text:
ISBN: 978-1-62205-007-9

ALL FOR ONE

Kate Wilhelm

Copyright © 2012 InfinityBox Press

First published in the collection A Flush Of Shadows, 1995

All rights reserved. Except for the use of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews, no part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means in any manner without the written permission of the publisher.

All characters, groups, places, and events portrayed in this novel are fictitious.

Cover: Richard Wilhelm

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All For One

Kate Wilhelm
IT WASN'T THAT CHARLIE DIDN'T like young people. He believed firmly that they should wear their hair any way that pleased them, that they had the right to adorn their bodies however they chose, that their music was their business, as were the movies they watched, the videos they memorized. Their vigor and passion, their frontal approach to problems, all that he could appreciate and applaud, but he really didn't want to work for them, he was thinking that afternoon in May as he watched a young trio in his driveway. It was obvious that they were arguing even if their words didn't carry to him at the window in his living room.

A young woman, Teresa Coultier, he assumed, since she had called earlier, and two younger men had emerged from a Land Rover and started to approach the house, then stopped when she turned on them both, apparently to lay down the law. The younger of the two men nodded meekly enough, but the other one was showing an attitude. Charlie didn't care much for young people with an attitude. The trio seemed to come to an agreement and the procession resumed. He went to the door to admit them. "Ms. Coultier?" he said. "Come on in. I'm Meiklejohn."

She shook hands with him and then pointed to one of the young men and said, "This is my half brother Michael Andreson. And this is my half brother Nathan Coultier."

She was in her twenties, and very pretty, slender, small-boned, with deep-set blue eyes and long black hair. He could see the resemblance between her and each of the brothers, both apparently younger than she was; Nathan had her lovely eyes, and Michael had her peaked eyebrows and black hair.

He ushered them to the living room; Constance walked in from the kitchen to be introduced, and they all sat down, the three young people in a line on the sofa, Constance in the wing chair, and Charlie in his morris chair, from which he regarded them without much enthusiasm. It was a warm day, and they were flushed and sweaty, dressed in jeans, running shoes, T-shirts.

"All right," he said. "What's the problem

"It's very complicated," Teresa Coultier said. "Will you just listen to the whole story before you ask anything?"

"Can you tell it in half an hour?" he asked.

Teresa flushed. Michael started to speak and she jabbed him with her elbow. "Yes. My stepfather is trying to kill me."

Charlie didn't groan out loud; he knew he didn't make a sound, or change his expression, any more than Constance did, but he groaned inwardly. "Go on," he said.

Teresa looked from him to Constance, to him again, apparently startled at their lack of response. Nathan glared at Charlie, and Michael drew in a deep breath but did not interrupt when Teresa continued. "My grandmother is very old, ninety-two, and she is very ill, in a hospital in Paris. When she dies, a large estate will be distributed to her heirs. I'm one of them, and Michael is another. I believe my stepfather killed my brother and my sister, and tried to kill me last summer, and again two weeks ago. So my part of the inheritance will pass on to my mother and to Michael, and my stepfather will control it."

"She's talking about your father?" Charlie murmured to Michael when Teresa paused.

Michael nodded; he looked belligerent and eager to talk but maintained silence, probably under orders.

"What happened last summer?" Charlie asked.

"There was a fire in the guest house where I was staying. I had to jump out of a second-floor window, and I broke my arm and my leg in two places."

"You think it was an arson fire? Where is the guest house?"

"It's on his property, and yes, of course it was arson!"

"Was there an investigation? Do the police think it was arson? Does the fire department?"

Her face tightened and she shook her head. "They seem to think I left a fire screen open, sparks flew out, something like that But I didn't."

"Okay," Charlie said. "What happened two weeks ago?"

"I was shot at in my car. And the police call that a random shooting, but it wasn't. He did it."

"Why?" Charlie asked bluntly. "If he wanted you out of the way, why wait almost a year to try again?"

"It's complicated," she said.

"Let me tell this part," Michael said.

"Is that what you were arguing about in the driveway? Who would tell which part?"

Teresa nodded unhappily. "I didn't want Michael to have anything to do with calling his father a murderer."

Charlie was watching Michael. He was a long boy, with long legs and arms, not yet filled out, as if he hadn't quite stopped adding height. His legs were stretched out before him and he seemed to be fascinated with his shoelaces, but there was a telltale tendon in his neck, and tendons showing on the backs of his hands. As relaxed as a guy facing a firing squad.

"Someone should tell us," Charlie said when the pause seemed to extend long enough.

"Trying to decide where to begin," Michael said, and drew in his legs, sat up straighter. "Okay. Her father is Jeffrey Coultier, and my dad is Sam Andreson. They were in the army together in Berlin back in the fifties, where they met Marie Lanier. She was working for the French government. They all became friends, and both of them wanted to marry her, but she picked Jeffrey."

He spoke with few pauses, no backtracking, as he covered the brief history. Marie and Jeffrey had come to the States, settled in his hometown, near Oyster Bay, and he returned to school to finish his education. They had Gary, Suzette, and Trish—she poked him with her elbow again, and he corrected himself—Teresa. When Trish was two years old, Marie divorced Jeffrey and married Sam, and a year later he, Michael, was born. Both families lived just outside of Oyster Bay.

"Grandmother was pretty sore over her daughter marrying an American," he went on, more slowly now. "She had lost her husband and three sons during World War Two, and her only surviving child was leaving the country. She set up a trust fund for the grandchildren, twenty thousand dollars a year when they reached twenty-one, and at twenty-five they would receive a very large settlement, and eventually, when she died, split the estate, half for the grandchildren, half for Marie."

"What kind of money are you talking about?" Charlie asked when Michael stopped.

"A million dollars, what Trish will get next August and I'll get in a few years. I'm twenty-one. When Grandmother dies, there will be a lot more."

Charlie whistled, then glanced at Nathan, who shrugged.

"She doesn't care if my dad is alive or dead," Nathan said. "She probably never even heard of me. I have zilch coming."

"I'm twenty-four," Trish said then in a low voice. "I want to live to see twenty-five." She sounded like a frightened child.

Nathan took one of her hands, and on the other side, Michael took the other. They looked very young, lined up on the sofa, holding hands.

After a moment, Charlie said brusquely, "You've made some drastic accusations; let's have some facts. Tell us about Gary. How did he die?"

Trish nodded and drew in a breath. "Seven years ago, he brought a girl home to celebrate his engagement. They were going to be married on his twenty-fifth birthday in July. There was a dinner party. Later on, he decided to go see Dad, our father, Jeffrey, and he ran off the road and was killed." She said this rapidly with no inflection, as if she were reciting a boring history lesson.

"He had been drinking?"

"Not that much!" she cried. "He never drank much. But they said the autopsy showed a high level of alcohol, anyway. Legally, he was drunk. I didn't believe it then and I don't now!" She pulled her hands loose from her brothers', and clasped them together tightly.

"Okay. Suzette. How and where?"

"Two years later," Trish said, but this time her voice broke. Michael put his arm about her shoulders, and Nathan looked at her uncertainly, as if he wanted to pat her or put his arm around her, too, but wasn't quite sure just how to do it.

"She was really upset by Gary's death," Trish said after a second or two. "They were close; I was five years younger than Suzette, but it was never the same. She missed Gary. Anyway, she had an apartment in New York and a job with a magazine, and she was getting better. When she didn't turn up at work on Monday and didn't answer the phone, one of her friends went to see what was wrong. She had died on Saturday night, they said. Overdose. Possibly suicide. She was twenty-four." Trish ducked her head, opened her clenched hands, closed them again harder.

Michael looked at Charlie. "Last June, Trish was home, my dad's home, Sam's. She had got her master's from Johns Hopkins, and we had a little party for her, just family and a couple of friends. There was a problem with the plumbing upstairs, and Dad suggested she might want to stay in the guest house because plumbers would be there early the next morning. You have to understand," he added quickly, "that wasn't punishment, but more like an honor. We all used to sneak in there and play when we were kids. I was a little jealous, to tell the truth, that he was letting her use it. After dinner, we sat around and talked awhile, and Mother went to bed." His voice faltered. "She hasn't been very well these past few years." Then he continued: "Trish, I, and a friend, Rita Glenwood, went on to the guest house. We made a fire in the fireplace and talked for a couple of hours, listened to music, and around midnight Rita said she had to be on her way, so we left and I drove her home. At four in the morning, the yardman woke up smelling smoke, and he yelled and got everyone up. When I got downstairs, I saw the guest house burning. The fire department got there about five minutes later, and one of them found Trish unconscious on the ground."

Charlie felt the cold knot that paradoxically came with fire. Trish looked frozen in place, hardly even breathing. Michael's arm was still around her shoulders; he had drawn her closer, and Nathan had moved in closer on the other side. "No smoke alarm?" Charlie asked.

"They said it had a bad battery," Michael said flatly.

"Okay. Trish, had you been drinking that night?"

"Hot chocolate," she said.

"When I heard she was going to stay in the guest house, I brought chocolate and milk and cookies, stuff we always liked when we were kids," Michael said.

Charlie nodded and asked Trish, "You went on to bed when your brother and his friend left?"

"Within a few minutes. Later, I woke up coughing and choking. My room was filling with smoke. When I touched the doorknob, it burned my hand, and I ran to the window. I couldn't get it open. The lights were out, and there was a glow from the bathroom, but it was too smoky to really see anything. Then I stumbled over my suitcase. I grabbed it and swung as hard as I could and the window broke. Flames came through the door and one of the walls then, and when I looked down, flames were coming from the windows on the first floor, and I just jumped."

And damn lucky you didn't kill yourself doing it, Charlie thought. He nodded. "Okay, two weeks ago. What happened?"

"I was driving from the train station to my father's house. I stayed there after I got out of the hospital—"

Suddenly, Nathan blurted, "He was afraid for her to go back up there. We all were. No one said anything, or why, or what we were afraid of, but we were. Dad had a fit when she said they were expecting her to come back. They stayed home; I changed my plans. I was supposed to go to Michigan State; I went to Stony Brook instead. No one argued. We all knew we didn't want to go away, be away. We wanted her home with us." He was flushed, very red.

Trish put her hand on his arm. "Take it easy," she murmured, and turned to Charlie. "They had planned to take their sabbaticals together and go to England, but they stayed home with me instead, Dad and Lorraine, I mean. And Nathan went to school every day and was home every night. And no one ever said anything, never raised a suspicion, pointed a finger. It was just a feeling of uneasiness. Anyway, the shooting. I went to New York City that day and left my car at the station. It was dark and raining when I got back, so I was driving pretty slowly." She looked down at her hands again and spoke very fast now. "Then he shot at me; I didn't know what it was at first. The rear window shattered, and the windshield cracked all over. I could hardly see through it, and I realized it was a shot. I sped up and drove the rest of the way home as fast as I could. Dad called the police."

Charlie gazed at her unhappily. "Did you see any lights following you?"

She shook her head, not looking up.

"And no one followed you home, or shot at you again?"

She shook her head again.

"Ms. Coultier, exactly what do you want me to do?"

"Are you kidding?" Michael demanded. "Look into it. Investigate the doctor who's treating my mother! He's keeping her so doped, she doesn't know if it's day or night!"

"Investigate Sam Andreson's finances," Nathan chimed in. "I think he's in deep shit and needs the money."

"See if there was a real investigation of Suzette's death!" Trish cried. "She didn't kill herself, and she didn't take drugs by accident!"

Charlie held up his hand for silence. "What about your mother?" he asked Michael.

"She took Gary's death hard, and she was just beginning to recover when Suzette died. She went into a tailspin then, but she was coming out of it again finally when Trish was nearly killed in the fire. She thinks Trish is dead, or she thought that for a long time. I don't know what she thinks now. He's keeping her doped all the time."

"She's under a doctor's care?"

"Yes! But he picked the doctor and he pays the bills and he hired a nurse and tells her what to do and when to do it."

"Have you told the police what you've just told us?"

"I tried. What's the use?" Michael muttered. "You don't understand the politics of a place like Oyster Bay. The police have it all figured out. Gary was drunk. Suzette took drugs. Trish was careless with fire. Coincidence, bad luck."

Charlie looked at Trish. "Have you told your father what you suspect?"

"No," she said in a low voice. "He's afraid all right, just as Nathan said, but there's nothing to name, to be afraid of. It's formless. But if he believed me, if we put this name on it, he would kill Sam Andreson."

"Ms. Coultier, why are you still hanging around if you really believe what you claim?" Charlie asked then. "You have some money, go visit your grandmother, or go to Hawaii for a vacation."

"I just came to understand this after he shot at me," Trish said slowly. "Two weeks ago. And we talked it over," she went on, looking first at Nathan and then Michael. "Maybe I've really believed it for a week or even less. But I can't leave Mother with him. I'm afraid that when Grandmother dies and my mother inherits, he'll kill her and get her out of the way. Then he'll inherit her estate."

Michael nodded.

Before Charlie could ask anything else, Constance got in a question. "Why did you come here? How did you know about us?"

Trish glanced at Michael. "He read about you."

Constance turned her gaze to Michael and waited. After a moment, he said, "In a true-crime magazine, they ran some articles about private investigators, how they work, what they do. When we were talking last week, I suddenly remembered your names. The article said Mr. Meiklejohn used to be an arson investigator."

"And I looked you up," Nathan added. "You checked out okay."

"Looked us up where?" Charlie asked with interest.

"Chamber of Commerce," Nathan muttered. "They didn't have any complaints filed against you."

Charlie regarded him, trying hard to conceal his disbelief. Nathan flushed very red again and averted his face.

Constance stood up then. "Charlie, why don't you take our guests out to the patio. It's such a lovely day. I'll bring some lemonade. Or would you prefer soft drinks, Cokes?"

The trio exchanged glances and got up uncertainly.

"Come on," Charlie said, ushering them from the living room. "I'll be waiter, take orders on the patio. That way." He took them through the living room and into the hall, out past the dinette space, through the sliding glass doors to the patio. Ashcan, the gray cat, streaked away in terror.

Constance watched them thoughtfully and then went to the kitchen, where she waited for Charlie to return.

"Cokes," he said. "I want a shot of whiskey." At her look, he added, "Later, when we get rid of them."

"You know what they're doing?"

He knew, but he shook his head. "You first."

"Setting us up for the defense?"

He grinned fleetingly. "Tell you one thing, I would not want to be in Sam Andreson's shoes. Now, for the Cokes, and then the bum's rush."

He gathered glasses and added ice cubes, got drinks from the pantry, and put everything on a tray while Constance stood facing out the window with unfocused eyes. She was hardly aware when he left, and then he was back at her side.

"I can imagine the courtroom pounding," she said in a low voice. "From both sides."

He nodded. "I noticed that you didn't bring up the question of abuse, or why Michael is going along with condemning his father as a killer, why Nathan is involved."

"They're being very clever, aren't they?"

"Michael just happened to remember our names," he murmured. "No doubt the fact that you're a psychologist escaped his memory." A fleeting grin softened his face. "Chamber of Commerce!"

"Charlie," she said, hating what she was thinking, "the real fact is, they've involved us in whatever they're planning. We can't just turn them out and let things happen, then plead ignorance. The deaths of her brother and sister must be true, on record; Trish's suspicions may even be correct. She may actually have reason to be afraid she will be killed before August."

"And none of it provable. If there was anything to it, the cops would have been all over the place," he said sourly.

"But if they kill Sam Andreson, that will be murder, no matter how you cut it, and if they're caught, and they will be, we'll be dragged in. But we don't have to walk in with open eyes." He put his arm about her shoulders; she was stiff, unyielding. "Honey, those kids are bad news. Real bad news."

