a criminal record. One way to get a “loan” from Mom and Dad would be to make sure they had the money to lend. And after grieving for one child, they’d be reluctant to refuse to help another. Not a perfect theory, but something worth further investigation.

Midmorning, we left to visit Evelyn’s Nikolaev family contact. She pulled into the driveway of a town house complex, less than an hour from her place.

“That was quick.”

“At your age, you want to keep lots of distance between you and your colleagues, so no one makes the connection. By our age, no one cares anymore, and it’s a hell of a lot easier to get together for coffee when you don’t live five states apart.”

She turned from one short, narrow road onto another, heading for the rear of the complex.

“Maggie and Frances are a couple girls I know from way back. Not girls anymore, mind you. They’re more retired than I am, but they still dip their hands in when the rocking-chair life gets dull. Not hitwomen, of course—there were never more than a few of us around. Maggie and Frances used to—” A smile played at her lips. “I’ll let them tell you. They’ll like that.”

I scanned the town houses. The sign out front said they were condos, but the units had that run-down “don’t-give-a-shit” look that I always associate with temporary residents. The one Evelyn pulled up in front of, though, shone with pride of ownership. The shoe-box-size front lawn had been replaced with a perennial garden, English-cottage style. There were cobblestones instead of crumbling walk-ways. A well-maintained, ten-year-old Honda sat under the carport, atop a cracked, but recently resealed, driveway.

“So they both live here?”

“They’re partners.”

“After all these years? Most marriages don’t last that long, let alone business partnerships. Or I guess, by now, it’d be more friendship than business.”

“More than friendship or business.”

“Oh?” I paused. “Ah, ‘partners.’ Right.”

Evelyn opened her door. “It’s a shitty word, isn’t it? People think things have come so far, and we’re still stuck using euphemisms like ‘partners.’”

“Probably better than what they called it fifty years ago.”

Evelyn snorted. “Pretty much the same thing they did call it fifty years ago.”

I climbed from the car. “So Maggie and Frances worked for the Nikolaevs?”

“No, they hung out with a couple of wiseguys who did. Gay wiseguys. The mob takes a dim view of gays, back then and now. Frances and Maggie gave them convenient girlfriends to parade around. In return, they got protection and contacts in the Russian Mafia.”

* * *

Russ

Toilet paper.

Before Russ Belding had left the house, his wife had asked whether there was anything else they needed from the grocery store. Now, watching his mutt-terrier, Champ, squat in the bushes, Russ remembered that he’d put the last roll of toilet paper on the holder the day before and forgot to add that to Brenda’s list. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and caught sight of the time on it: 7:57. Too late. Brenda liked to go shopping as soon as the store opened at eight, before it got busy, and she didn’t have a cell phone.

Should he pick some up on the drive home? He hated leaving Champ in the car. It was a cool fall day, but here in Florida, “cool” didn’t mean the same thing it had back in Detroit. Even with the window open, that blazing sun would turn the car into a furnace.

Would they have enough paper to last until tomorrow? A full roll, put on yesterday, would last approximately—

Russ stopped himself and chuckled. Thirty years in the navy and his engineering skills were reduced to calculating the rate of toilet paper consumption. The joys of retirement.

At the sound of his master’s laugh, Champ bounded across the grass and twined his lead around Russ’s legs. As Russ untangled himself, he thought of a better use for his abundance of free time: dog training. A squirrel darted through the bushes and Champ shot after it, nearly yanking Russ to his knees. Amazing the amount of velocity one small dog can produce. Now there was a scientific question worth considering.

Russ walked off the path to check the spot where Champ had squatted. Even before he could see anything, the smell of dog shit wafted past him. He reached into his pocket for a baggie and found…nothing.

Getting old, captain, Brenda would say. Memory is the first thing to go.

A furtive glance around. This stretch of path was empty, as it almost always was since