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woman seated in the chair before his desk. She had to be well over fifty, but there was in her still composure, calm gray eyes, and petite curvaceousness a familiar chilly vitality.
    “I’m Agnes Boyington,” she said, half standing as Nudger entered. “Jeanette’s mother.” She offered a cool hand, which Nudger shook gently, then she sat back down and waited for him to circle his desk and settle into his swivel chair. She winced when the chair yowled.
    “I assume Jeanette told you she hired me to investigate Jenine’s murder,” Nudger said.
    “No, she didn’t. But I came across your name and phone number when I was visiting Jeanette. Then I discovered that you were a private investigator.”
    Nudger smiled thinly. “It seems you’ve been doing some investigating yourself,” he said, instinctively not liking this woman, not liking her at all.
    “I bore Jeanette and Jenine late in life, Mr. Nudger,” Agnes Boyington said, as if recalling with distaste the messy process of childbirth. “Perhaps for that reason I spoiled them, meddled too much in their affairs. Yes, I admit that. But I don’t intend to confront Jeanette with what I’ve discovered and insist that she terminate her arrangement with you.”
    Nudger was ahead of Agnes Boyington. He knew she realized that dealing that way with her daughter would be futile. Jeanette would simply hire another investigator, taking pains to be more secretive. “Isn’t my arrangement with her pretty much up to Jeanette, whether you confront her or not?” Nudger said. “She’s how old ...in her early twenties?”
    “Twenty-eight,” Agnes Boyington snapped, as if this were distinctly none of Nudger’s business. He understood why and immediately raised his estimate of Jeanette’s mother’s age. “But she listens to her mother, usually.”
    “If you don’t intend to interfere,” Nudger said flatly, “why did you come here?”
    Agnes Boyington leaned forward in her chair and fixed her unblinking eyes on Nudger, summoning her powers to persuade. “I’m here to try to convince you that the police should be left to handle alone the investigation of Jenine’s murder. Jeanette was very close to her twin sister. Whatever she told you would be colored by her grief, and the emotional residue of her recent trouble. She would benefit from your benign neglect.”
    “Recent trouble?” Nudger said, grabbing at the brass ring that had been so obviously proffered.
    “I regret the necessity to tell you this,” Agnes Boyington lied, “and I am relying on your professional ethics to ensure your silence. Just a few months ago Jenine underwent an abortion.”
    “I thought you said the recent trouble was Jeanette’s.”
    Agnes Boyington removed a long, slender brown cigarette from her purse and lit it with a silver lighter that worked on the first try. She had about her the air of a woman who was used to things working on the first attempt, a woman whose daughters, especially Jenine, had been an aggravation in an otherwise perfectly controlled existence. After making sure the cigarette was burning adequately, she condescended to speak to Nudger.
    “Jeanette got into an argument with the man who impregnated Jenine,” she said. “They fought over who was to pay for the abortion, and I’m sure they had other matters over which to fight. He beat her up badly, then left the city. The girls thought they were keeping it a secret from me, but of course they weren’t.” She sighed and gazed for a moment at the ceiling, as if seeking tolerance to cope with this world that didn’t measure up to her standards. “It was I who eventually paid for Jenine’s abortion, under the guise of a loan for a different purpose. I have paid for my daughters’ mistakes all their lives. It’s the cross God has given me to bear.”
    “What’s the man’s name?” Nudger asked.
    “It doesn’t matter. I want to maintain some discretion. I’m only here to try to impress upon you the fact