Casey paused, then said, “Sorry.”

Marty slowly nodded his head, swerved to the side of the road, and threw open the car door. He removed his glasses and began cleaning them furiously on his shirttail before he leaned out and retched, spilling a stream of vomit onto the edge of the road. When he leaned back into the car and replaced his glasses, he wiped the corner of his mouth on the back of a wrist and apologized to her.

“It’s okay,” she said as they pulled back out onto the road.

Casey sat in the car in front of the Barrone law offices while Marty ran in. When he came out, he carried two boxes, both of which he dumped into the trunk.

“That’s a lot of stuff,” Casey said.

“Yeah, well,” Marty said, starting the engine and pulling away from the curb fast enough to swerve into the oncoming lane and set off a series of horn blasts, “I was starting a novel.”

Despite Casey’s pleas, Marty insisted on staying with her as she worked her way though the check-in process at the airport, waiting patiently beside her while the TSA agents went through her luggage. Upstairs, security had only one line going, and it snaked through the terminal all the way to the mouth of the walk bridge that led to the parking garage. Casey looked at her watch, counted the people in front of her, and came up with an estimate of how long it would take to get through the line.

“Your ten minutes cost me,” she said. “They shut the doors, like, twenty minutes before the flight these days.”

“You’ll make it,” Marty said. “There’s only a couple gates. It’s not like Atlanta. It took me half an hour one time to get to my gate once I passed through security there.”

Casey nodded and moved slowly forward. Her phone vibrated and she saw another number she didn’t recognize. She powered it down and stuck it into her briefcase. Her voice mail had already been overloaded, some from concerned friends like Stacy and Sharon and José but mostly from reporters eager for a scoop. How they got Casey’s number she couldn’t imagine. She considered calling Stacy back, just to check in, but pushed the idea from her mind. She just needed to get home, to her own couch, with her own balcony overlooking the narrow Venetian canal. Maybe a longneck bottle of Budweiser in her hand.

She was next in line to have her ID checked when a stampede of travelers gushed through the double doors on the exit side of the glass partition. Marty finally said good-bye and that he’d call her as things progressed, but he remained standing off to the side, evidently intent on seeing her all the way in. Casey was loading her computer into a plastic tub when the profile of Jake Carlson’s face caught her eye.

“Jake,” she said, waving and patting the plastic divider. “Jake.”

JAKE POINTED at the cell phone he held, then at Casey, then waved for her to come back. She gathered her things, disrupting the flow of the line and apologizing as she worked her way against the flow and ducked under the elastic rail. Jake kissed her cheek and hugged her excitedly.

“Why didn’t you answer your phone?” Jake asked.

“Too much,” Casey said. “I shut it off.”

“Where were you going?”

“Home.”

“And leave this lovely little town?”

“I got your message,” she said. “I didn’t think you’d get back. I need to put some distance between me and that place. I can still smell the urine from the woman in my cell. I think it’s on my clothes.”

Jake sniffed. “No. Come on. You can’t go. See what I’ve got. It’s going to take some doing, but we’re going to tie Graham in so tight with these mafia thugs that he’ll be the front-page story. Believe it or not, the FBI has an active investigation going on the guy.”

“I’d believe anything,” she said.

“Hi,” Marty said, appearing from behind them and extending a hand to Jake.

“Marty got fired,” Casey said. “He’s been great.”

“Your own uncle?” Jake said.

Marty shrugged. “He was an asshole, anyway.”

“I bet,” Jake said. “I saw you on TV at the DC airport.”

“My luggage,” Casey said.

“The TSA won’t leave with it if you’re not on the plane,” Jake said. “Don’t worry. Come on.”

They got Casey’s luggage back at the TSA bag check, then took the walk bridge to the garage while Jake told them about a mobster named Niko Todora, John Napoli’s patron, and a man who’d gone from the underworld to legitimate businessman.

“So, where to?” Casey asked.

“Buffalo,” Jake said. “I’ve got a list of all the names and companies. We’ve got to find the link to Graham. We’ve got to prove he’s tied in with these guys and they’re all trying to sink Patricia Rivers because of those gas leases. Once we do that, his whole story about you falls apart.”

“No sweat,” Casey said. “What’s your plan?”

“People,” Jake said. “They can’t help talking. We get a disgruntled employee or someone who got screwed on a deal and we drill down. There’s got to be a money trail somewhere. There always is.”

“Follow the money,” Casey said. “Great. I never heard that before.”

“I can help,” Marty said.

“Of course,” Jake said, stopping in back of his rental Cadillac to open the trunk and load Casey’s bags.

“I mean, I can really help,” Marty said. “To follow the money. I think.”

“How?” Casey asked.

Marty said, “When you’ve got money, you’ve got taxes, right?”

“Taxes and death,” Jake said.

“For some people,” Marty said.

“I remember that,” Casey said. “That’s how he introduced you and your firm, right? Something about a second set of eyes on some tax work?”

“I remember a company in Syracuse while I was clerking one summer,” Marty said. “They had this big office building with statues and fountains, some fiber-optic company. A hundred or so high-paid executives with a thousand people underneath them, but no one local did the legal work, or the accounting. They paid some firm in Connecticut twice the hourly rate they could have gotten around here. It drove the partners crazy.”

“And?” Casey asked.

“The whole thing was a Ponzi scheme,” Marty said. “The shares were worthless. The thing went belly-up. Everyone lost their jobs and when it was over, all the lawyers around said it was no wonder they didn’t use local lawyers or accountants. They didn’t want anyone to know what was really going on. Like Jake said, people talk.”

“And Graham had your law office do some tax work?” Jake said.

“Maybe because we’re a safe distance from Rochester and Buffalo,” Marty said.

“Where his partners are,” Casey said.

“To catch wind of his scheme,” Jake said.

“What scheme, though?” Marty asked.

“That’s what we have to find out,” Casey said.

“And those tax records might be the key,” Marty said.

“Where are they, Marty?” Jake asked.

“That’s a problem.”