She nodded absently. "They expect us to turn them down. Then they can say they tried the police, and a private investigator, and a psychologist, but to no avail. In desperation, they acted on their own. The defense will say, What would your child do if she knew her life was in danger and no one would help her? They'll bring in a lifetime of abuse of one sort or another, and they'll get away with it, won't they?" A shudder passed through her. "And they'll be destroyed, all of them."

"Our three brave knights will slay the dragon, rescue the endangered mother, move to France, and live like royalty for the rest of their lives," he said. He pulled his arm away and said, "I don't want them, Constance."

"Neither do I," she said in a very low voice, "but I think we have them, anyway."

She turned to face him, her pale blue eyes very remote and cool, like twin frozen lakes viewed from a great distance. He knew from the way her mouth was set, the way she met his gaze levelly, from her whole body stance that she intended to save those kids if she could. The question she had posed hung there between them: What would your child do... ? He added silently, What would you have your child do if her life was in danger? After a second, he shrugged.

"Maybe we've become too cynical," she said then. "Maybe they're telling the exact truth as they see it."

"Right. No lemonade. Iced coffee with a slug of rum."

He glanced at his watch; it was 2:30. "I intend to give them a dose of what it's going to be like if they try anything."

She nodded, still absent, distracted. When he stamped back out to the patio, she followed him.

"I'm sorry we intruded," Trish said as they drew near the table where the three youngsters had been whispering with their heads close together. "It was a mistake. We'll pay you for your time, of course, and just be on our way now."

"Nonsense," Constance said serenely. "I couldn't find any lemons, so I'm making iced coffee. It will be ready in a minute or two. Meanwhile, Charlie has a lot of questions to ask. I'll be right back."

Trish and Michael exchanged looks. "You mean you'll take our case?" Trish asked. It was hard to tell if she looked more disbelieving or alarmed.

"Of course," Constance said. "Excuse me for a minute."

Couldn't find lemons, Charlie thought at her darkly. Not in the sink, or out back. He glowered at Trish. "You might as well try to relax. You hired us; you put up with questions. Right?" He pulled out a notebook and sat down at the glass-topped table.

* * *

As Charlie probed and pushed that afternoon, Constance formed a narrative of life with the Coultiers and the Andresons throughout the past twenty-five years. Jeffrey Coultier had supported his three children until they reached twenty-one and came into their trust funds, and he had stayed on the edge of bankruptcy for most of that time. Sam was niggardly, Trish said at one point, and Michael had agreed. With him, too, he had added. His mother had not been any help financially, since she had no money of her own, despite the fact that any day she would become a millionaire.

The Coultier children had spent their weekends and most of their vacations with their father, and later with him and his second wife, Lorraine, Nathan's mother. Michael had never been allowed to go to the Coultier house, and he had been jealous and lonely when the three stepchildren left for holidays and weekends. When Nathan was born, he had been afraid the love Trish had for him would be diverted to her new half brother, but it hadn't happened. Trish simply had two younger brothers to love after that. And they both adored her. Nathan had been as lonely as Michael when the three children were at Sam's house. He never had been invited up there, and he used to fantasize about the parties they were having, the good things they were eating, the fun they had swimming in their own pool.

"In fact," Michael said during that grueling afternoon, "I'm not supposed to be spending time with Trish or Nathan even now. When she went to Jeffrey's house to recuperate, Dad was furious. He had promised to hire a nurse, to arrange therapy, everything, and she turned to her father instead. But I was over there just about every day this past year," he added defiantly.

The three knights, Constance thought, watching them.

"Why aren't you supposed to see Trish or Nathan?" Charlie asked.

"Dad says the Coultier kids are unlucky, that they have a death wish or something. He's afraid it'll rub off."

"Yet, here you are with them," Charlie commented.

"Dad's out of town, in Chicago. He arranges sales of buildings," he added with a shrug. "Big buildings, skyscrapers, that kind of thing. He'll be back Sunday."

"Were you at home all this past year?" Constance asked then.

"Yeah," he said. "After Mother came home from the hospital, she was... I don't know, afraid maybe. She wanted me there, so I dropped out of school for a year and stayed."

Trish put her hand on Michael's on the table. "Tell the rest of it," she said.

He looked at her miserably, then gazed out over the yard in full bloom. "She'd start like, 'Where's Gary? Where's Suzette? Where's Trish?' And by then, she'd be crying and screaming, 'Where's Michael?' Sometimes, if I was around, she'd calm down again. If I wasn't there, they'd give her a shot, and she'd be out for a week or more."

Constance could imagine how close they must have become, how much they had depended on each other. And now he was feeling the responsibility of keeping her sane.

"Finish it," Trish demanded.

"Yeah. I heard him, my father, tell her to just shut up, they were all gone, and that time she kept screaming even though I was there. It was like she couldn't see me." He stared out past them all, and the tendon in his neck grew taut. His hand must have tightened painfully on Trish's; she grimaced, but she didn't pull free.

Constance called for a break then. Michael strode off for a walk, his hands jammed in his pockets. Charlie vanished. Nathan and Trish tried to lure Candy from her perch on a deck rail. Her tail twitched a few times, signifying displeasure at being disturbed, the only indication that she was aware of their chirping and clucking.

"Okay," Charlie said when they all reseated themselves at the patio table. "This is our standard contract. It's in your name, Trish, not the consortium of three. We agree to look into the deaths of Gary and Suzettte; we will see what the fire marshal had to say about the fire; we will check out the police report on the shooting; we will look into Sam Andreson's finances. And I can find out if the doctor who is treating Marie Andreson is reputable. Aren't those the items you mentioned in the beginning?"

"What's the point of that?" Nathan demanded. "We know what the police say, and why not have all our names on a contract?"

"Do you have any money?" Charlie asked.

He shook his head.

"How old are you?"

"What's that got to do with it? I'm almost nineteen, old enough to sign a stupid contract."

"But you wouldn't have anything to do with the financial responsibility," Charlie said blandly. "You see, I believe those who pay the bills should be allowed to give the orders and receive the reports. And that brings up a point I'd like to clear up. What's your role in all this? You don't come into any money; Sam Andreson has nothing to do with you."

"She's my sister! If he hurts her again, I'll kill the son of a bitch!"

Charlie regarded him silently for several moments until Nathan looked away.

"Actually," Trish said, "he will come into money. I've always told him that when I inherit, I'll share it with him. At first, that's all it was, share it, but after I nearly died, too... I intend to split whatever I get with Nathan. He's my brother." She said this in a vehement rush. She turned to Nathan and continued. "It doesn't matter whose name is on the contract. We know we're in this together; that's the important part"

My yes, Charlie thought, you're in it together. He said, "As far as your knowing what the police reports contain, forget it. You know what they told you, not the extent of their investigations. I can find that out. After I do this preliminary work, we'll have another conference."

"When?" Michael asked.

Charlie shrugged. "Obviously, I can't go to your father and question him directly. I can't tell you when. That's just the way it is."

Michael and Trish passed a silent message, and she nodded. "I'll sign it and give you a check. Do I call you or something?"

"Nope. You don't do a thing until I get in touch with you. Do you visit your mother?"

She nodded. "Several times a week, at least."

"Can you visit her and stay away from Sam?"

She looked uncertain, and Michael said, "I can let you know when he's out. He's gone a lot," he added, glancing at Charlie.

"Okay," Charlie said. "Trish, will you promise to keep away from Sam Andreson until this is over?"

"You do believe me!" Trish exclaimed. Her eyes sparkled and both cheeks flared with color.

Soberly, Charlie shook his head. "I believe the sun is shining because I can see it; I believe our cat is over there. What I'm saying, Trish, is that I believe the evidence of my eyes, my senses. If you're not mistaken in how you've interpreted events, that's simple good sense: Keep away from Sam. Don't go out driving alone at night. Be cautious. If you are mistaken in what you believe, it can't hurt anything to keep away from him. Okay? Will you do that?"

For a moment, she stared at him, then she sighed and nodded, drew the contract across the table, and pretended to read it. Constance and Charlie were both aware that her eyes were not tracking the words, that she was hiding the way a child hides, by not seeing them.

It was 5:30 when Constance returned to the patio after showing them out. Charlie had not moved.

"What are those spiky blue flowers?" he asked.

"Delphiniums."

"And the yellow mounded things?"

"Euphorbia polychrome."

He knew the red tulips that completed the grouping. "Nice," he said.

The sun was still high and it was quite warm. Now Candy flowed off the rail and began to sniff the chairs the kids had occupied, taking her time about it, being thorough. Ashcan appeared, apprehensive, ready to flee again, and Brutus swaggered in from under the lilac bush. Ashcan tensed, preparing to stalk a butterfly table-hopping among the pansies.

"Long Island," Charlie muttered.

"I know." She stood up. "Of course, the doctor, Sam's affairs, the two deaths will turn out to be exactly what they seem. As for the shooting, it just won't work as a murder attempt, will it? I'm going to pick peas and asparagus and salad greens."

Charlie nodded, to all appearances fascinated by the colorful flowers. In a low voice, he said, "But someone probably did set an arson fire and try to kill Trish."

Constance sat down again. "Why do you think that?"

"She wakes up in a smoky room, no lights. The door is hot, fire in the hall outside. And there was a glow in the bathroom. Why couldn't she open the window? I need to see a floor plan." Suddenly, he stood up. "I never did get my whiskey."

Constance watched him reenter the house, and after a few minutes, she went out to pick vegetables for dinner. A mistake, she kept thinking. She should have let him get rid of those kids when he wanted to.

That was Thursday. On Friday, they both put in time on the telephone and computer modem and later exchanged notes glumly. Sam Andreson was a dragon all right, Charlie said, mean, inflexible, tight, never lost a battle in his life that anyone knew about, but if he was in financial trouble, it would take more than a dozen phone calls to find out A herd of auditors and accountants, maybe.

She said Marie's doctor not only was above reproach but was rated one of the best psychiatrists in Manhattan.

"Okay," Charlie said. "Monday, Manhattan and Suzette's files. And then Oyster Bay."

They wouldn't need a house sitter for a few days, she decided. One of the Mitchum boys would come to feed the cats, have a look around. She said, "It doesn't make much sense, does it? Sam is sixty-five. He has plenty of money, no need to murder for more."

"Honey," Charlie said gravely, "you can't be too rich, ever. A million here, a million there, every little bit helps."

"I wish we could think of an excuse to go talk to him," she said. "Maybe we should have asked more indelicate questions of those kids."

Charlie snorted. "They told us exactly what they planned from the start. If they'd wanted to talk about child abuse, we would have gotten an earful. Right?"

"Right."

"Now I'm going to fire up the grill, thaw out some of those trout in the freezer, and, in a couple of hours, eat. No more talk about the three knights for today."

She eyed the sky. "It's going to rain."

"Later it will rain. Much later."

Later he dragged the grill under the overhang of the house and shivered as the wind drove rain into his face when he turned the fish. Even the cats were indoors instead of prowling underfoot hoping for a handout.

He scowled at her when he reentered the house, shaking water from his hair. "The damn rain's putting the fire out."

"We could wrap the fish in rice and call it sushi," she said.

"Funny, very funny."

Later they fed the nearly cooked fish to the cats and went to their favorite Mexican restaurant, where the margaritas were always extraordinarily good.

"What would you do with a million dollars?" she asked, holding her glass up to admire the light through the pale green drink. Salt on the rim sparkled like diamond chips.

"I'd think of something," he said. "You?"

"I don't know. Travel a little more maybe. I wouldn't change anything much, I don't think."

Looking at her across the table, he knew he wouldn't change much, either.

On Sunday night, they watched the midnight news brief on television. Constance was paying scant attention, her thoughts on several pop psychology books she was going to review, and Charlie was thinking of the coming drive down to New York, the hassle of traffic, windshield wipers, muggers.... Then they both came to full attention. The newscaster was saying, "Police are investigating the brutal murder of Samuel Andreson, who minutes ago was found shot to death in his burning car on a lonely road near his home at Oyster Bay."

"Oh dear God," Constance breathed.

"Those goddamn kids!" Charlie said furiously. The newsman was talking about some of Sam Andreson's most notable accomplishments, the sales he had negotiated. At the commercial break, Charlie turned off the television.

"What are we going to do?" she asked.

"Not a goddamn thing! They'll come here soon enough. I'm going to bed." He turned off his lamp, stamped out to the hallway, paused, and came back. "We did what we could," he said. "I thought there'd be a little time, for God's sake. I thought they'd give us a week or so to start poking into things, and we'd have time to come up with a way to head them off."

"Charlie," she said sharply, "it's not our fault. I thought that, too."

"I didn't know they were this dumb. For God's sake, they've cooked their own goose. Can't you see it? The prosecutor yells, You hired a detective and didn't wait for him to detect! Why not? Because you knew there wasn't anything for him to find, isn't that why? What's their answer? Those dumb-ass kids don't have an answer!"

Constance got up and went to him, took him by the arm. "Hey, come on. You did what you could. So did I. We granted them more sense than they have perhaps, but no one could have guessed something like this would happen right now. Charlie, maybe they didn't do anything; maybe it was someone else we don't know anything about"

"Hah!" He took a deep breath. "Bed. I was on my way to bed."

She kissed his cheek. "Thank you, Charlie."

"For?"

"For not saying you didn't want them in the first place."

He looked at her, puzzled. He had not even thought of saying that

"Go on," she said. "I'll close up, do lights and things, be along in a minute." But when he went up the stairs, she sat on the sofa again, frowning into space. They should have done something to prevent this, should have anticipated something like this, should have warned the youngsters of the danger, let them know they were suspect from the beginning.... It was more than a few minutes before she was ready to go upstairs.

Charlie always got up first, and he almost always made breakfast. She didn't care if she ate or not when she got up, but he did, and he liked a variety—pancakes, omelets, bacon and eggs, French toast.... If she actually made breakfast, it usually was something weird, like oatmeal, or some other cereal that looked like baby food. No, it was better if he did it, he was telling himself as he rummaged in the refrigerator for eggs and scallions, considered a hot pepper and decided not this time. The answering machine across the kitchen was blinking, but he ignored it. He liked a certain decorum in the early hours: coffee, food at a leisurely pace, and then business.

By the time Constance came down, he had everything ready to scramble the eggs and make the toast. She went straight to the answering machine and pushed the button. Before coffee, even.

Trish's voice came on: "Mr. Meiklejohn, this is to inform you that we—that is, I—have terminated your services. I will send you a registered letter to this effect. Please send me an itemized accounting and a refund."

"Well," Constance said.

"And good morning to you, too."

"That, too." Now she poured herself coffee and sniffed at his eggs and scallions. If he made breakfast, he had always noted, she ate it appreciatively. She tilted her chair to pour off Candy, who complained in a loud voice and stalked to the back door with her tail up like a standard. Constance let her out. "I'll go do my aikido class and then a little shopping for dinner. What are you up to for the day?"

He shrugged, paying attention to the eggs in the skillet. The last thirty seconds of cooking should be done on the plate, and it took concentration. Actually, he had decided to overhaul the tractor; he always decided that when he was grumpy, and he had not quite gotten around to it yet. He brought the perfect eggs to the table and said, "I know how we can get a million bucks; maybe I'll work out a few of the details."

She gave him a skeptical look and got up to fetch the toast

"See, when they arrest the kids, our names will come up, and every tabloid in the country will be hot for our stories. You'll have the psychological dope for them, and I'll be the hard-boiled detective and give them clues we gleaned from the knights. We'll charge what the market will bear, get them bidding, have an auction maybe. More for TV appearances. You'll need a few new things. More cleavage maybe." He paused with a thoughtful look. "Think I should have my hair styled?"

"I'll stop in at the travel agent and get some brochures," she said, handing him a piece of buttered toast.

