten minutes later, it looked oddly like a half-completed stage set-two cars parked in an empty, featureless half bowl of white space, faced with a seemingly flat picture-postcard image hanging before us like a drop.

I left my car to join Katz in his-a rusting, ten-year-old Japanese pickup with chained-together cinder blocks in the back to give it traction in the snow. As soon as I’d closed the door behind me, I regretted my manners. The tiny cab stank of rancid fast food and stale cigarettes, both aggravated by an overactive heater.

Despite the cold, I cracked my window a few inches and turned up my collar. “What’s on your mind, Stanley?”

He sat staring out at the view for a few seconds, as if collecting his thoughts. “We’ve known each other a long time, right?”

I didn’t bother answering.

“And we’ve helped each other out now and then. You’ve given me stuff under the counter. I’ve sat on a story or two. I mean, all the cops-versus-press bullshit aside, we’ve always gotten along pretty well, haven’t we?”

He expected an answer this time. And despite his being someone I’d never think of inviting over for supper, at least I couldn’t argue his basic point. “I suppose so.”

As anemic as it was, that seemed to settle his mind. “I’m in a bit of a jam. Not a legal one.” He quickly cut me a glance. “More like an ethical one. Remember when I asked you about Jim Reynolds?”

Again, I stayed silent, this time holding my breath. “Well, I got another anonymous call about him-a little more serious.”

“Same guy?”

“I couldn’t be sure. It was a man’s voice but muffled like the first one.”

He hesitated. I filled the gap. “What did he say?”

He twisted in his seat to look at me. “It’s pretty big, Joe, even without Reynolds being who he is and this being an election year. It’s big enough that I’m going to be digging into it like nobody’s business.”

“You want to know what we have on him?” I guessed. “Use me to see if you might be on to something?”

“I want to know where you stand with him first.”

I stared at him in surprise. “Stand with him? I barely know the guy. You asking if I’d shield him?”

My incredulity spoke for me. He looked slightly embarrassed. “I had to ask, Joe. You blew off the illegal dumping when I mentioned it. Gail does have close ties to him…”

“Tell me what you got,” I told him angrily, “or I’m out of here.” I put my hand on the door handle, impatient with his dancing around.

“The man on the phone said Reynolds was connected to the woman who was knifed to death.”

That stopped me. “How?”

“You know of no such connection?”

I hesitated before answering, suddenly wary of what might be lurking out of sight. I decided to play it straight. “None at all.”

“But you are checking him out?”

I sidestepped a bit, sticking to what was already in the public record.

There was no chance in hell I was going to tell him about the presumably bogus sighting of Reynolds’s car at the railroad tracks. “His office was broken into a while back. We are looking into that, although we have no suspects, no leads, and nothing reported stolen or missing.”

He understood I wanted him to read between the lines there. “That must be a little delicate, poking around where you’re not invited.” He paused and then muttered, as if to himself, “I don’t remember that item being in our police blotter column.”

“It was right up there with a barking dog complaint. The current theory is that one of our patrols scared off whoever it was before he even got inside. You said it yourself, Stan, it’s a political year-hotter’n most. Could be your caller is up to dirty tricks.”

“Tying a candidate to a murder?” he asked, his voice rising. “Suggesting I’m being used? Who says you’re not doing the same thing right now?”

I suddenly became resensitized to the heat and stench of the cab. I wanted to get out of this conversation. “Stan, I’m not sure what we’re doing here. I could’ve told you on the phone we have nothing linking Reynolds to Croteau’s murder.”

“Then why are you still poking into a burglary that wasn’t? Why were you checking out Reynolds’s car at his house?”

I rolled the window all the way down. So much for the buddy-buddy routine. “Who told you that?”

“Never mind. I know you were there, and that Willy brought J.P.’s bag of toys with him. What were you looking for?”

“Something that didn’t pan out.” He opened his mouth to say something, but I kept talking. “Stanley, we do a lot of things nobody ever hears about. People call us anonymously, too, you know? They tell us they saw a crime, or committed one, or know someone who did. We check ’em all out, no matter how bogus they sound-just like the one that brought us to Reynolds’s garage.”

He pretended to look at something far out on the ice. “If it was a dead end, why don’t you tell me what it was?”

“Because it’s not news, Stan. It’s none of your business.”

He suddenly flared up and hit the steering wheel with the flat of his hand. “Bullshit. I get two separate calls that Reynolds is dirty, his office is broken into, I know you guys have been checking him out, and the whole town is in a tizzy with two homicides, one of which I’ve been told is linked to him. And I’m supposed to ignore that?”

“I wouldn’t be writing any stories about it.”

He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed heavily, finally smiling at me wearily. “That’s why I’m here, Joe. I’m not writing any stories. I want to do the right thing, not play into some game his opponents are setting up. The press gets manipulated enough as it is. I want to write the truth.”

I opened the door to get out. “I’d help you if I could, Stan. Right now, the truth is we came up with nothing when we looked at his car, so the reasons why we did so in the first place are irrelevant. And we have absolutely nothing linking Reynolds to the Croteau killing. As Jack Derby already announced, we have a confessed suspect in custody for that, and we’re going to trial with it.”

He rolled his own window down as I circled his hood to return to my car. “You don’t put a man’s car through the forensics wringer for a fender-bender. If Reynolds is clean on the Croteau thing, then maybe you’re trying to tie him to the bum. Is that what’s happening?”

I considered leaving it at that, with an unstated “no comment.” But I knew Stan too well-it would have been like pouring gasoline on an ember.

