The killer came to us in the trunk of a Lincoln Town Car, and stayed just long enough to wreck the house. By that I mean the pile of brick that Naomi Nantz uses as her personal residence as well as for the business of solving unsolvable cases, assisting the helpless and generally amusing herself by being difficult, if not impossible.

My name is Alice Crane, and I serve as Ms. Nantz’s recording secretary and chief factotum. In case you don’t know-I had to look it up when she hired me-a factotum is an employee or assistant employed in a wide range of capacities. I mean, come on, this is the twenty-first century, who uses fusty old words like that anymore?

My boss, Naomi Nantz, that’s who.

The Nantz residence takes up most of a block in the Back Bay area of Boston. Don’t bother trying to find us, we’re camouflaged as two-or is it three? — typical Victorian brick town houses located somewhere between Storrow Drive to the north, Boylston Street to the south, Arlington Street to the east and Charlesgate to the west. Check your map and you’ll see that pretty much covers the neighborhood. On the outside we’re staid and rather ordinary, the kind of staid and ordinary that only money can buy. On the inside, which was gutted and rebuilt a few years before I entered the picture, it’s clean and sleek and modern, except for the Zen sand garden that takes up part of the ground floor. Boss lady often meditates in the garden, drawing what look to me like meaningless lines in the sand, saying it helps her to think.

Like several of the staff, I live in. At the time of hire, it wasn’t a choice for me because my adorable husband had suddenly vanished along with all of my money, and it was either the Nantz residence or my sister’s place in Malden.