All Shots

badly. Although she Wasn’t carrying the usual clipboard, handouts, and petitions, I wondered whether she could be soliciting for some good cause. In a sense and from her viewpoint, I was right: the good cause was herself.
    “Holly Winter,” she said.
    “Holly Winter,” I said with a smile that she didn’t return.
    “May I come in?” Her tone was formal and cold.
    “Of course. Kimi, okay. Good girl.”
    Holly Winter, the other, didn’t even glance at Kimi, who with the weird prescience that still unsettles me, headed directly for the living room. The woman’s stiff manner had made me reluctant to return to the kitchen. She seemed anything but the kind of person who’d sit there chatting while my dog filed her own nails. On the contrary, the other Holly would, I sensed, consider the activity bizarre.
    Our living room is perfectly conventional. It has a small fireplace, a couch, two upholstered chairs, and the usual lamps and low tables. My office is packed with trophies, ribbons, framed certificates, show photos, and other dog paraphernalia, but except in December when there’s a Christmas tree loaded with dog ornaments in the living room, the decor is proof to myself that my life hasn’t gone entirely to the dogs. The day was still so dark that I turned on three lights, but I just gestured my visitor to a chair and didn’t offer coffee or tea. Kimi, too, withheld any welcoming overtures. Holly took a seat on one side of the fireplace, and I sat opposite her. Kimi lay down at my feet and watched my face.
    “I’m sure you’re aware of this horrible business,” she said.
    I nodded. “Of course.”
    “Zach Ho,” she said.
    “The owner of the house.”
    “A classmate of mine.” In Cambridge, classmate means at Harvard, presumably on the grounds that other colleges have no class. “And an, uh, acquaintance. We serve on an advisory board together.”
    “As I understand it,” I said, “he’s in Africa and totally out of touch. Unless there’s something I haven’t heard? Have the police been able to reach him?”
    “Oh, the police! The police are useless.”
    “That hasn’t been my experience with the Cambridge police.” By nature, I’m the sort of straightforward person who gets her hackles up and blurts out, The hell they are, you condescending snot! This my-experience tactic was Gabrielle’s. It always worked for her. In fact, it more than worked: she ended up making friends with everyone. The DEA agent? He was probably calling her all the time for advice about dealing with his parents and improving his love life.
    “Then your experience must be very limited,” the other Holly said. “Or in a role other than mine.”
    “I don’t know what you mean.” That wasn’t a Gabrielle tactic. I honestly missed the insinuation.
    “As someone who is the victim of identity theft,” she said, “I take a personal interest in finding out the facts.”
    My hackles were now up. “As opposed to an impersonal interest? My information was stolen, too, you know. The police must have told you that. The woman, the murdered woman, apparently went through my trash. But she didn’t actually commit identity theft. It certainly looks as if she intended to. But she hadn’t done it, at least so far as I know. My bank accounts look fine. I’m going to check my credit. I just haven’t gotten around to it yet. Have you?”
    “Yes.”
    “And?”
    She shrugged. “Nothing yet.”
    “The poor woman is dead. She’s hardly in a position to steal anyone’s identity. Yours, mine, or anyone else’s. In comparison with what happened to her, our problems are nothing.”
    “I don’t appreciate having my situation minimized and trivialized, and I have to ask myself why you have such an investment in downplaying a serious crime.” A certain immobility of expression and stiffness of body gave her an androidlike quality.
    “The serious crime is murder. Pilfering other people’s bills and bank statements isn’t in the same league.”
    “Were you in Cambridge this summer?”
    “What does that have to do with anything?”
    Kimi slowly rose to her feet and moved to the left side of my chair.
    “I was abroad,” said Holly Winter.
    “I wasn’t. So what?”
    Holly Winter, too, stood up. As she headed for the door, she said, “Simple explanations are often best. If one were to set out to steal another’s identity, how very, very easy to target a victim with one’s own name.”
    “Leave,” I said.