“Your … he’s getting the car,” Broun said, taking in the whole scene.

“I’m sorry about your African violets,” Annie said. “I was looking at one of them and…”

“No harm done, no harm done.” He led her to the front door and out, talking the whole time. “I’m so glad you could come to our reception.”

When he came back, I was on my hands and knees in front of the bookcase, looking for volume two of Freeman. “I had a very peculiar conversation with your roommate just now,” he said. He sat down on the arm of the loveseat and looked at the pile of dirt and flowerpot fragments that had been his violet. He scratched his scruffy beard, looking more than ever like a horsetrader. “He told me that Lincoln’s dream was a symbol for some deep-seated trauma, probably in his childhood.”

I found The Gray Fox and looked up “Cats,” and then “Lee, love of pets,” in the index. “Well, what did you expect from a psychiatrist?” I said, wishing he would go back to the party so I could find out whether Lee had had a cat.

“I told him I thought the deep-seated trauma was probably the Civil War, and that it seemed perfectly normal for him to dream about assassinations and coffins in the White House. Did you know Willie’s coffin was put in the East Room?”

“Did Robert E. Lee have a cat?” I said.

Broun looked at me. “Lincoln had cats. Kittens. He loved kittens.”

“Lee, damn it, not Lincoln. When he lived at Arlington, did he have a cat?”

“I don’t know,” he said, and it was the same placating tone he’d used with Richard. “Maybe Freeman says something about a cat.”

“Maybe it does, but I don’t have a goddamn clue as to where Freeman is. You keep volume one in the attic, volume three under your bed, and volume four you tear up for mulch and use in your African violets. If you had a library like other people instead of this goddamned disorganized mess …”