"Exactly. The old guy had been threatening to disinherit Monty anyway. Even though he had never adopted the kid, he had pledged the dying mother that he'd secure her son's financial future. As a result of what Aurora told him, he wrote Monty out of his will- not a single cent of inheritance-and before Monty could clean himself up and plead for another chance, the fat cat had a stroke and died a day or two later. Revenge," Guidi said, his voice dropping to a whisper.

"What did you say?" I asked.

"Revenge, Ms. Cooper. That's why Aurora Tait wound up in a brick coffin. I might not have been as creative in disposing of her, but more than a few of us who crossed her path would have been only too happy to have had our revenge. I'm sure that's what Monty had in mind."

He tugged at the tip of his shirtsleeves to align them with each other and rested his clasped hands on the table.

"Do you shoot, Mr. Guidi?" I asked.

"Sorry?"

I pointed to his cuff link. He twisted his wrist to look and remind himself what he was wearing.

"Oh, these? Upper Brookville Hunt Club. It's their logo."

Ellen Gunsher found a new purpose for herself, trying to make her pathetic little firearms unit relevant. "Are you a good shot?"

"Been shooting all my life."

Scotty Taren looked puzzled. "In the Bronx? What are you, a friggin' squirrel bagger?"

"Quail, mostly. Game birds. At the club. But my first kill was back when I was a teenager, Detective, right in Van Cortlandt Park. D'you know it?"

"North Bronx, right next to the high-rent district in Riverdale."

"That's where I grew up-Bailey Avenue," Guidi said. It was still a neighborhood of large fieldstone houses that looked more like suburbia than New York City. "I was fourteen and had just gotten a new puppy for Christmas. We were in the backyard and I was throwing sticks for him to fetch. A coyote came out of the park-"

Little Miss Texas was incredulous. "A coyote?"

"There's eastern coyotes all over the state," Taren said. "Sometimes they slip down here through the woods when they get cold and hungry farther north. Real pain in the ass for Emergency Services to tranquilize them and ship 'em out before they start running in packs and attacking domestic animals-and little kids."

Guidi went on. "I thought it was a German shepherd running into the yard to play so I didn't panic at first. Then I saw that grizzled gray neck and the tail hanging down-you know the way coyotes do?-and he just snatched my puppy, a small brown Lab, and made off into the park. I went after him with one of my father's deer rifles, hanging in the garage, and dropped him before he could do any serious damage to the dog."

Ellen seemed pleased with the story's happy ending. Scotty Taren raised an eyebrow at me and moved his lips. I made out the words "Professor Tormey." Aaron Kittredge was no longer the only marksman on our list. Guidi could just as easily have been the one who shot at us that day at the Hall of Fame, and Kirby didn't know enough to stop him from telling a story of his childhood that set up his marksmanship for us.

There was a knock on the door and Laura opened it. "Excuse me, sorry to interrupt."

"It's fine," I said, getting to my feet with the expectation that she had Mike Chapman on my phone line. "I can step out."

"It's for Ellen," she said, shaking a finger at me. "Mr. McKinney needs to talk to you, dear."

There was a pause while Ellen left the room, and I decided to wait for her before going on with any more questioning.

"It's an odd set of circumstances," I said to Guidi. "Aurora's body found in the basement of the house on Third Street, and now the possibility that someone you knew bricked her up there to pay back a betrayal. Nobody in literature served up revenge better than Poe, and here we have a real-life copycat. On top of that, you're one of the most generous supporters of Poe Cottage. I don't think I've even thanked you for getting us in for a private tour last week."

"Did I do that?" he said, apparently surprised to hear it.

"Perhaps it was your secretary. Zeldin set it up for us, after we left the Botanical Gardens. I noticed your name on the plaque in the cottage."

"No coincidence there at all, Ms. Cooper. My name is on a lot of Bronx institutions. Zeldin himself can tell you that. I've donated a new magnolia garden in my mother's memory, which will open in the spring. And the two of us traipsed all over the conservatory just before the holidays. He's shameless about looking for naming opportunities, and some of us are vain enough to oblige him."

"Traipsed? What did you do with Zeldin?" The man couldn't traipse, from what I'd seen of him.

"Have you been to the conservatory since it reopened? It's spectacular. He walked me through the whole thing after hours one night."

"I didn't think he could walk," I said. "I've only seen him in a wheelchair."

Zeldin's immobility had kept him out of my main focus as a suspect.

"He only resorts to his iron buggy when his gout kicks in. That makes it too painful for him to get about very much, with the muscle deterioration condition he suffers from. But most of the time he can walk just as well as he can talk."

The meeting had broken up by noon. I called Mercer at his home in Queens and suggested we meet at Zeldin's office at the Botanical Gardens up in the Bronx at two o'clock, for another go at him.

When I dialed Mike's cell phone it dumped me into voice mail. Sympathy and concern hadn't worked to get him to respond to me, so I tried another route. "Look what you've reduced me to, Detective Chapman. Now I'm getting information from you through Ellen Gunsher. I'm insane with jealousy. You knew it would have that effect, didn't you?

"Well, she's playing so nicely with me in the sandbox that I'm going to take her along this afternoon. See how she does in the gardens. Scotty will drive us up to the Bronx and Mercer will meet us there. I'm not trying to tempt you to come back to work, but I thought maybe you and Ellen were beginning to bond and you'd want to show her all your old Fordham haunts." I paused, thinking my tone had been too flip. "Take care. I'm not very good at getting the bad guys without you."

Scotty Taren's bulky outline blocked my doorway. "Zeldin's there. I gave him some crap about wanting to discuss Mr. Guidi's connections and contributions. We gotta enter through the back gate on Mosholu 'cause the front entrance is closed today."

"I thought they only shut down on Monday."

"Usually. But they're setting up a giant tent behind the conservatory this week. Most of the staff is off 'cause they'll be doin' overtime for the benefit. Friday night's their big fund-raiser- Winter Wonderland, he called it. He's gonna leave our names with security. I'll give Mercer a shout and let him know."

Shortly before 2P.M. the three of us-Ellen, Scotty, and I- drove through the tall wrought-iron fencing off Kazimiroff Boulevard and stopped at the gatehouse. The guard pulled back the plastic window to tell us that Zeldin was expecting us in the Haupt Conservatory, the stunning crystal palace that was the jewel of the gardens' exhibition space.

There was no sign of Mercer as we parked in the designated space-the only car in the deserted row-and climbed the walkway against the fierce February wind. The pathways were empty but for the golf carts that employees used to get around the miles of roads and sidewalks inside the gardens. There was no one to inquire of at the ticket desk inside the front door of the enormous building-one full acre under seventeen thousand panes of glass. It was very still inside, and eerily quiet.

We must have been there almost ten minutes before a custodial worker trudged from a hallway into the circular lobby area, where we waited under the Palm Dome. It was a thicket of New World palms that reached over ninety feet up into the building's cupola, circling a reflecting pool that mirrored their elegant limbs as they stretched toward the sunlight.