“And you sense they’re in danger.”

“Yes. But not just them … me, Jim, my family, my friends … any way they can get to us. There’s so much treachery all around us.”

“What sort of treachery?”

She frowned, turned her thoughts inward. “I sense it, but also I catch them behaving suspiciously.”

“Who?”

“The household staff, for one.”

“I see.”

“You need to investigate all of them! And Jim’s assistants at the Navy Department, and I’ll make you a list of my newer acquaintances …”

“Why them?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Isn’t it convenient that they’ve suddenly become my friends at this particular stage? Doesn’t that make your hackles tingle?”

My hackles were tingling, all right, but I just said, “You’re right-make me that list, it’ll be helpful.”

“You may find that many of these people … perhaps even all of them … are working together to harm everything near and dear to me. The only person I trust is Jim-and that’s why I asked him to bring somebody in from outside, someone that he trusted. You, Nate.”

“I appreciate your confidence in me, Jo.” I patted her hand. “And I promise you I’ll give this my full attention. I’m not going to let anything happen to you or your boys.”

“Or Jim!”

“Or Jim.”

“Thank you, Nate …”

And she half-rose, leaning across the picnic table, and kissed me full on the lips.

She was gazing at me rather lasciviously, stroking my face as I said, “You’re welcome,” and then she stood, the nervousness gone, the confidence snapping back into place, and strode over to her horse, untied it, mounted and galloped off.

Now Jo Forrestal was clearly nuttier than a Baby Ruth bar, but her husband had come to the conclusion that the best way to snap her out of this was for me to take her fears seriously, and do a full, for real investigation. Forrestal figured that by demonstrating to her that her suspicions had no basis in reality, his wife would return to reality, herself. I didn’t know whether I agreed with this approach or not, though I did agree with his thousand-buck minimum retainer.