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“Yeah, she might have mentioned it once when she wanted to boot me out the car window.”

“The first thing Margaret did after her sister’s daughter was molested was to enroll Callie with an excellent instructor, to be sure that Callie would never be a victim.

“You seem like a good man, Detective Raven. You’re interesting, you’re also an excellent listener. I’ll bet you manage to get information out of the most obdurate of perpetrators, don’t you?”

“I try, ma’am. Actually, I hear it’s Agent Savich who’s the master at it. They give lots of classes on interviewing at Quantico. One day I might go see what it’s all about.”

“You really think Agent Savich is all that good? It’s been nearly a week since Stewart’s murder and nearly four days since Danny O’Malley’s murder, yet he doesn’t seem to have turned up anything.”

“He will. Justice Califano interacted with a great many people, so many it makes your head ache, and everyone has something quite different to say. Lies? Just differences of perception? Sheer perversity?”

“I see what you mean. Well, you’d expect that, wouldn’t you? It would be like Bitsy and me being married to the same man. We’d both experience him as very different men.”

“I never thought of it like that. Do we change our behaviors so much with each different person we know?”

“I’d rather eat pizza than think about that,” Janette said.

CHAPTER

24

THE DOORBELL RANG, and the delivery boy stood grinning from ear to ear with seven pizza boxes piled up to his nose. Callie, charmed by that grin, gave him a big tip.

Bitsy St. Pierre said between mouthfuls of her anchovy pizza, “This is delicious. Eat, Margaret, I don’t want to have to tell you again.” The other three women nodded. Ben watched them, his head cocked to the side. He was eating with six women, five of them his mother’s age, something he couldn’t remember ever doing before in his life. He decided he liked it.

Margaret took a small bite, chewed on it forever before finally swallowing it. Bitsy said matter-of-factly, “We buried Stewart today. It was a grand send-off. The President spoke, the Vice President spoke. You dealt magnificently with the media, Margaret. We’ve given Stewart a wonderful toast with his favorite champagne. He would have made one of his decision matrixes and concluded he was proud of you. Now, eat.”

He’d heard them say such things to Margaret at least three or four times that evening. Did it help? Evidently so. Margaret Califano took a bigger bite of pizza and actually looked like she might be enjoying it.

Janette Weaverton appeared to be the quietest of the five women, although he hadn’t found her reticent or shy at all. It was just that the others seemed more forceful in their opinions, bigger in their laughter. She seemed preoccupied. Yes, that was it.

Ben said, “Will you ladies be staying here tonight?”

Five sets of eyes turned to him. “Oh no,” said Anna Clifford. “Our families are patient, they understand, but they want us back home. Since Callie’s here now, we’ll leave when it’s time for Margaret to go to bed.”

“Your husband, Mrs. Clifford, what does he do?”

“He used to be a banker, but now he’s a venture capitalist.” She paused a moment, chewed some pizza. “Most people don’t really understand what that means, exactly, but to me it sounds mysterious, maybe dangerous, like laundering Mafia money.”

That drew a round of laughter, but Margaret said, in a serious voice, “There’s nothing illegal in what Clayton does, Anna. He simply invests his own and other people’s money in individual entrepreneurs or start-up companies that interest him. He’s good at analyzing their growth potential, their planning skills, and deciding if they’re worth the risk.”

Anna smiled as she said, “Come on, Margaret, you know very well Clayton says it’s like deciding whether or not to buy Boardwalk in Monopoly.”

Bitsy said, “Eat more pizza, Margaret. Those chunks of pepper will bring back your sense of humor.”

Margaret dropped her slice of pizza back on her paper plate.