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short, older man with a big dark mustache and a good-sized paunch on him that made Chappy razz him endlessly. He’d worked as hard as anyone trying to find Christie, did everything he could to comfort the boys. He’d even hired his own private investigator—but with no luck. No one had had an ounce of luck.
    Jules had seen Christie? No, that was impossible. Dix had long ago accepted that Christie was dead, killed by some psychopath and buried in an unmarked grave somewhere, and it had sunk him deep into himself for too long a time, and nearly brought his sons into the pit with him. He thought about his sons, Rob and Rafe, what this news could do to them. He wasn’t going to say a word about this to them. Not yet.
    He was a cop and he had to take a step back, had to get it together. “Chappy, where did Jules say he’d seen her? In San Francisco? Did he speak to her? Come on now, get your thoughts together and tell me everything.”
    Chappy slumped down onto a three-hundred-year-old Hepplewhite chair covered with what looked like the original green-and-white-striped brocade. He looked down at his Italian loafers. Dix saw his hands were trembling. Chappy said, “He was attending a fundraiser at one of those big yahoo penthouses on Russian Hill, given by a man supporting a senatorial candidate. Jules said it was this guy’s wife—he said there was no doubt in his mind. She was Christie.”
    “What’s this guy’s name?”
    “Thomas Pallack. I’ve done business with him. He was here in Maestro once, maybe three and a half years ago, before Christie disappeared. He only stayed a couple of days. I don’t think he met Christie, though. He’s decades older than even the income tax laws, and he’s wealthy, made his money in oil and diversified. Like I said, it’s his wife, that’s what Jules said—his wife is Christie.”
    Dix said slowly, patiently, “You know that’s impossible, Chappy. You know it.”
    “I know it, but still, Dix, I’m just not as certain as you are. Yes, yes, I know she’d never have left you willingly. She loved you and the boys more than anything. Hell’s bells, she even loved me, even tolerated her brother’s idiot wife. But Jules swore it was her. It shook him so much to actually see her he told me he thought he was having a heart attack—searing pain all up his right side and he couldn’t breathe. He said he whispered ‘Christie’ to her and Thomas kneeled down beside him while they were calling 911. He said Pallack leaned close and said, ‘My wife’s name is Charlotte. Do you understand? Don’t forget it.’ Jules said Christie looked down at him like a hostess would at someone who was ruining her party, a sort of polite forbearance because the last thing she wanted was for this old buzzard to die on her beautiful oak parquet floor. Admittedly he felt really sick at this point, even admitted he didn’t see any recognition in her eyes when she looked at him, and that bothered him because, you see, he knew it was her.”
    “So you’re saying Jules never got to speak to this woman before he collapsed?”
    “No, just the one look in the receiving line, and then he was lying on his back staring up at her. The paramedics arrived and whisked him off to the hospital. Turns out he hadn’t had a heart attack, but the doctors wondered if he’d suffered some sort of temporary stroke, said it could paralyze your body and make you keel over, that it could happen to an old guy like him. He called me from the hospital a few minutes ago while they were still doing all their infernal tests, said you had to get out to San Francisco, find out what Christie is doing there.”
    “It’s not Christie, Chappy. She’s dead. You heard what Jules said, the woman looked at him with no recognition at all.”
    “Then who the hell is she?”
    Dix only shrugged, but all the memories, all the faded pain was back again, almost bowling him over, as it had in those early months after she’d disappeared.