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Suong.”
    Suong didn’t bother to extend a hand to us. Rather, she made a shooing motion, herding us up the walk. “This way, this way. Stay off the grass.”
    As we reached the front door, Suong darted around the group and turned to face us, spreading her short arms to block entry. “No shoes in the house. Leave them outside.”
    We slipped out of our shoes and left them on the mat.
    Suong glanced down at my feet, her mouth gaping in horror. “Your socks don’t match!”
    True. One was a plain black trouser sock, the other bore stripes. I’d been too lazy to dig through my drawer for a matching set this morning. Of course I hadn’t expected anyone to even notice, much less have a virtual coronary over it.
    Once we were all shoeless, Suong stepped aside to let us enter the residence. Why she’d made us remove our footwear I had no idea. Clear rubber runners covered every square inch of carpet in the place.
    Though the house contained the normal contents of a family home, it had an artificial feel to it, like a model home. The carved animal figurines on display in a curio cabinet in the front hall were placed precisely the same distance apart, as if the span had been carefully measured with a ruler. All of the blinds in the living room were raised to the same height, the slats turned to exactly the same angle. The place smelled heavily of furniture polish and pine-scented floor cleaner. Not a thing was out of place, not a speck of dust in sight.
    Inside, Trang pulled an adorable though fussy toddler from a portable playpen. Lien went to the kitchen, returning with a tray of hot tea and lemon cookies that she placed on the rosewood coffee table.
    The couple took places on a plastic-covered love seat while Ackerman, Eddie, and I sat shoulder to shoulder on a sofa that was also covered with plastic. Suong perched on the edge of a Queen Anne chair upholstered in a blue and white print, the only piece of furniture in the room without a protective covering. Her muscles seemed tensed, like those of a cat prepared to pounce on an unsuspecting bug. The woman really needed to learn to relax.
    I eyed the lemon cookies. In order to prevent the appearance of bribery, Federal agents weren’t supposed to accept anything of value from those under investigation. But the government and the Nguyens were on the same side in this case, and it would be rude to refuse Lien’s hospitality, wouldn’t it? Of course it would. I’d been taught as much in Miss Cecily’s Charm School. Besides, the stale Fruity Pebbles I’d eaten for breakfast hadn’t exactly hit the spot.
    I fished a lemon cookie off the stack and took a quick nibble. Suong sprang from her chair, grabbed a handheld vacuum from its charging stand by a nearby wall outlet, and sucked a microscopic yellow crumb off the knee of my pants. Whirrr.
    She hovered over me, wielding the hand vac like a weapon, waiting for me to take another bite. Rather than risk another suction attack, I shoved the rest of the cookie into my mouth. Miss Cecily would not have recommended such an unladylike action, but sometimes a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. I tried not to gag on the dry cookie. The last thing I needed was to cough out cookie crumbs all over the couch and table. It might send Suong over the edge.
    The toddler held his arms out to his mother. Lien took him from her husband and offered the boy a cookie, which he happily gummed. Suong left me to hover over her daughter and grandson, sucking a series of yellow fragments off her grandson’s chubby belly as they fell from his gooey mouth. Whirr. Whirr. Whirr.
    Ackerman laid his briefcase on his lap and opened it, pulling out his pen and notepad. He closed the briefcase and used it as a lap desk, placing his notepad on top of it. He addressed Lien and Trang. “How did you get hooked up with Game Set Match?”
    Trang replied for the couple. “We got behind on our house payments when I lost my job as an IT specialist with the