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satisfaction: I’d lived down to her expectations.

    I gave her my most innocent smile. “I’m just trying to do my job, Ms. Cade.”

    She checked her watch again, more elaborately this time. “You’re lucky I’ve got work to do, and no time for this nonsense,” she said. She walked down the hallway and took a left at the end, and she was back in under a minute, with a black notebook.

    “This is the last address I have for her. I have no idea whether it’s still good.” It was an address in Brooklyn and I copied it down.

    “Is she still acting?” I asked.

    She sighed impatiently. “Acting, writing, video— Holly’s dabbled in a thousand things, and as far as I know not one has taken. I have no idea what she’s doing now.”

    “She can support herself doing that— dabbling?”

    Impatience morphed into suspicion, and Nicole Cade squinted at me. “Ask Holly, if you can find her— though how it’s relevant to your accident case escapes me. And now goodbye, Mr. March.” The storm door swung shut and the front door closed behind it, and I was left standing in the cold.

    I made my way down the path toward my car. I rounded the corner and found all three garage doors open. There was an immaculate Volvo sedan in one bay, a filthy VW wagon in another, and Herbert Deering in the third, standing by a green metal tool cart and fumbling with a socket wrench. He looked up and dropped the wrench on the concrete floor. The clang made him wince.

    “Catching up on some chores?” I asked.

    He ducked his head nervously and made a small, rueful smile. “Plenty of time for that now— the wonders of outsourcing.” I nodded sympathetically. Deering opened a drawer in the tool cart and picked through whatever was inside. “You through with Nikki?” he asked.

    “More like she’s through with me.”

    Deering smiled again. “I didn’t think it would take long, not when you said you’d come to talk about Holly.”

    “I guess they don’t get on too well.”

    Deering shook his head. “They have nothing to do with each other,” he said, and looked up at me. “Is Holly all right?”

    “As far as I know,” I said, and I trotted out my accident story yet again. I was getting to like it, and Deering seemed to have no complaints either. “Your wife gave me an address,” I concluded, “but she didn’t know if it was still good.”

    Deering nodded vaguely and opened another drawer. “Holly moves a lot, and like I said she and Nikki don’t keep up. It’s one of those things where one says white and the other has got to say black. It’s a thing with sisters sometimes.”

    And not just sisters, I thought. I nodded at him. “Is Holly still making a living as an actress?”

    Deering thought about it a while and shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know that she ever made much of a living at it.”

    “How does she pay the rent, then— waiting tables?”

    “That’s never been her problem,” Deering said, shaking his head. “Her mom left some money.” He looked around and then looked at me. “You going over there? To Brooklyn?” I nodded. “Well…tell her hi if you see her.”

    “Will do,” I said, and I dug in my jacket for the car keys. I found them and thought of one more question for Herb Deering. “Who is Fredrick Cade?”

    Herb nearly dropped his wrench again. “Fred is Nikki’s dad— my father-in-law. Where’d that come from?”

    “This used to be his house?”

    Deering grimaced a little. “The girls grew up here. We— Nikki— bought it from him a few years back.”

    “And where did he go?”

    “North of here, up to Brookfield. He’s in an assisted living setup. Why?”

    “Do you think Holly might be in touch with him? Just in case this address is out of date.”

    He blanched. “God, no. The one person Holly gets on worse with than Nikki is Fred. No way she’s in touch with him. And even if she was, he wouldn’t know it, not the way he is now.” Herb Deering