“Yeah, I know.”

From the entryway in the middle of the lobby, Russ could hear the muted clinking of forks hitting china. “Gimme back to Harlene, will you?”

Harlene came onto the line. “Yeah?”

“Tell Lyle I want him to drop by the hospital again as soon as he can. See what the reaction is when he tells Becky Castle her stuff was found in Reid’s office. Have Eric call me from Haudenosaunee as soon as he can. I want to know if he’s turned up anything.”

“Will do, chief. How’s the fancy party? Is it making up for having to work on your birthday?”

He thought about their table. Linda and Clare and Hugh and Russ. Like a bad Italian art movie. “Harlene, I can honestly say I’d rather be eating greasy takeout and waiting for an autopsy report than be here.”

Lisa Schoof tried to control her shaking. She stood in the passageway outside the Algonquin Waters kitchen, listening to pots hammering iron burners and dishes clanging against stainless steel. The door swung open, and she jerked to attention, but it was only an assistant in a grease-spattered white shirt, ducking down the hall for a quick smoke. The door, shutting, pumped a blast of steam and smell and the sound of harsh voices jabbering in a language Lisa couldn’t even recognize.

She had found her way to the kitchen door easily enough: In her sweater and padded motorcycle jacket she looked nothing like the guests she had seen in her brief flight through the lobby, and a sympathetic chambermaid, thinking she was new and late for her shift, pointed her in the right direction.

She stepped into the kitchen, thinking she could snag a waiter to deliver the message she had written out, but was stymied immediately by the chaos around her. She had waitressed before, at the Red Lobster in Glens Falls, but that kitchen could have fit into a corner of the acreage of white tile and chrome racks that surrounded her here. She was perhaps ten steps in when a short man in front of an open blast furnace of an oven started screaming at her, first in a foreign language, then in English. “Get out! Get out, you! Get out!”

Lisa stumbled back, breathless, and was on the verge of bolting when a hand fell on her shoulder and a pleasant voice asked, “What are you doing here, kiddo?”

She was face-to-face with a faultlessly white shirt and an elaborate waistcoat. The man holding her looked like a riverboat gambler in a western. “Are you a waiter?”

“Sure am. Are you new?”

She shook her head. “No.” Her throat threatened to close up, but she got her prepared story out. “I work for Mr. Shaun Reid. I have to get a note to him. It’s important. It’s about the, the mill. His mill.”

“Where’s he at? The banquet? The door’s right over there. I can show you the way.”

“Oh, no. I can’t. I’ll get in trouble. He, he doesn’t want the other businessmen to know. That… there’s a problem.” She reached into her pocket and withdrew the tightly folded note. “Could you?”

The waiter smiled at her indulgently. “Sure, kiddo. Do you know where he’s sitting?”

She had thought about that, driving in. “I think he’s with the people from the big paper company.”

“GWP? Okay, I’ll see that he gets it.” He held out his hand for the paper, but she unfolded it quickly and pulled her ballpoint from her pocket. Meet me in the hallway outside the kitchen, she scribbled at the bottom. She refolded the paper and passed it to the nice waiter.

“You better leave now, before Egoberto tries to fillet you.”

She glanced over to where the ferocious cook was ramming rounds of helpless bread into the fiery inferno. “Right,” she said.

So here she stood, chafing her hand over her arms in a futile attempt to rub away the cold seeping from her gut. It already felt as if she had been waiting for an hour. What if the waiter couldn’t find Reid? What if he laughed and tore up the paper? What if he called the cops and they were already on their way to arrest her for blackmail? What if-

The kitchen door swung open again. Shaun Reid strode into the hall, brushing at his tuxedo jacket as if it had been soiled by his time in the kitchen. He saw her. His head went up. His black eyes and bruises startled her. He looked like a boxer. “Who are you?” he asked.

His age, his clothing, the authority in his voice-she almost blurted out the truth by sheer force of habit. The thing that caught her was that he didn’t know already. She had been cleaning his house for a year now, and he didn’t recognize her. Then she noticed the sheen of sweat across his forehead, the dampness on his upper lip.

It was quite cool in the kitchen passageway.

“I’m the person who has Millie van der Hoeven safe.”

He glanced quickly over his shoulder, then back at her. “I don’t know anything about that,” he said.

“Fine. I’ll go call my friend, and he’ll take her to the cops. She’s been dying to talk to them all day.” She feinted, as if she were going to go around him.

He threw out his arm to stop her. “Open your jacket,” he said.

She did.

“Pick up your sweater.”

“Screw you. You want to see tits, go somewhere else, you perv.”

“I want proof you’re not wearing a wire before I talk with you, you little twit.”

“Oh.” She lifted her sweater and jacket as far as the underside of her breasts and turned around slowly, so he could see there wasn’t anything snaking down her back. It was by far the weirdest thing she had done in a day full of weird things. It didn’t feel real-more like she was acting in a TV show. The unreality emboldened her. “Here’s the deal,” she said, lowering her sweater. “You confess to having beaten up Becky Castle, and we’ll make sure Millie van der Hoeven never has the chance to testify that you killed her brother.”

Reid’s eyes narrowed. He stepped toward her, and for a moment she was afraid. Then a crash from the kitchen reminded her that they were in a relatively public place. If he tried anything, she could bring the house down with her screams.

“It was you who put that dress and the makeup in my office, wasn’t it? You little bitch.” He hissed the last phrase so quietly she wasn’t sure he had said it at all.

She forced her voice to remain strong and confident. “I’m sure you’d rather be arrested for assault than for murder.”

“It was an accident,” he snapped.

“So you want us to take Millie to the cops?”

“No!” He crossed one arm over his chest and propped the other against it. He covered his mouth and chin with one hand. Finally he said, “How do I know you won’t let her testify to the police after I’ve pled guilty to the assault?”

“It’s a balance. Like a seesaw. If you deny you beat up Becky Castle, we’ll be in trouble. If we let Millie tell the cops, you’ll be in trouble.”

“Getting arrested for assault and battery is trouble, you idiot.”

“You’re a rich guy. You can afford a good lawyer. Tell him it was a lovers’ fight, he’ll probably get you off with a few years suspended and some domestic violence classes.”

He looked at her closely. “Your friend is the person who really assaulted the Castle girl, isn’t he?” He stared at her hand. She looked down and saw her wedding ring. “He’s your husband,” Reid said.

She folded her hand and pressed it against her leg. “Do we have a deal?”

“I have to finish the dinner,” he said, tilting his head toward the kitchen. “I’m conducting some important business there. And I need a chance to call my attorney, to arrange to turn myself in.”

“You have until midnight tonight.”

“Just like Cinderella,” he said. “All right.”

She stood for a moment, not knowing what to do now. He had just… given in. She hadn’t been expecting that. Finally she shook herself and walked off. He said nothing, so neither did she.