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bubblehead, there’s not much point in getting furious because he is a bubblehead. That’s a bit complicated, but it makes sense, doesn’t it?
    Outside, we stood a moment in the parking area lighting cigarettes. Mine. Binky never carries coffin nails, claiming he is determined to stop smoking. His pals pay for his firm resolve.
    “We’re going to that black-tie bash, aren’t we?” he asked me.
    “Of course.”
    “Glad to hear it. Things in the detective business are looking up. Archy, do you believe everything Sunny told us tonight?”
    “Perhaps not everything,” I said cautiously.
    “Me neither,” he said. “I think she was scamming us—or trying to.”
    For the second time that day I was shocked by his perspicacity. I wondered if there was a tiny, tiny spark of intelligence in that bowl of lemon Jell-O between his ears.
    “Call you tomorrow,” I said. “We’ve got things to do.”
    “Okay,” he said cheerfully, “but not too early. I’ve got to watch the Cat People tonight so I’ll probably sleep in. Make it around noonish—all right?”
    I stood there and watched him pull away in his decaying Mercedes, black smoke spewing from the exhaust. Then I climbed into my barouche and headed home.
    I slid into bed shortly after midnight, still pondering the events of that hugger-mugger day. Before waltzing with Morpheus I reviewed again everything that occurred and what little I had learned in the curious case of the lucrative funeral homes.
    I had an aggravating itch that I was failing to recognize something significant that had happened. But the Z’s arrived before I could pinpoint exactly what it was.

6.
    I T SOMETIMES HAPPENS THAT one falls asleep with a problem and awakes with a solution. So it was for me on that Friday morning. I sat on the edge of my bed, and the puzzle that had bedeviled me the previous night suddenly became clear, if not completely resolved.
    Question: Why had Sunny Fogarty sought the assistance of McNally & Son in the first place?
    She had given us a rather frail excuse for not conducting an in-house investigation on her own: she said she might endanger her job by “poking and prying,” and arouse the derision of other employees. After all, who would be silly enough to become concerned because their employer was suddenly making more money?
    I might have accepted that if I had not pegged Comptroller Fogarty as an extremely competent executive, a computer maven who kept a sharp eye on Whitcomb’s balance sheet and bottom line. I could not possibly believe she had missed the increase of out-of-state burials; it was so obvious that even a couple of computer illiterates had caught it immediately.
    Assuming she was aware of what we’d discover before she sent us the printout—and I did so assume—what could be her motive in dumping the mystery into the lap of McNally & Son, her employer’s attorneys of record? I could only conclude she had an urgent need for wanting us to investigate rather than the flimsy reasons she had stated.
    But what that need might be, the deponent kneweth not. I did know that if something was seriously awry at Whitcomb Funeral Homes, it was doubtful if Sunny herself was involved in any wrongdoing. I mean, since when does a guilty party initiate an inquiry, discreet or otherwise, into his or her own conduct?
    After breakfasting on eggs scrambled with chunks of smoked turkey sausage, I phoned Binky Watrous around ten o’clock. I endured his grumbling at being awakened at such an ungodly hour and finally had to cut him short by threatening to tell the Duchess of his distressing lack of ambition. He finally agreed to come to my office in an hour’s time.
    He was only fifteen minutes late, still yawning, and grasped my packet of English Ovals like an opium smoker reaching for a full pipe. He smoked and listened in silence while I outlined our program for the day.
    We were to visit funeral homes in the area and conduct research on exactly how a person who