Instead, I leaned against his door in a friendly gesture. “Look, I know you want some answers. And I know that, being who he is, Reynolds brings a lot of weight to all this. So I’m not trying to blow you off. I mean, you’re right about our scratching each other’s back now and then. It’s worked out for both of us. But we move slower than you do, Stan. We have to. You’ve got readers wanting sexy news, not state’s attorneys ready to kick your ass at the first mistake. It makes us more cautious.”

“I wouldn’t print anything I couldn’t stand behind,” he said stiffly. “That’s why I called you.”

“I know that. I also know you’re not going to end it here. You’re going to chase after every other source you can think of.”

“So?” he asked.

I held up my hand. “So great. I’m just telling you to watch out… Off the record?”

He raised his eyebrows. “What?”

“We are looking into Reynolds, for what I won’t tell you right now. But I am smelling a rat in motion somewhere, which is what’s making me extra careful. You’re going to do what you do-you always have-but I gotta tell you: On this one, watch your step. Don’t get used.”

I couldn’t read his expression and didn’t wait around for explanations.

I stopped by Ron’s desk and waited for him to finish typing on his computer.

“What’s up?” he asked almost immediately.

“Remember I asked you a while back to look into Reynolds’s past?”

“The court cases? Yeah, I got that going…”

He was stopped by my shaking my head. “No, no. I meant earlier-anything on VIBRS or even our internal files. Any mention at all?”

He looked at me oddly. “Couldn’t find a thing. Maybe a parking ticket or two, but that was it. Why? You got something?”

I didn’t make a habit of withholding information from my officers, but I comforted myself this time that what I had didn’t even qualify as such-yet. “No. His name just keeps coming up. Have you had a chance to tear into Brenda’s journal-line by line?”

“Pretty much. It hasn’t been a high priority, what with her killer in jail. I thought I’d use it more as a future intel source than as ammo against Owen. He’s barely mentioned.”

“What about Reynolds? Does he come up?”

Ron shook his head, giving that look again. “Nope. Not a peep.”

“How ’bout code names or pseudonyms?”

His brow furrowed. “Nothing that obvious. She used a lot of first names, though. I suppose they could be codes.”

I got up, disappointed. “Okay. Thanks anyway.”

“How’d the arraignment go?” I asked Gail that night.

She put her briefcase on the floor, kicked off her snow boots, dumped her coat on one kitchen chair, and collapsed into another. “Fine. McNeil whined about his client’s confused state, his ties to the community, his financial constraints. Judge Harrowsmith couldn’t have cared less. I asked for no bail, and that’s what we got. Good thing Owen called about bus schedules just before you grabbed him. I think that clinched it for Harrowsmith. We have any boiling water ready?”

I knew her well enough to have done just that. Without asking, I fixed her a steaming cup of green tea and set it on the table beside her. She took advantage of my proximity to kiss me as I leaned forward.

“Thanks,” she said. “You get a chance to talk with Owen?”

“No. By the time I got out of the hospital, he’d already been sucked into the pipeline. Why?”

She paused to sip her tea, wincing slightly at its heat. “God, that feels good. I don’t know-he looked pretty pathetic. Hardly the knife-wielding sort.”

A cold feeling entered my mind as I recalled Katz’s suspicions about Reynolds. “You had dinner yet?” I asked.

“We had a pizza brought up-again. That’s one reason this tastes so good. Cuts through the grease.”

“You seen the evidence we have against him?” I asked her cautiously.

She interrupted a second sip to answer quickly, “Oh, yeah. I don’t have any doubts he did it, and we have Janice Litchfield’s statement about him attacking someone with a pen a while back. He just looked a little incongruous, you know? Like the kind of kid always ignored by the in-crowd.”

I took my own cup of coffee and sat next to her, as we often did late at night. “You think that’s the line McNeil’s going to use? Diminished capacity or something?”

“Probably. Who knows? He’s only had about fifteen minutes with him so far. It’s too early to tell. He’ll start digging around and collecting witnesses and asking for delays, like he always does, hoping he can wait long enough for either the furor to die down or for us to drop the ball somehow. And sure as hell he’ll try to get that confession thrown out.”

“You think he can?” Again, I was wondering what Katz might be doing in the meantime, unwittingly or not, to undermine the process. Not to mention where those missing journal pages might be.

She shook her head. “I talked to Willy about it. I wish he hadn’t been the one to get it. He leaves such a lousy impression with juries. But he had J.P. with him, and it sounds like it was straight as a string. It should hold up. What worries me is that since it came after that chase, McNeil’ll argue Owen was too weak and disoriented to know what he was saying-and since he did ask for a lawyer right after he confessed, it shows he was confused.”

I smiled at her scrutiny of the angles. She hadn’t been a deputy SA for very long and had started out, as most of them did, in family court, where any potential mistakes occurred mostly behind closed doors. This was big-league stuff at last, and I could almost touch her enthusiasm.

“How’s Derby to work with on this?”

“Great. He’s giving me lots of leeway. He handed virtually my entire case load off to the others, so I can really keep focused. I think it’ll be fine.”

“Scuttlebutt has it he’ll be chasing votes most of the time anyway,” I said mildly. “James Dunn supposedly wants back in.”

But she saw through the veil. “Oh, I know what people think. I’m a woman, I have strong local connections and a useful political past, and this case is a no-brainer. I can live with that perception.” She drained her cup and smiled at me. “Because I also know Jack Derby owes me. He feels guilty for giving me the shaft when you got into trouble with the Attorney General’s office-treating me like a pariah just because he was worried about bad press. He knows I deserved better.” She paused and added, “He didn’t come up with the idea of using me entirely on his own, you know.”

I nodded deeply in her direction in a mock salute. “I should never have thought otherwise. And I’m sure you’ll knock ’em dead.”

But I had my concerns, both real and imagined.