“What weed?” Joel asked.

Maya shook her head in anger and frustration. She spoke under her breath. “Oh, Jesus!”

“Dylan was selling marijuana out of your wife’s store,” Hardy said in his most neutral voice. “I don’t know why it hasn’t been in the papers. The cops have known this all along.”

“How special for them,” Joel said. Clearly seething now, he spoke in a near whisper. “How long were you going to keep all this from me, Maya? What is that about? I thought we talked to each other.”

“We do.”

“Not so much, though, as it turns out.” Finally, Joel brought his attention to Hardy. “So you’re suggesting we go outside and tell these people that my wife lied to them, is that it?”

“Omitted,” Hardy said. “Not lied. At least then we start over with a clean slate.”

“But Maya’s at the murder scene within, apparently, minutes of the crime.”

“That’s true. And in point of fact, she was.”

Now Joel came back to her. “And you don’t know what the emergency was?”

“No.”

“No idea?”

“No, Joel, really.”

This wasn’t enough for her increasingly furious husband. He kept at her. “So the situation here, correct me if I’m wrong, is that Dylan called you on Friday night saying he needed to see you first thing next morning, and you dropped everything and got up at five-thirty, lied to me and the kids about going to Mass-”

“But I did go to Mass, after-”

Joel waved that off. “After you went to see Dylan first, for some reason that he wouldn’t even tell you. Is that what you expect me to believe?”

Tears glistened in Maya’s eyes. “That’s what happened, Joel. That’s exactly what happened.”

“That twerp calls you, doesn’t even give you a reason, and you come running, and now we’ve got the cops sitting in our living room and your lawyer here says we need to tell them the truth, except that the truth leaves you going down to visit the murdered man just about the time he was killed, and with essentially no reason.” He turned to Hardy. “How can we tell them she went down there if we can’t tell them why? Can you answer that for me?”

“Keep it simple. He asked her to, that’s all. Some problem with the business, some decision she had to make in person.” Hardy slowed himself down. “I’m sure Maya thought it was going to be a quick little meeting and then she’d have time to make it back to Mass. Isn’t that right, Maya?”

Hardy had given her the answer and was glad to see her embrace it. “That’s exactly it, Joel. I didn’t think it was anything really important. I wasn’t hiding anything from you. It was just a small business hassle that I thought I’d take care of like I have a million others.”

Another silence, finally broken when Joel asked Hardy, “You really think this will fly?”

“It’s the truth,” Hardy said. “All things considered, honesty’s still the best policy.”

Husband and wife stared at each other for a long beat. Maya reached out and took Joel’s hand in hers. “That ought to be the end of it,” she said.

“Not exactly,” Joel said, extricating his hand from his wife’s. “You and I are going to have to have a discussion.”

“We can do that.” She looked up at Hardy. “Meanwhile, let’s go tell ’em,” she said.

He nodded, no-nonsense. “All right,” he said. “But let me do the talking.”

At ten-thirty that night Hardy threw the next-to-last dart of his round at the Little Shamrock bar and it landed in his “out” spot of double eleven. He plocked the next shot directly in the center of the bull’s-eye, ending the game. He was playing “ 301” and he’d gone out ahead of his opponent, Wyatt Hunt, by hitting his last eight throws in a row, a fairly nice run.

And all too underappreciated by Hunt, his firm’s private investigator, who now owed him not only the tab for the three beers they’d each consumed in the three-game minitournament, but the extra hundred bucks they’d put up as the pot. No sooner had Hardy’s winning shot landed than Hunt handed him the Franklin and offered to go double or nothing.

“That’s a sucker bet, Wyatt, as you well know.” Hardy took the bill and put it into his wallet. “But I’ll buy you a consolation drink to help assuage the agony of defeat.”

“Assuage is a good lawyer word,” Hunt said. “You don’t hear people say assuage every day.”

“No indeed, you don’t,” Hardy replied. “And yet, sometimes it is the perfect choice, le mot juste, as Hemingway would have said.”

“Or me if I spoke French.”

The private eye went about six three, two ten, an athletic hunk comprised of about equal parts gristle and testosterone. If you could be handsome in an ugly way, that’s what Hardy would have said he was. He’d grown up in foster homes, done a stint in Iraq I, then worked a dozen or so years in Child Protective Services, taking kids from abusive environments away from their parent or parents, pretty much the apogee of thankless jobs. Now, and for the past seven or eight years, he ran a private investigations business called The Hunt Club, and Hardy’s firm used it almost exclusively.

Wyatt was leading the way as the two men moved from the dart area and into the narrow recesses of the bar proper, which was having a relatively slow night. Two stools stood open in front of the taps, and they got themselves seated. “That was an obscene run of darts, you know.”

“Admittedly. I’m sure I couldn’t do it again. Although you’ve got to figure that a guy who’s got a board on the wall of his office and his own customized darts probably spends a few minutes playing the game. He’s going to get a lucky run from time to time.”

Hunt was grinning. “I’ll try to keep it in mind.”

Moses McGuire appeared in front of them and they ordered-a club soda for each of them. McGuire, on a club soda regimen himself for the past couple of years, still couldn’t help himself. “Whoa,” he said. “Katie, bar the door. Want those babies full-strength up or on the rocks?”

“The great thing about drinking here”-Hardy ignored his brother-in-law and spoke directly to Hunt-“is the commentary.”

“I knew there was something,” Hunt replied.

“Rocks,” Hardy said, coming back to Moses, “and hold the pithy observations, thank you.”

McGuire pulled the drinks, and Hardy held up his glass to clink Hunt’s. “I feel a little guilty inviting you down here and then taking your money, but thanks for coming.”

Hunt sipped his soda. “Long day?”

“Actually, fairly brutal.” Hardy filled him in on the dramas surrounding both Glitsky and Wes Farrell, which had continued into the night as Hardy, after dinner at home, went to the hospital to check on Abe and Zachary-Abe still a zombie, Zachary unchanged.

Hardy had stayed on with Abe for a long half hour, then patted his friend’s knee and told him to hang in there, call if he needed anything, and left. Unable to make himself go back home to Frannie, Treya, and Rachel, he’d stopped by the Shamrock and called Farrell, who’d apparently turned off his telephones. Getting an idea, then he had called Hunt. “Anyway, between Abe and Wes, it’s like I’m knocked off my horse. I can’t seem to get my arms wrapped around this Dylan Vogler situation. Not just what it’s done to Wes, or potentially could do.”

“You’re really worried about that?”

“A little bit, yeah.”

“Well, let me lighten your load, Diz. You can get over that. Nobody outside of Singapore cares about who smokes weed. Certainly nobody in law enforcement in this town. ’Course, the bad news in Singapore is they hang you for it. But the good news is we’re not there. Not even Wes. But I’d warn him if he’s thinking about making the trip.”

“I’ll do that,” Hardy said with a strained tolerance. “But in actual fact Wes is an officer of the court. He’s a rainmaker for the firm, he’s-”

Hunt held up a hand. “It’s only going to increase his street cred among his potential clients, Diz, all of whom probably light up a doob with some regularity. The guy’s one of them.”