YAN WAS AT A PORCH TABLE, SMOKING. IN FRONT OF HIM WERE the remains of a cheeseburger basket and an empty beer mug. A small metal disc held multiple butts, suggesting he'd been at the pub for some time.

Not good. Ryan relapsed to cigarettes only when anxious. Or angry.

Keep it light.

"You from around here, handsome?" Light, bubbly, and strained as hell.

Ryan's face swiveled toward me. Something flicked in his eyes, then disappeared before I could read it.

I gestured at a chair.

Ryan shrugged.

I sat.

Ryan ground his cigarette into the disc.

"Snowbird migrating south for some sun and sand?" I persisted.

Ryan didn't smile.

"Why didn't you come inside at Anne's house Wednesday night?"

"I'd booked for the ghost dungeon walking tour."

I ignored that. "You're avoiding my calls?"

"Reception problems."

"Where are you staying?"

"Charleston Place."

"Nice."

"Thick towels."

"I'd prefer you bunk at Anne's."

"Pretty crowded."

"It's not what you think, Ryan."

"What do I think?"

Before I could answer a waitress appeared at our table.

"Hungry?" Ryan's offer was delivered with all the warmth of a supermarket cashier.

I ordered a Diet Coke and Ryan asked for a Palmetto Pale Ale.

OK. He wasn't jumping up to hug me, but he wasn't leaving. Fair enough. I knew my reaction had I driven fourteen hundred miles to find him cuddling his ex.

But I hadn't been cuddling Pete. Ryan was exhibiting all the self-assurance of a pimply eighth grader.

We sat in silence. The night was humid and windless. Though I'd changed to clean scrubs before leaving the hospital, these, too, were beginning to feel damp and clingy. Irritation started to surface.

Reason raised a restraining hand. When the waitress brought our drinks, I decided to approach from another angle.

"I had no idea Pete would be coming down or that we'd be here at the same time. Anne invited him. It's her house and I was scheduled to leave the day he arrived. That's probably why she didn't mention it. The place has five bedrooms. What could I say?"

"Keep your pants on?"

"That's not how it is."

Ryan raised a palm, indicating he didn't want to hear.

That gesture launched a resurgence of the irritation impulse.

"I've had a rough week, Ryan. You could cut me some slack."

"You and hubby devise some sort of calamity scorecard? One point for sunburn. Two for a bad Pinot. Three for ants during the picnic on the beach."

Occasionally, I give myself good advice. Example: Don't get irritated. Often I ignore that advice. I did so now.

"Haven't you just spent a week in Nova Scotia with your former lover?" I blurted.

"Pretend I just slapped my forehead in surprised realization of your concern."

Hot. Hungry. Tired. Lousy at diplomacy in the best of moods. I really lost it.

"I've just learned a friend is sick, probably dying," I snapped. "A reporter is hounding me and a developer is threatening me. I've been sucked into three homicides. I've spent the last seven days either in an ER, at a morgue, or slogging through muck in search of putrefied bodies." A bit of an exaggeration, but I was on a roll. "Wednesday night I suffered an emotional implosion. Pete was concerned and offered comfort, which I badly needed. Sorry for my timing. And sorry to bloody hell I bruised your fragile male ego."

Out of breath, I sat back and crossed my arms. In my peripheral vision I could see the couple to our right staring. I glared at them. They turned away.

Ryan lit up again, drew deeply, exhaled. I watched the smoke spiral up toward an overhead fan.

"Lily told me to piss off."

"What? What do you mean? When?" Stupid, but Ryan's segue to his daughter had caught me off guard.

"We got into an argument sometime after you and I talked on Sunday. Started over some dolt with studs sticking out of his face. Hell, I don't even remember. Lily stormed out of the restaurant, said I was ruining her life, hoped I'd leave and never come back."

"What does Lutetia think?"

"I should back off and give Lily space for a while." Ryan's face was a stone mask. "I spent all day Monday and most of Tuesday trying to talk to the kid. She wouldn't see me or take my calls."

I leaned forward and placed my hand on his. "I'm sure it'll be fine."

"Yeah." Ryan's jaw muscles bunched, relaxed.

