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get to use it.” She gestured around her. “As long as I don’t abandon it.”
    “I see.” And I did. She was a prisoner of circumstance. She had to stay. She was an unmarried woman with a child. She had known poverty and knew rich was better. Poverty was a prison, too. “I think I’m going to like you, Maggie Jenn.”
    She raised an eyebrow. What an endearing skill! Few of us have sufficient native talent. Only the very best people can do the eyebrow thing.
    I said, “I don’t like most of my clients.”
    “I guess likable people don’t get into situations where they need somebody like you.”
    “Not often, that’s a fact.”
     
     

9
    The way things started, I became convinced that a certain eventuality had been foredoomed from the moment I’d opened my front door. I’m not a first date kind of guy, but I’ve never strained too hard against the whims of fate. I especially don’t struggle to avoid that particular fate.
    Dinner ended. I was unsettled. Maggie Jenn had been doing these things with her eyes. The kind of things that cause a bishop’s brain to curdle and even a saint’s devotion to monasticism to go down for a third time in those limpid pools. The kind of things that send a fundamentalist reverend’s imagination racing off into realms so far removed that there is no getting back without doing something stupid.
    I was too distracted to tell if the front of me was soaked with drool.
    There had been banter and word games during dinner. She was good. Really good. I was ready to grab a trumpet and race around blowing Charge!
    She sat there silently, appraising me, probably trying to decide if I was medium or medium well.
    I made a heroic effort to concentrate. I managed to croak, “Tell me something, Maggie Jenn? Who would be interested in your affairs?”
    She said nothing but did the eyebrow trick. She was surprised. That wasn’t what she’d expected me to say. She had to buy time.
    “Don’t try to work your wiles on me, woman. You don’t get out of answering that easily.”
    She laughed throatily, exaggerating that huskiness she had, wriggled just to let me know she was capable of distracting me as much as she wanted. I considered distracting myself by getting up and stomping around to study some of the artwork decorating the dining chamber but discovered that rising would be uncomfortable and embarrassing. I half turned in my chair and studied the ceiling as though seeking clues amongst the fauns and cherubs.
    She asked, “What do you mean about people interested in my affairs?”
    I did pause to reflect before I gave away the store. “Let’s back up some first. Did anybody know you were coming to see me?” Of course somebody did. Else Winger wouldn’t have come to me first. But I needed Maggie’s perspective.
    “It wasn’t a secret, if that’s what you mean. I did ask around once I decided I needed a man of your sort.”
    Hmm. What was a man of my sort?
    This was not an unfamiliar phenomenon. Sometimes the unfriendlies get the jump because they hear about my client asking after someone who can help. “Next step, then. Who would be bothered if you started looking for your daughter?”
    “Nobody.” She was getting suspicious.
    “Yeah. It would seem like nobody ought to care. Unless maybe they were to give you a little support.”
    “You’re scaring me, Garrett.”
    She didn’t look scared. I said, “Might be a good idea to be scared. See, I knew you were coming.”
    “What?” She was troubled for sure now. She didn’t like that at all.
    “Just before you showed up, a friend who’s in my racket stopped by to warn me you’d be coming.” Saying Winger and I are in the same business is stretching a point, maybe. Winger is into anything likely to put money in Winger’s purse, preferably fast and easy. “He thought you were coming to buy a hit. That’s why he warned me.” Catch that clever misdirection. Not even a dead Loghyr often mistakes Winger for male.
    “A hit?