“Okay. We’re doing a Caesar salad, my mother’s recipe for chicken breasts with Dijon mustard sauce, and sautéed string beans.”

“With garlic,” Mike added. “That a problem for your love life?” he asked.

“He’s out of town, Mikey. Let’s go.”

We parked on Third Avenue and walked to the apartment. In place of Zac’s leash on the table in my entryway was a bouquet of flowers and a note from David’s housekeeper, who had reclaimed my weekend companion for her master.

Mike and Mercer set up shop in the kitchen while I changed into leggings and checked my answering machine. There was a message from Drew, who had tried me at the office with no success, a call from my mother reminding me not to forget my sister-in-law’s birthday, and a rambling message from Nina while stuck in a traffic jam on the Santa Monica Freeway.

I watched my two chefs cut and chop and squeeze their ingredients into a meal. Mike’s blazer and Mercer’s suit jacket were laid on the living room sofa, ties in pockets. Their shirt sleeves were rolled up and Martha Reeves was singing to them. “We’re all prepped,” Mercer said. “Let’s have our dinner after the evening news, okay?”

We went into the den and I served drinks as we waited for the six-thirty broadcast. Mike called Lieutenant Peterson to tell him the results of our two interviews and to learn what had gone on with the rest of the team. Detectives continued to plod through the corridors of the underground bomb shelter, talking to vagrants and searching for leads.

He hung up the phone and looked at Mercer and me, “Peterson wants to know what your thoughts are at this point. I told him we haven’t even talked about it yet.”

“It’s been gnawing at me all afternoon. What doI think? I’m convinced we’ve had it all wrong from the start. From the very first moment you guys got to the crime scene.”

Mercer leaned forward, drink in hand, and nodded his head slowly up and down. He knew where I was headed.

“I think you saw exactly what the killer wanted you to see. A sexual assault. A victim who died trying to fight off a rapist. A chance attack by a madman who happened to come across a woman all alone in her office in the middle of the night, random and opportunistic. And I think it’s all bullshit.”

Mike muted the television and stared at me.

“Gemma Dogen’s death was a murder, plain and simple,” I said. “Whoever did it staged it to look like a rape, to take us off course, have us looking for somebody who had no connection to Dogen. Like Pops. Like Can Man. The place is full of them.

“Kill her. Take off her panties, lift up her skirt. Make ‘em think sex crime. I don’t think anybody tried to rape her. That’s probably the last thing whoever killed her wanted any part of-a sexual encounter with Dr. Dogen.”

“Maybe I wanted you to work on the case with us so bad I didn’t even consider staging as a possibility that morning,” Mike responded.

“Isn’t it logical? The killer leaves the body positioned to look like a rape-or a good attempt at one. But there’s no semen, no trace evidence in the wounds, not even a strand of an assailant’s pubic hair on her body. Sure, he could have been interrupted or scared off, but my bet is he didn’t even want to try to rape her.

“The more we know about Dogen,” I told them, “the more I’ve got to think that somebody wanted her dead and had the good sense to plan this to throw us off track.”

“They’re wasting their time squirreling around in the basement with the whackjobs. It’s gonna be somebody reallysane, like the guys we’ve been talking to in business suits and white lab coats,” Mike said.

“Like Spector told you,” Mercer said, “these doctors are already paranoid ‘cause you’re on the case.”

“That’s asinine. They’d be hard-pressed to find someone who respects the medical community as much as I do. The two men I’ve loved most in this world,” I responded, thinking of my father and of Adam, my late fiancé, “have been doctors-the most caring and devoted people I’ve ever known.”

“Besides,” Mike added. “Nobody’s saying the killer’s a doctor. But the odds are pretty good that it’s someone who knew Dogen. Knew her habits, her hours. Knew that everyone would think her strong enough to fight back against a rapist and fit enough to try it even though he was armed.”

“I think tomorrow’s another day for us at Mid-Manhattan,” Mercer suggested. “Who’s reaching out for the husband? Any idea?”

“Yeah, the lieutenant said he called London this afternoon and broke it to him. Very cooperative, appropriately upset. Told Peterson it was like losing his oldest friend.”

“I hope they’re gonna try to bring him over here to talk to us. There must be some light he can shed on her for us.”

We argued our way in a friendly fashion through most of the news stories, disagreeing with each other about which of the witnesses we liked or disliked and what the order of our interviews should be throughout the week.

Mike shushed us up when he saw the lead-in forJeopardy!

Mercer called Maureen to check on her spirits at the top of the show since neither Mike nor I took the first round seriously. He passed the phone to each of us and she told me about her day.

She’d had a visit from John DuPre on his neurological rounds. “He’s one of the guys who found Pops in the X-ray department, isn’t he? I was tempted to give in and let him do a physical on me. Don’t you think he’s fine, Alex? Quite a looker.”

“I’ll let you know tomorrow. Mike wants us to reinterview him. We promised your husband there’d be no hands-on medical practice, Mo. Behave yourself.”

“What’s a girl to do? The only news from the solarium today was from my next-door neighbor. Says her internist told her Gemma had a thing for younger men.”

“How young? And did she name names?”

“Well, the woman telling the story is eighty-two so anything in her book is young. Sorry, no names.”

“Sarah’s coming up to see you tomorrow. Meanwhile, I’m being wined and dined by the other two musketeers.”

“I’m jealous. Call me later.”

By the time Trebek got to the highlight of the show, the legally blind linguist from Tampa was leading both other contestants by four thousand dollars. “Today’s Final Jeopardy category,” he announced, “is Art. We’ll be right back after a commercial break.”

Mike yelled at the television screen. “How the hell can they ask a blind man a question about art? That’s a disgrace-it’s discrimination, it’s-”

“It’s basically because you’re ignorant in that area, Detective Chapman,” I said, winking at Mercer and imitating the tone of a cross-examining attorney, “is it not?”

“Five dollars, Coop. That’s my bet.”

“Sorry once again, Chapman. House has a ten-dollar minimum. I’m willing to go to fifty on it with you. Get my money back.”

Mercer was the referee as usual. “Ten dollars is the bet.”

Trebek looked at the tense trio before him and revealed the answer. “Seventeenth-century Dutch portraitist famous for his miniature paintings of wealthy burghers, whose best-known work isThe Peace at Münster. ”

While the theme music marked the time, Mike ranted at the ridiculous notion that any of the contestants would know the answer to such an obscure query.

“No, I’m sorry, Mr. Kaiser,” Trebek told the first contestant. “Frans Hals is a good guess, but you’re a century off.”

“You want me to tell you beforehe does so you know I’m for real?” I asked Chapman as the second contestant misfired with a try at Rembrandt.

“See, Mercer? This is the kind of bullshit they teach at a Seven Sisters school. That’s why they’re all so arrogant when they get out of those places. Who is it, Blondie?”

“Who is Gerard Terborch?” I said, complying with the basic rule by, putting my answer in the form of a question.

Trebek was consoling the blind man, who didn’t have a clue and had left his Braille answer card completely blank.