"Lily needs time to get used to the idea of you as her father."

"Yeah."

"It's been less than a year."

Ryan did not reply.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"No."

"I'm glad you decided to come here."

"Oh, yeah." Ryan gave me a mirthless smile. "There was a great idea."

"I was a head case Wednesday night. Self-pity, pity for others, tears, the whole bit. When you arrived, Pete was trying to settle me down. That's it. Nothing more. I'm sorry about my lousy timing."

Ryan didn't respond. But he didn't pull back.

"I wouldn't lie to you. You know me."

Still, Ryan remained silent.

"It was nothing, Ryan."

Ryan toyed with his cigarette ash, rolling it on the edge of the metal disc. A full beat passed. Another. Ryan broke the silence.

"After Lily's rejection, I was filled with guilt. I felt like a failure. The only person I wanted to be with was you. The decision was simple. I hopped in the Jeep and headed south. Then, after driving twenty hours, to see you there in the yard…"

Ryan left the thought unfinished. I started to speak. He cut me off.

"Maybe I overreacted Wednesday night, let anger rule the moment. But I've realized something, Tempe. I don't know my daughter. OK. I buy the blame for that. But I don't know you, either."

"Of course you do."

"Not really." Ryan took a drag, released the smoke. "I know about you. I can quote your resume. Brilliant anthropologist, one of a handful in your field. Undergrad at Illinois, Ph.D. from Northwestern. DMORT experience, U.S. military consults, genocide expert for the UN. Impressive bio, but none of that gives any hint of how you think or what you feel. My daughter's a blank canvas. You're a blank canvas."

Ryan slid his hand from under mine and picked up his mug.

"I've shared a great deal more than my resume," I said.

"You're right." Ryan drained half his beer. To calm his anger? To collect his thoughts? "You married Pete the barrister at age nineteen. He was a cheat. You were a boozer. Your marriage went bust. Your daughter's a university groupie. Your best friend's a realtor. You have a cat. Like Cheetos. Hate goat cheese. Won't wear ruffles or stilettos. You can be caustic, hilarious, and a tiger in bed."

"Stop." My cheeks were on fire.

"I've pretty much run the list."

"You're not being fair." I was too exhausted mentally and physically to protest with much vehemence. "And it's deliberate."

Placing his forearms on the table, Ryan leaned close. In the still air I could smell male sweat, aftershave, and a hint of the cigarettes he'd smoked.

"We've been friends for a decade, Tempe. I know you feel passionate about your work. Otherwise, most of the time, I'm clueless about what you feel. I have no idea what makes you happy, sad, angry, hopeful."

"I follow the Cubs."

"See what I mean?" Slumping back, Ryan stubbed out his cigarette and chugged his beer.

Tight bands squeezed my chest. Anger? Resentment?

Fear of closeness?

I sipped my Coke. Silence roared between us.

The waitress looked our way but knew better than to interrupt. The couple beside us paid their check and left. Another horse clopped by on Church. Or maybe it was the same horse I'd followed in my car. My mind slid sideways.

Did the horse mind walking the same brainless loop? Did it dutifully obey day after day out of fear of the whip? Did it pass the time dreaming equine dreams, or did it know only the world between blinders?

Was Ryan right? Did I wall myself off? Had I put on emotional blinders? Barricaded myself against troubling memories and troubling issues of the present?

A sudden pang struck deep in my chest. Was Pete one of those issues? Was I being fully honest with Ryan? With myself?

"What is it you want?" My mouth felt dry, my throat constricted.

"Lutetia was very curious about you. I didn't have answers for most of her questions. That surprised her. I said the things she was asking about weren't important. She told me that might be true, but, nevertheless, I should know them.

"Motoring solo allows for a lot of introspection. On that long drive I came to understand that Lutetia is right. There are areas of noncommunication, Tempe. Our relationship has borders."

Relationship? Borders? I couldn't believe I was hearing this from Andrew Ryan. The bad boy. The player of the field. The Don Juan of Montreal homicide.

"I don't intentionally keep things from you," I mumbled.

"It's not what a person shares, but that a person shares. Intentional or not, you often close me out."

