The revolver had belonged to Vivian’s late husband, the homicide detective, but as she welcomed us into the foyer, she grimly assured us that she knew how to use it and that she had no compunctions about plugging anyone who might have followed us with mischief in mind.

“We weren’t followed,” I said. “We took care not to be.” Holding the weapon down at her side, muzzle safely pointed at the floor, Vivian regarded me with motherly affection. “God love you, Cubby, you’re a sweet man and a fine writer, but by nature you’re a blithe spirit—”

Wincing, I disagreed: “Not blithe. Cheerful, generally cheerful, but not all the way to blithe.”

“Blithe spirit,” Vivian insisted. “You’re a flaming optimist—”

“Not flaming,” I said as I took off my raincoat. “Generally optimistic but not flaming.”

She favored me with an expression of such motherly indulgence that I expected her to pinch my cheek. “You’re a blithe spirit, a flaming optimist, and we’d want you no other way. But being the kind of man you are, you don’t understand how infernally clever a truly wicked person can be. So we’ll assume you were followed until time proves otherwise.”

Frowning as Vivian closed the door, Penny said, “Okay, I told you on the phone we were in a spot of trouble. But how did you know it was the kind of trouble, you might need a gun?”

“Cop’s-wife instinct,” she said. “This morning your house blows up, fire so intense there’s hardly ashes left. The news says you’re in Florida doing book research when I know for a fact you’re not. Then you call, trying not to sound scared, you need a little help. Hell’s bells, my instinct would have told me to keep the Smith and Wesson handy even if I had been married to a florist.”

Lassie shook her coat, and water flew, and Penny said, “I’m so sorry, we’re making a mess of your foyer.”

“Heavens, Pen, it’s only rain. Hang your coats on the hall tree. That towel on the floor is to dry the dog.”

As I toweled Lassie, Milo struggled out of his hated slicker.

Vivian said, “How’s the extraterrestrial radio coming along?”

Milo shrugged. “Better than the time machine.”

“Have you talked to anyone on it yet? Or should I say anything?”

“No,” the boy said. “It’s turning out to be something different from an interstellar communications device.”

“How different?” Vivian asked.

“Very.”

“It won’t blow up the world, will it?”

“No. I stopped working on the thing that might have done that.”

“Come on through to the kitchen,” Vivian said. “I can tell you haven’t had dinner, and you need it.”

“We don’t want to bother you,” Penny said.

“I’ve got soup, I’ve got brisket and potatoes, I’ve got graham-cracker cream pie, and none of it’s trouble at all. I always cook enough for four and freeze the leftovers.”

As we went through the living room and dining room, I noticed that Vivian had closed all the draperies. In the kitchen, the blinds were drawn down to the windowsills. She was an apt conspirator.

Four places were set at the kitchen table. Fragrant steam rose from the pot of soup on the stove.

Vivian put the revolver on a counter and set a dish of cubed cooked chicken breast on the floor for Lassie.

As the dog gave her an adoring look, Vivian asked us what we would like to drink.

Opening a bottle of root beer for Milo, she said, “The critic is just as much a gibbering nutball as he is a hoity-toity snob, isn’t he?”

Penny was no less startled than I. “Viv, we didn’t say Shearman Waxx was our spot of trouble.”

“I can add two plus two,” Vivian said. “Besides, yesterday, long before your house blew up, I went online and started reading through the archives of his reviews.”

“Why?” I wondered.

“I detested the man because of how unfair and vicious he was to you, Cubby, and I don’t like detesting people. I wanted to give him a chance to prove he wasn’t a complete rat. After I read about twenty of his reviews, I didn’t detest him anymore. I despised him. And then I read ten more.”

I said, “Maybe you shouldn’t visit his newspaper’s website, Viv. I don’t know … but maybe he can track the e-mail addresses of people who go to his page, and right now he might be especially interested in people who stay there a long time.”

Accepting a glass of milk from Vivian, Penny said, “My God, I spent hours in his archives this morning, after we got to the house on the peninsula.”

“That’s not how he found us,” I assured her. “Maybe your e-mail address could lead to your home address, but not to the address of the Net port you used.” To Vivian I said, “What’s your e-mail name?”

“I hate people being anonymous on the Net,” she said. “So I use Viv Norby.”

“That would be enough. If he knows you’re Milo’s sitter or if he can find out, he could get your street address from a phone book.”

“Stay away from his publisher’s website,” Penny urged.

“I’m not afraid of him,” Vivian said.

“You should be,” I told her.

“He’s just a snotty pretend intellectual.”

“Let’s hope he’s just pretend. The real intellectuals have spent a hundred years or more trying to destroy civilization, and they’ve made considerable progress.”

Over dinner, Vivian wanted to know the full story, what Waxx had done to us and what actions we were going to take next.

Acting on the theory that the less she knew, the safer she would be, we had not intended to mention Waxx. But because her cop’s-wife instinct told her that the destruction of our house was no accident and that Waxx must be somehow related to the incident, the equation had reversed. Less knowledge meant more danger for her, and the more she knew, the more cautious she would be.

When I got to the part about the brutal murders of John Clitherow’s and Thomas Landulf’s families, I hesitated, searching for euphemisms and metaphors that would allow me to inform Vivian without alarming Milo.

Into my hesitation, Milo said, “Sometimes, you forget I’m a kid but I’m also not. It isn’t my primary field, but I’m interested in aberrant psychology. I know what kind of loons are out there, and I know the kind of crazy things they do, like cut off people’s heads and stuff the mouths with severed genitalia.”

Nonplussed, Penny and Vivian and I sat staring at Milo with our forks frozen halfway between our plates and mouths. Even Lassie, for whom our hostess had provided a chair at one remove from the rest of us, regarded her young master with a disconcerted expression.

I looked at Penny, and she shrugged, and I said, “Point taken, Milo,” after which I held back none of the grisly details.

Judging by the gusto with which Milo ate dinner, at the end of which he demolished a piece of cream pie as big as his head, Waxx’s monstrous crimes rattled him less than they rattled me.

Of course, my anxiety was higher than Milo’s because my past had sharper claws than his did, and even after so many years of peace and happiness, memory could wound me anew.