Abruptly, they both dropped the subject. Constance knew he had been restless throughout the night, and while Charlie couldn't have said the same of her with certainty, he thought she looked tired that morning.

It was not a good week. Charlie wrote "Void" across the face of Trish's check, wrote a brief note, and mailed both to her by registered mail, return receipt requested. They received her letter of dismissal. He took a wrench out to the barn and banged on the tractor a bit. They read the news papers, which reported on Suzette's death, on Gary's, on the fire. A tabloid headline screamed: MARIE ANTOINETTE REINCARNATED AS MARIE ANDRESON. STILL PAYING FOR HER SINS... .

On Friday when Constance arrived home shortly after twelve, Charlie was at the back door. He jerked his thumb toward the answering machine, and she pushed the message button.

"Mr. Meiklejohn, Dr. Leidl, this is Lorraine Coultier. I have to talk to you. I'll call back at one."

Her voice was very clear, the words crisp, a teacher's voice. And she had addressed them both, Constance added to herself; Lorraine Coultier knew who Constance was, what her title was.

"Well," she said. "Well, I guess things are moving."

He grunted. "Right down the slippery slope."

The second call came promptly at one. Charlie answered, and Constance listened on the extension in his office. Lorraine Coultier did not waste words, did not pretend anything. They were in desperate trouble. She knew the youngsters had been to see Charlie and Constance. They needed help.

"If you can come today," she finished, "I'll make a reservation for you at the Oyster Bay Inn, either a room or a cottage, whichever you prefer."

Charlie waited a second for Constance to object if she intended to, then said okay. A cottage.

Lorraine Coultier gave them directions, her telephone number, the number for the inn, and they hung up. Already he was thinking of the traffic leaving New York City on a Friday afternoon. He would have to drive; Constance refused to drive in or through New York City. She had done that, she said.

Actually, Charlie felt pretty good when they began to smell the sea air a few miles outside of Oyster Bay. The road was blacktop, narrow, and there was little other traffic. After the fumes of the city and then the Long Island Expressway, the air was refreshing and pleasantly cool.

"There's the fork," Constance said.

"Yep." He slowed down just to make sure; at the sign—OYSTER BAY INN 1 MILE—he swung to the left, onto an even narrower road with a high crown. They glimpsed big houses set back among wind-sculpted pine trees. Now and then, a landscaped yard came all the way down to the road, but for the most part, the pines, scrub brush, and straggly grass made up the only visible greenery. The ground was rocky here, the woods sparse—coastal scenery.

They rounded a curve and a mammoth white building came into view on the bay side. The building was from the turn of the century or earlier and had sprouted growths in all directions: wings, ells, dormers over additions, balconies jutting out here and there. As a gravel drive came into sight, Charlie slowed to a crawl and then made the turn to the inn.

"I love it!" Constance said when he stopped at an entrance with a wide porch. "In season, I bet that porch is thick with chairs and people taking their ease."

Now it was empty. A sharp wind came in from the bay some fifty feet below; it was pretty out there, with a few sailboats leaning precariously. The water was deep blue.

A man was standing at the entrance door, watching when they got out of the Volvo. He was scowling, in his fifties or sixties, jaundiced, stooped, with a mean look in his eye. "You're Meiklejohns?" he snapped.

"Yep," Charlie said. "You have a cottage for us?"

"Not in season, you know. Not until Memorial Day. Won't have any food here until after Memorial Day."

"Fine," Constance said. "This is a wonderful building. How old is it?"

He looked at her suspiciously and turned his back. "You have to sign the book," he said. "Inside." He entered without another look at them. Charlie shrugged, and Constance fought the twitching of her lips as they followed their host.

Charlie signed the book; the yellow man studied his signature, then compared it to the ones on his driver's license and credit card.

"Third cottage across the road and up the hill," the man said finally, handing Charlie a key. "Park next to the back door."

Charlie saluted and walked out with Constance, got back in the car. At the road, he began to search for the next driveway. It was another gravel drive that climbed upward, narrower, with potholes; he passed two cottages and pulled in at the third, close to the door.

"Home," he said.

The cottage had been aired; it was clean, and over fifty years old. Constance loved it, too. "Look," she said, "we have a front porch." There was a living room area with a table and chairs for meals, as well as four rattan chairs and another table. The woodwork was blue, the walls white; blue-and-white-striped curtains and blue drapes hung at the windows. A tiny kitchen looked like a galley on a small boat, and the bedroom had twin beds pushed together.

"Home," Charlie said again, more glumly this time, looking for the bathroom, hoping for a modern shower.

There was a bathtub with a handheld shower hose but no shower curtain.

Constance was standing in the open door, gazing at the bay. "Come look."

She was letting in a lot of cold air and the cottage had no heater that he could find. Of course, no one needed heat in season, he thought as he went to stand by her, intending to pull the door closed, get on with unpacking the car. He had a bottle stashed away, and he wanted it very much at that moment.

Beyond the porch, the rocky ground sloped downward for twenty feet or so, then apparently dropped steeper; the road was not visible, but the other side of it was, more rocky ground and then a drop-off to the bay. The water sparkled and tiny whitecaps raced erratically. He started to close the door, then paused as a woman rose into sight before him. First her head appeared, then shoulders; evidently, she was climbing stairs. She reached the top and waved.

"Meiklejohn? How do you do? I'm Beverly Kratz." She was huffing from her exertion. She had red hair and freckles, was heavyset, dressed in a black skirt that was too short and a red sweater that was too big.

She examined Constance as she drew near and then looked Charlie over. "I paid old sourpuss a ten spot to let me know when you arrived. Wanted to have a little talk before you get in the middle of the Coultiers and Andresons."

She thrust out her hand to Constance first and then to Charlie. It was like shaking hands with a stevedore.

"You're the family cook, come to find out what we will or won't eat," Charlie said.

She shook her head. "Attorney. Can we go in? Worked up a sweat that's cooling pretty fast."

Constance and Charlie moved aside and she entered the cottage; Charlie closed the door at last.

"I want to know how far you got with the stuff the kids hired you to do," Beverly Kratz said. She sat in one of the rattan chairs.

"I'll bring in the other suitcase," Charlie said. "Anything else?"

"I think that's all," Constance said.

"Hey, you guys, knock it off," Beverly Kratz said. "I know they hired you, and why, and that they fired you. I'm going to represent Trish."

"If you do take menu orders, Ms. Kratz," Charlie said thoughtfully, "you might mention that I eat just about anything. The exceptions are items you have to go scour the gourmet shops for, so they don't come up too often."

Beverly Kratz reddened. She fished in a pocket and pulled out a card, stood up, and handed it to Charlie. "Call me Bev. See, a real card."

"So it is," he said, and handed it back. "Excuse me." He walked past her to the door and out to get the other suitcase and the bag with his bottle. The bag was heavier than he had thought it would be, and it clanked. He grinned. Constance had added something.

Inside, Beverly Kratz said to Constance, "I shouldn't have come on like that. Manners of a hog. Did Trish go into the child abuse, sex abuse, any of that?"

"I think we may have some glasses, with any luck," Constance said, and went to check in the tiny kitchen. There was one cabinet, and it did have glasses. She brought out three. They were as thick and heavy as jelly jars.

Charlie put the suitcase in the bedroom and opened the grocery bag, to find three bottles, the bourbon he had put in and two bottles of wine. There were peanuts and crackers, cheese, and a tin of smoked oysters. "Well, well," he said, pleased. "Honey, you travel in style." He got a tray of ice cubes from the minuscule freezer compartment of the refrigerator and worked at liberating them. Then he asked, "Bourbon, with or without ice, with or without water, chardonnay, or pinot noir?"

He put the white wine in the refrigerator and opened and poured red wine for Constance, handed her the glass, and turned to Beverly Kratz.

"Bourbon, on the rocks," she snapped.

"My drink exactly," he said. After he finished being host, he looked at her pleasantly. "You still don't quite get it, do you, Bev?"

"I get it." She glanced around. "This is a real dump. Jeff talked old sourpuss into opening a cabin for you. Reporters down in Oyster Bay. I'd go with the reporters, personally, if I didn't have a room over at their house."

Charlie motioned her toward a chair, and he sat down in another one and stretched out his legs. Constance sat at the table, and after a moment Bev sat opposite her. She sipped her drink and put it down.

"Look, everything on the table," she said, and shrugged. "The kids told us what they hired you to do. Lorraine and Jeff will hire you to do the same things. Okay, you don't tell me anything until you talk to them. Fair enough. But let me lay it out for you, anyway." She went on before either of them had a chance to interrupt. "Sunday evening, Sam and his secretary, Ellen Hosty, came home around four. They had something going, those two," she added with a knowing look that was not quite a leer. "So, at seven they had dinner, Marie, Michael, Sam, and Ellen. They got into a real fight, with Sam and Michael yelling at each other. Sam yelled that he'd go see Jeff and put a stop to it. Sam went back to his office and Michael ran upstairs to his room. A couple of minutes later, Sam left in the Caddy. Michael called Trish to warn her that Sam was on his way. Nathan took the call."

She began to make rings with the wet glass. "Trish went to her room to watch out the window for him, and Nathan hung around downstairs to make sure Sam didn't walk in on Jeff and start anything. Sam never showed up. They gave it up around ten; Nathan went to his room and listened to music or something, and Trish stayed in her room, reading. End of their story. At ten-thirty or thereabouts, Michael knocked on Ellen Hosty's office door and asked her if Sam had come back. They decided he must be out driving around to cool off. He did that sometimes. They went to the kitchen for a sandwich. At quarter after eleven, a neighbor saw the glow from a fire off the road and called the cops. Then at twenty-five after eleven, there was the explosion and the car blew to hell and gone."

"He was shot," Charlie said. "Fatal shot?"

Bev shook her head. "His death officially was due to fire-related injuries. The head wound would have done him in, though—massive brain damage. They recovered the gun. It was Sam's."

"Where was he shot?"

She put her finger on her right temple. "Close range, real close, as if someone had been sitting right next to him in the car."

She finished her drink then, glanced at her watch, and stood up. "You want to see the place Sam got it?"

"Yep," Charlie said. He pulled on his jacket, Constance got her sweater, and they left. Constance drove, Charlie beside her, and Beverly Kratz sat in the back.

She directed Constance. "First house on the right is the Coultier place." It was less than a quarter mile away, a big gray boxy house with white trim and a porch that seemed to encircle it completely. The yard was untended, unkempt. Constance drove on.

After a short distance, Bev said, "There's the road on the left. Keep going and you'll see the Andreson place. That's the neighbor who spotted the fire, Edward Blachley." That house was on the bay side.

The road was not very steep, but in bad weather, in fog, for anyone speeding, it would become a very dangerous road. Then the Andreson house came into view. They didn't go farther into the driveway than Constance needed in order to turn around, but even from here it was apparent that Sam had built a spectacular house for his wife and family. There was a frosted-looking dome behind it—a covered swimming pool. Constance drove more slowly going back down the winding road. The road curved again, then a straightaway, followed by another curve.

"Where Gary went off," Bev said.

Constance stopped. The curve here was no worse than the others; the edge of the road was ten or twelve feet from the edge of the cliff. He shouldn't have run off the road here. She started again.

"It's two miles from Sam's house to the spot where he died," Bev said. "One mile from Jeff's house. The turn's coming up around the next curve."

Constance turned onto a very narrow road that had been gravel but was mostly dirt now.

"Used to be a cabin back there," Bev said. "Gone. And the road's going fast."

The road wound among stunted trees and boulders for less than a quarter of a mile and then came to an opening where obviously there had been a recent fire. She stopped and glanced at Charlie. He shook his head, meaning later they would come back and examine it, but not now. She drove back out.

"You can see the fix," Beverly Kratz said when Constance stopped in the Coultier driveway. "How likely is it that a stranger happened back that road? No one knew Sam would be going out that night. He wouldn't have picked up a hitchhiker. He had no enemies in these parts. No friends, either. Not popular, not a third- or fourth-generation resident the way Jeff is, but he was respected. His car was noticeable, a big black Caddy with dark windows. If he'd been out prowling, he would have been seen."

"How close are the cops to Trish and Nathan?" Charlie asked.

"Close. Asking too damn many questions, hanging out in Oyster Bay and asking questions. Meiklejohn, we need you to prove Sam Andreson tried to kill Trish, and to prove that he did kill her brother and sister. That's all we need. I'll take care of Trish." She opened her door, then added, "Everyone reads the papers, watches TV. The abused wife, abused kid, hell, an abused goat would get a sympathetic jury these days. I'm not too worried about Trish, or I won't be when she comes clean. What she can't do is stick to her story." She got out of the car, strode toward the big gray house.

Charlie glanced at Constance, who raised her eyebrows in such a noncommittal way that he grinned. "Onward," he said, and they left the car and followed Bev.

Lorraine and Jeffrey Coultier met them at the door. She was a large woman, taller than Constance, and big through the shoulders, almost masculine-looking in her body, but with a pretty face and curly brown hair. Jeffrey had the deep-set blue eyes that Trish and Nathan had inherited, thinning gray hair, and was inches shorter than his wife, not frail, but delicate in appearance. His handshake was surprisingly firm; his slight build concealed a wiry body. Nathan's resemblance to him was startling.

After a quick scrutiny of Constance and Charlie, Lorraine said, "Let's go into the plant room. It's more comfortable."

In the wide foyer they had entered, there were side tables, chairs, the wall space covered with overlapping pictures—portraits, photographs, even a New York State map. Constance glimpsed the living room they passed; it looked like a museum managed by an insane curator, with every period represented, every inch of space occupied with furniture, book stands, lamps, rugs on top of rugs

"We always figured if there are ghosts and they come back home," Jeff said, "they should feel comfortable, surrounded by familiar things."

Constance caught a gleam in his eye, although his voice was dry, his demeanor quite sober. Charlie was thinking, What a sensible house. You built a box, divided it into rooms with a central hall and central stairs, and then filled it. They had filled it admirably.

The room they were led to used to be a dining room, Lorraine said as they entered double doors. "Jeff's mother," she continued, "was a Virginia girl who couldn't abide the northern winters, so Jeff's father knocked out the south wall, added a lot of glass to the porch, ceiling, and walls, and turned the whole thing into a conservatory for her."

The room was very large, an indoor garden with a lemon tree, raised beds of vegetables, a hydroponics tank, and a pair of tomato plants that reached the ceiling and were laden with fruits. Pots of blooming plants were everywhere, hanging from the ceiling, in planters, on the floor... . There were redwood chairs with print cushions, glass-topped tables, a long dining table. The room was bright with sunshine and smelled fresh and good.

"It's wonderful," Constance said. "Lovely!"

"We like it," Jeff said. "We garden at strange hours in this house."

"He gardens," Lorraine said complacently. "I come in to smell the roses." She gestured toward the end of the room. "Let's sit over there." The area she indicated was like a separate little sitting room within the bigger room; there was a television, the redwood furniture, tables covered with books, good reading lamps. "Can I get you something? Coffee, wine, a drink?" Constance and Charlie both said coffee and sat down; she excused herself.

Bev sat down with a grunt, and Jeff sank into the cushions on the sofa. He regarded them evenly, the gleam gone from his eyes now. "You know why we called you," he said finally. "Will you continue your investigations?"

Charlie shook his head. "Mr. Coultier, or is it Dr. Coultier?"

"Jeff," he said impatiently.

"Okay, Jeff. You see, the problem is that I consider everything your daughter said to me as confidential. We terminated our relationship. If you want to hire us now, you should tell us what you want us to do, and we'll start fresh. And we have to know up front who is offering to hire us. You or your attorney?" He glanced at Bev, who was scowling at him fiercely.