"I don't."

"Why do you call me Ryan?"

"What?" The question threw me. "It's your name."

"My last name. My family name. Other cops call me Ryan. The guys in my hockey league. You and I have been as intimate as two people can be."

"You call me Brennan."

"When we're working as professionals."

My eyes remained fixed on my hands. Ryan was right. I didn't know why I did that. A distancing measure?

"What is it you want?" I asked.

"We could start with conversation, Tempe. I don't need a busload. Just tell me things. Begin with family, your friends, your first love, your hopes and fears…" Ryan threw up a hand. "… your views on mind and anomalous monism."

I ignored the attempt at a lighter touch.

"You've met Katy. Anne. My nephew Kit."

Harry.

In the early years, when Ryan was inviting and I was declining personal involvement, my sister, Harriet, came to Montreal in search of Nirvana. She ended up sandbagged by a cult, and Ryan and I saved her ass. One night the two went missing, and, I suspect, did the biblical deed. I've never inquired. Neither Ryan nor Harry has ever explained.

"And Harry."

"How is Harry?" Ryan's voice sounded a fraction less taut.

"Living in Houston with a harpsichord maker."

"Is she happy?"

"She's Harry."

"Introduce me to your parents." Dr. Phil prompting a talk show guest.

"Michael Terrence Brennan, litigator, connoisseur, and good-time drunk. Katherine Daessee Lee, known to one and all as Daisy."

"Thus your unpronounceable middle name."

"Like Daisy, with a soft s."

"Daisy. I kind of like—"

"Don't even think of saddling me with that moniker."

Ryan flourished two scout's-honor fingers.

I swallowed and began.

"Michael's Chicago Irish, Daisy's old-line Charlotte. College sweethearts, they marry in the fifties. Michael signs on with a big Chicago law firm and the happy couple settle in Beverly, an Irish neighborhood on Chicago's south side. Daisy joins the Junior League, the Ladies' Auxiliary, the Rosary Society, and the Friends of the Zoo. Temperance Daessee, their firstborn, puts an end to Mrs. Brennan's social ambitions. Harriet Lee follows in three years. Three more, and it's Kevin Michael."

Almost four decades and the pain still sliced me in two. I was aware I was speaking in third-person present tense, but couldn't help myself. Somehow the ploy helped. Ask Freud.

"Nine months later, baby Kevin succumbs to leukemia. Devastated, Daddy sets a land speed record for the single-malt sprint into unemployment, cirrhosis, and an overpriced coffin. Mama retreats into debilitating neurosis, eventually slinks back to Charlotte with young Temperance and Harriet. The trio take up residence with Grandma Lee."

Ryan reached out and thumbed a tear from my cheek. "Thanks." Spoken so softly, I barely heard.

"Next installment, the Charlotte years." I arced a hand, suggesting a movie marquee.

Pub sounds swirled around us. Seconds passed. A minute. When Ryan's gaze met mine some of the tension had eased in his face.

Leaning back, Ryan raised his brows as though seeing me for the first time. The man loved raising his brows. And it worked for him. Gave him an air of unruffled curiosity.

I imagined my appearance. Smudged mascara. Tear-streaked face. River-rat hair yanked up in a knot.

I knew what was coming. An unspoken question as to today's events. OK. Business. Familiar ground. Neutral.

"It's a long story," I said.

"Involving mud wrestling?"

"Involving a reptile named Ramon."

"Loved Henry Silva as the big-game hunter."

Blank stare.

"Alligator. 1980. Heartlessly flushed in his youth, Ramon grows to thirty feet and wants out of the Chicago sewer system. Great film. Classic B creature feature."

"Do you want to hear this?"

"I do."

"Can I have a cheeseburger?"

Ryan signaled the waitress, ordered, then chest-crossed his arms and thrust out his legs, ankles crossed.

"You know about the Dewees skeleton," I began.

"The one your students unearthed."

I nodded. "He was a white male, probably in his forties. Probably dead at least two years. I found an odd fracture on one of his neck vertebrae, and nicks on his twelfth rib and on several lower back vertebrae. He'd had dental work, but nothing popped when we ran his identifiers through NCIC. Ditto for a match with local MPs. One item of interest. I found an eyelash with the bones. The Dewees guy is blond. The lash is black. Emma's sent it to the state lab for DNA testing."

