Everyone was offered the chance to throw a shovelful of dirt into the grave. I wasn’t sure, if I were Joel, that I’d see this as an act of friendship, but I took a turn. In the heavy, damp air, that simple exertion pulled a trickle of sweat down my spine. Then it all was done. We left Joel there and made our way to the gate.

“Lack of cheeriness seems to be the order of the day,” I said to Bill as I climbed into the car.

“You okay?”

“I keep wondering about this.” I tapped the envelopes. “Whether Joel would be happy we’re following a hunch. I think more likely he’d chew me out for letting my imagination run away with me.”

“Well, let me ask you this. Was he always right when he chewed you out?”

I gave Bill a long look. “You know, for the Marlboro Man, you’re pretty smart.”

“Speaking of which, would you mind if I had a cigarette?”

“Of course I’d mind. It’s not good for you. Though I have to admit, if I smoked, I’d be puffing away right now.”

“You mind when I do things that aren’t good for me?”

I stared. “I take it back. Smart. What was I thinking?” I closed my eyes and leaned back against the headrest, just feeling the car roll along for a while. Then I asked, “Listen, assuming Joel would be wrong and the Shanghai Moon’s a good hunch, did you get Dr. Edwards? What did he say?”

“He has no idea about Major Ulrich beyond what we already know, but he’s intrigued. He’s going to put a graduate student on it and get back to us.”

“When?”

“Soon. She’s his ace researcher, so it just depends what there is to find.”

“Great. Can I nap?”

“Sure, but only if you want to stay in the car while I talk to the roommate from Zurich. We’re here.”

I sat up. “Here” was the Pilarsky home, where Ruth and her family would be sitting shiva for seven days. Strictly speaking, we weren’t here. Cars already lined both sides of the street; Bill had pulled into a space a block away. He was opening his door when I asked, “Do you think I should go in?”

“What?”

I smoothed my black linen skirt, which suddenly seemed very wrinkled. “Maybe they blame me.”

“Blame you?”

“I was working with him. I was on the phone with him right before.”

“Do they seem to? His sister-in-law called you to go on with the case.”

“But maybe-”

“Lydia? I don’t think they’re the ones who blame you.”

I looked away. “If I’d rushed up there like he told me to-”

“You couldn’t have-”

“But he told me-”

“Did you ever wonder why he called you in?”

“On this case? Because I’m Chinese.”

“Did he only call you in on Chinese cases?”

“No. But-”

“Did I ever call you in on a Chinese case?”

“No. But-”

“You don’t do what people tell you to.”

“What?”

“That’s you, all the time. You don’t, and by and large it’s a good thing. I know your mother hates it. In a daughter it’s probably irritating.”

“That’s an understatement.”

“But a partner-an associate, fine, whatever-who doesn’t follow directions is a huge plus. I like knowing if you make a move, it’s because you really think it’s the right one. Not somebody told you to. Even me.”

This was seriously new to me. I said slowly, “Joel was always on my case for not doing things the way he would have.”

“It can be frustrating day to day. And he did have that mentor thing going, with you. But he didn’t stop calling you.”

“As opposed to you.”

“No, hey. Okay. I stopped calling you because-”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“What isn’t?”

“Calling me. We’ll talk about that later, maybe.” I saw, on his face, the resolve to explain himself warring with the relief of not having to. It was almost funny. “What I meant, you don’t get on my case. About how I do things. One of the last things Joel said to me was ‘You and Bill work well together.’ ”

“Did that come as news?”

I thought about it. “Not news. More like one of those pop-up reminders on your cell phone screen.”

“My cell phone doesn’t have those.”

“Yes, it does; you just don’t know how to make them work.” I opened my door. “Let’s go. We need to pay our condolences, and find this guy from Zurich.”

As I walked toward the house I heard, Good going, Chinsky.

I’d never paid a shiva call before, so I didn’t know what was normal after a Jewish funeral, but the chaos in the house, I thought, would have appealed to Joel. A small boy, shirt untucked, chased an older girl who kept slowing down so she wouldn’t lose him. Women ferried from the kitchen to the dining room with casseroles, salads, breads. Men poured glasses of whiskey or juice. People stood, sat, ate, talked. No one rang the doorbell; you just walked in. Except for the contents of the casseroles, and the black cloths draping the mirrors, it was just like dropping by after a funeral at Wah Wing Sang.

I spoke to Ruth, who sat on a plain wooden stool in her living room. I’m not sure what I said, though “sorry” came into it a lot. I introduced Bill and she thanked him for coming. As I was offering my sympathy to Joel’s son-I told him Joel had talked a lot about him, which made him smile-someone tapped my shoulder.

“Lydia? I’m Leah. I’d have recognized you anywhere.”

I turned to find an angular, gray-haired woman smiling beside me. “Well,” I said, shaking her hand, “I do sort of stand out in this crowd.”

“Not just that. Joel described you perfectly.”

“I’m afraid to ask.”

“ ‘Small, quick, restless.’ He also once said, ‘Much smarter than she knows,’ but I’m sure by now you know.”

“She doesn’t.” Bill arrived with a beer, and a seltzer for me. “But it won’t help to tell her.”

I was afraid I was going to have to squelch this debate about my IQ, but Leah waved over a stocky bald man from across the room. “This is David Rosenberg. From Zurich, that you wanted to talk to. David, this is Lydia Chin, the investigator Joel was working with. And this is her partner, Bill Smith.”

In less somber circumstances I’d have objected to Bill’s unauthorized promotion back into his old job, but in less somber circumstances he’d have smirked. As it was, we all shook hands, and Leah, after suggesting we might have more privacy on the screened porch, left us. We settled ourselves in creaky wicker chairs and watched some kids making a mess of their good clothes by digging in the dirt. A few overgrown shrubs symbolically marked the boundaries of the Pilarsky backyard. Toward the rear rose a surprising and well-tended vegetable patch featuring an even more surprising scarecrow dressed in an old gray suit of Joel’s.

“That’s a little spooky,” I said.

“His daughter Amy once said it was scary how many years Joel could wear the same suit,” David Rosenberg said. “So Joel wondered if it would scare the birds, too.”

“Does it work?”

Rosenberg gazed at the scarecrow with a sad smile. “I don’t think Joel ever scared anything, in person or in effigy. Leah said you have questions for me?”

“Yes. You were one of the last phone calls Joel made. Not long before he died.” I tried for clinical detachment, but I could hear I hadn’t made it. “Alice Fairchild said she’d gotten Joel’s name from a contact in Zurich. Could that have been you?”

“Yes. She called me a few weeks back to ask if I could recommend an investigator who knew his way around Forty-seventh Street. Because I’m originally from New York.”

“Is that why Joel called you? Something about the case?”

“I wish I could say something that could help you, but we really didn’t talk about much of anything.” Rosenberg looked out at the scarecrow again, maybe thinking if he’d known this was his last conversation with his friend he’d have made sure to cover all kinds of topics. “I’ve already told this to the police. He called to thank me for sending Alice his way. He asked about her. I’ve known her for years, slightly. To say hello at cocktail parties, that sort of thing. She didn’t say why she needed an investigator, and I didn’t think it was right to ask.”