"I want to hire you. Whatever you say can be said in front of Bev. I want you to investigate the deaths of my elder son, Gary, and my daughter Suzette, the fire that very nearly killed Teresa, and the shooting at her a few weeks ago."

Charlie nodded thoughtfully. Lorraine returned, pushing a cart with coffee and cups. Charlie waited out the confusion of serving everyone before he spoke. "Let me tell you the usual procedure. The cops find a murder victim. First they look into the domestic situation, because usually that's where they find the murderer. But at the same time, they'll be looking into possible business enemies, transients, a neighbor with a grudge, a madman on the loose, an Iranian terrorist, you name it. They'll be looking into this family, of course. All of this is routine for them, and it takes time. Weeks, sometimes a lot of weeks. But as soon as they know you've hired someone to look into the other deaths, the fire and the shooting, they'll home in on this house. And once they decide they know who's guilty, the other investigations tend to get less attention, or even get dropped. That's just how it is. Are you sure you want that?"

Bev had been following this closely. Now she snapped, "Don't tell me you didn't know what those kids were up to when they came to see you!"

"All right, I won't," Charlie said, but he kept his gaze on Jeff, who had gone paler and paler, until now he was chalky.

"Is that true?" Jeff asked Bev.

She shrugged. "He's the cop expert. If he says so."

Jeff turned to Lorraine as if asking what he should do. She was sitting next to him and took his hand.

Charlie said, "I suspect they already have started to consider this household simply because you've brought in an attorney."

"I've known Bev all my life," Lorraine protested. "She comes here to visit a lot." She glanced at Bev, then said, "In fact, after the fire, I asked her how I could get a look at the police files on Gary's and Suzette's deaths. It just didn't seem reasonable to have three children either dead or nearly dead so violently."

Jeff jerked around in surprise, stared at her, then at Bev.

"You didn't know?" Charlie asked.

He shook his head.

"And?" Charlie asked the attorney.

She shrugged. "I have the police reports."

"I want what you have," Charlie said.

She nodded. "But you'll have to go farther than those reports; they won't help."

"Were any of you at the party they had for Gary?" They shook their heads. "See the problem?" he said. "As soon as I start asking questions, it's going to be out, what I'm digging for. How about the secretary, Ellen Hosty? Was she there? Can she be questioned without having everything turn up the next day in the National Enquirer?'

Bev snorted. "She's so closemouthed that if her nose got stopped up, she'd suffocate. If she'll talk to you? Who knows? She was there."

"How about the fire? Who investigated that?"

Jeff told him two names, men he had grown up with, went fishing with. They could both be questioned, he said without hesitation. He turned to Lorraine and added, "In fact, last year I talked to Pete Belasco about the accidents and the fire, had him look into the reports, exactly as you did." He looked at Charlie again, a haunted expression on his face. "It's hard to accept coincidence when it's your children's deaths you're talking about."

Before Charlie could ask anything else or vent his frustration with this secretive family, he felt as if Constance's fingers were tickling his back. She had not moved, and he knew she had not, but she had a way of signaling that was unmistakable. He glanced at her, waiting.

"Jeff, Lorraine," she asked, "didn't you talk about this? The two of you?"

They both shook their heads. "I started to a dozen times," Jeff said, "but what was the use? Pete couldn't find anything to suggest... . He couldn't find anything."

"Did you believe Sam Andreson was responsible?"

He hesitated, then said, "I'd known him for forty years. After Marie... . There wasn't any reason for him to do anything like that."

Bev suddenly yelled, "For God's sake, Jeff, just shut up!"

Constance ignored her. "What about the shooting? Did you think someone tried to kill Trish that night?"

He looked miserable. "Pete and I talked it over. If anyone had wanted to kill her, he could have done it out there."

"Yet a year ago, you canceled your travel plans for your sabbatical, stayed home with your daughter," Constance said.

He nodded and cleared his throat, then said raggedly, "There wasn't anything to point to, nothing concrete, but I wanted to stay close to her."

"Did you talk to her about any of this?"

"No. We talked about using caution, not being out alone at night, general precautions, nothing specific." He looked desperate, near tears. "I was a fool. I had no idea she had grown suspicious of Sam, that she was terrified of him."

Constance studied him, finished. Charlie knew she was finished just as he had known she wanted to ask questions, without being able to say how he knew.

"You haven't answered the question I asked awhile back," Charlie said then.

"I don't want you to bring the police here. Maybe they'll never come here."

Bev made an indignant noise and straightened in her chair. They both ignored her. Charlie said, "You understand that I may come up with no more than you already have learned? Maybe there's nothing to find?"

Jeff nodded. "I know that. Pete's good, he's our chief of police here, retired from a long-time position with the state police. But he might have missed something."

"Right," Charlie said. "I can start with those people who won't blab about it. In this house, for openers. And I want to be brought up to date about Sunday night."

"For God's sake!" Bev snapped. "What for?"

At last, Charlie turned to her. "I don't tell you how to run your law office; you don't tell me how to conduct my business. Okay?"

She flushed a deep red and her mouth tightened until her lips all but disappeared.

Charlie glanced at his watch; it was close to seven. "We have to discuss fees, and I have to ask you a number of questions that might become pretty personal. For example, why did Sam Andreson forbid his son to hang around here?"

Lorraine stood up. "Please, will you both stay and have dinner with us? I made enough. I'll just go see how it's coming along." Charlie glanced at Constance, who nodded. Lorraine walked behind Jeff and laid her hand on his head for a moment. "I can tell you why Sam was so determined to keep Michael away," she said. "He was insanely jealous of Jeff." She moved on.

Constance stood up. "Can I help?" she said, and trailed after Lorraine toward the door to the kitchen. Watching, Charlie knew she would be as hard at work in the kitchen as he would be in the garden room, and her work would not be culinary.

"You want me to beat it, too?" Bev asked meanly.

Jeff shrugged. "I don't guess we have a single secret you haven't known about for years." The glint was back in his eyes when he said this. Then he asked Charlie. "Fees first?" He stood up. "We should move to my study. They'll be setting the table in here." He led the way across the hall to a study that looked like a library that had long ago run out of shelf space. Books were everywhere—on tables, the floor, every shelf, on a chair.

Trish and Nathan set the table in the garden room, and at a quarter to eight they all sat down to dinner. The young people were subdued, even embarrassed. Trish played with her food and kept her gaze on her plate. Nathan fidgeted, but he had an appetite. They talked about fishing, about baseball, about colleges, about everything except what they were all thinking about.

The dinner was okay, Charlie decided, the sort of meal Constance might turn out on one of her infrequent bad days in the kitchen. Roast beef too well done, oven-roasted potatoes, green beans, salad... all okay and very plain. Wholesome, he thought, plain wholesome chow.

"We'll clean up," Trish said after they all had strawberries with cream.

"Ah, I have a favor to ask," Charlie said. "How are you at drawing? Ever make a floor plan? Do any drafting?"

"No."

"Try," he said. "Maybe Nathan can help. A drawing of the guest house. Upper and lower floors, everything you can think of, like where the fridge was, the outside entrances, bathroom, the window you jumped out of, everything. Can do?"

She glanced at Nathan and said faintly, "I'll try." They left together.

Charlie turned back to Jeff. "You up for any more tonight?"

Jeff sighed and nodded.

In half an hour, Trish and Nathan came back with the sketch, and Charlie sat down by Trish at the dining table and began asking questions about it, redrawing parts of it as she answered.

"Circular stairs?" Charlie asked, pointing at a squiggle.

She nodded and watched him redraw them.

"Okay. The fireplace. Was there a pull screen, or a screen that had to be lifted out of the way and put back?"

"A pull screen with a chain."

He studied the drawing some more and kept asking questions until he had a pretty good idea of the cottage. About twenty by twenty-five feet, a cathedral ceiling in the living room, the upstairs bedroom over the kitchen, in the back. Circular stairs, near the wall opposite the fireplace, went to an open, railed landing, where a bathroom door was at the head of the stairs and the door to the bedroom down farther.

"Was there another door to the bathroom?"

She blushed and said yes, she had forgotten. She pointed and he added a door from the bedroom.

"Uh-huh," he said. "Describe the bathroom. Tiled?"

She nodded. "A tub here, and a shower stall next to it. I used the shower before I went to bed. Toilet, double sink at the vanity, here." He filled in the space as she pointed.

"Good," he said finally. "See, you can do drafting, draw floor plans."

She gave him a look of such skeptical derision, he wanted to pat her, the way he would have done his own daughter. Instead, he leaned back and said, "I know this is hard; sometimes you just don't remember a lot both before and after a severe trauma, but can you remember that evening in the guest house?"

"Yes. I know what I did, and I did close the screen." She sounded defiant now, for the first time.

"Okay," Charlie said. "But I want you to back up a little. Where were you guys sitting, where did you drink your chocolate? That kind of stuff. Can you remember that?"

She was eyeing him doubtfully. "Sure. We sat on the floor on cushions."

"From the beginning," he said. "Consider it a memory test. First you entered the house. Was the door locked when you got there?"

Step by step, he took her through the evening. The door had not been locked; they went inside and Michael made the fire while she heated milk for the chocolate. She used two packets of cocoa mix, made four cups. The milk, cocoa mix, cookies had all been unopened. She took the hot chocolate and cookies to the living room and they sat on the floor on the cushions and listened to music on Michael's CD player.

"It just wasn't working, having the party, I mean. We were all tired and sleepy. It wasn't the same, being allowed to be in the cottage. It used to be fun when we sneaked in, but too much had changed."

"I understand," Charlie said. "Did people go up to use the bathroom?"

"I think we all did. Oh, I took Rita up and showed her the bedroom and bathroom."

"Were there locks on the bathroom doors?"

She frowned. "Probably, but I don't know for sure."

"Okay. You were all tired and Michael's friend had to leave. What then?"

"We took our mugs out to rinse them and left them and the pan in the sink to soak. We pushed the cushions back against the wall, and they left. I closed the fire screen and turned off lights and went upstairs. Then I took a shower and went to bed."

Charlie nodded, but he had her back up again. "Did you lock the door when they left?"

"It had one of those push-button locks. I pushed it in."

"Okay. Upstairs. You went to the bedroom and undressed there to shower?"

"Yes," she said tiredly. "I got my nightshirt out, undressed, and took a shower."

"You entered the bathroom by the door to the bedroom? Not the hall door?"

She was looking exasperated now. "Yes. Do you want to know what kind of soap I used?"

Charlie grinned. "Maybe. Was the door to the landing open?"

"No. You couldn't have both doors open. They hit each other. Oh." She looked at her sketch, pointed. "That's not quite right. The door's down farther."

Charlie erased the door and put it closer to the landing so that if both were opened, they would hit each other. He nodded, satisfied. "Just a couple more questions," he said. "Did you leave the bathroom door open to the bedroom when you went to bed?"

She looked at him as if she thought he was crazy, but she nodded. "Yes. Mr. Meiklejohn, is all this important?"

"Well," he said. "Let's pretend we know an arsonist entered the guest house. We don't know for sure at this point, but we'll pretend we do. See, he has to open the fire screen, and then he has to go upstairs and open the bathroom door to the hall. You saw a glow, and that means either the bathroom was burning or else both bathroom doors were open, the one to the bedroom and the one to the landing. A tiled bathroom that's been used recently for a shower holds a lot of moisture in the air. That would have slowed the fire. And tile isn't good combustible material; that would have slowed it down. Fire was burning throughout the lower building, all the way into the kitchen, flaming out the window over the sink. It was on the landing; you said the doorknob was hot, but no fire had come into the bedroom yet. But if the bathroom had been in flames, so would the bedroom have been. You would have seen fire, not just a glow."

"Someone sneaked in and opened the door?" She stared at him, then added in a whisper, "To make sure the smoke went to the bedroom?" She looked bloodless, as if only now did she realize what her accusation about arson meant.

Charlie nodded.

Bev let out a long, loud breath, and Jeff moved to his daughter and put his arms around her; he was nearly as colorless as she was.

Charlie folded the sheet of paper with the sketch of the house plan and put it in his pocket. When he turned away from Trish, he saw Nathan staring at him with what he hoped was awe, not terror. It was hard to tell.

It was after eleven when they left the exhausted Coultiers and drove the short distance back to their own cabin, which was like a refrigerator.

"What did you think?" Constance asked. She was moving about, putting things away, pulling the bedspread off the bed exactly as if the cabin was livable. His teeth were chattering.

"Tomorrow," he said.

She went into the bathroom and he could hear water running. Then, after a few minutes, she called, "Charlie, come here!"

He had taken his shoes off; the floor was icy. He hurried across the room to the bathroom door and flung it open, to be enveloped in a cloud of steam.

"Have you looked at this tub? It's gigantic! Come on in, the water's fine."

He stood for a moment and then laughed and began to strip off his clothes.

The tub was gigantic, and the water was very fine. He soaped her back, as muscular as a boy's, with skin as soft as a baby's, and he thought contentedly how one thing usually led to another, and another.

Constance heard Charlie get up the next morning, and she snuggled down lower in the warm bed; she heard him leave, and she drifted off to sleep again, and then she was dreaming of coffee and cinnamon. Cinnamon? She sat up and stretched.

When she got to the kitchen, coffee was ready, cinnamon rolls were hot, and Charlie was sorting through a pile of papers. She kissed him. "You are one good provider," she said, pouring coffee.

He grinned at her. He had gone to town, nothing open but a little cafe, and he had done the sensible thing, he told her; he had eaten breakfast and waited for the grocery to open. "Juice in the fridge, and eggs, bacon. Want me to rustle up something?"

"This is fine," she said, tearing a cinnamon roll apart. "What's all that?"

"Bev Kratz's reports on Gary and Suzette. Fire report in here somewhere. Nothing new so far."

She nodded. "According to Lorraine, Sam came sneaking around to woo and win Marie while Jeff was tied up teaching and getting his Ph.D. Marie didn't put up any roadblocks. She was not happy," she added.

"And after Sam? Was she happy then?"

"Lorraine suspects it was frying pan to fire, but she has nothing definite. In the last few years, Marie has pretty much dropped everything."

She poured more coffee. "Your turn."

"One reason Jeff didn't pursue the idea of arson, aside from the fire report," he said, "is that the secretary, Ellen Hosty, and Sam both swore they spent the night together." He frowned. "You think Jeff is as naїve as he comes on, trusting police reports instead of his own suspicions?"

She nodded. "Experts tend to trust other experts, and he's an expert in history. Lorraine trusted the reports. Only Trish trusted her own senses and intuition. She's too young and fresh out of school to have faith in experts yet"

She cocked her head, listening, and now Charlie heard it, too. Tires grated on the gravel outside their door, then stopped. He went to the door to look out. A man was climbing down from a beat-up pickup truck. The man was tall and thin, with a few white hairs and a very pink scalp. His face was brown from weather, as lined and wrinkled as a sun-dried peach.

"Meiklejohn? I'm Pete Belasco," he said at the door. He looked about eighty, but his handshake was firm and his eyes were clear and steady as he examined Charlie and then looked past him to Constance.

"Well, come on in, Chief," Charlie said. "We're having coffee. Want some?" He introduced Constance.

"You bet. Never turn down a free anything, that's my motto," Belasco said, watching Constance gather up the papers on the table and take them into the bedroom. New lines appeared on his face, at his eyes, his mouth; he could have been smiling.

Charlie put a plate down, poured coffee, and pushed the cinnamon rolls toward Belasco, who helped himself.

"Jeff told me about you," Belasco said. "Thought we might have a chat. You've seen the reports, not much to add."

"You knew Gary pretty well?"

"Knew them all pretty well. Jeff's kids, I mean. Gary was as straight as a young guy could be, a real surprise to find so much alcohol in him, but it was there."

"You don't know Michael well?" Constance asked.

