Carmen and I cooling our heels out here on the curb meant that there were strangers watching Holly’s every move and, even better for her, the possibility of judgmental Artie walking around any corner. Yep, the setup was almost as good as that afternoon in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart.

All that, and a turkey in the oven, too.

No Native Americans. No Pilgrims. But nonetheless, for Holly it had the makings of a Thanksgiving to remember.

The dashboard clock informed me that it was exactly three minutes after four o’clock.

Why was that important? Sometime in the last couple of hours, a world or two away from South Bend, Mary Ellen Wolf had carved a long slender knife through the crisp skin on the outside of a beautiful Georgia turducken. After a little downward pressure-it would take just a little because after eighteen hours in a slow oven those nested birds would be as tender as a grandmother’s whisper-the sequential beauty would be revealed. Turkey, duck, chicken, followed by some dark andouille, and then all the glorious components of oyster stuffing.

There are times in life when you just know that the train has left the station without you and that it’s not coming back around, ever. A county fair and a girl you could have kissed. A job and a promotion you might have had. Some friends in a beat-up old car and a trip you might have taken.

Twins, and a meal you might have eaten.

The Wolf sisters and that turducken were going to haunt me for a while. I was 110 percent sure about that.

A foot away from me Carmen was doing something with her fingernails and a sharp wooden stick. Sherry did the same thing occasionally, but Sherry doing it never captured much of my attention. Carmen doing it did. She distracted me even more when she started humming the melody of one of those tunes she’d sung the night before at bedtime in the Days Inn.

While the turkey was resting on the cutting board prior to carving, Lauren asked me if I’d spoken with Jon Younger.

“Maybe after dinner,” I said. “But I’m still not convinced this can’t wait until Monday.”

She kissed me. “Call him. Please.”

Dinner? The turkey was dry, the gravy a little salty, and the cranberries overcooked, but the caramelized Brussels sprouts were perfection, and the merlot that Lauren had picked was as supple as a young dancer. Jonas, our neighbor Adrienne’s son, and his nanny joined us for the meal because Adrienne was taking call at the hospital. Grace made it through the entire affair without a meltdown, and Lauren fought her steroid malaise with a determination that was inspiring.

The dogs slept like dogs.

It was a pretty damn good Thanksgiving.

Lauren and I cleaned up the kitchen together. I grabbed my pager off my hip a moment after I started the dishwasher and promptly excused myself to make a couple of phone calls. Five minutes later I tracked Lauren down at the pool table in time to watch her rerack the balls and begin to fondle the white cue ball in a way that made me just the slightest bit jealous.

I said, “Our guests are gone?”

She nodded. “Jonas was approaching a cliff at high speed. We thought he should have a mattress under him when he went over it.”

I pointed at my pager and said, “Emergency, unfortunately. I have to go into the office for a couple of hours.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Yeah?”

I said, “Yeah.”

She didn’t believe me.

She leaned over the table and with a single powerful stroke turned the triangle of pool balls into a physics lesson in vectors.

I didn’t make the third phone call, the crucial phone call, until I was in my car on the way downtown to my office.

“Jim? Alan Gregory.”

“Alan. This is a surprise.”

“Are you out somewhere, Jim? Am I disturbing your dinner?” The truth was that I didn’t really care whether I was intruding, but feigning politeness was called for, and I was feigning politeness.

“I’m with some friends. We just finished. What’s up?”

“It’s about the problem with… your client’s secrets. I have some information that you should know.”

“I’m listening.”

“I’m not comfortable going into it on the phone. Could you drop by my office later on? Maybe five o’clock?”

“On Thanksgiving? This is necessary?”

“I think you should know what’s going on. Some of what I want to talk with you about other people already know, so I’d like to bring you up to speed as soon as possible in case some of it becomes public, Jim.”

“Really. Five o’clock?”

“I’m heading into the office now, and I have an emergency-something with another patient-that I need to take care of first. She and I should be done by five at the latest.”

“See you then,” he said.

When I arrived in downtown Boulder, I detoured into the parking lot of one of the banks on Walnut near Fourteenth and withdrew the maximum amount that was permitted from an ATM. My plan required cash. Quite a bit of it, actually.

A few blocks farther west I pulled down the driveway of the building that held my office. She was waiting for me on the steps that led up to the French doors at the rear of the building.

“You got the money?”

I flashed the thick pile of twenties.

“Let’s go, then, get this done. They’re holding dessert until I get back. My sister makes a sweet potato pie that…”

Tayisha’s words just faded into the night.

“Shouldn’t take long?” I asked.

“Nope.” She smiled at me in a way that made her sparkling white teeth jump out of the darkness. “My boss never hears about this, right?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“Then we’re on. Where’s my baby?”

Only one other house on Holly Malone’s block seemed to be having people over for the holiday celebration. As far as Thanksgiving was concerned, this was a neighborhood of guests, not hosts.

Carmen and I took turns dozing off for the next couple of hours. On one of my turns awake I walked around the block, not so much because I expected to find anything going on as because everybody had been telling me that it was good for my heart to get my pulse up every once in a while.

I was beginning to suspect that Carmen was good for my heart, too, though the fact that she was sleeping right beside me in the car was distracting me in ways that left me uneasy. The minutes passed especially slowly as she napped, but it was okay. I spent a portion of the silent hours lost in a familiar cop reverie about evil, an evil that I felt was hovering over that South Bend neighborhood like a dark cloud in still winds.

Somewhere around six o’clock Carmen and I got confused about whose turn it was to nap. The second I opened my eyes I knew something didn’t feel exactly right. It took me longer than it should have taken to realize that she, too, was snoozing.

“Activity,” I said.

Carmen’s eyes popped open. “What, what?”

“Activity.”

The activity was the arrival of a minivan, an older Plymouth that had those tacky fake wood panels on the sides. It hadn’t been washed since water was invented. The minivan had parked right behind the little Lexus, so our view of the ensuing disembarkation was partially obscured. Still, I could tell that a small crowd was forming on the sidewalk.

“The other sister,” I said.

With some wonder in her voice, Carmen said, “My, she’s fertile. Look at the size of…”

I counted five kids congregating on the sidewalk, but anyone who was shorter than three feet or so in height probably remained invisible to me because of the angle and the intervening Lexus.