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actress would have been Hell.
    ‘So you know Sam Clarion?’ The speaker was DeeDee, one of the Sisters. Her name was actually Delia Dunn, but Marie could have suspected the nickname came from her chest, even if she also suspected that double-D was an underestimate. Pretty, of course, and ash-blonde, DeeDee had perked up and become a lot more outgoing since lunch.
    ‘Uh, yeah,’ Marie said. ‘Well, he’s my boyfriend.’
    Eyes widened. ‘Damn, girl, did you save the planet in a past life or something?’ That was Sister Niamh, a tall, slim, brunette who seemed to be following Naomi down the dominatrix line.
    ‘Must’ve. I mean, I do have to pinch myself some mornings. Then again, the woman I was with before Sam was… Maybe I saved a couple of planets or something. I live with them both. I live in the basement apartment, when I’m not waking up beside Sam, and that’s where I do the cleaning. Sam says we have to talk about the whole maid thing when I’m a famous actress.’ She grinned. ‘Like that’s going to happen.’
    ‘Where are you from originally?’ Demeter, the Senior Sister, asked. She probably had a decade on her charges, and looked older than they did, but she pulled off the added years very well. Her eyes had the same sort of cool, blue-green colouration as Fox, but set in the kind of make-up that Fox rarely wore, and capped with highly arched eyebrows. Her body was more voluptuous than the slim frames which seemed more common among the Sisters, with a full chest and wide hips, and she had a somewhat motherly attitude, both in terms of the care she took and her firmness if she thought you were doing something wrong.
    ‘Originally, Sioux Falls in the Kansas Belt. I moved out here when my Mom died. Sixteen and sure I could become an actress. Yeah, I know, stupid. I got lucky and got a job doing housekeeping for an old guy, Felix, and that saved me from doing illegally what you’re learning to do now.’
    ‘But now you’re living with Sam?’
    ‘Felix… was murdered. He left the house to Sam, so Sam sort of inherited me too. And Felix left me some money to pursue my dream, and Sam knows an agent who helped me along.’
    ‘Did they catch the killer?’ DeeDee asked. She sounded shocked.
    ‘Fox caught him. She’s our other housemate, the woman I was with before Sam. She’s beautiful, strong, really smart. If there’s anyone you want on your side if you’re in trouble, it’s Fox. And we’re still friends, which I think says more about her than anything.’
    ‘All right, girls,’ Demeter said, ‘enough interrogating our new novice. Poker before bed and we can chat through that.’
    ‘Poker?’
    ‘Oh yes,’ Niamh said, grinning. ‘We have to get undressed anyway, so Sister Demeter is teaching us to play strip poker, Texas Hold ’Em rules.’
    Marie sagged in her seat. ‘Well, I won’t be playing for long then.’
    17 th August.
    ‘Thanks for seeing me so quickly,’ Fox said. Harper August had arranged a meeting almost as soon as she had asked for it, limited only by having to go through NAPA for authorisation.
    The old man was sitting at his desk, one wall of his room flooded with stock reports and accounting information which Fox neither understood nor wanted to. He was, she thought, looking a little better than the last time she had seen him. There was a light in his eyes she had not seen before, even before his arrest.
    ‘I wanted to talk to you anyway,’ August said, ‘concerning the foundation.’
    ‘You got a name for it yet?’
    ‘The Patricia Randall Foundation for Criminal Justice. The paperwork is already going through. I’ve recruited my executive board and a few more advisors. We’re currently negotiating with a number of experts we would like to have working for us. I’d like to organise a virtual conference this week. Nothing too terrible. A meet and greet as much as a business meeting.’
    Fox settled into one of the guest chairs, noting that the terrible,