'Not now,' Smoke told her without much interest as he spun around the cylinder of a Colt.357.

'I sure could do with a little more / miss you enthusiasm.' Divinity's voice was hurt on the way to being mad.

Smoke wasn't listening. His mind wandered back to the old woman and her fear. Smoke had never scared anybody that much. He was awed by his power and as drunk from it as he was from vodka. He loved the way it felt to squeeze the trigger. He had been so high he barely heard the explosions when he blew apart her head. He threw back another swallow of vodka.

'What'cha gonna tell the others?' Divinity was asking.

Smoke came to.

'About what?' he said.

'You ain't even listening.' Her voice was getting sharp.

One thing Smoke avoided was fighting with Divinity. She could make a scene, and that was what he didn't need right now.

'I'm just so tired,' he said, sighing. 'And I miss you and it makes me crazy I can't see you until Saturday night. That's when we'll be free and clear.'

'How?'

'You'll see.'

'What about Dog and the rest of them?'

'I don't want them anywhere near me,' Smoke said. 'None of you come anywhere near the Azalea Parade.'

'I don't understand this big shit about some little parade named after a bush.' Divinity hadn't softened much.

'Baby, I'm gonna be the king of it,' Smoke said.

'What'cha gonna do, ride on a float?'

He couldn't stand it when she got sarcastic. He slammed down the vodka bottle and snapped the revolver's empty cylinder in place. He dry-fired at the TV.

'Shut up!' he said in his voice from hell, that tone he got when the change came over him. 'You just do what I say, bitch.'

'I always do.' Divinity backed down.

'Don't you call anymore. Don't you come around, and the others don't know where I am, right?'

'I ain't told 'em nothing. So you dumping me?'

'For two days.'

'Then we're good?'

'As good as it gets,' he said.

Brazil ran into his house for only a moment and when he returned to West's car, he was carrying a grocery bag with something in it. He had a strange look on his face.

'What's that?' West asked.

'You'll see,' he said. 'I don't want to talk about it right now.'

'You got a body part in there or something?'

'In a way,' Brazil said morbidly.

West knew about Ruby Sink. The word had traveled like electricity. Everyone in the police department found out Miss Sink was Brazil's landlady, and when West heard the truth, she felt sick with guilt. She felt stupid and ignorant. Brazil's so-called girlfriend had been a seventy-one-year-old woman who rented a row house to him. West felt absolutely terrible and for hours had been trying to think of what to say.

She drove through the Fan. Nothing was open, not even the Robin Inn. She parked in front of her town house and turned off the engine but didn't get out. She looked at Brazil in the dark. Her heart stirred as she stared at his face, sharply defined by shadows from the streetlight.

'I know,' she said.

He was quiet.

'I know about Ruby Sink. That she was your landlady. The landlady I heard you were seeing.'

Brazil turned to her, baffled.

'Seeing?' he said. 'Where the hell did you hear something like that?'

'The talk was all around the department from day one,' West replied. 'People told me you had a thing going with your landlady. Then I heard you on the phone with her and… well, it sounded like it was true, in a way.'

'Why? Because I was nice to her when she paged me?' Brazil said with emotion. 'Because she was lonely and always bringing me cookies, cakes and things?' His voice wavered. 'Leaving them on my doorstep because I was never fucking home and never gave her the rucking time of day!'

'I'm sorry, Andy,' West said gently.

'It's like my mother.' He dissolved. 'I don't call her. She's so fucking drunk all the time and I can't stand it and won't listen to the awful things she says. I don't know. I don't know.'

West moved over and put her arms around him. She held him close to calm him. Her blood got hot and her chemistry woke up.

'It's all right, Andy,' she said. 'It's going to be all right.'

She wanted to hold him forever, but suddenly the awkwardness of it overtook the magic. She thought of her age. She thought of his talent, of everything that made him so unusual and special. He was probably hugging her back because he was terribly upset, no other reason. His heart probably wasn't pounding like hers. He probably wasn't as aware of their bodies touching as she was. She abruptly pulled away.

'I guess we should go in,' she said.

Niles heard them long before they gave a thought to him. He was waiting by the front door when his owner and Piano Man walked in.

Piano Man took a moment to pet Niles, while Niles's owner couldn't be bothered. Niles stayed where he was, tail switching. He watched with crossed eyes and plotted as they went into the kitchen.

When they were out of view, Niles jumped up on the table in the foyer. He hooked a claw into the florist's card. He jumped down, landing silently on three legs.

West did not think she could eat the sweet potato pie. She stared at the slice Brazil set before her. The idea that Ruby Sink had made it before her cold-blooded murder was too much for West to process.

'I can't throw it away.' Brazil sat across from West at the kitchen table. 'It would be heartless to throw it away. I just can't. You couldn't either, Virginia. She would want us to eat it.'

'This is kind of sick,' West said, blinking, focusing, looking at him. 'I don't think I can.'

Brazil picked up his fork. He flinched as he cut off the point of his slice. He raised it. He took a deep breath and put it in his mouth. West watched him chew once or twice and swallow. It surprised her that he looked enormously relieved. Tension left his face. His eyes brightened and got that fierce blue flame in them that she had learned to recognize and take very seriously.

'It's okay,' he told her in a strong voice. 'Trust me.' He nodded for her to eat.

West had never backed down from a challenge, especially in front of him. It was one of the hardest things she'd ever done when she took a bite of that pie. It surprised her that it didn't taste weird or dead or who knows what. She had no idea what she had expected.

'Brown sugar, coconut milk, cinnamon,' said Brazil, who spent more time in the kitchen than West did.

He took another bite, this time without hesitation. West matched him.

'Raisins, vanilla extract.' Brazil concentrated on his tongue as if he were tasting fine wine. 'Ah. Ginger. A hint of it. And a breath of nutmeg.'

'Breath of nutmeg?' West said. 'Where the hell does that shit come from?'

Brazil took another bite. So did she. She might just eat another slice to spite him.

Neither of them heard Niles, not that they ever did. He walked in holding up a paw, a white square of paper caught on one of his claws.

'Baby?' West said in alarm, certain he was injured. 'Oh sweetie, what did you do to yourself?'

She didn't realize what was on his claw until Niles was in Brazil's lap and the florist's card from the hallway table was in plain view. Brazil got a confused expression on his face.

'Schwan's Flowers and Gifts? Charlotte?' he read aloud what was on the envelope as he pulled out the card. '"Thinking of you, Andy,"' his voice trailed off.

West tried to act nonchalant and failed. She hated Niles and would pay him back for this.

'How did this end up on your hallway table?' Brazil wanted to know.

'How do you know it was on the table?' she said coolly as she imagined leaving Niles out in a hailstorm.

'I saw it there when we were here working on the computer!'

'Why were you looking at anything on any table?' Old anger and hurt jumped off the shelf where she had been storing them for months.