He shrugged. "Sam had his own ideas about child raising. Private school when he was little, boarding school at thirteen, Princeton at eighteen, flunked out, dropped out, something, and went to Columbia. He didn't let Michael associate much with us common folk. The others went to the public school here, same as my kids."

"Tell us about the shooting a couple of weeks ago," Charlie said then.

"Got a piece of paper?"

Constance got up to bring paper. Belasco fumbled in his pockets, and she handed him a pen.

"Thanks. You know that fork back on One-oh-six where you turn off to come to the inn?" He drew the road and then a little rectangle. "Okay, here's her car, making the turn, where she says it happened. See, the bullet went through the left-rear window, out through the front-right windshield. A perfect diagonal. Only problem is where did he stand, or sit, or whatever he was doing?" He drew in the straight-line trajectory of the bullet. It would have been fired from the center of the road. He frowned at the drawing. "And why wait until she was turning if she was the target? Either he knew her car or he didn't, and if he did, why wait? And why not follow up?"

"Find the shell, anything?"

"Nope. And we searched."

"What kind of car?"

"Hers? Honda, two-door."

Charlie frowned at the drawing with him.

"Maybe he thought she was going to Oyster Bay," Constance said.

"Maybe," Belasco said. "Still the same problem—why wait until she was turning? But why didn't he follow up?"

"How high up did the bullet go through?" Charlie asked.

Belasco held his fingers about three inches apart. "That far down the windshield."

Charlie pushed the drawing aside. "Okay. What about Suzette?"

Belasco drank his coffee. His lined face grew even more lines, deeper lines. "She had a boyfriend in," he said. "They ate pizza, drank wine, went to bed, and afterward she did heroin, Quaaludes, and sleeping pills."

Charlie gazed at him unhappily. "They're sure it was consensual?"

"No signs of roughhousing. He used a condom; she had lubricant in her vagina, a hickey on her neck. The sleeping pills were some Marie gave her when Gary died. Where she got the other junk, no one knows. She was wearing a nightgown, in her bed when they found her. Needle in the bathroom, her prints. No other prints that told them anything, a few unidentified, some smudges." He looked at Charlie and said, "I thought it stunk. She'd been a good kid, and to end like that... Anyway, I asked questions. Whoever was with her spent time there, and Sam didn't have that kind of time that night. He had people around, some kind of emergency meeting. He could have left for a little bit, from fifteen or twenty minutes after seven until about eight, but his apartment is on Park Avenue South and she was in SoHo. He couldn't have gotten there, had a party, bed, and then the junk. His prints are on army files, no matches. I had to go along with them, Meiklejohn. Another good kid—drink, drugs, sex..."

Constance got up to pour more coffee for them all.

He nodded at her in thanks and held his mug in both hands. "The fire. I tried... God, I tried to find a way to prove arson. Even called in Ron Leicester. You know him?" Charlie nodded. "Yeah. He said it could have been, or not. No way to prove anything, no combustible fluids or oily rags. He said it's suspected that thousands of arson fires happen every year, all without any way to prove anything."

"Ninety-four thousand is the last number I heard," Charlie said tightly.

"Yeah. So we tried, but there wasn't anything, not a damn thing. Then the secretary swore that Sam spent the night with her. I thought he'd hit her for that, for saying it in front of Marie, but he went along with it. And that's how it was. No proof, no motive, and she was ready to alibi him." He drank his coffee and set the mug down hard. "If Trish had died, I would have taken him in anyway, proof or no proof."

"Did you tell Jeff Coultier that?"

He shook his head. "Look, Meiklejohn, I want to level with you. I don't come out smelling so good, but that's how it is. I was wrong about Gary; he really was drunk. I was wrong about Suzette; she really did have a boyfriend and really did the drugs. I think now that I was wrong about the fire. It just seemed too much at the time. One, two, three. Too goddamn much! Jeff's one of my oldest friends. I wanted to slam someone for hurting people I love. I should have talked it out with them all, Trish especially, because now they're in deep shit, and I might have prevented it." Abruptly, he stood up and made a motion toward the door.

"Sit down," Charlie said. "Pete, isn't it? Sit down and listen to me a minute." Belasco sat down again, and Charlie told him what he had gone through with Trish the night before. "Maybe Ron didn't ask her enough questions, or maybe she didn't think to mention seeing that glow in the bathroom, I don't know. But it was arson, Pete. It was an arson fire and attempted murder."

"But you can't prove it."

"Who do I have to prove it to? Why couldn't she get the window open?"

"We don't know. They got the fire out, but the place was falling down. They found the pieces of window, latch worked okay, what they could tell about it."

"Tell us about Sam Andreson."

"We all liked Marie when Jeff brought her home. Pretty little thing, with that great accent, a wonderful cook. She fit right in. But things were hard, three kids, not much money with him in school, then just starting to teach. So Sam began coming around, hanging around her. People tried to warn Jeff, but hell, Sam was an old army buddy. Way I figured, Sam was out to take what he thought was rightfully his. Folks here think he built that house on the hill to spite Jeff." He shrugged. "Then, later on, nothing good enough for Michael, and let Jeff do what he could for the others. Jeff never had an extra cent all those years, I can tell you. Sam broke Marie, turned her into a tight-mouthed, bitter woman, and he ran herd on Michael like a sergeant at boot camp."

Charlie sighed; Belasco's biases were showing, whether he knew it or not. "Sam's murder," he said.

Belasco didn't add a thing to what they already knew.

"What about the explosion? A bomb?"

He shook his head. "Gasoline. Fire burned the interior for a while, heat built up, the gas went. They had a pumper on the road, just about at the turn from One-oh-six when it blew. They put it out in a couple of minutes."

"Why a fire?" Charlie said. "Why not another shot if the first one didn't do him?"

"You can have the preliminary report," Belasco said. "State marshal toted the wreckage off to the lab. We'll know more maybe in a couple of weeks."

Charlie scowled at him. "Someone shot him in the temple, probably beside him talking or something, then got out, went to the backseat to arrange a fire. Jesus!"

"Maybe there were two of them," Belasco said quietly. "One in the front seat, one in the back."

After a moment, Charlie nodded.

Belasco didn't stay much longer and didn't add anything to what he had said. Charlie walked out with him, and Constance stood at the door, watching them go around the Volvo, pause at the truck, shake hands. She turned back to the table and studied the drawing of the fork in the road, visualizing the car on it, someone shooting at Trish.

When Charlie came back in, she said, "I keep hearing her tell Nathan they were all in it together, back at our house." He nodded. "She wouldn't have gotten in a car alone with Sam for anything," Constance said. She realized she was moving Belasco's sketch back and forth, and she removed her hand from it. "And the shooting..." When she looked at Charlie, he nodded again.

"Let's see if Marie is receiving," he said. He put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed lightly, then went to the telephone.

The house was more impressive close up than it had been from the end of the driveway. Michael admitted them to a spacious foyer, with a lot of chrome, brass, and polished wood. There were open stairs with chrome trim, brass urns, a long hall carpeted with a thick black-and-white runner. He led them into the living room, two stories high, a mammoth L-shaped room, with floor-to-ceiling windows and a view of the bay. All the furnishings were sleek and modern; a fireplace was a brass and beveled-glass enclosure raised a foot above floor level. It was like walking into an illustration from an upscale women's magazine, Charlie thought.

"Mother will be down in a couple of minutes," Michael said. Like Trish and Nathan, he looked nervous and perhaps even embarrassed. "And Ellen said she'd come out whenever you want her to."

"Mind showing us around the house first?" Charlie asked.

Michael seemed relieved to have something to do. "There are people in the office, the lawyer sent them. Going over files with Ellen. This way."

Back in the foyer, he opened the door to the office, where several people were at desks and a table. No one looked up. Next to that was Ellen's office, Michael said, indicating the door. He didn't open it. Opposite the office was the dining room. Like the living room, it was spacious and sparkling clean. The table gleamed; sideboards had silver candleholders. The view was of a big garden terrace with red-tile flooring, and beyond it, the swimming pool dome. Michael showed the rest of the downstairs, a television/game room, the kitchen, another staircase in the rear.

"The master suite and four more bedrooms upstairs," he said. "You want to see them?"

Charlie shook his head. "Is there a housekeeper? A live-in?"

"Juana and Pablo. They have a little house behind the pool."

They were back at the dining room door. Matter-of-factly, Charlie said, "You were all at dinner when the fight started. What happened? What started it?"

Michael looked out the window, his shoulders hunched, hands deep in his pockets. "Dad said he and Ellen had more work to do, that they'd have coffee in his office, and Mother... she started to yell about being left alone all the time." He glanced miserably at Charlie. "She said I was gone, and when she tried to get Trish to come keep her company, she was gone. And he jumped to the conclusion we were out together. He began to yell at me, and she was still yelling, and I guess I was, too."

Charlie nodded, his gaze on the shining table. "So you were all yelling. Then what?"

Michael was staring down at his shoes. He mumbled, "He grabbed my arm and yelled at Ellen to get Mother up to her room. And he pulled me out into the hall. I... I could have hit him to get loose, maybe, but... Dad yanked me into his office and slammed the door. He was still yelling, saying if I wanted to stay in his house, I'd do what he said. Then he yelled that he'd stop it right now; he'd order Trish to keep out of his house. If Marie wanted to see her, they could meet somewhere else, and if I couldn't live by his rules, I could get out, too.... I ran out and up the stairs, and he followed me into the hall, yelling he'd put a stop to it, that he was going to have it out with Jeff and Trish. I didn't really think he'd go over to Trish's, but I was afraid he might, so I called when he left, to warn her. I got Nathan."

Charlie nodded when he'd finished. "You saw him leave?"

"Yes. Not from my room. It's on the wrong side. I went to the spare room and watched until he pulled out, then went back to my room to call."

"What time was that?"

"I don't know. Not nine-thirty yet."

"Okay. Then what?"

Michael shrugged. "Nothing. I hung out by the phone, hoping Trish would call. I didn't want to call them again, just in case they were having a fight or something. Then around ten-thirty, I began to wonder if he'd just driven around a while and had come home again. So I went down to see. Ellen was in her office working. We went out to the kitchen and had a snack together."

"Where was the nurse during all that?"

"She had Sundays off. Mother fired her on Monday."

"Michael," Charlie said slowly then, "you know it doesn't make much sense, having a fight like that because you'd spent time with your sister. What was it really about?"

Michael stared out the windows, hunched again. "I think he kept inventing new rules, hoping I'd finally get mad enough to walk out. He said if I left, I couldn't come back. He meant it. Then Mother would have been alone with him." He swung around and said vehemently, "You know what I kept wishing that night? I kept hoping he'd gone off the road where Gary did, that he was down in the bay just like Gary."

Charlie held up his hand. "Take it easy. In the office, what did he say?"

"He was yelling about me hanging out with Trish and Nathan. I was yelling, too. I mean, I'm twenty-one years old!"

"Where did he keep his gun?"

"In his office, locked up in his desk, or in the car. I think he carried it a lot."

"Know why? Was he threatened?"

"He just said he felt safer with a gun."

Charlie nodded. "Okay. When you were with him in the office, did you see the gun? Did he get it from somewhere?"

Michael shook his head. "We stood just inside the door. When I ran out and up the stairs, he followed me to the hall, still yelling. Then he went back inside his office and slammed the door."

"How long after that did he leave? Two minutes? Ten?"

"Not long, not even five minutes."

"So he had time to call someone?"

"Maybe. I guess so."

"Fine," Charlie said, and started to walk toward the living room. "You suppose your mother intends to come down?"

"Want me to get her?"

"Not yet. How about Ms. Hosty?"

Michael nodded and crossed the foyer to the office door and entered. He came out a second later along with a slender, fortyish woman with blond hair done in a chignon. Michael introduced them.

"Ms. Hosty, I know this is an imposition, but would you answer a few questions?"

She looked at him coolly, shrugged, and turned toward her office. She was trim in a pale blue linen suit, medium heels, no jewelry except for a watch, little makeup. She carried a pair of gold-rimmed glasses. When Michael started to accompany them, she regarded him even more coolly. "If you don't mind, this will be private," she said. Michael flushed. She opened her door, entered, stepped aside for Charlie and Constance, and then closed it.

"I agreed to see you," she said, going to her desk, "only to tell you that if there's anything I can do to make certain Trish and Nathan are convicted of killing Sam, I'll do it." She sat down, her back to the double windows, her face shadowed.

The office was as neat and efficient as she was—a chrome and teak desk, a computer station with a modem, fax, two telephones; a laptop computer, several file cabinets with locks; a door to the other office.

"They seemed to think he was trying to kill Trish," Constance said. She sat down in a low-slung chair. "Was he?"

"Don't be ridiculous! They are crazy. All Marie's children are or were crazy, just like her. Sam was good to those kids."

"We heard that he refused to give them a cent, that Jeff had to support them until they came into their own money," Constance said.

"Jeff and Marie had a divorce agreement; he accepted the terms, and if he had to cry poor, he should have thought of it sooner."

"Did Sam really get upset when Trish went to her father's house after the fire?"

"Yes. Of course he did. He tried to help her. That's how it always was—he tried to help, and they turned their backs on him. He tried to help Suzette in New York, and she... she preferred dope."

Constance nodded. Her eyes were adjusting now and she could see Ellen's face more clearly; the secretary's expression was grim; everything about her was stiff and unnatural. "What do you mean, he tried to help Suzette? Did he know she was into drugs?"

Ellen Hosty shrugged. "I don't know what she told him. They had lunch on Monday of that week, and he was upset, but when he called her a day or two later, she didn't take his call. Then she called him and agreed to have lunch again on the following Monday. She did drugs instead."

"And then the police asked embarrassing questions," Constance said in a low voice. "He must have understood the implications of their questions."

"Yes, he understood," she said bitterly. "He understood all too well." She looked at her watch. "I'm very busy and I have nothing to tell you."

"But you do," Constance said. "See, one way to interpret the history of these two families is to say that Sam came here and bought Marie with promises. He tried to ruin Jeff financially and extended his hatred for Jeff to his children. One by one, they were going to deplete Marie's inheritance, and Marie didn't stay bought. Did anyone weep for him?"

Ellen Hosty jumped up. "Please, leave. This is insane, trying to analyze a man you never even met!"

"Why didn't he divorce her, marry you? You were lovers for how many years? Ten, fifteen? Was it just good business to stay married, wait for the money to come along?"

"Everything he did was for her!" Ellen Hosty said in an intense low voice. "She was his dream for ten years and he came out here and saw how unhappy she was, her life a drudgery, living in that mausoleum. He still loved her, and she wanted what he had to offer. He gave her a dream house, and he thought she would be happy at last. Hah! He was in town all week and as soon as he got home, the children ran to their father, that pitiful little schoolteacher father, and she blamed Sam for separating her from her children. She blamed Sam! He was working eighteen-hour days, twenty-hour days, some nights he didn't sleep at all, and it was for her, all of it, Sam trying to make poor little Marie happy!"

Abruptly, she swiveled her chair around to face the windows. "He lost her, lost the stepchildren, lost his son, all because she's an emotional cripple, and he couldn't see it He loved her for so many years, when he stopped loving her, he couldn't even see any other life for himself. She did that to him. Blinded him to life."

"Someone wept for him," Constance said softly.

Ellen Hosty didn't move.

"What do you mean, he lost his son, Michael?" Constance asked after a moment.

