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industry, and in his spare time he plays with mechanical cats.”
    “What happened last summer?” Charlie wished he could close his eyes again and take just a small nap. He had spent the morning splitting firewood and now it felt good to be tired, full, and warm before the fire, too good to ruin by talking about ghosts. Still, trying to connect a man like Vernon Garrity with ghosts had turned on a switch in his head and sleep switches had been shut down.
    “You know how many times someone asks if you believe in ghosts and everyone says no and then they all spend the evening telling one improbable story after another without ever giving you anything you can hold on to. Noises, feelings, precognitions, fears. Bullshit!” He glanced apologetically at Constance. “Sorry. But that night, it got to me. I’d only met Vernon a couple of times, and there were things I really wanted to talk to him about. Anyway, at din ner he says, ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’ And I said something or other that squelched the topic.”
    “What you said,” Gretchen remarked, almost casually, as she studied the design on her coffee cup, “was that only idiots take seriously the superstitious fears of women, chil dren, savages, and lunatics.”
    He flushed. “I don’t know exactly what I said, but what ever it was, the topic was dropped and wasn’t brought up again. And now his widow is haunted, and she thinks it’s my fault.”
    “Wanda didn’t get a chance to talk to Vernon again about what was on his mind,” Gretchen went on when Dutch stopped. “The next day, she drove back to New York with us, and the day after that, before she returned, he was killed. And now, six months later, she is getting messages from him, she says.”
    “How was he killed?” Charlie asked.
    “He was walking on the beach and someone hit him in the head with a rock and robbed him. No one was ever arrested.”
    “Didn’t I meet Wanda years ago? She was a little girl,” Constance said then.
    “She’s thirty-five now. Maybe at a slumber party at my place? She was at our house a lot.”
    Constance and Gretchen had been in college together, had been friends, had parted and lost track of each other for many years. Gretchen’s call had been a surprise to Con stance and, she admitted to herself ruefully, she had looked forward to gossip about mutual friends and enemies from the past. What she was hearing now was not at all what she had had in mind.
    “Don’t forget Brother Amos,” Dutch said. “And Sister Angel.”
    “Please. I’m getting to that. Brother Amos calls himself an evangelist. He claims that Vernon is in touch with him, and he tells Wanda what Vernon says. Angel is his daughter, a teenager. He calls her Sister Angel.”
    “Nasty can of worms,” Charlie commented, shaking his head. “People who want to hear from the dead always find a way. Not much you can do about it.”
    “I said she should see a shrink.”
    “Well, she won’t,” Gretchen snapped. “She claims that Brother Amos has told her things that no one on God’s earth but she and Vernon could have known. She isn’t hys terical or crazy or disturbed in any other way.”
    “So you want Constance to go talk to her.” Charlie glanced at Constance with what was almost an evil grin. She understood the message: Now it was her turn to explain that she was retired, not taking private cases, busy writing a book and being a country housewife.
    “Aunt Louise,” Gretchen said carefully, “asked me to get in touch with both of you. She wants someone to investigate Amos. And she wants Constance to talk sense into Wanda.”
    “For the first time in her life, Aunt Louise has money in the family,” Dutch added dryly. “And she wants to keep it there.”
    Gretchen nodded. “That’s part of it, of course. The way things are going, Brother Amos is likely to be the main beneficiary of Vernon’s death. And, of course, Brother Amos is a fraud.” She took a deep breath. “I have a