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Caroline said, confused and angrier than ever. “Of course those papers are Al’s!”
    “Are they?” I asked calmly.
    She looked furious, her tight little chin quivering.
    The people near us were all laughing and joking loudly, unaware of our spat or the auction, which had reached $21,500.
    “I have decided this really is a police matter,” I finished. “I am a very close friend of a detective on the LAPD, and I think it’s wise to let them handle it, Caroline. And my suggestion to Mr. Grasso is, please keep going to that therapist.”
    “Everyone…” Brianna called from the stage, her high-pitchedvoice projecting over the loudspeaker. “Listen to me now. Everyone…”
    “Mad,” Holly whispered as Caroline stood there, sputtering, “What the hell?”
    “EVERYONE…” Brianna tried again, much closer to the mike.
    “You are going to regret this!” Caroline shouted at me.
    “WHAT?” Holly and I yelled at the same time.
    “You leave my Albert alone!” she shouted back.
    At which point, Ms. Brianna Welk, up on the stage, had simply had enough. She expected the crowd’s respect. She assumed their devotion. And most of all, she demanded their goddamned attention. She screamed into the microphone, “SHUT UP!”
    And at that, this assembled group of happily partying arts patrons, parents, and philanthropists, some soused, some flirting, some chatting loudly with friends not seen in weeks, along with Albert Grasso’s overwrought lady friend, simultaneously stopped speaking in sheer surprise and alarm.
    “That’s better,” Brianna drawled over the mike, not noticing the stunned glares of disapproval. “I just wanted to say, the flower-thingie luncheon is going…going… gone! Sold to the lady at Table 4 for twenty-six thousand five hundred!”
    “Gadzooks!” Holly said, shaking her head, as someone on the auction committee rushed onto the stage and managed to pry the microphone out of Brianna’s hand. The Sotheby’s auctioneer took over and the party guests went back to a slightly quieter form of chatter. “Say, what happened to that nasty woman?” We both looked around, but Caroline had disappeared. “And why was she so angry?”
    “That’s a good question. It has to do with the papers I found in front of my house this afternoon. There may be something private among those papers that our neighbors donot want anyone to see. Why else would they get so bent out of shape?”
    “Just what you need, Maddie, more crazies.”
    I smiled.
    “And what was that you were telling her about being ‘a very close friend of a detective on the LAPD’? Are you speaking to Chuck Honnett again?” Holly asked.
    “Well, no. I still hate him, of course. Nothing’s changed there. But I was so sick of all her threats and intimidation. I thought it made me sound more substantial to say I have friends in high places.”
    Holly nodded. “It did.”
    I smiled back at her. “I know. I wish I still did have one, too.”
    Honnett and I. Now there was a story. He was this detective with whom I’d had a short, kind of passionate thing. It had started earlier in the year and had ended not that many months later. A pity the whole thing blew up, since we had some great chemistry. Really great. But he hadn’t been honest with me. He hadn’t told me everything.
    “Being hot is not a crime,” Holly reminded me, referring to Honnett’s long, lean body and stong-jawed, edgy looks.
    “We really had nothing in common,” I said. I knew it was lame, but there was truth to it. My friends were chefs, artists, bohemians, writers, the unemployed. Honnett was a cop. His buddies were cops. He liked rules. He liked guns. He liked being a macho man, not too many words. I was all talk. This thing would have ended sooner or later. I just hadn’t seen the end coming quite as soon as it had.
    “What are you talking about?” Holly asked, staring at me. “You and he were cool. So he was a little older than you—”
    “Like about