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would doubtless end up at the crêperie around the corner, where the picture of the owner, Eloise Timmler—whose entire former restaurant experience consisted of asking customers if they wanted to up-size their fries and Cokes—was the newest thing on the menu.
    As I pushed myself off the low windowsill where Akahana always liked to spend a couple of hours in the evening, someone ran into me, making me stagger.
    “Hey! Hi!” It was Mark Metcalf.
    The day was suddenly looking up, like maybe I could pull it—stinking just a little—out of the Dumpster that was May 27. High points so far? Bawling freely on Dana—before I found out about her treachery. Hearing about that sweet good-neighbor discount from the Beck guy. Hiring that piano-playing tiger of mysterious gender, Mrs. Crawford. And now, Mark Metcalf.
    Mark was someone I was forever running into. It was as if the cosmos wanted us to, well, do things together. The first time, about a month ago, I ran into him coming out of Starbucks.
    He was one of those all-American hotties I secretly yearn for because I feel I owe it to the great, disappearing American cowboy. Like a public service, even. The Marlboro Man without the silly hat or the cigarettes. One of those men who are born tan. Green eyes that, yes, twinkled. Close-cut hair, because who needs long hair when you’ve got a chin that says you know what you’re doing, and lips that say they’ll kiss you up right good, missy.
    Not that Mark Metcalf and I had gotten to that point.
    It would help if our dates weren’t always on the run. We had had three of them so far. Drinks always led to food somewhere on the fly, like it was a threesome: Mark, me, and power-walking somewhere while chewing. The good-nights had all ended up strangely nowhere—near a park entrance, a performance just letting out, and a random tree—with me edging away when all I really wanted was to be a flying squirrel splayed against the screen of Mark Metcalf.
    I was nothing if not perverse.
    Was he gay?
    Landon—whom I enlisted to casually walk by one time—declared no.
    Was he married?
    He once comfortably mentioned an ex-wife out West who was what she termed “an artist in glass” and what he termed achingly neurotic. And that was as much as I got. Mark himself was a day trader whose idea of Italian cuisine involved Chef Boyardee and a can opener.
    We had a big laugh.
    “So what’s going on?” Mark jerked his handsome head toward the other side of the street. I’m pretty sure I had seen Clint Eastwood make the very same move in High Plains Drifter, but I think maybe his wool poncho was irritating him.
    “Oh, well, murder,” I said, waving it away, like it was the second one already this week.
    The green eyes twinkled a little less. “Anyone you know?”
    “No, it looks like some kind of weird breakin.” Technically, I didn’t know the dead guy, so I didn’t feel like I was lying to someone who could possibly become my husband.
    “Anything stolen?”
    “Stolen? No.” Terrible thought. “Unless you count the Quaker Hills PD making off with the precious Caruso seventy-eight lying under the body.” When he looked at me narrowly, I had to explain. “I’ve got a bunch of opera stuff over there,” I said, wondering if it would be the last I’d see of him.
    “Cool,” he said.
    “I’ve even got the gloves Caruso wore in Rigoletto in his first season at the Met.”
    Mark gasped dramatically. “Not the gloves!”
    I gave him a playful little kick in the shin. Just a love tap.
    I’d rather have the 78 than the gloves, but Caruso memorabilia doesn’t come on the market very often. Caruso collectors are an elusive bunch, worse even than a secret society, since they guard their identities even from each other.
    Mark checked his gold watch—he must be good at day trading, whatever that is. “I’d like to see you work sometime, Eve,” he said softly, green eyes back to full twinkle mode. In my head, I substituted work with