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want to get into my wife’s pants. Or my daughters’. Now you tell me this crazy story.”
    “A cold trail, you’ve got to start somewhere,” I said.
    “Cold is right. My family got out of the phosphate business twenty years ago.” The man confirmed my surprise with a glance.
    “I didn’t know.”
    “My father thought Johnnie Walker Black was a better investment. Second generation, just like the book says.”
    I said, “Now I understand why you’re reading it, to get the Albright legacy back on track.”
    “Out of the toilet, more like it.”
    “Sorry to hear that,” I said, “but maybe you still have access to someone’s list of artifact hunters. That could help.”
    “I doubt it. Tell me more about these carvings. What makes your friend think they’re in Florida?” Albright was interested but didn’t want to show too much.
    “I asked the same thing,” I said. “They were stolen from tribal land back in the nineteen seventies.”
    “That’s fifty . . . almost sixty years ago.”
    “I know, it sounds like a wild-goose chase,” I said. “But not when you think it through. Collectors network, and they tend to hold on to their best stuff. They also know what other collectors have or what buyers want. What’s the point if you can’t make someone in your peer group envious? A list of names, especially collectors from twenty years ago, could put Fallsdown on the right track. Why not?” I placed my beer on a woven elephant doily. “It might be fun to help a tribe in Montana solve an old mystery.”
    I smiled, Albright didn’t. He retreated into his drink—yes, a troubled man. A crumbling marriage, financial problems, and now he was sitting with a stranger, fielding questions. It was anuncomfortable situation, and I understood why. Even twenty years ago, phosphate mining was reviled by environmentalists. Those in the industry have learned to tread carefully when it comes to dealing with the public—especially nosy biologists.
    Finally, he said, “People don’t realize how much work goes into making it in the phosphate industry. My grandfather started Mammoth Ridge Mines back when they dug the stuff with shovels, not draglines. Nineteen seventeen.”
    Mammoth Ridge
—maybe that explained the maharajah-and-elephant décor.
    I said, “He had to be a very smart, tough guy. Obviously successful if he bought an island and built a house like this.”
    Albright motioned across an expanse of tile toward a hall. “There’s a whole room full of photos and old records, if you really are interested. You’ll have to dust them off. The twins won’t go in there. They say the photos make them nauseated. And the only history Ava cares about is the kind that makeup won’t cover.”
    “Your daughters are thirty-some years old?” I asked.
    My tone gave me away.
    “Kids mature slower these days, I agree. The year after they graduated, they married brothers who’d inherited a bundle. An Oregon family, Apple software. They both divorced about the same time, too—eighteen months later—and came home to Dad. Not literally, of course. They bought a beach house on Siesta Key. Esther is good with money.”
    “I wasn’t criticizing,” I said.
    “Of course you were, and you’re right. Thank god, my stepson is starting to come around. If it wasn’t for him, I think I’d just say to hell with it. Let all the spinning plates come crashing down andmove to Costa Rica. I hear it’s nice down there, maids and a staff for next to nothing.”
    I knew the answer before I asked him, “Is Ava your stepson’s mother?”
    Disdain confirmed that she was not. “My second wife, Madison. Her husband was killed in a skiing accident. Owen, my stepson, was four when Madison and I married, then she got pregnant with the twins. She was unusual . . . the finest
person
I’ve ever met. Mattie, everyone called her.”
    Albright’s reflective tone, the way he withdrew into his head, told me his second wife was dead. I said,