But she said, “This’s something else. One of our clients makes car parts.”

“Right. Kenosha Auto. See? I do listen.”

She looked at her husband with an astonished glance. “Well, the CEO, turns out, is an absolute prick.” She explained about a wrongful death case involving components of a hybrid car engine: a freak accident, a passenger electrocuted. “The head of their R-and-D department…why, he demanded I return all the technical files. Imagine that.”

Steven said, “I liked your other case better-that state representative’s last will and testament…the sex stuff.”

“Shhhh,” she said, alarmed. “Remember, I never said a word about it.”

“My lips are sealed.”

Emma speared an olive and ate it. “And how was your day?”

Steven laughed. “Please…I don’t make enough to talk about business after hours.” The Feldmans were a shining example of a blind date gone right, despite the odds. Emma, a U of W law school valedictorian, daughter of Milwaukee-Chicago money; Steven, a city college bachelor of arts grad from the Brewline, intent on helping society. Their friends gave them six months, tops; the Door County wedding, to which all those friends were invited, had occurred exactly eight months after their first date.

Steven pulled a triangle of Brie out of a shopping bag. Found crackers and opened them.

“Oh, okay. Just a little.”

Snap, snap…

Her husband frowned. Emma said, “Honey, it’s freaking me a little. That was footsteps.”

The three vacation houses here were eight or nine miles from the nearest shop or gas station and a little over a mile from the county highway, which was accessed via a strip of dirt poorly impersonating a road. Marquette State Park, the biggest in the Wisconsin system, swallowed most of the land in the area; Lake Mondac and these houses made up an enclave of private property.

Very private.

And very deserted.