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mustn’t he?”
    â€œEverybody, huh?”
    â€œYou know how it is. People talk.”
    â€œAnd they say the kid is Professor Keener’s son, do they?”
    It’s easy enough to look befuddled. “Do I have it wrong? Oh dear, maybe I’m worried about nothing. But you said—what was it you said?”
    â€œHaven’t yet,” she says, going all cagey. “Joe, is that what his friends called him? Really? He was always Professor Keener to me. Very formal man, very private about himself. First time I went over there and introduced myself he looked at the ground and said, ‘Professor Keener,’ and that’s how it stayed. It fit him, too. He was the perfect neighbor, really. Anyhow, he used to have a little kid that came around on a regular basis, but thatstopped a couple of years ago. Not every day, but like on weekends. A toddler, couldn’t have been more than three years old, the last time I noticed. Played in the backyard a few times, but mostly they kept him inside.”
    â€œThey?” I ask, genuinely surprised.
    â€œThe Chinese lady I assumed to be his wife. Or ex-wife, or whatever. She was always here with the boy and she was obviously his mother. She’s a real beauty, an exotic type, wears those formal Chinese dresses, doesn’t speak a word of English. At least not to me.”
    â€œBut you haven’t seen her or the boy for the last two years?”
    â€œSomething like that. At first I thought maybe she was just a friend of his. They didn’t look like a couple, if you know what I mean. Not even a divorced couple. But one day one of my ninjas got out.”
    â€œExcuse me?”
    â€œMy kitty cats. Ninjas, I call ’em. I’m owned by four cats, shelter cats, and they like to hide under the furniture, whack your ankles as you go by. Anyhow, Jeepers got out and bolted over to Professor Keener’s yard, and the little boy was sitting in the sandbox, playing with a scoop, and wouldn’t you know, Jeepers was interested in the sandbox, or that’s what I thought. I go running out, afraid the kid might get scratched, but the cat was sitting there, perfectly well behaved, letting the little boy pet her. Very cute, I wish I’d had my camera. The professor came out at the same time, and I retrieved Jeepers and he retrieved the boy, and we had ourselves a little conversation. Which is all you ever got with the professor. I said, what an adorable child, I can see he takes after his father, and he smiled and said, ‘He’s my keyboard kid,’ and that was all. Not another word. I mean, what does that mean,‘keyboard kid’? I asked, but the conversation was obviously over. He never even told me the boy’s name.”
    â€œBut you took him to mean the boy was his son.”
    â€œAbsolutely. You could tell, the way he was holding him, the pride in his eyes. He actually looked me in the eye that one time, just for a second, and I could tell how much he loved the boy. And close-up like that you could see the resemblance, I wasn’t kidding about that.”
    â€œYou haven’t seen the child in at least two years. Did you ever ask Professor Keener where his son was? Why he didn’t come around anymore? What happened to the boy’s mother? Anything like that?”
    Mrs. Nadeau shakes her head, gives me a flinty, dismissive look, almost scornful. “Who are you really?” she wants to know. “If you worked with Professor Keener, you’d know what he was like. You’d know not to ask him personal questions like that. What are you, some kind of reporter?”
    Boss lady always says that when you’re engaged on a case, it’s best to season your prevarication with just enough truth to make it edible—and be ready to alter the recipe on the fly. “Not a reporter, no, absolutely not,” I say, backpedaling in place. “And to be totally truthful with