Dear Irene

Still not enough. But then I practically got down on bended knee and begged him to allow war widows with young children to support to stay on. He finally agreed to that, provided they had good work records.”

“Wait a minute. You’re saying that all three of these women were widows?”

“Not only widows, war widows. And war widows who had not remarried by the end of the war. I lost my own father in World War I, when I was eleven. So I knew something of what these children would know, growing up without a father. My goodness, yes, I think that’s why I fought for them. I had watched my own mother struggle to find work that would pay a decent wage. She eventually went into business for herself, and managed quite well, but at first it was simply horrible.”

“How many of these women were kept on, would you say?”

“Oh, at a guess, well, perhaps no more than a hundred.”

One hundred. Manageable research, even if it turned out to be a dead end. “Would Mercury still have records on these women? The ones who were allowed to stay?”

There was a long silence. “Yes,” he said at last.

No “oh my” or “goodness.” Shaky ground.

“Mr. Devoe, before you answer my next question, please think about what happened to the children of three women you helped — and what might happen to the children of other women war workers if we don’t learn more about why Thanatos is targeting them.” I drew a deep breath. “If I never published or revealed how I learned…”

“I understand,” he interrupted in a firm voice. Another long silence. “The personnel offices will be empty on Wednesday,” he said at last. “The employees who work there won’t be back until the day after New Year’s. Perhaps Wednesday would be a good day for you to come to see my museum. I’ll call you again after I’ve arranged a flight back to Las Piernas.”

“I can’t tell you how much—”

“No need to. Merry Christmas, Miss Kelly.”

“Merry Christmas, Mr. Devoe. And thank you.”

I CLEARED THE COMPUTER screen of the jumbled letters. Hobson Devoe had given me a thread of hope. I found I was able to start writing the story of Rita and Alexander Havens.

As I finished and signed off for the day, I looked at the blank screen, seeing my reflection in its darkened glass. Images of Rita Havens staring at her dead husband came unbidden. I stood up and left quickly.

CHRISTMAS EVE DINNER was even better than I had imagined it would be, which is saying a lot. We ate, laughed and chatted happily over cioppino and linguini con vongole and a variety of other meatless pasta dishes.

Apparently, most women suffer a standard reaction of near catatonia when they first look at Steven, because even Mrs. Pastorini — Lydia’s mom — spent some time… well, appreciating him. But once that wore off and Rachel and Mrs. Pastorini found their speech restored, Steven fit right in with the gathering.

At midnight, the non-Catholics humored the rest of us and we all went down to St. Patrick’s for Mass. Even though I’m basically a lapsed Catholic, I seldom miss this tradition.

Afterwards, we thanked the chefs, and with a last “Merry Christmas!” headed for home.

“Did you have an okay time?” I asked Steven as we dropped him off.

“I had a great time. You have terrific friends.”

I acknowledged it was true. As much as I look forward to those rare times when Frank and I can spend a day alone, this time, I was glad we hadn’t run off to cocoon with one another in the mountains. Our close friends, in many ways, comprised a family.

The dogs had completely torn up the backyard by the time we got back home. Cody had shredded part of the couch. None of it mattered. Our problems were small ones and we knew it. We climbed into bed and held each other. I was grateful just to be able to hear his heart beat. It was Christmas.

AS IT TURNED OUT, Frank and I both had to work on Christmas Day. John called and said that since my story on the Havens was causing the phones to ring off the hooks, I should get my ass down there, and Merry Christmas. The Express was inundated with calls from children of Mercury Aircraft wartime workers; from people who were sure they knew who Thanatos was; from readers who had been angry to find murder on the front page on Christmas Day; from readers who thought we were aiding and abetting a murderer by running the letters at all.

I left the Thanatos identifications and the editorial complaints to the handful of other people who were working that day; I concentrated on the children of war workers.

I took names and numbers and whatever useful information I could, including the caller’s age, marital status, and parents’ names. I asked if the caller’s parents were still living — and if not, when they died. I asked about any current connection the caller might have to Mercury Aircraft or to the three victims. Finally, I sought opinions about Thanatos’ identity. I had to assure each and every one of them that there weren’t any new letters from Thanatos. I made a list of the callers; there were over sixty by late that afternoon.

Fewer calls were coming in by then, so I found time to make a second list, eliminating those who weren’t fifty- four years old, praying to God that wasn’t just a coincidence. For the third list, the smallest, I excluded the ones whose fathers had survived the war. The third list had twelve names on it.

I remembered Hobson Devoe’s guess that about one hundred women had stayed on after the war; I worried that I had somehow eliminated too many of the callers.

John and I had one of our conferences to review what I had learned and decide what could be discussed with the police. He gave me his consent to tell Frank about my discussion with Hobson Devoe. I noticed that John was backing off from his previous hard-line attitude about my working on the story. I suppose he had come to trust Frank a little more as well. “For a cop, he’s done all right by us,” he confided. Merry Christmas again.

I called Frank. For the past two days, he had been trying to talk to people who saw Alex Havens set sail. The police had located only two or three people who had noticed Havens, and they didn’t see anything unusual. The Lovely Rita had been found smashed to pieces on a rocky jetty several miles south of Las Piernas. The police were working with the Coast Guard to figure out if it could have drifted there by itself, or if it was deliberately wrecked there, just as Havens’ body must have been deliberately left where it would most likely