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tables in the restaurant were filled with familiar faces. William Campbell Gault and his wife were having a leisurely late breakfast at one table; at another, Tim Culver and Cynthia Crystal were finishing up theirs. Cynthia, a lovely Grace Kelly blonde in her midthirties, had won the Mystery Writers of America Edgar award last year for
The Children Are Hiding
. Mystery-magazine columnist and short-story master R. Edward Porter was having coffee with Bill DeAngelo in a side booth.
    DeAngelo was a big, gregarious guy in his early thirties, with the usual beard and Poe-ishly long hair of the younger mysterywriter. He was wearing a black suit with a tie but was not quite getting away with it—the suit meant for us to take him as a serious-minded adult, but his good-humored enthusiasm for his work, and for life, was childlike and endearing. DeAngelo had won two Edgars, once for a hardcover mystery novel and again the next year for a paperback; he was a very young man to have pulled that off—I couldn’t seem to find a way to resent or dislike him for it, though, try as I might.
    He smiled when he saw me, and stuck his hand out to be shaken; I complied.
    “I understand we’re on another panel together,” he said.
    We’d been on a panel at the last Bouchercon I’d attended, also in Chicago, years before; I was a little surprised—and flattered—he remembered that, and me.
    “Really?” I said. “I haven’t seen the program listing yet. But I did tell the ’con organizers I was willing to make a fool out of myself, if they wanted me to.”
    “I think we’re on the catchall panel,” he said. “We’re supposed to talk about the ‘state of the mystery’—that’s so general a topic as to be meaningless.”
    “Is Donaldson on it?”
    “The Guest of Honor? No. Disappointed?”
    “No.”
    A wicked little smile formed under the mustache. “Don’t you like Donaldson?”
    “Never met him.”
    “I meant his books.”
    “I know you did. I’m just being evasive.”
    Ed Porter smiled a little. “Care to join us?”
    “Thank you, no—I see Sardini and Murtz over there. I have to go talk over some things with Tom.”
    Porter, a soft-spoken, gentlemanly man in his fifties, said, “Sorry to hear about Roscoe Kane.” His concern was genuine, his manner somber.
    DeAngelo’s cheery look dropped away. “Terrible thing. Hell of a way to start a Bouchercon. It’s like a bad joke.”
    “I wish it were a joke,” I said.
    “Roscoe was a nice man,” Ed said, “and an underrated writer.”
    I nodded.
    DeAngelo said, “I never got to meet the guy, but he was very, very good. I think he was better than Chandler.”
    That was a controversial thing to say out loud at a Bouchercon, Chandler having achieved a sort of sainthood approaching Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s. I liked DeAngelo for that—even if he had won two Edgars.
    I stopped at the table where Tim Culver and Cynthia Crystal were just finishing up what appeared to be a rather silent breakfast. Cynthia smiled briefly on first seeing me, then apparently made the Roscoe Kane connection, because her expression turned sympathetic.
    “Mal,” she said, rising, holding a hand out to me, which I took. She still had the same trim model’s figure, in a stylishly cut gray slacks outfit; she was wearing her pale blonde hair short these days.
    “Hi, Cynthia,” I said.
    There was something besides sympathy in her eyes; nervousness, maybe. It was impossible for Cynthia to be anything but graceful, yet somehow this seemed an awkward moment for her. “I’m very, very sorry to hear about Roscoe Kane’s death. I know what he meant to you.” She let go of my hand; swallowed. “Do sit down for a moment.”
    Culver, without rising, motioned toward an empty chair—they were two at a table for four—and I sat.
    “It’s been a long time, Cynthia,” I said.
    “Since that other Bouchercon, here in Chicago. How many years ago?”
    “I’ve lost track.”
    “Don’t you ever