Mickey was looking in at the goat and now pulled it out of the oven, setting it on the top of the stove. He covered it with aluminum foil, then turned back to the table. “Ten minutes to let the meat rest while the polenta cooks, then we eat. And you said it better than I could, Alicia. That was pretty much exactly it.” In spite of her no-nonsense style of dress tonight-she wore old jeans, a plaid flannel shirt, and hiking boots-Mickey had been fighting the temptation to stare at her since she’d come in. But now he braved a quick surreptitious look and noticed a faraway glaze and glassiness in her eyes. “Alicia? Are you okay?”

Biting her lip, she nodded. “Just, you know, dealing with the Dominic thing again. That whole doing-something-that-matters is looking a little more distant right now, that’s all. But I’m okay. Really.”

Parr tipped up his glass, then poured himself some more. “What about Dominic? Did you know him too?”

“Did she know him?” Ian asked.

And for the next twenty minutes, until the dinner was halfway gone-everyone loving the goat-they covered the common ground between Jim and Alicia as Como’s drivers, some of the life and politics up at Sunset, how things were the same, and how they had changed. “Yeah, but even with all the changes,” Parr was saying, “everything I hear is that what Dominic did was essentially the same. He drives around, talks to people, helps wherever he can. Serves food. Drives nails. He was just a hands-on guy. I’m never going to believe Dominic was stealing money. And irregularities? A business this big, there’s always going to be paperwork problems. But if somebody was taking money, it wasn’t Dominic.”

“But do you think that’s what this is about?” Mickey asked. “Somebody taking money and Dominic found out?”

“This is what’s been getting to me,” Alicia said. “I can’t imagine what it’s about. Given who Dominic was, the man he was, it just defies belief.”

“Well.”

All eyes went to Parr.

“But I promised my good-cooking grandson I wouldn’t go out there and ask around.”

Ian was sitting in the visitor’s chair at the end of the table. “And what would you ask about?”

Parr put his fork down. “Just what we’ve all been talking about here. Somebody taking money. Maybe somebody who just wanted to take over. I mean, look at it. Dominic’s been doing it his way forever. So long as he’s there it’s going to keep getting done the same way. But now there’s more money and more organization all around, am I right? More decisions that he’s got to take part in, but he’s not really interested. He wants to be on the street ’cause that’s who he is.”

Mickey, though, was shaking his head. “It’s a good theory, Jim, but let’s not forget that Dominic wasn’t exactly Saint Francis of Assisi living with a vow of poverty. Just his legit salary was six hundred and fifty grand a year in this job.” He held up a hand at the expected opposition around the table. “Not that he didn’t earn it, but he was also the rainmaker who brought in most of that money.”

“And is that a bad thing?” Alicia asked.

“Not at all. But let’s remember that whoever took him out killed the goose who kept laying the golden egg, year after year. Alicia, Jim here is talking about serving food and driving nails, but how often did Dominic do fund-raisers too? Almost every day, right? At least four days a week?”

“At least,” she had to admit.

Mickey shrugged. “I’m just saying I haven’t seen any sign he was slowing down in the job. In fact, the more we talk about this, the more I’m inclined to start with what Al Carter said-Dominic was meeting somebody he knew over how he could help him. That sounds like Dominic, doesn’t it? Hands-on, one-on-one. Even if the appointment was just an excuse to get Dominic alone, at least he believed it.”

“Maybe you should talk to Al Carter again, Mickey,” Alicia said.

And Mickey nodded. “The thought has crossed my mind.”

Hunt had sat in his car and pondered for most of fifteen minutes, then had placed a call to Gina Roake. She advised him to leave the scene and to make an anonymous call to the Police Department reporting what he’d seen. Maybe even disguising his voice. He wanted, she had told him, nothing to do with discovering the body of Nancy Neshek, if indeed it was she, which he did not doubt.

But they both knew he could not do that without running the risk of losing his license. More than that, he just didn’t see himself operating like that. So about twenty minutes ago, he had called Juhle and then gone back to sit in his car at the curb.

The first police vehicle to appear was a black-and-white SFPD squad car. This might turn out to be a dicey moment, Hunt realized, since his precise role here was nebulous at best. Especially when the crime was murder and the scene was a locked-up, darkened mansion in one of the city’s most expensive neighborhoods.

Nevertheless, there was nothing to do but brazen it out, so he flashed his lights briefly at the squad car as it pulled up, and emerged from his Cooper into the lights of the squad car with his identification held out in front of him. “I’m a private investigator named Wyatt Hunt,” he announced. “I’m the one who called Inspector Juhle.”

One of the officers-the name badge over his pocket read “Sorenson”-jerked a thumb in the direction of the house. “There’s a body in there?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you know?”

“I saw it from the window.” He didn’t want to go into too much detail about which window and what he’d been doing out here in the first place. Maybe they wouldn’t ask.

“You’re sure?”

“Reasonably, yeah.”

“Okay.” The cop opened the back door of his squad car. “Please have a seat and we’ll be right back.”

This sounded like a request, but Hunt knew that squad car doors didn’t open from the inside when you were in the backseat and that a cage separated him from access to the cop’s stuff in the front. He was being detained in the nicest possible manner.

Sorenson said, “Let’s go, Lou,” and they walked together up to the now-dark front porch where Sorenson tried the door, rang the bell, and called out “Police” a couple of times, to no response. Meanwhile, his partner was shining a flashlight beam through the windows on either side of the front door. After a short discussion, they walked back to the squad car and opened the door.

“It’s all locked up.”

“I know.”

“The back too?”

“Right.”

“We didn’t see anything,” Sorenson said.

Hunt got out. “It’s farther to your left,” he said. “Way over by the corner.”

“You saw something over there? We didn’t see a thing.”

“It was lighter out.”

Hunt was starting to wish he’d taken Gina’s advice and placed an anonymous call when another figure approached on the street to his right. “Excuse me,” the man said. “I live just across there. What’s going on here?”

But Sorenson was within hearing and moved a few steps down the pathway to the door. “Would you please stay back, sir? This is a potential crime scene.”

“A crime scene. What happened?”

Sorenson had the neighbor and Hunt both in his flashlight now. “We’re not sure,” he said, as another car pulled up behind Sorenson’s squad car.

“Here’s the sergeant,” his partner said.

“Let’s hope so.”

Eventually Juhle arrived in his personal Camry, but not before another squad car, a van from Channel 3 that must have picked up the dispatch call, an ambulance (in case the person wasn’t in fact dead and needed medical attention), and six other locals-neighbors who had materialized out of the once-deserted street. By the time Juhle got there, none of the other five policemen on the scene with their flashlights, and looking through the door and front windows, had been able to spy the body.

Hunt knew he was going to have to admit he’d been over to the side window, snooping, and was starting to get a bad feeling about it.