Ellen shrugged, still facing away from them. "She poisoned Michael against him. Sam tried to save him. At least, he could see what was happening to his son, but she won there, too. Sam sent him away to schools, tried to get him interested in sports, studies, anything, but the more he tried, the harder she held on." Her voice dropped to near inaudibility. "Eight years ago, he came to my apartment, and he cried. She despised him, he said, and Michael did, too. He cried, and I took him to my bed. We became lovers. He could have left her then. He admitted it that night, but he blamed Michael. If they could just get Michael past those awful teens, everything would work out. I felt sorry for the boy, taking the blame for his mother, but Sam was so sure it was only a matter of another year or two. He had to stay for Michael, had to try to straighten him out. Then, after Gary died, Marie's breakdown, his own frustration and unhappiness, the guilt he suffered over failing Marie, the trap had closed for good. The time for leaving had passed and wouldn't come back."

Throughout this, Charlie had pretended to be somewhere else, hardly even breathing. Ellen had made it clear at the start that she intended to stonewall him, and he had been afraid to remind her he was still around. Now Constance glanced at him, as if to say, Your turn. He shook his head slightly.

"Ms. Hosty," Constance said, "this has been helpful. Thank you. Can you tell us something about the party for Gary? Everyone was surprised by the high alcohol content in his blood. Do you know when he could have drunk enough to account for it?"

Ellen Hosty turned back around, reached for her glasses and put them on, probably turning Charlie and Constance into a blur. She shrugged. "If anyone gave him too much, it was Suzette, Trish, and Michael. They were making fruit punch, and they kept sampling it and passing out samples to Gary." She looked past Constance for a moment. "We had an early dinner party for about twenty people, with tables set on the terrace. After dinner, the kids started making the punch. There was to be a dance later on the terrace, with twenty or thirty more people expected. I know Trish and Michael took turns giving Gary and his girlfriend samples. Maybe Suzette did, too, but I didn't see her do it, and I did see them. Michael was only a kid, fourteen, and Trish was underage. They had no business getting involved with punch to start with." She thought for a moment. "The girlfriend went up to shower and change clothes, maybe lie down for half an hour. Gary tried the punch again, kidding around about it, pretending it was awful, and then he said he'd run down and say hello to his father. He left." She twined her fingers on the desktop and looked at them. "The police collected the punch when they came—about a cup of rum in nearly a gallon of juice. They decided he must have helped himself at the bar inside the living room. No one would have paid any attention if he'd wandered off for a minute or two. No one claimed to have seen him doing it." She spread her hands. "That's all I can tell you about it."

Constance nodded. "What about the night the guest house burned?"

Ellen Hosty looked at her over the top of her glasses, then looked down at her hands again. "I told the police I spent the night with Sam. I did. And he didn't leave."

"All right. But what about the plumbing problem? What was that?"

"When Juana went up to prepare the room for Trish, she found the bathroom floor soaking wet. Pablo tried to find a leak and couldn't, and they had to call the plumber. He was due the next morning. Pablo turned off the water to that bathroom and drained the toilet. So Sam said Trish should have the guest house and be done with it. The plumbers said later that it was a faulty gasket on the tank, where it joined the bowl."

"Why didn't Trish use the guest room in the house?"

Ellen Hosty looked at her coolly. "That room and my room share a bath. We thought she would be more comfortable all the way out."

Constance nodded, but before she could ask anything else, Ellen stood up. "One more thing about that night. We all thought Trish had died in the fire. We were shocked, stunned, and Marie turned on Sam and screamed that he had killed all her beautiful children. Then she fainted. But she said it in front of Michael, and no doubt during the next months she kept saying it. She's crazy, hysterical. But Michael is hers, and it would have been easy for her to convince him of her delusion, and for him to convince Trish and Nathan. Those three conspired to murder Sam Andreson. Michael called them, and they met Sam at the road and got in his car, and they killed him. And it's her doing!" Abruptly, she sat down again. "I have nothing more to say to either of you. Just go away."

In the sun-filled hallway again, Charlie took Constance's hand and held it. "I could have stayed home and read a book," he murmured.

Michael appeared at the living room door. "Mother said if you want to talk to her, she'll be in her room upstairs." He looked embarrassed again. "She's upset that you've been talking to Ellen."

"Oh, well, then upstairs it is," Charlie said, and gave Constance's hand a light squeeze. "Lead the way."

Michael nodded toward the wide stairs. "Sorry about this," he mumbled.

"It's okay. I sort of wanted to see the rest of the mansion. Quite impressive."

They followed him up and had to wait a second when he tapped on the door to his mother's room. Then he pushed the door open for them to enter. The rest of the house was sterile, decorator-perfect to the last detail, but here there were soft grayed blues and greens, terra-cotta colors in prints on a sofa and chairs, brilliant splashes of red and yellow on pillows, in prints on the walls. Mediterranean colors, Constance thought, Gauguin colors.

Marie stood in a doorway to a bedroom beyond, with more of the same warm colors visible behind her. She was wearing a simple gray silk dress with a green-and-violet scarf, and she was at least fifty pounds overweight. Her hair was black, streaked with gray, her eyebrows the same high peaks that Michael and Trish had inherited. Her brows were drawn close in a tight frown.

"You've talked to that woman, who, I imagine, has filled your heads with scurrilous lies. That can't be helped. Sit down."

She waited until they were all in chairs and then lowered herself onto a lounge and leaned back. "I know why you're here," she said then. "I know Jeff hired you, and the purpose. It's all a waste of your time and his money. That woman killed my husband. Michael, Trish, and Nathan had nothing whatever to do with it."

"How do you think she managed that?" Charlie asked with interest. "She was in the kitchen with your son when the fire started."

"She saw Sam arrive home; they argued and got in the car so no one would overhear them and drove to that place where she shot him and started the fire, and she came back on foot. If Michael had gone to her office five minutes earlier, he would not have found her."

Charlie nodded gravely. "The preliminary reports state the fire started at about eleven," he said. "She was here at eleven."

"The reports are mistaken."

"I'm afraid the police will go along with them," Charlie said. "Why would she have wanted to kill him?"

"Because he wouldn't divorce me and marry her. She waited and waited and he wouldn't do it. She was a leech, always hanging on him, taking trips with him, sleeping with him in my house, and she finally realized that he would never leave me and take her instead. So she killed him."

"Hm," Charlie said. She spoke with utter conviction, as if nothing she was saying was in any way disputable. "Why is she here now?"

"The attorney, the executor, said her presence is necessary to process the papers of my late husband's estate. I granted them three days, after which she will not be permitted on these premises ever again."

"I see." Charlie regarded her. Her face was smooth and calm, her expression benign, as if they were discussing the weather. "Mrs. Andreson, did you believe your late husband was trying to kill your daughter Trish?"

"Don't be ridiculous. Of course not. Trish had a ghastly accident."

"Or that he was responsible for the death of your son Gary, and your other daughter, Suzette?"

"That's absolute nonsense!"

"Would he have gained financially by their deaths?"

She shook her head. "My late husband did not believe in spoiling children by giving them more money than was good for them. He worked for his wealth and knew the value of doing so, and he expected them to take care of themselves. Many years ago, we both made our wills. In mine, I bequeathed my estate to my children, and in the event that I outlived them, I listed the various charities that would then benefit. I bequeathed only a token to Sam. His will did the same thing. We had a legal understanding about financial responsibility drawn up before we married so there would never be any misunderstanding years later."

Michael had been gazing impassively at a print on the wall, as if memorizing it, but he started at her words. "You never said anything like that to us."

"Of course we told you. You've simply forgotten. But you see the implications, I'm certain," she went on, addressing Charlie again. "There was no earthly reason for Sam to want to murder my children, and they certainly had no reason to fear him." She turned her calm gaze to Michael. "What kind of a monster would that make me, a mother who believes her husband is trying to murder her children and does nothing about it?"

She said that of course Gary had not been drunk; he never drank, and when a nondrinker has a little wine, a little punch, it is potent. Suzette reacted to sleeping pills and died. Trish forgot to close the fire screen and was afraid to admit it. Her expression remained placid. About the fight on the evening Sam died, she said, "That woman insisted on dragging him away when he obviously wanted to stay with me. He lost his temper and slammed out of the house. Michael tried to stop him and he nearly knocked him down, his own son, while that woman was forcing me upstairs. She seduced him, you know. Here in this house, in front of witnesses, she said they spent the night together, that they often spent the night together. But she was still only a secretary, someone to be used, and she wanted more. She wanted my place, to be chatelaine."

Abruptly, Constance rose, and Charlie got to his feet also. There was no point in hanging out here, he understood. They thanked Marie Andreson and left. Her calm expression never changed.

Downstairs again, on the way to the door, Michael said, "I can't make out my own mother. On Monday, she was so hysterical, we—I—called her doctor and he came and gave her some tranquilizers. Yesterday the house was full of flowers and she ordered Juana to get rid of them, everything. And now... I've never seen her like this. I don't know what I should do, call the doctor back, wait it out?"

"She seemed calm enough," Charlie said after a pause that Constance made no effort to fill.

"Yeah, calm. Why does it make me feel like I'm in the eye of a hurricane?" He laughed unconvincingly and stopped at the massive door. "Can they really tell when a fire started?"

"Pretty much. They know how long it takes to burn through upholstery; they'll find out what kind that particular car had. They know how long it takes to blister paint, or to burn through it, and so on."

"But they could be wrong," Michael said. He sounded more hopeful than convinced, and very confused.

"Don't count on it," Charlie said. "Was that true about the prenuptial agreement, the wills?"

"I don't know what's true anymore," Michael muttered. "I found out about Dad's will from the lawyer yesterday, first I knew anything about it. Mother and I get the house, with a trust for upkeep, there's a pretty good bequest for Ellen, and I get the rest. No idea yet what that will amount to. They never said a thing about it to us—at least not to me. And I'd swear Trish doesn't know."

"Insurance?"

Michael nodded. "Two policies—one for the business, to let them liquidate in an orderly fashion, according to the lawyer; one personal, I'm the beneficiary, a hundred thousand, with a token amount for my mother."

"Whew!" Charlie said. "Well, take it easy, Michael. We'll be seeing you." He and Constance left.

Constance got in the passenger side and he drove back down the long driveway to the road. "Wait until Beverly Kratz hears her," he said. "She'll blow steam out of every orifice. There goes Trish's preemptive self-defense defense." When Constance made no response, he glanced at her and let it drop. She had gone into a place where she had to think about something. How long she might stay there, he never knew, but he knew enough to leave her alone until she came back. He drove slowly, and when he got to the turnoff to where Sam had been killed, he turned onto the narrow, crumbling road.

And he might as well have driven straight past, he decided a few minutes later. He could replay the action here almost minute by minute from the evidence still at hand, but what good that did, he couldn't tell. Sam had driven into the center of the clearing, an old homestead, the house gone for decades, with grasses and low straggly shrubs now reclaiming the land. Someone had shot him in the temple; then someone had arranged the newspapers for a nice little fire. The New York Times, picked up on the plane from Chicago, had been sufficient kindling. Then someone had doused things with brandy and lighted it. He scowled.

Why not a second shot if one hadn't been enough? Why brandy and papers? How flammable did the someone need it to be? Other bottles had been broken, but they had found the brandy bottle intact, the cap behind the backseat, and obviously brandy had burned. Champagne had spewed, tonic spilled, bourbon and gin bottles broken, but brandy had been splashed around. Why? Why the fire to start with?

Because he had tried to burn Trish?

Where had he been from nine-thirty or thereabouts until eleven, when he ended up here with a hole in his head in a burning car? Charlie gazed at the clearing unhappily.

Old sites like this had ghosts: irises in a line, a row of rosebushes, a path outlined with daylilies, plantings long since reverted to more natural forms and colors, plants that sprawled and violated their own boundaries and that told the story anyone could read. Here was where they'd sat, where they'd walked, where they'd planted their garden, burned their trash... . He prowled about the clearing, around the perimeter, examined places where burning debris had landed, the flames extinguished; he stopped and examined places where dirty water had flowed, swirled, puddled, evaporated... . The arson squad had been too damn thorough, he decided, heading back to the Volvo. There was nothing left for him here.

Constance was standing by the car, facing in his direction but seeing little, he knew.

"Ready?" he asked.

She nodded and got in the car.

"Is it Marie?" he asked then before he turned on the ignition.

She nodded again. "She intends to protect her children at any cost," she said.

He remembered Marie's words: What kind of a monster would that make me, a mother who believes her husband is trying to murder her children and does nothing about it? If she hadn't believed it then, she clearly saw the danger her daughter was in now. He turned on the key, glanced at Constance. "How far do you think she'd go toward implicating Ellen?"

"She was pushed into a corner, and a tiger came out. As far as necessary."

"And she'll do and say all the wrong things and turn this mess into pure hellish chaos," he muttered, and started to drive.

"I have to talk to Belasco and his fire chief," Charlie said after a moment. "If they can't answer a couple of questions, I'll go to the fire lab and poke around."

She nodded. "And I have to talk to Bev Kratz. If she believes the defense she was preparing can't stand, that Sam wanted to inherit a significant amount of money and killed in order to get it, all she has to fall back on is the child-abuse theory. There's simply no other reason for Sam to have killed Suzette and to have tried to kill Trish."

"Meaning?"

"They could have threatened to talk about it. That will be Bev's defense now, don't you think? And that would have ruined Sam Andreson; even the suspicion of sexually abusing his stepdaughters would have been enough. She'll have to use it."

He put his hand on her thigh. "Honey, isn't that exactly what we've both thought from the very beginning?"

"But it's different now," she said, giving him a surprised look. She patted his hand and then kept hers on it.

He sighed. She would explain and he would follow step by step and probably agree with her; he usually did. But he couldn't make the leaps.

"Michael's here," she said as they drew near the Coultier house. The Land Rover was in the driveway. "Why don't you go on and talk to the police and firemen, and I'll visit a little. I'll walk up to the cabin when I'm through. Meet you there."

He pulled into the driveway and watched her approach the house, feeling a bit irritated with her, but more pleased with the way she walked, the long, loose stride she had, the way her hair bounced. She was one gorgeous woman, he thought then, backing out of the driveway, and she was his. And he knew he could never say that out loud to her, never. He was grinning as he drove off toward Oyster Bay. But she was his, all his.

Lorraine opened the door for Constance. She looked frantic. "Do you know what's going on up at Marie's house?" she asked, and then she seemed to realize that Constance was alone. She glanced past her, and she appeared surprised that Charlie was driving away.

"Business to take care of," Constance said, motioning toward the Volvo. "What's going on is that Marie says she told the children there was a prenuptial agreement and wills that made it abundantly clear that Sam would never touch her money."

"Michael came running in saying he had to talk to Trish, and they went down to the beach. He looked desperate. Is that all it was?"

"As far as I know," Constance said.

Lorraine closed the door just as Bev came hurrying from the plant room. "I caught that," she said. "Marie told them about wills and stuff?"

"So she says."

"What else?"

"She thinks Ellen Hosty killed Sam," Constance said. For a moment, no one moved in the hallway; then Lorraine started to walk to the solarium. Constance followed.

Jeff Coultier rose to greet her, and they sat down where they had before, at the far end. Bev walked about the room jerkily, frowning, as Constance repeated what Marie had said.

"Cripes! She's a jealous bitch!" Bev cried when she finished. "She'll put a whammy on it all!" Then she stopped in the middle of the room and very slowly began to walk again. She looked intently at Jeff. "You realize what that means? If Sam didn't try to kill Trish for the money, then it was to keep her quiet. We have to get her to open up and tell us about it."

Jeff closed his eyes, as if they had gone through this too often already. "She's told us what she did that night," he said evenly.

"No one can pin it on Ellen Hosty," Bev said savagely. "They'll see through Marie in a second. Who's left?"

Constance said, "If I were conducting this investigation for the police, I would say there are several people left. There's Jeff, for example. Suppose he overheard Nathan on the phone. He could have met Sam at the end of the driveway, gone off with him. Or Lorraine could have met him, trying to intercede. Or Nathan himself. Or Sam could have called someone else whom we know nothing about."

