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this all sorted out for Millie and her mother. You’ll meet Judith Chapman at a dinner party my parents are hosting for you. She’s a lovely woman, and I don’t know what she would do if she found out Millie wasn’t her biological daughter and that somewhere out there she had another child.”
    Annie shook her head with a decisive manner. “It won’t make a difference to her. Not in the way she loves Millie. I know. I have a daughter and nothing could ever change how I feel about her. She is my daughter no matter what. But if it turns out some other young woman out there is the biological child of Mrs. Chapman, well, that will be difficult, no?”
    “Yes, it would be a very hard situation for all involved,” I said to Annie.
    John and Gerard came in with the steaks and I put the potatoes and sprouts on the table, and soon enough the topic turned to murder. And as I suspected, my husband wasn’t giving much up. But that was okay. I had a secret weapon and as soon as the men left in the morning, I would put my plan into action.

 
     
     
CHAPTER NINE
     
     
    If I could do things differently, well, I probably wouldn’t. When I took a good look at my life I found that I liked things pretty much as they were. But still. It was only natural to let your mind wander once in a while about how things might have been if you took a different path. I always thought being a private investigator might be fun. In reality I think they spend a lot of their time on a computer or chasing down cheating spouses. But I would be the fun kind of detective. The kind you see in the movies. The ones that have an inside track and work on the really juicy cases. The murders and international jewel thief and art forgery cases. I’d work with Interpol helping them to track down the whereabouts of suspects with the moniker of The Ghost or Le Voleur .
    But I wasn’t a detective. I could do some quick searches on the Internet the same as the next person. That was about the extent of my detecting gifts. But luckily for me, I had recently met a real-life PI. Her name was Shirley Reynolds, and Annie and I were meeting her for coffee this morning.
    The two of us headed to Westport, and as I drove along I-95, I told Annie the story of how I met Shirley while working on another murder, and how at one point I thought perhaps she might be the killer.
    “But she wasn’t, correct?”
    I smiled. “No, no need to worry. She wasn’t. But you have to check everything out. Just because someone seems trusting and has a reputable job, doesn’t mean they can’t be a criminal as well. Once I knew I could trust Shirley, she helped me put a really good plan into action and together we caught the people involved and managed to get the whole story out of them before the police arrived. And it was a very good story.”
    “You have such an interesting life, Alex. All these years I never understood why Gerard so much enjoyed his work. Spending his days with these horrible people. But I think I can see why now. I’m excited to find out what is going on with the Spiegel case.”
    “It’s addicting,” I nodded. “But I only work the good stuff. I leave the everyday crime to the police. And I hate to say this, but people who kill aren’t who you would imagine them to be. They’re everyday people, like us. Of course, some of them are just evil, but a lot of them, well, they feel justified in what they’ve done. An eye for an eye type of thing. It can be fascinating to get a glimpse into their way of thinking.”
    I took the next exit and made a left turn. Traffic was light and though the day was clear and promised to warm up, full springtime weather hadn’t yet arrived. Annie and I had grabbed our zip-up sweatshirts, and as we neared the water, I was glad we brought them along.
    “I wonder how this crime will turn out,” Annie said. “Will we be meeting the evil person or the everyday one just trying to get justice?”
    “That’s a good question and I’ve