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eating crumb cake too quickly. “What did he tell you?” I asked.
    “He said he’d gotten a call about an author whose name was unknown to him. That he’d asked around his office and found out that there was a manuscript in house by that author. That’s you, you know.”
    “No kidding. Who was calling about me?”
    And somehow I knew the answer before Adam had the opportunity to say it. I can’t say it made my stomach feel any better.
    “He said he’d gotten the call from someone in a county prosecutor’s office and the guy’s name was Duffy Madison.”

Chapter 6
    After spending twenty minutes (unsuccessfully) trying to convince my agent that I was, in fact, not paying some guy to pretend to be a law enforcement official and call publishers on my behalf (why would a producer read a book because a county investigator told him to?), I forgot about my revisions, got into my car, and drove, with the help of my very reliable GPS device, to the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office.
    Hackensack, New Jersey, is not all it’s cracked up to be. On the other hand, when you start out with a name like “Hackensack,” you’re not exactly shooting for the stars to begin with. It’s the seat of a county that includes some of the richest real estate in the country within its borders, and yet the city itself is a little tired, a little rundown, and frankly, mostly forgotten by Bergen County’s wealthier residents except when they have to find a way to get out of jury duty.
    My purpose was considerably less hypocritical (I thought). I asked very nicely for Chief Investigator William Petrosky’s office and was told I couldn’t see him.
    That was something of a problem. You’d think that a woman of my accomplishments (which were up to about five now) would have thought to call ahead, but I’m more of a take-the-bull-by-the-horns kind of girl, and besides, it had never occurred to me that Petrosky wouldn’t drop everything on his to-do list just to converse with a woman from a county he didn’t represent and of whom he had almost certainly never heard.
    But I decided to persevere. “It’ll only take a minute of his time,” I said. “I promise. Did I mention I’m a mystery author doing research?”
    “He doesn’t have any time today.” The receptionist, whose expression indicated she had expected to marry out of her job by now, wasn’t exactly looking at me. She was glaring into an iPhone, which was situated in such a way that I couldn’t tell exactly which Candy Crush game was giving her trouble. “You want to make an appointment for next month?”
    “I’m afraid it can’t wait.”
    “Sorry. There’s nothing I can do.” She slammed the phone down on her desk. “Dammit!”
    “I appreciate your frustration,” I told her. “Couldn’t you just ask him?”
    The woman looked up, apparently startled that I was still there. “I told you, he’s booked.”
    Defeated, I started for the office door. Then completely on an impulse, I turned back and blurted out, “Duffy Madison.”
    She looked dumbfounded. “What did you say?”
    “I want to talk to him about Duffy Madison.” I had no idea what this conversation was about, but it was working.
    “Hang on,” she said, and walked to the door six feet to my left. If I’d had any indication that was where Petrosky was located, I’d probably have tried to barge in, but the door wasn’t marked with anything but the numeral 4 . The receptionist knocked, walked in, and shut the door behind her. I waited perhaps ten seconds before she walked back out, smoothed her hair (which did not need smoothing), and said, “He says to go right in.”
    Petrosky turned out to be a man of about fifty, was an inch or two shorter than me, and wore a white shirt and navy-blue tie. The jacket from his navy-blue suit hung over the back of his chair, which was behind his desk.
    “I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t get your name.” He reached out to take my hand in a businesslike