Lorraine had gone bone white listening to her. "But they'll come here sooner or later, won't they? One of us. No one accepts a husband and wife libeling one another, do they?"

Constance shook her head.

"Listen," Bev grated. She nearly threw herself into a chair. The rattan groaned at the impact. "The night of the fire, Trish was talking about a guy she'd been living with, talking about going off to California with him maybe. Sam got ugly, riding her about not being able to settle down, afraid she'd end up like her sister. Trish went white and gave him a look; for a minute, something was going on between them, and then she ran out. That's why Marie went all over sick that night and excused herself early. She damn well knows about it. That's why Sam had to act that night, for fear Trish was starting to remember. He was going out of town the next Monday; he had to act fast, or she might have escaped all the way to California, gotten in touch with a shrink, gotten it all back. That girl held his life in her hands and he knew it!"

Jeff was staring at her in wonder. "How do you know any of that? Who told you? Not Trish."

"Not Trish," she said impatiently. "I talk to people, get around. I heard." She shrugged. "Look, ask Trish about her childhood, you'll get great big blanks. There's nothing there. That's one of the signs. Ask why no boyfriend ever worked out. Same thing. They can't form a real relationship. My God, she's nearly twenty-five. Why the hell doesn't she settle down?"

"Have you asked her those things?" Jeff asked in a very quiet voice.

"Yes! What do you think I'm going on about?"

"And she didn't tell you anything?"

"She can't!"

"Bev, has it occurred to you that she probably thinks it's none of your business?" His voice was still very low and controlled, and ice-cold.

"Jeff!" Lorraine exclaimed. "It's Bev's business now."

"I wonder if Trish would agree," he said. "Let's put this off and ask her when she comes back in."

Faintly, Lorraine said, "Maybe it would be a good idea to have her talk to a... a professional." She looked out the window as she said this, her face strained; she was twisting her rings around and around.

Jeff's expression was sympathetic; he took her hands in his own. Then he turned to Constance. "What do you think?"

Slowly, she said, "We all know that many people who were desperately hurt as children suffer the consequences and bear the scars for a lifetime. But there are many people who, for whatever reason, are responsible for urging others to recount memories that sometimes turn out to be false. That can cause grave harm not only to the one accused but also to the one called "The survivor.' Those consequences and scars can also be a life's burden. This is very dangerous ground, which must be approached with extreme caution. I wouldn't recommend such a course for anyone who is not personally compelled, overwhelmingly compelled to take such a step. Indeed, I would urge anyone without such an overwhelming need not to take such a step. The witches of Loudon were very real to those who encountered them, and present-day witches are easily roused."

She was very aware of Bev's blazing anger as she spoke, but she kept her gaze on Jeff, who was watching her without expression. "In this case, I would consider very carefully the implications of such urging. If the only reason is to suggest that Sam had a reason to silence Trish, and therefore she was in danger from him, aren't you in fact accepting that she actually did murder him? Wouldn't she interpret it that way? Wouldn't others? What kind of scar would that leave, abandonment by her family at this time, facing their disbelief in her? Is that what you believe?"

Jeff's face seemed frozen, it had become so still. Finally, he nodded. "She has to make that decision without any interference from anyone. From anyone."

Bev threw up both hands. "Jesus Christ! Now we're on a high moral ground! Look at me, Jeff! Look hard, because I'm going to tell you the dirty truth. Those kids planned this a long time ago. Trish was scared, and with good reason, and they intended to set things right because no one else would. When they come for Trish, this is the only defense she has! I have a woman lined up, a damn good psychologist who has a lot of experience in these things, and the longer we put off starting, the harder it's going to get. Sam had a gun on her, it went off, and she panicked and ran—that's one thing. But there was the goddamn fire! That's not panic; that was planning. If the police decide it was a cold-blooded, premeditated murder, they'll play rough with your kid. If they know she's under a doctor's care, disturbed, seeking help, it's going to be a different story altogether. Those are the choices, my friend. I'm going out for a smoke." She stomped out.

Jeff held his composure until she was gone and then his face crumpled; he aged ten years in a second. He stood up. "Maybe I'll put on some coffee," he said. "She's good for us," he added. "She tells us what the rest of the world thinks. We need that."

Lorraine's gaze was on her hands in her lap, and he regarded her for a moment with an expression that was infinitely sad. Then he looked at Constance and said almost apologetically, "The problem is that I believe my daughter." He walked out.

Lorraine stood up, not facing Constance. "I think the kids are coming," she said. "I'll be back in a minute." She hurried from the room.

Constance watched the young people approach the house, their heads lowered, talking. They were dressed in jeans, sweatshirts, running shoes, and they were wind-blown, as if they had been on an outing that should have involved fun and games, not a discussion of murder.

"Hi," Constance said when they entered the solarium. "I think Jeff is making coffee, and Lorraine said she'd be down in a minute. I'm waiting." Michael looked resigned; Trish, apprehensive; and Nathan simply looked young and defenseless.

"I'll be going," Michael said.

"Can you wait a second?" Constance asked. "There are a few things we need more information about. Charlie's off talking to people, and I'm here to do the same." She smiled at them reassuringly and sat down, waving to nearby chairs. She could almost feel their reluctance as they seated themselves.

"Trish, on the night the guest house burned, did you mention you were considering going to California? With a friend?"

Trish started and said, "How did you find out that?"

"Someone mentioned it. Will you tell me about it?"

"Sure. I said Barry Swanson wanted me to go to California while he attended law school in San Francisco. That's all."

Constance nodded, frowning slightly. "Did Sam make a fuss about it?"

Now Trish drew in a breath. "Okay. See, Barry and I had been together for about a year, but I had already decided to end it. I was trying to make up my mind about going for a doctorate, and it was tough. I mean, the world isn't exactly clamoring for any more Ph.D.'s in English. Not that I could tell. And I had come to wonder what I'd do with more degrees if I had them. I didn't want to talk about that—you know, you always get so much advice—so I brought up Barry instead." She glanced at Michael. "Remember? Mother wanted to know about him, his family, everything. And Sam made some kind of stupid remark about how girls didn't sleep around when he was in school, and maybe it was time to start behaving more responsibly. I was pretty mad about it. I mean, I'd had one other real boyfriend, and I was twenty-three. That's hardly sleeping around! The first one, Luke Wertheimer, was an English major, and after about six months I got tired of having to tell him how wonderful his poetry was, so we split." A gleam had come into her eyes as she spoke.

"What happened to Barry?" Constance asked.

The gleam shone more brightly, and now Nathan's eyes were gleaming, too—their father's eyes, right down to that rather unholy gleam.

"He came to the hospital to see me," Trish said gravely.

"I was pretty banged up, you know. Bruises, scratches, stitches, casts. Not a pretty sight. He was... unnerved. He questioned my doctors, the nurses, everyone, demanding to know if I'd recover, get back to normal. Later on, after I got home, he called and talked to Nathan. I coached Nathan on what to say." She looked at her younger brother and nodded. "Your turn."

"I told him the scars were hardly noticeable anymore, at least for us, because we knew Trish was still behind them." He couldn't control his demeanor the way she had; mirth was very near the surface and a grin kept forming as he talked. "I said I liked pushing her wheelchair, it was fun, and I'd be sorry when she got the brace and the special tripod cane. And we didn't care if she had to use it forever; she was still our own dear Trish." He laughed.

Trish was smiling. "It was cruel, I suppose. A couple of weeks later, I got a bouquet from him and a little note that said in view of the workload he had taken on, he thought it would be wise to postpone any plans for the time being. I wrote back and thanked him for understanding."

Constance laughed. "It was cruel all right. Poor Barry." Then she sobered again. "Trish, Michael, think back to that dinner party. Was any mention made of Suzette?"

Michael shook his head. "Not that I remember."

Trish said no. "If there had been, I would remember," she said. "Why?"

"Just a puzzling detail. Was your mother ill? Did she become ill at the party?"

Unhappily, Trish said, "You have to realize ours was not Ozzie and Harriet country. Mother and Sam tended to snipe at each other during meals, about the only time they spent together, I guess. If the sniping got bad, she got headaches."

"Do you remember what they said that night?"

Trish looked away, troubled. "I usually tuned them out. I'm not sure."

"I remember," Michael said. "After the talk about Barry, Rita changed the subject, something about always wanting to see the house. She said it was like a castle and Mother must have felt like a queen living there. And Mother said something about Anne Boleyn, but that at least her head was safe, since she had produced a son, but even a castle could serve as a prison." He spread his hands in a helpless gesture. "It was like that. Just sniping. Poor Rita didn't get much of it, I guess."

"Who is Rita?" Constance asked then.

"We went to high school together," Trish said. "We did things together, were camp counselors together one year. We weren't close friends; it just happened that we were together at events."

"And I didn't know that," Michael said with a contrite look toward Trish. "Rita cornered me in town a week or so before that night and said she'd heard Trish was coming home and that she couldn't wait to see her, and it suddenly struck me as a good idea to have an outsider, a guest, a longtime friend. Sometimes if we had guests, Mother and Dad were on good behavior. I invited her. A mistake. She gushed."

"Everyone leapt to the conclusion that she was chasing Michael," Trish said, the gleam in her eye again. "Both Sam and Mother were furious about that." Suddenly, she straightened and said, "I remember what set Mother off. Remember, Michael? After the Anne Boleyn bit, Rita said something dumb about people who didn't appreciate what they had probably didn't deserve it. Then Sam said gold diggers always deserved exactly what they got, and Mother said fathers deserved their sons and he said mothers deserved losing their daughters. That's when Mother left."

Abruptly, she became very still, hardly breathing. Then she said slowly, "I thought he was talking about Mother and her mother, or about me, considering going to California. Not Suzette. I don't think he meant Suzette," she said in a lower voice.

Definitely not Ozzie and Harriet country, Constance thought. At that moment, the door to the hallway opened and Jeff appeared, pushing the food cart.

"Sandwiches," he said. "Tuna, ham, or egg salad. Them's the choices, mates. Coffee, tea, or milk. Could rustle up some wine, if anyone insists," he added with a glance at Constance.

She shook her head and suddenly realized she was ravenous.

Michael jumped up. "Oh God! Lunchtime! I've got to go!" He rushed from the room. "I'll call, Trish."

Constance walked back to the cabin slowly. When she climbed the stairs from the road, someone yelled, "Dr. Leidl, were the children molested by Sam Andreson? Was Trish? Was Michael?" She kept moving toward the cabin; a photographer ducked in front of her, then ran to one side and then the other, snapping pictures, and the reporter, a bald, fat man, yelled questions.

Charlie opened the door for her and slammed it again. "I think they're on to us," he said gravely.

"I think it's time to go home," she said.

"My thought precisely. In fact, I already packed most of the gear."

Half an hour later, they were heading for the Long Island Expressway, Charlie driving.

They didn't talk much. Charlie passed a Day-Glo-painted bus and waved at the driver, who flipped him off. "Rita Glenwood gushes," he commented. The bus passed him. "Talk around town has it that Sam tried to kill Trish and that whatever she did was justified. Population about eight thousand, six thousand ready to be character witnesses."

Traffic picked up and he paid attention to driving. She filled him in on what she had heard and seen, and they became silent again until they were out of the city, heading north along the Hudson.

"Can she get off with the abuse defense?" he asked.

"I doubt it. At least not today. Hand her over to the right therapist, give them enough time, maybe."

He nodded moodily. "Every damn thing gets contradicted sooner or later, you notice that? Either she saw the glow in the bathroom or not; who knows? Not in her original report. Either they knew about the money matters or not. Mom says yes; kids say no. Rita said of course she wasn't chasing Michael; he was chasing her until she told him to get lost. God alone knows what all she told Bev; whatever Bev wanted to hear, I suspect. The night the guest house burned was the most boring evening Rita could remember; she couldn't keep her eyes open, it was so boring. She says they got there after ten-thirty and she wanted to go home before twelve. Trish and Michael said it was a couple of hours. Either Marie is hysterical, incapable of taking care of herself, in need of a nurse, or else she's a determined, cool woman who will lie until hell freezes. And Jeff? He didn't believe Sam was trying anything, but he decided to give up his year in England and stay home with Trish." He had been driving faster and faster as he spoke. He looked in surprise at her when she dug her fingers into his leg, and then he slowed down. She kept her hand on his leg.

They stopped for an early dinner; afterward she drove. Sam and Ellen, Charlie said, had driven from Kennedy; he had sat in the backseat and read the financial section, made some phone calls, and worked on the laptop computer. At the house, they had taken in a carry-on bag each, the computer, their coats, and had left the newspapers on the backseat. She had intended to go back out later and get them.

"Why splash paper with brandy?" he muttered. No one had been able to answer that one.

At home, they were greeted by the cats: Brutus glowered from atop the refrigerator, Ashcan whimpered and apologized, and Candy complained about the Mitchum boys, about the food, the water, the weather, about their lack of interest in her complaints.

On Sunday morning, Constance drank coffee on the patio and watched Charlie play with fire. He had put a stack of newspapers on the grill, crumpled one or two sheets and added them, and regarded it all with a match in his hand. He looked dissatisfied. He looked at his watch. "Ten-thirty," he said, and struck the match, lighted the crumpled paper, and sat down at the table by her. She had jotted down the time.

The top papers burned fiercely; the papers still in a stack began to char around the edges, to curl, and then one by one began to burn also. By eleven, the entire pile had burned to a stinking mass of crisp black ashes.

"So why the brandy?" he growled, poking the ashes with a long-handled fork.

"To make it all burn faster?"

"But why?"

She shrugged, then watched him clear the grill of the ashes and put a new stack of papers on it. This time, he doused an eight-ounce cup of grain alcohol on the paper and watched it burn even more fiercely and finish faster. He looked more dissatisfied. When he looked at Constance, she was holding the alcohol bottle, frowning at it.

"Wasn't purple-label rum listed on that inventory of Sam's bar in the Cadillac?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Isn't that one hundred and eighty proof?"

He sat down at the table. "Go on."

"If Sam always bought that purple-label rum, and if he had it on hand at Gary's party, that would have been a powerful drink, if someone spiked Gary's punch with it."

He nodded. "We can find out if Sam kept it on hand." He nodded toward the grill; the bottom part had filled with ashes. "I'll clean that out and try one more thing. See, the problem is that the newspapers didn't all burn up. Why not? If the fire started around eleven, the explosion twenty-five minutes later, and the fireman doused everything ten minutes after that, it seems to me the papers should have burned completely."

The ashes flew apart and onto the patio when he tried to collect them. "Sprinkle them with water," Constance suggested. "It will be messier, but at least you'll be able to scoop them up."

Charlie turned to look at her with a strange, distant expression. "That's it," he said after a moment. "My God, that's it!"

She watched wordlessly as he swung around and hurried to the door, went inside the house, and then reappeared with her watering can. She remained silent, watching, when he began to water papers in a stack on the table. He opened the stack in several places, poured water down between the pages, and then put the stack on the grill. He poured the rest of the water over it.

Then he crumpled up two sheets of dry paper, laid them on top of the rest, and lighted them. "Twelve-ten," he said. He closed the lid of the grill partway again and sat down opposite her, watching.

Several times, it appeared that the fire was going out altogether, it burned so feebly, with so much acrid black smoke; each time it revived without help, and finally at five minutes before one, it began to blaze in a meaningful way, as if it were done with playing around. By 1:15, the fire had burned itself out. There were many sections of newspapers stuck together, not wholly consumed.

Charlie nodded at the grill. "Right," he said.

"Why?" she asked after a moment. "An alibi?"

"Maybe."

