“Ed,” Susan asked, twitching the curtain aside with a practiced hand, “have you any projects on the boil, as it were?”

“Why would you think that?” he asked, stifling the urge to yawn into his teacup (too many late nights in the bars of DC will do that to a man, he reflected, even one with his sort of stamina).

“The murder in our front yard was a dead giveaway,” his sister said, and it’s only that exhaustion he had to blame for the undignified way he scrambled from his chair; in hindsight, perhaps the caws should have given it away long before Susan’s satisfied huff of laughter.