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Shah.”
    “The former head of the Pakistani secret service is here?”
    “He’s living on Useppa Island. They took me out there by boat this afternoon to meet him. He wants me to work for him.”
    “To do what?”
    “To find his missing fiancée.”
    “Okay.”
    “You’re not going to believe who his fiancée is.”
    “Try me,” Freddie said.
    “He says he’s engaged to Elizabeth Traven.”
    Freddie’s face darkened perceptibly. “Elizabeth Traven is going to marry a Pakistani spy? I don’t believe it.”
    “After I got back from Useppa, I dropped around to her place.”
    “Oh, great,” Freddie said.
    “She wasn’t there. The gate was locked. The place looked deserted.”
    “And you’re going to do this? You’re going to try to find her?”
    “What would you say if I said yes?”
    She rose and came over and bent to kiss his mouth. “Tree, my darling, Tree, we are getting too old for this. I am sixty now, remember?”
    “That’s impossible,” Tree said. “I know that’s what you told me in Paris in order to lure me into bed with you.”
    “If I was trying to lure you, I wouldn’t tell you I was sixty.”
    “You’re lying through your teeth.”
    “Nonetheless, we could be on the verge of, financially, not having to worry about anything. I don’t want to spend the rest of whatever life I’ve got left wondering whether my husband is coming home.”
    “I always come home,” Tree said.
    “This from a guy who no sooner became a private detective than he got himself shot.”
    “It was a couple of weeks at least.”
    “Who was almost dinner for two alligators.”
    “I knew I shouldn’t have told you about that.”
    “And not so long ago lost most of his front teeth in a beating.”
    “But the point is, I survived the gunshot wound. The alligators didn’t eat me, and I’ve got lovely new teeth that make me look like Brad Pitt.”
    “No, the point is, you’ve been very lucky. But one of these days your luck is going to run out.”
    “It’s going to run out for all of us,” Tree said. “It’s how you live until you die. That’s what makes the difference.”
    “You’ve been reading Hemingway again.”
    That reduced them both to silence.
    “To tell you the truth, I’m worried about Elizabeth,” Tree said finally. “What’s she doing mixed up with spies?”
    “It’s not worry,” Freddie said. “The correct term is obsession.”
    “No, it’s not. I didn’t look these people up. They came to me.”
    “But how do you think they got your name, Tree?”
    “They say they got it from Elizabeth,” Tree said.
    “Why is she giving them your name? And if this guy really is a spy, why does he need you? Doesn’t he know other agents who could find Elizabeth? And I don’t believe Elizabeth was about to marry some Pakistani spy and then, like some fluttery Tennessee Williams heroine, ran away at the last moment.”
    “Do Tennessee Williams heroines run away?”
    “Blanche DuBois did. How do you think she ended up in New Orleans?”
    “Elizabeth is no Blanche.”
    “She’s up to something, and that can only mean trouble for you. I don’t want to tell you what to do, but I would stay as far away from this as you possibly can.”
    “I’m going to make a couple of phone calls, that’s all,” Tree said. “Besides, I’ve already taken their money. Three thousand dollars.”
    Freddie shook her head in feigned exasperation—or maybe not so feigned. “I’m going in to make us some dinner.”
    “Are you mad at me?”
    “I’m worried about you.”
    “I keep telling you, Freddie. There’s nothing to worry about.” Was there? Well, actually there probably was, but not tonight.
    “So if I told you that since we got back from Paris, you don’t seem the same, what would you say?”
    “I would say that Paris wasn’t Paris this time—for either of us.”
    “No,” Freddie said evenly. “I don’t suppose it was.”
    She gave him a fleeting look and then went into the