The Throat

and didn't bother putting it back.'

'Don't you want to read it first?'

'I copied the whole damn thing,' he said. 'Get it back to me as soon as you can.'

'Why are you doing this for me?'

He smiled at me in his old way, without seeming to move his face. 'You wrote that stupid book, which my sergeant adores. And I shall have no other sergeants before him. And maybe there's something to this ridiculous idea after all.'

'You think it's ridiculous to think that the new Blue Rose murders are connected to the old ones?'

'Of course it's ridiculous.' He leaned forward over the satchel. 'By the way, will you please stop trying to be helpful in front of the cameras? As far as the public is concerned, Mrs. Ransom was one of Walter's victims. The man on Livermore Avenue, too.'

'He's still unidentified?'

'That's right,' Fontaine said. 'Why?'

'Have you ever heard of a missing student of John's named Grant Hoffman?'

'No. How long has he been missing?'

'A couple of weeks, I think. He didn't turn up for an appointment with John.'

'And you think he could be our victim?'

I shrugged.

'When was the appointment he missed, do you know?'

'On the sixth, I think.'

'That's the day after the body was found.' Fontaine glanced over at Michael Hogan, who was talking with John's parents. Her face toward the detective, Marjorie was drinking in whatever he was saying. She looked like a girl at a dance.

'Do you happen to know how old this student was?'

'Around thirty,' I said, wrenching my attention away from the effect Michael Hogan was making on John's mother. 'He was a graduate student.'

'After the funeral, maybe we'll—' He stopped talking and stood up. He patted my shoulder. 'Get the file back to me in a day or two.'

He passed down the row of empty chairs and went up to Michael Hogan. The two detectives parted from the Ransoms and walked a few feet away. Hogan looked quickly, assessingly at me for a long second in which I felt the full weight of his remarkable concentration, then at John. I still felt the impact of his attention. Rapt, Marjorie Ransom continued to stare at the older detective until Ralph tugged her gently back toward the gray-haired broker, and even then she turned her head to catch sight of him over her shoulder. I knew how she felt.

Someone standing beside me said, 'Excuse me, are you Tim Underhill?'

I looked up at a stocky man of about thirty-five wearing thick black glasses and a lightweight navy blue suit. He had an expectant expression on his broad, bland face.

I nodded.

'I'm Dick Mueller—from Barnett? We talked on the phone? I wanted to tell you that I'm grateful for your advice—you sure called it. As soon as the press found out about me and, ah, you know, they went crazy. But because you warned me what was going to happen, I could work out how to get in and out of the office.'

He sat down in front of me, smiling with the pleasure of the story he was about to tell me. The door clicked open again, and I turned my head to see Tom Pasmore slipping into the chapel behind a young man in jeans and a black jacket. The young man was nearly as pale as Tom, but his thick dark hair and thick black eyebrows made his large eyes blaze. He focused on the coffin as soon as he got into the big room. Tom gave me a little wave and drifted up the side of the room.

'You know what I go through to get to work?' Mueller asked.

I wanted to get rid of Dick Mueller so that I could talk to Tom Pasmore.

'I asked Ross Barnett if he wanted me to—'

I broke into the account of How I Get to My Office. 'Was Mr. Barnett going to send April Ransom out to San Francisco to open another office, some kind of joint venture with another brokerage house?'

He blinked at me. His eyes were huge behind the big square lenses. 'Did somebody tell you that?'

'Not exactly,' I said. 'It was more of a rumor.'

'Well, there was some talk a while ago about moving into San Francisco.' He looked worried now.

'That wasn't what you meant about the 'bridge deal'?'

'Bridge deal?' Then, in a higher tone of voice: 'Bridge deal?'

'You told me to tell your secretary—'

He grinned. 'Oh, you mean the bridge project. Yeah. To remind me of who you were. And you thought I meant the Golden Gate Bridge?'

'Because of April Ransom.'

'Oh, yeah, no, it wasn't anything like that. I was talking about the Horatio Street bridge. In town here. April was nuts about local history.'

'She was writing something about the bridge?'

He shook his head. 'All I know is, she called it the bridge project. But listen, Ross'—he looked sideways and tilted his head toward the prosperous-looking gray-haired man who had been talking with Ralph Ransom—'worked out this great little plan.'

Mueller told me an elaborate story about entering through a hat shop on Palmer Street, going down into the basement, and taking service stairs up to the fourth floor, where he could let himself into the Barnett copy room.

'Clever,' I said. I had to say something. Mueller was the sort of person who had to impose what delighted him on anyone who would listen. I tried to picture his encounters with Walter Dragonette, Mueller bubbling away about bond issues and Walter sitting across the desk in a daze, wondering how that big schoolteacher head would look on a shelf in his refrigerator.

'You must miss April Ransom,' I said.

He settled back down again. 'Oh, sure. She was very important to the office. Sort of a star.'

'What was she like, personally? How would you describe her?'

He pursed his lips and glanced at his boss. 'April worked harder than anyone on earth. She was smart, she had an amazing memory, and she put in a lot of hours. Tremendous energy.'

'Did people like her?'

He shrugged. 'Ross, he certainly liked her.'

'You sound like you're not saying something.'

'Well, I don't know.' Mueller looked at his boss again. 'This is the kind of a person who's always going ninety miles an hour. If you didn't travel at her speed, too bad for you.'

'Did you ever hear that she was thinking of leaving the business to have a baby?'

'Would Patton quit? Would Mike Ditka quit? To have babies?' Mueller clamped a fat hand over his mouth and looked around to see if anyone had noticed his giggle. He wore a pinky ring with a tiny diamond chip and a big college ring with raised letters. Puffy circles of raised fat surrounded both rings.

'You could call her aggressive,' he said. 'It's not a criticism. We're supposed to be aggressive.' He tried to look aggressive as all get-out for a second and succeeded in looking a little bit sneaky.

People had been coming into the room in twos and threes while we talked, filling about three-fourths of the seats. I recognized some of John's neighbors from the local news. When Mueller stood up, I left my seat and carried the heavy satchel to the back of the room, where Tom Pasmore was drinking a cup of coffee.

'I didn't think you'd come,' I said.

'I don't usually have the chance to get a look at my murderers,' he said.

'You think April's murderer is here?' I looked around at the roomful of brokers and, teachers. Dick Mueller had sidled up to Ross Barnett, who was angrily shaking his head, probably denying that he'd ever had any intention of moving April anywhere at all. Because you never know what you'll be able to use, I stepped sideways and took