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When I called hi "Jaerly "News! Tell round--the crackle of a party, a child crying "What time is it there?"

"I’m at your stepmother’s family’s Christmas brunch"

"Oh, I don’t want to bother you," I said "Can I call back--"

"Yes! That’s such an interesting, coo take this outside--it’ll only be a o ahead and play without me, ha! I’ fun?" I asked him For some reason, I’d never stopped to think that my father had a whole new set of in-laws I wondered how they stacked up against my mother’s family, the Baylors On her side, I had one cousin He was a fifty-five-year-old accountant

"I’m on the porch" I heard him slide the door shut behind him "There are sodown the kitchen, they’re giving Robbie fireworks to set off in the backyard It’s been a hazardous holiday"

My half brother Robbie was six "They sound a little like you"

"If I watched professional wrestling instead of solving crimes," my father huffed "Well, what have you discovered? Or are you calling to apologize for ignoringall the work"

"You and I both know that Milo is doing none of the work, or else Leander would have been delivered ho Tell s, includingand my theory as to the perpetrator

"Well, it certainly sounds like a ham-handed attempt at altruism," he said "You’re not badly hurt? Then no har man, froust and nored that "It’s good to hear that you’re coy of your own It sounds like your poor Charlotte is distracted, and with good reason It’s terrible to hear about her ht be a bit of a witch, but no one deserves that"

"You’ve met them? Holmes’s parents?"

"A few tier E pharmaceutical companies Mostly I saw her flex her skills when she yanyway, she and Alistair cah, when Leander and I were flatmates Alistair would tell us wild tales about his exploits in Russia I always thought of hie he wanted me to have of hi like the people I’d ot married Had Milo, and then--and please don’t tell your friends this--they went through a bad patch and had Charlotte, I think, as a fix-it People do that with children sometimes It’s a terrible idea for everyone involved But Alistair had gotten sacked by the MOD--"

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