"Emma?"

"Emma Rousseau is the Charleston County coroner." I couldn't handle discussing Emma right then.

"The Dewees skeleton is body number one."

"Yes. Pete's in Charleston doing a financial investigation and searching for a client's daughter. Helene Flynn disappeared over six months ago while working at a street clinic operated by God's Mercy Church, the brainchild of a local televangelist named Aubrey Herron.

"When Helene vanished, her father, Buck Flynn, hired a private investigator named Noble Cruikshank. Two months into the investigation, Cruikshank pulled his own vanishing act. Cruikshank drank. He'd been on benders before where he just disappeared for a time, so no major search was launched. Last Monday, kids found a body hanging from a tree in a national forest just north of town. We got prints, ran them through AFIS. Bingo. The dangler was Cruikshank, who, by the way, was carrying the wallet of a guy named Chester Pinckney, a local swamp rat."

"Why?"

"No idea. Pinckney says his wallet was stolen. More likely, he lost it."

My cheeseburger arrived. I added lettuce, tomato, condiments.

"Cruikshank was male, white, forty-seven. He had a neck fracture like the man on Dewees. Same vertebra, same side, though the noose was knotted at the back of his head."

"Nicks in the ribs and lower back?"

"No."

I took a moment to devour a significant portion of my burger.

"Gullet, that's the Charleston County sheriff, got Cruikshank's belongings from the guy's landlord. Among them was a disc of photos showing people coming and going from the clinic at which Helene Flynn worked. Another box held files. Some contained the stuff you'd expect on a PI's cases. Notes, canceled checks, copies of letters and reports. There was one file on Helene Flynn. Others held nothing but clippings on missing persons. Still others held only handwritten notes."

"Get much from the notes?"

"Zilch. They're in code. We also have Cruikshank's PC, but so far no password."

"OK. Cruikshank is body number two. When do we get to Ramon?"

I told him about the woman and the cat in the barrel.

"She's white, approximately forty, and probably died of ligature strangulation. The cat was registered to one Isabella Cameron Halsey. I plan to follow that up tomorrow."

"Anything to connect the three cases?"

"The deceased are all white and middle-aged. The two men have identical neck fractures. The woman's been strangled. Beyond that, not really. But I haven't finished with the barrel lady. Her bones won't be fully cleaned until Monday."

Ryan dropped his eyes to the little metal disk filled with cigarette ash. But he wasn't really seeing it. He looked like he was focusing on some thought, coming to grips with some realization.

"You really have pulled the plug on Pete?" he asked.

"I moved out on the man how long ago?" Words chosen carefully.

Ryan's gaze came up and settled on mine. The blue eyes, the sandy hair, the lines and creases in all the right places. Looking like that must be breaking six state laws and a dozen federal guidelines, I thought. What was I doing? Why hadn't I simply said yes to Ryan's question about Pete? Would I now get a brotherly kiss on the cheek and a fond good-bye? My fingers remained tight on the handle of my mug.

Then Ryan smiled.

"Startovers?" he asked in a quiet, calm voice.

"Olee ocean free," I answered, relief flooding through me.

Ryan held out a hand. We shook. Our fingers lingered, then separated slowly.

"My dear old Irish mother gave a lot of thought to choosing my Christian name," Ryan said.

"Don't push it, bucko," I said.

"I'll keep trying."

"Fair enough."

"I'm a detective," Ryan said.

"I know."

"I detect things."

"A special skill."

"I could, if properly persuaded, place my years of experience at your disposal."

"With Isabella Halsey?"

"And the cat. I love cats."

"What sort of persuasion?"

"Persuasive persuasion." Ryan ran one finger across my hand and up my wrist.

I signaled the waitress.

When the bill arrived we both went for it. Ryan won. As he dug out his credit card, I rose and circled the table.

Arm-wrapping Ryan's shoulders, I laid my cheek on the top of his head.

Ryan agreed to move into the house.