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he’ll run the Corvette’s license plate number.” He glanced at the papers she’d placed next to the lamp on the table. They were marked with red felt-tip pen where she’d been revising. She was being careful with this article; often she sent in her story to the Burrow office using the modem in her computer. “I thought you were finished with the pollution story.”
    “I am. This is something else. I’ve been working on it for a while and should be able to wrap it up soon.”
    “What’s it about?” he asked, nodding toward the papers.
    “A mail-order company that sends overpriced junk merchandise to grieving widows and pretends the husband ordered it just before his death. Bastards!” She sat back and crossed her improbably long legs, parting the robe high up her bare thigh. “Fred, I’m sitting here wondering if things would have worked out the same way today if I hadn’t arranged for you and Donna to meet.”
    “They wouldn’t have worked out exactly the same,” he told her, “but the end result probably would have been the same. Your friend wasn’t holding up well under the strain of a disintegrating marriage, and like you said, she wasn’t the type to have an affair. Despite the glowing account of her relationship with Enrico Thomas, I suspect he only made things worse for her.”
    What he didn’t say was that he’d been wondering the same thing as Beth: If he and Donna Winship hadn’t met and talked, would she still be alive? Not that he considered himself responsible for her impulse to destroy herself, but undeniably, if the kaleidoscope of fate had been turned a few degrees either way, things might be different. He told himself that life was a risk for everyone every second and he bore no blame, but how could he really know? Had he said something seemingly innocent to trigger the plunge of spirit that had prompted a desperate woman to take her last and fatal step?
    Beth gently lifted the cold beer can from his hand and took a sip, then touched the rounded damp side of the can to her forehead as if trying to relieve a headache.
    “There’s the matter of the thousand-dollar retainer she gave me,” Carver said.
    Beth lowered the can but didn’t hand it back to him. “What about it?”
    “Donna Winship hired me to follow her, and obviously that’s impossible now.”
    “You followed that Enrico Thomas character.”
    “To satisfy my own curiosity, not as part of why she hired me.”
    “So the nature of the job has changed.”
    “There is no client, Beth, so no job.”
    “Well, you can’t very well return the money if Donna’s dead.”
    “I won’t cash her check,” Carver said, “but it’ll be entered in her checkbook, so her husband will know about it. I’m going to have to talk to him, return the check to him.”
    “Don’t do that, Fred. The way Donna talked, the guy turned away from her and tuned her out completely. Believe me, she wouldn’t want you to return the retainer.”
    “If I simply hold the check, he’ll eventually contact me with his own questions.”
    She looked thoughtful, then resigned. “I suppose that’s true. And if you do cash it, he can get you for fraud. Judging from how Donna came to think of him, he probably would.”
    “So I’ll drop by and give him the check,” Carver said. “I’ll let him think she hired me to follow him, checking to see if he was having an affair.”
    “Are you doing Enrico Thomas a favor?”
    “Doing Megan Winship a favor. There’s no reason she or anybody else has to know about Thomas and her mother.”
    Beth took another sip of beer then gave him back the can. “Some world, huh? A person steps outside the lines, maybe only once, and there can be a multitude of victims.”
    “That’s why I’m returning the check to Mark Winship.”
    “Maybe I can get this company I’m writing about to send him a thousand dollars worth of crappy merchandise along with a bill addressed to Donna.”
    Carver laughed. He finished the