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cupboard; at least he wasn’t alone with his thoughts about the drunken little prick who’d weaved across the center line and met Molly’s car head-on; at least the report of her heart monitor didn’t echo in his memory like a crow’s call. But when the house was empty…
    The front hallway of the Shadyside house was a riot of moving cartons, Brenna’s stacked dining-room chairs, and the scattered pieces of a forsaken Candy Land game that had ended badly two hours earlier with Annie accusing Taylor of planting the Queen Frostine card to his advantage. The conflict was annoying at the time, but as he swept the cards into a pile and tracked the far-flung game pieces, it made him smile. Kids weren’t nearly as entertaining in the moment as they could be with a few hours’ distance.
    The phone rang again. Christensen checked his watch. Still thirty minutes until Simone’s birthday party ended.
    â€œHey Jim, me again.” With his basso profundo voice and trace of Dublin lilt, there was never a need for Terry Flaherty to be more specific.
    â€œFord Underhill?”
    â€œWh-what?” Flaherty said.
    â€œBrenna filled me in.” Christensen waited through a long pause.
    â€œLoose lips sink ships.”
    â€œYou ethical titan. Relax. She told me who, but that’s it. What’s the deal?”
    â€œWe still don’t know what the hell is going on, but it’s so bizarre. She still around? I found some background she may need.”
    â€œJust left. You have the cell phone number.” Christensen folded the Candy Land board in half and put it on the kitchen counter. “Brenna didn’t tell me anything about what happened. Really.”
    Flaherty laughed. “I’ll leave that up to her, then. Ford Fucking Underhill. You think he pays his bills?”
    It was hard not to notice the Underhill name in Pittsburgh. The family’s generosity over the past century had left it on dozens of Downtown buildings, a sprawling public park in Oakland, and an urban plaza near the old Grant Hotel. In the past decade alone, thanks apparently to the generosity of former governor Vincent Underhill, the family’s controlling heir, the Underhills had helped underwrite the neo-natal wing at Mount Mercy Hospital, the Harmony Brain Research Center, an overly splendid Downtown ballet theater, and one of the most convenient concourses at the city’s massive new airport. Florence, Italy, had the Medicis, Pittsburgh, the Renaissance City, had the Underhills.
    â€œThe old man’s kind of disappeared the last couple of years, hasn’t he?” Christensen asked. “I mean, compared to Ford.”
    â€œFord’s the family’s front guy now, yeah. Vincent’s playing Joe Kennedy to Ford’s John. But Vincent’s still a player.”
    â€œMeaning?”
    â€œThat’s his rep, anyway. He’s out of the spotlight for decades, since he left Harrisburg, but he didn’t exactly retire. Took what was left of the family fortune and diversified into retail and office development, public-works construction, all that. The family’s companies built a lot of what got built in Pennsylvania during the last twenty years. Christ, they get a chunk of practically every major public contract that’s awarded, so he still had a lot of friends in politics when he left office.”
    Christensen absently opened the refrigerator. They’d moved a few staples from Brenna’s house before unplugging her fridge the day before, but nothing snackable. And even if he felt like warming Thai takeout leftovers from last night, where was the microwave? “What does any of that have to do with them needing a criminal-defense attorney?”
    Christensen let the remark hang, hoping its weight would pull Flaherty into an explanation of what had happened to Floss Underhill.
    â€œThe Underhills are just big power brokers, is all.”
    â€œThere’s