Neither spoke for several minutes. A gust of wind lifted black ash from the grill and swirled it about, lofted it, and then let it fall in crumbling, ever-diminishing flakes.

"Why a damn fire?" Charlie muttered finally. "If he wasn't dead yet, why not another shot? The gun wasn't empty. A lovely piece of misdirection: brandy to make us think a fast fire was wanted, when actually brandy was probably the last thing to ignite and burn. It was on the upholstery, not on the papers. A slow fire. Alibi, maybe. If there hadn't been a fire, the car and body would have stayed hidden away all night, the following day, who knows how long."

He became silent again, pondering: What are fires good for? In arson, they served to get rid of the evidence of wrongdoing; the reason the number of unsolved cases was in the high thousands was because the evidence of the arson itself often went up in flames. Insurance, murder, revenge, malice. Way down on the list was a bevy of mental conditions that demanded spectacular events to keep the inner voice stilled, the inner person happy. They didn't apply here, he knew without doubt.

Alibi, insurance, revenge... He shook his head. To hide something. Another bit of misdirection?

Unhappily, he said, "I'll have to go snoop around the fire lab. What all was in that damn car?"

She nodded. "Who would know if the car phone was a cellular? If it was, all the calls made on that Sunday would be on record, wouldn't they? I wonder if anyone has found out yet."

"I'll give Pete a call," he said. He went inside, and when he returned, he was frowning. "A call at nine-twenty-eight to the Coultier number."

"Was it completed?" she asked.

"Yep. They don't keep a record otherwise." He sat down and tapped his fingers on the tabletop. "It must have been to Jeff," he said after a minute. "Goddamn it No wonder Lorraine was concerned, asking if husbands and wives were credible alibis for one another." He slouched down in his chair, scowling darkly. "So Michael calls and gets Nathan and a minute later Sam calls and gets Jeff, or someone. And no one bothered to mention it." His anger was directed at Pete Belasco as much as at Jeff and Lorraine. He visualized the evening: Nathan and Trish upstairs doing whatever kids their age do; Lorraine watching television; Jeff in and out of his study. Probably heard the first call without paying much attention, but a second one following almost instantly, he might have noticed, picked it up without waiting for the machine.

A fire to get rid of fingerprints that didn't belong in the Caddy? Maybe, he thought. Maybe.

That evening, they went out for dinner and then a movie, which held their interest for over an hour, or at least kept them in their seats that long. When Constance stood up, he got up, too, and they left the theater, neither of them aware that the climactic scenes were yet to come.

"We've been trying to link everything," she said on the way to the car. "We should forget about the attempt on Trish's life and concentrate instead on Sam's murder. I think trying to link everything has complicated it so much, my head is spinning."

He grinned when they reached the Volvo and she opened the driver's side door and got behind the wheel. He got in the passenger seat without comment.

"Because," she continued as she turned on the key and gunned the engine, "if we keep the murder as a separate thing in and of itself, it's so clear. Isn't it?"

He laughed and leaned his head back against the headrest. "I love you," he said, and laughed harder when she turned to give him a curious look.

"The problem will be proving anything," she said with a nod. She started to drive.

At home again, he realized she thought he knew what was on her mind, the conclusions she had reached. As soon as she began to talk about it, he realized he had known at the level he hadn't examined yet. But he had known. And she was right. The problem was going to be to prove anything. He watched her as she talked, how the lines of her face changed, how a slight frown came and vanished, the distant look in her eyes, and when she paused, he reached across the table and took her hand. She gave him another of her looks, and he kissed the hand and released it. Her face relaxed. And this time, he received a look that he knew was his alone.

And then they planned out the next day or two or three, the questions they needed answers to, the people who might have answers, who would use the car first... .

On Tuesday, Bev Kratz called Charlie. She sounded disheartened. "I don't know what you're messing with," she said, "but things are getting out of hand here. Trish is falling apart; her story's coming unglued faster than the tide moves in. They'll worry her about the shooting in her car and then spring the shooting in Sam's car, and she'll be in little pieces all over the floor. Jeff, Lorraine, Trish... they're waiting for you to do something, save the day, some goddamn thing! For God's sake, Meiklejohn, tell her to trust me!"

Charlie groaned. Too soon, he thought; there were things to be done, things to be looked into, but he didn't want to wait for the staties to make their move first. "We'll be there tomorrow," he said. "Early afternoon."

Bev wanted more, something concrete, but she had to settle for what little Charlie could give her, and after a few seconds, they hung up.

"Tomorrow," Constance said, looking unhappy.

He nodded.

Wednesday at 12:30, Charlie, Constance, and Chief Pete Belasco stood outside the door of the Andreson mansion. The housekeeper, Juana, opened the door and looked startled to see them.

"No appointment," Charlie said, "but maybe Mrs. Andreson and Michael can see us, anyway."

She hesitated, then admitted them. "I'll tell Mrs. Andreson," she said, and hurried away, up the stairs.

In a second or two, Michael came running down; he was in shorts and sandals, a tank top, and looked very muscular and tan.

"What's up?" he asked. "Has something happened?"

"Just a few things to clear up," Charlie said. "We need your mother's help."

"You want to go up?"

"Nope. We'd like for her to come down. I took the liberty of asking Jeff and his crew to come over at one. Hope no one minds. Seemed a good idea to have the whole family in on this at the same time, avoid misunderstandings later."

Michael glanced up the stairs, a worried frown on his forehead. "I don't know," he said. "She might not want to."

"Son," Chief Pete Belasco said firmly, "tell her I sort of think it's necessary. Okay?"

Michael nodded and trudged slowly up the stairs, as if he dreaded arriving.

Charlie grinned at Pete Belasco, who had not wanted to come here and had protested that the whole case was out of his hands, off limits. His face was set in so many lines that cut so deeply, he looked inhuman. He did not return Charlie's grin.

Michael came back down. "She said we should go to the den and she'll come down in a minute or two." He motioned toward the hall and the rear of the house. "She said I should tell Juana to bring us coffee, tea, something, if you want it."

Charlie shook his head.

"I didn't think so," Michael said. He led the way to the den, where Charlie began to arrange chairs in a semicircle.

"I'll tell Juana to bring the others back here," Michael said, and left.

When the others arrived, the family without exception looked frightened; Bev Kratz, who accompanied them, looked furious. "Goddamn it, Meiklejohn, when are you going to quit stalling? Have you got anything new on Suzette's death yet? On the fire out back here? What the hell have you been up to?"

Charlie regarded her for a second and then said very kindly, "Bev, just shut up. And stay shut up."

Marie Andreson came into the den and surveyed them all. She was in a silk dress the color of burgundy, her hair sleekly back off her face, wearing only a touch of makeup. She looked regal.

"Let's start," Charlie said without preamble. "Trish, do you realize that the state police are probably planning to arrest you within the next day or two?"

She was as pale as skim milk, with wide, staring eyes. She shook her head.

"If they question you seriously, they'll arrest you; and if they arrest you, you'll plea-bargain or stand trial. If you go to trial, no doubt you'll be found guilty."

"Just hold it a bloody second, mister!" Bev cried.

Without looking at her, Charlie said, "I told you to shut up. They know as well as you do, Trish, that no one tried to shoot you in your car. That's the first story that will fold. What did you do, park it somewhere, let Michael shoot a hole in it, and then drive on home? Was Nathan involved in that, too?"

Trish ducked her head as color flared on her white cheeks.

"Don't you say a word!" Bev yelled at her. "You want to get out of here, let's walk."

"They'll say you tried to manufacture an excuse to justify killing Sam Andreson, but in fact, Trish, they won't care too much about motive. Just what you did, what you said you did, and what they think you did. And they think you killed him."

Marie made a moaning sound deep in her throat. Charlie glanced at her without comment. He turned back to Trish. "He had no reason to kill you; they'll press that hard. If you go for a child-abuse defense, they'll make mincemeat of you."

Tears welled in her eyes and she shook her head. "I didn't do it," she whispered.

"I know that." He looked at Marie Andreson with a terrible pity then. "No one will make you choose," he said, "but you can see that they can't both be saved."

"What are you talking about? It was that woman! That Hosty woman!"

He shook his head and gazed at Michael, who had not moved for several minutes; it was as if he had become a wax model of himself.

"I kept asking myself, Why the damn fire?" Charlie said. "I came up with reasons: to make certain Sam actually died without having to touch him or shoot again. That gun must have sounded like a cannon in the closed car. Or to hide something: for instance, the cell phone, but called numbers are automatically recorded, so that didn't seem likely. To provide an alibi: the most likely reason so far, and it did. But that seemed to suggest a greater familiarity with fire than anyone in this case had. Even wetting down the papers didn't determine exactly when the car would burn; it was a gamble if there would be enough time to get home before the fire was spotted. So much misdirection, and most of it awfully good, by the way. But if none of the above was the real reason for the fire, what was left? I kept coming back to the phone and the one call. The phone was in the backseat, out of reach for Sam at the wheel, but it could be argued that he used it and tossed it back there, or the killer tossed it back there. Then I called the fire lab and asked if there were any prints on the phone, and what do you know? No prints, it had been wiped. That and the gun gave it away."

Jeff looked completely bewildered. He clutched Trish's hand and stared at Charlie. "Just say it, whatever you're getting at!" he cried.

"You see, the gun presented another problem," Charlie said, not turning his gaze from Michael. The tendon was showing in his neck again and on the backs of both hands, which were holding tightly to the arms of his chair. "Sam wouldn't have left it in the car in a parking garage, and he wouldn't have tried to board a plane carrying it, and since he used a carry-on bag for his trips, the gun must have been here in the house. Someone from this house must have taken it to the car and used it to shoot him. It couldn't have been missing very long or he would have known."

"But Sam could have picked it up in his office," Jeff said.

Charlie shook his head. "Sam had no reason to carry a gun to your house," he said quietly. "I imagine he was on his way to warn you that Trish was in danger. I suspect he knew that the fire in the guest house really was arson and attempted murder, and he knew who had done it, and finally he was going to tell the truth about it, in an attempt to save Trish."

Marie buried her face in her hands; her body shook, but not a sound issued from her. There was total silence in the room. Suddenly, Trish wailed, "No! No! No!"

"He invited Rita Glenwood." Charlie said, "and she gave a statement about how innocent the evening was, hot chocolate, cookies, a nice little fire. Rita said she couldn't keep her eyes open; she fell asleep as "soon as she got home and slept until after ten the next morning. You were supposed to sleep like that, Trish, but you didn't. You woke up."

"I didn't drink much chocolate," she whispered. "It was too sweet; I poured mine into Rita's cup when she wasn't looking."

Suddenly, Nathan launched himself across the room at Michael. They turned over the chair Michael was in and rolled on the floor, with Nathan trying to get his hands around Michael's throat, crying incoherently.

Pete Belasco separated them. He dragged Michael away.

Nathan was on the floor, crying, choking on words. "He kept going on about his father, how he was trying to kill Trish. We had to do something because he would kill her before her birthday. We faked the car shooting, just so people would pay attention. And we came to see you, to make someone pay attention." He looked at Charlie and then Constance; tears ran down his cheeks; he was oblivious. "I thought Sam would kill her. I wanted her to go away, anywhere. I would have gone, too, if she'd let me."

Pete Belasco had pushed Michael onto a straight chair and now stood with his hand on Michael's shoulder. Michael was pale, unmoving, his hands clenched on his legs. "You little creep," he said. "He's lying," he said to Pete Belasco calmly. "I don't know what anyone here is talking about."

"You had the fight," Charlie said, "and Sam said he would put a stop to it all. You ran to your room to get the gun and then ran down to the car, where you got into the backseat and made a call to Trish or Nathan, whoever answered. The call was recorded. Sam came out and started to drive, and you popped up with the gun and told him to turn off into that cul-de-sac. As soon as he stopped the car in the clearing and started to turn toward you, you shot him in the temple. Then you could have pressed his fingers onto the telephone, but you didn't. I imagine you couldn't bring yourself to touch him at that point. So the fire. So you could be somewhere with someone when the fire was spotted, and to get rid of the phone. But when you left the car and walked back to the road, you carried some peculiar dirt on your shoes—old homestead, flower gardens, a lot of fertilizer that's long since been incorporated into the soil, but also some ashes from an old fireplace or stove, ashes scattered around here and there, ashes that are still identifiable, maybe from coke, or coal. The lab will identify them."

Michael started up from the chair; Pete Belasco held him down firmly. "I've been down there a couple of times this past week," Michael said. "I wanted to see for myself where it happened."

Charlie shook his head. "Funny thing about ashes, Michael. Archaeologists can read a whole history in them, as I'm sure you know. See, the old ashes won't have any chemicals in them, chlorine, stuff that's in the city water. A good lab, good technicians, they can pretty much pinpoint where and when ashes were picked up on clothes, on shoes. Hard evidence, what they call 'physical evidence,' or sometimes 'circumstantial.' Like the prints they lifted from Suzette's apartment. They have them on file, you see; they will compare them with yours. No one did then, since you were only a kid. Now they will."

"I used to go see her," Michael said.

"Some of the prints will be hard to explain," Charlie said coolly. "On things used that night. You were so young, nowhere near as smart as you are now."

For a moment, no one moved or spoke. Then Michael whispered, "You don't know what it was like! He used to come into my room at night and do... He made me do things, and he said if I told, he'd kill me, kill my mother. I was afraid. All my life, I was afraid of him, the things he did to me...." He buried his face in his hands and his body shook.

No one moved. Then very slowly, Marie rose to her feet and crossed the room to Trish, held out her hands to her daughter. Wordlessly, Trish stood up and they embraced.

Chief Belasco had produced a search warrant, and two men who had been outside entered the house and made the search. They all left, taking Michael with them.

Later, at Jeff's house, Constance and Charlie talked briefly to Jeff and Lorraine. Bev sat huddled in a deep chair. Trish was with her mother, and Nathan was out on the bay with his sailboard. No one had objected; he needed to be alone, to expend his emotions through physical exertion.

"I suspect he had no intention of really harming Gary," Constance said. "A rather childish prank, spiking his punch, hoping to make Gary look bad, foolish, at least drunk. But he died. And I imagine that Suzette knew what Michael had done. She was meeting with Sam; Michael probably was terrified she would tell. None of the past can be proven, of course, not unless he talks about it."

Jeff had gone very pale. "You know how they found Suzette? The details?"

Constance nodded. "Yes. We know. He was sixteen by then. If he doped the wine with his mother's sleeping pills, she would have been unconscious throughout the night. There was no sex," she added gently. "He made it appear there was, that's all."

"He cared for Trish," Lorraine said after a moment. "I'm sure he did."

Constance nodded. "I think you're right; he did. And she loved him, but she also loved Nathan and planned to share her wealth with him. And that would have left Michael on the outside. No money of his own, years to wait, Trish and Nathan rich, possibly traveling. All his life, he must have felt he was being left outside while the Coultier children were having fun with their father, one another. Finally, he saw a way to get rid of his own father, whom he hated, blame the death on Trish, and become extremely rich all at the same time."

"He'll try to use the child-abuse defense," Lorraine said after a few moments. "It's so patently fake!"

"More so than it would have been for Trish?"

"I don't know," Lorraine said. "God, I just don't know."

In her chair across the room, Bev did not look up or speak.

When they left, Charlie drove with his hand on Constance's thigh until he needed both hands at the wheel, and then she rested her hand on his leg.

"No one ever said there wasn't any sex that night at Suzette's apartment," he commented after a time.

"I know," she said.

Charlie put his hand on hers. No matter what came out now, Jeff would choose to believe that. Charlie thought of his own daughter; Jeff would choose to believe that Michael had not raped his unconscious daughter. Constance raised his hand to her lips and kissed it. So sometimes you lie a little, he thought, and she nodded. Sometimes you do.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaBook