Birthright

did, but I appreciate it. It’s easy to think about this as something that happened years ago and forget the immediacy. You need to go to the police.”
    “After we talk to the Simpsons, I’ll give Sheriff Hewitt everything I have. For all the good it does.” Noting the joined hands, Callie swiveled farther around. “So, you guys sleeping together yet?”
    “Where the hell do you get off asking that?” Doug demanded.
    “I’m just trying the sister hat on for size. I didn’t have the chance to evolve into it, go through the pest stage and all that. So I’m just jumping in. How’s the sex anyway? Good?”
    Lana ran her tongue around her teeth. “As a matter of fact—”
    “Cut it out.”
    “Guys get weirded out when women talk about sex,” Callie commented.
    “I don’t.” Jake reached over to pat her hip.
    “You’re an aberration. But Graystone here’s really good in bed.”
    “I don’t want to hear about it,” Doug said.
    “I’m talking to Lana. You know how some guys are mainly good at one thing? Like maybe they’re a good kisser, but they’ve got hands like a fish or the endurance of a ninety-year-old asthmatic?”
    “I do. Yes, I certainly do.” Lana capped her pen, put it back in her bag.
    “Well, Graystone, he’s got all the moves. Great lips. And, you know, he does these little magic tricks, sleight-of-hand stuff. He’s got really creative hands. It almost makes up for his numerous flaws and irritating qualities.”
    Lana leaned forward, lowered her voice. “Doug has reading glasses. Horn-rims.”
    “No kidding? Horn-rims kill me. You got them on you?” She reached back, pushed at Doug’s knee and got nothing but a withering stare in return. “Starting to think it wasn’t such a bad thing when somebody grabbed me out of that stroller, huh?”
    “I’m wondering how I can talk them into kidnapping you again.”
    “I’d just find my way back now. You’re awful quiet, Graystone.”
    “Just enjoying watching you needle somebody besides me for a change. Almost there, Doug.”
    “Just remember I’m in charge,” Callie said when Jake got off at the exit. “You three are just backup.”
    “Now she’s Kinsey Milhone,” Doug grumbled.
    She felt more like Sigourney Weaver’s character from Aliens. She wanted to slash and burn. But she strapped her rage down as Jake pulled in the driveway. Temper wasn’t going to blind her.
    She climbed out of the car, walked to the front door, pressed the bell.
    She heard nothing but the late-summer twitter of birds and the low drone of a lawn mower from somewhere up the street.
    “Let me check the garage.” Jake walked off while Callie pressed the doorbell again.
    “They could be out, Sunday lunch, tennis game,” Lana suggested.
    “No. They know what’s going on. They know I’ve been talking to people who might remember Barbara. They’re not sipping mimosas and playing doubles at the club.”
    “Garage is empty,” Jake reported.
    “So we’ll break in.”
    “Hold it, hold it.” Doug put a restraining hand on Callie’s shoulder. “Even if we toss out the downside of daytime breaking and entering, a place like this is going to have an alarm system. You break a window, bust down a door, the cops are going to be here before you can find anything. If there’s anything to find in the first place.”
    “Don’t be logical. I’m pissed.”
    She slapped a fist on the door. “They couldn’t have known I was coming. Not this fast.”
    “One step at a time. Doug’s got a point about the neighborhood.” Jake scanned the houses across the street. “Upscale, secure. But a village is a village, and there’s always a gossipmonger. Somebody who makes it his or her business to know what everyone else is up to. We fan out, knock on some doors and politely ask after our friends the Simpsons.”
    “Okay.” Callie reined herself in. “We’ll go in couples. Couples are less intimidating. Jake and I’ll take the south side, Doug and Lana, you take the north. What time is it?”
    She studied her watch as she ran ideas around in her head. “Okay, timing’s a little off, but it’ll do. We were supposed to drop by for drinks with Barb and Hank. Now we’re worried we’ve got the wrong day or that something’s wrong.”
    “It’ll do in a pinch.” Jake took her hand, linked fingers when she tugged. “We’re a couple, remember. A nice, harmless, unintimidating couple concerned about our friends Barb and Hank.”
    “Anybody