I hadn’t yet so I mentally settled for old-fashioned “buxom.” She wore wide-legged gray wool slacks over medium-heeled black boots, a white turtleneck pullover covered by one of those unstructured ladies’ jackets, no hat, no jewelry that I could see, pale lipstick, too much eyeliner, and some rouge that didn’t quite hide the tiny scar just under her right eye. It looked as though someone had engraved a tic-tac-toe crosshatch with a fine scalpel. She crossed her legs and folded her hands over her knee; one of the knuckles had a faint bluish tinge.

Everything fit together on her nicely but you can’t always tell what a woman spends on her get-up the way you can with a man-no jewelry, for example, didn’t mean she was broke. She sat as calmly as a toad waiting for flies, and the dog’s presence didn’t seem to unsettle her. It didn’t look like a matrimonial to me, but I’ve made a career out of being wrong. So I just asked, “How can I help you?” in my neutral professional voice.

Now that she wasn’t coming over the speaker, her voice sounded like she forgot to clear her throat. “I want you to find somebody for me.”

“Why?” Not that I give a senator’s morals for her reasons, but this kind of question usually gives you a good clue to how much money the customer wants to spend.

“Is that important?” she asked.

“It is to me. How do I know you don’t want to find this person and do some damage to them, for example?”

“If I did, you wouldn’t take the job?”

I didn’t need sarcasm this early in the morning. Even Pansy grinned appreciatively at her before rolling over and cracking another piece of her marrow bone.

“I didn’t say that. But I have to know what I’m getting into…”

“So you can fix the price?”

Okay, sure I have to fix the price. But she obviously didn’t understand the complexities of my business.