"Hello, Mr. Stone?"

"Adam Stone here," Clayton said, using the name his clients knew him by. "How can I help you, Mr. Rothman?"

"I got your message. I'd be happy to drive down to work on the position paper, if that's easier for you. I have a dinner this Thursday, but I'm free Friday afternoon. And believe me: I'd love to get out of Concord."

"Excellent. Bring your wife down after the dinner on Thursday night. I'll make a nice dessert. Fax me what you have on the position paper, and I'll have you back in Concord in plenty of time for a good night's rest before work begins on Friday."

The voice on the other end of the phone sighed. "At this rate, I think I'm going to take Friday off."

"Oh, what a *gorgeous* view!" Cheryl Rothman padded across the brick floor of the cabin to the picture windows overlooking Lake Massabesic. The moon, just past full, shone obligingly upon the waters.

Clayton grinned. "Thank you, Mrs. Rothman. It's one of--"

"Oh, please, Cheryl," she insisted. "And you can call him Dan, no matter what he says." She giggled and walked over to her husband. Soccer Mom reclaims her Guy. They were both dressed in jeans and sweaters: no formalities here.

Dan Rothman smiled thinly. "Just don't call me Pookie." He chuckles slightly, while Cheryl laughed out loud, squeezing the legislator's thickening middle.

"Well," Clayton said, "I would love to give you a tour, but this is about it." He moved himself over to the open kitchen to put the finishing touches on the dessert he was arranging. "Would you like a drink?"

"Scotch please," Dan rumbled. Cheryl gave him a look. "Scotch *and water* for him. I'll take some wine, if you have any." Clayton grinned and fetched a bottle of white from the refrigerator. He poured a glass of it for Cheryl, and a tumbler of scotch with a fair amount of water for Daniel.

"So what's going on down here in Manchester, Adam? It seems like all I hear about are the people who speed on 93 up in Concord." He pinched his face up, then took a sip of the scotch. Muscle by muscle, his jaw loosened as he exhaled. "Nice," he commented.

Clayton looked up from ladling fruit into the dish. "The big news here are the Manhater Murders. The police are being mum about it, and the papers are getting suspicious."

Cheryl ooohed. "Oh, I read about that one. Some sort of cover-up."

Clayton nodded. "The Examiner has started to make noises like that. Of course, the Enquirer went from cover-up to alien vampires, or something, a week ago."

Daniel snorted. "What a piece of trash." He sipped his scotch again. "What are the police covering up?"

Clayton shrugged as he put the large dish onto a tray with two smaller bowls. "I'm not sure. I think they just don't know enough of the details yet--and those they do know are pretty gruesome." He carried the tray to the table between the couch and the kitchen. "This is an old dish from home. My mum used to make it."

Cheryl Rothman cooed, "Trifle! One of my all-time favorites!" She walked over, pulling Daniel along.

Clayton smiled and nodded. "I'm told that Thomas Jefferson ate this often while writing the Constitution." Daniel grunted and sat down at the table, Cheryl and Clayton following.

"So what's the story, Adam? Do they have a profile on the killer yet?" Cheryl asked. Clayton looked at her carefully for a moment. She looked back with eyes much more intelligent than they usually let on, then the Soccer Mom returned.

Clayton scooped out two bowlfuls for the Rothmans, shaking his head. "Truth be told, all they know is that the killer is a sicko. They're guessing that it's a one-night-stand gone wrong, because marks of bondage are found on the victims."

Daniel's eyebrows went up. "Bondage?" The sour look on his face said what he didn't.

Clayton nodded. "All of the victims are young, single, attractive men." He paused to let them do the addition. "The problem is that they know more about the victims than the murderer."

Daniel swallowed a bite of ladyfinger and asked, "How could that be? Isn't there a lot of evidence at the scenes?"

Clayton nodded, joining his hands and placing them on the table in front of him. "Yes, but the press has been getting in the way. A lot of friends in the police department are not able to investigate with proper caution and safeguards because of the interference of the press."

"Aren't you going to have any of this, Adam? It's good," Daniel said, spooning another mouthful in. Clayton shook his head. "Nah, I can't have too much sugar after 8pm, or I can't sleep." He smiled apologetically.

"But," Cheryl continued. "They have a right to be there. And the public has a right to know. There's not much the police can do." She paused. "Is there?"

Daniel swallowed another mouthful. "Well," he rumbled. "They need to release what the public needs to know for its safety. But if it's in the public's best interest to have some of the details kept secret, well, then the papers'll have to back off."

Clayton nodded. "That's what the police have been saying. Of course, the Enquirer has been crying cover-up."

Daniel snorted. "As much as I think the police are usually a bunch of complete incompetents, I have to agree on this one. If they have a good reason for why the public doesn't need to know, then dammit, the media should get off their backs about it. Freedom of the press also means responsibility." He took another swig of scotch. "Besides. If you want to be tough on crime, you have to let the police do their job."

Clayton smiled and nodded. "My thoughts exactly, Dan."

Clayton watched the taillights of the Rothman's Cadillac recede down the hill toward the Bypass. Not quite as categorical as he had hoped, but it would do. The congresscritter got the help he desperately needed on wording his health care position paper--though Clayton thought Cheryl would have provided it just as easily as he could have, if Daniel would only listen to her--so it wouldn't infuriate the medical lobby, and Clayton got him to give a small press conference before he left town the next morning. The Examiner would be there, and hopefully that twit Chaser would get wind of it too.

He closed the front door and went to clean off the table. Daniel Rothman had polished off a good amount of the rest of the trifle while they hammered out the wording of his position on health care. Cheryl had long since pushed her bowl away--after seconds--and washed the bowls out while asking probing questions about the position. She was obviously an experienced Advocatus Diaboli, Clayton thought.

And so. Bishop to Queen's Knight Four, hemming in the development of the flank. A white stone placed near a black formation, so it would have to fortify rather than expand, and couldn't form two eyes. Drawing an extra trump on an unexpected split, forcing a finesse to find the last one.

More to be done, of course. More work to do. But this game would have to wait for a little bit. There were other games afoot.

He slipped into his hidden sanctum sanctorum. A small, almost bare room greeted him. Sighing once, he sat down on the pallet he used as a bed, and looked at the oil painting on the wall across from him. It was an Italian masterpiece--a replica hung on the walls of the Chicago Art Institute--of Ottoman soldiers lingering in a courtyard awaiting orders. The detailed application of the brush, however, made the latticework and cracks between the stones take on a near-photographic quality.

Up in one corner was one feature which the famous replica lacked: through the gates, across the courtyard, over the heads of the bustling soldiers, between the slats of a lattice, beneath a veil, was a woman. Clearly the beautiful maiden princess of this palace, her face almost faded into the shadows of the inner chamber she was in. But her eyes looked out through the veil, between the slats of the lattice, over the heads of the soldiers, across the courtyard, through the gates, to meet the eyes of the person standing there, outside the painting.

In a small niche carved into the wall next to the painting was a silver apple, delicately etched over its entire surface. Clayton stood, stepped over, and reached out to pick up the apple. This had been left behind in a synagogue by a descendant of Moses Maimonides when the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 on Tisha b'Av.

Clayton took the apple in his hand. He looked down at the familiar trick: the apple was not silver at all, but rather solid gold, and covered in an intricate latticework--maskiyyoth, they called it--of silver filigree.

Clayton smiled as he held the apple in his hand. Of such trifles are lives made and unmade, mainly because people insist on thinking these things are but mere trifles.