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  With difficulty, because his joints were failing and the walk up to the Clarkson place this afternoon had left him exhausted, Oswald got out of bed and shuffled across the room to the window. The source of the lights wasn’t clear, but they came from somewhere down toward the end of the cul-de-sac. Squinting his eyes, he thought he detected an ambulance. He wondered if there had been sirens, and if it had been the sirens, and not his usual insomnia, that had roused him from his slumber.

  He hoped no one was ill.

  Oswald turned away from the window. An ambulance had come to this house, too, when he’d discovered Antonio lying cold and motionless beside him. Oswald had never understood how a heart attack could take a man as young as Antonio—he had been just forty-three!—in the middle of the night. He had been absolutely fine, chipper, and cheerful when they’d gone to bed. Yes, Antonio had just taken up running, and he was maybe fifteen pounds overweight, and when he’d come in that evening after his run, he’d seemed particularly short of breath. But a heart attack? No one had suspected it. Antonio had been as healthy as a horse. He was supposed to be here now, taking care of Oswald in his dotage, as they used to jokingly call old age. That was the benefit of these May–September romances. Oswald had taken care of Antonio, who’d been a poor Mexican immigrant when they met. And then Antonio would take care of Oswald.

  It hadn’t quite worked out that way.

  Of course, Oswald had servants to do the job. Drivers and assistants and housemaids and part-time nurses. But it wasn’t the same.

  It wasn’t the way it was supposed to have been.

  Old Mr. Thayer sat back down on the edge of his bed. He lifted the photograph of his deceased partner from the bedside table, where he kept it so he could roll over and see Antonio’s face, just as he could when Antonio was alive. He gazed down into the soft brown eyes. Not a day, not an hour, went by that Oswald didn’t miss him.

  He replaced the photo on the table and lay back down. The flashing red lights continued to circle the room as Oswald fell back to sleep.

  SIXTEEN

  “Something’s going on down there,” Heather said, peering out of her window toward the end of Hickory Dell.

  “You’re acting like Gert Gorin,” Bryan said from bed.

  “Jesus Christ,” Heather said, unable to look away. “It looks like they’re carrying somebody out on a stretcher.”

  “A stretcher?” This piqued Bryan’s interest, and he threw off the sheet and hopped out of bed to join Heather at the window. “Are you sure?”

  “They definitely carried something out to the ambulance,” Heather reported.

  Bryan leaned up close, his nose almost pressing against the glass. “Is it Jessie’s house, or Monica’s, or the Gorins’?”

  “Hard to say,” Heather replied. “But it looks like they’re all congregating on the Clarkson side of the street.”

  “Damn, that’s a lot of police cars,” Bryan said. “There’s got to be at least five.”

  “Just like all those years ago, when Jessie was mixed up in that drug ring.” Heather pulled away from the window. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s still involved in all of that business.”

  “Now you’re taking crazy, Heather. Jessie was never mixed up with that shit. She just got involved with a creep who—”

  “Who killed a guy.” Heather sighed and got back into bed. “You don’t get involved with a bastard like that and not know something about what he’s like.”

  Bryan was still peering out of the window, trying to figure out what all the commotion was about. “I just think you’re jealous of her, that’s all,” he said quietly.

  Heather nearly exploded out of bed. She lurched forward, her face twisted, her mouth open in large O. “Jealous? Of Jessie Clarkson? I hardly think so.”

  Bryan turned to her and smirked. “Come on, baby. I haven’t said anything about it, but this afternoon, at the picnic at her house, the way you suddenly grabbed me and announced we were leaving after I simply shared an innocent joke with her . . .”

  “An innocent joke?” Heather had been keeping her rage bottled up ever since they’d gotten home. She and Bryan had barely spoken for the rest of the day, and certainly no words had been exchanged about what had happened at Jessie’s house. “I hardly think Jessie would have bolted out of her seat the way she did and stormed into the house if all you’d made was an innocent joke.”

  Bryan laughed and turned to look out the window again.

  “Admit it!” Heather shouted, moving down the bed on her hands and knees like a tigress. “You hit on her! I saw how cozy you were trying to get with her. You said something that pissed her off—”

  “Cozy?” He turned back to her and leveled her with one of his evil grins, the kind that made him look like a villain on a Saturday morning kids’ cartoon. “You mean cozy like you were trying to get with John Manning ?”

  Heather sat back on her haunches. “I wasn’t trying to get cozy with John.”

  Her husband barked out a laugh and came around to sit on the edge of the bed, going eye to eye with her, seeming to find this battle with her suddenly far more enjoyable than the view of the police cars outside. “Oh, yes, you were, my darling, and it was you who was the jealous one, absolutely furious that your dashing famous author was paying attention to that sexy—and very young—German au pair.”

  Heather laughed unconvincingly. “Why would I care if John pays attention to some kid?”

  “Because she’s way younger than you are, and her breasts are far perkier, and there’s not a trace of cellulite in her legs.”

  Heather glared at him. “You are a pig.”

  “See, what I don’t understand,” Bryan said, crossing his arms over his chest and lifting his eyebrows, “is why you refuse to admit to me that you’ve been having an affair with John Manning. After all, I tell you about the girls I fuck. I even invite you to join in sometimes. It’s what makes our marriage work, darling.” He grinned again, his eyes dancing. “You know, I wouldn’t mind joining in for a three-way with you and Manning, if he’s open to it. I haven’t done two guys on one girl in a long time.”

  “You truly make me sick, you know that?”

  Bryan just threw his head back and laughed.

  Heather got out of bed, her heart beating hard in her ears. Her husband infuriated her. But she was glad that he knew about her affair with John. It kind of balanced things out in a way. Still, she’d never admit it to him. It was her private little world, one that she intended to keep as separate from Bryan as possible.

  Heather returned to the window. A few police cars were now leaving the scene, driving slowly down the street, their lights no longer flashing and their sirens muted.

  Bryan was right about one thing, however—though once again, Heather would never admit it in a million years. She had been jealous of John’s attentions to that German girl. Why did every man she fell for have such a wandering eye? Was she not enough for anyone? She’d been frantic watching the flirtation between John and Inga, and when she confronted him about it, asked him what the hell was going on, John had gotten defensive. Heather had left the picnic angry with both John and Bryan, and she was sure that busybody Gert Gorin had picked up on it. Well, let the neighbors gossip. Heather didn’t care.

  She just wanted to make sure that John never saw that German bitch again.

  Another police car slowly passed under Heather’s window. She couldn’t be sure, but Heather thought she saw Jessie sitting in the backseat. A small smile stretched across Heather’s face. She was right. Her former best friend was mixed up in something. And Heather couldn’t be more pleased about that fact.

  SEVENTEEN

  It was nearly two o’clock in the morning when Jessie got back home. Aunt Paulette was waiting for her. Thankfully, Abby had never woken up.

  Jessie flopped down in Mom’s old chair and started to cry. It seemed impossible to imagine. . . . Just this morning, Inga had been bustling around the house, helping Jessie get se
t for the party. And now she was gone. Everywhere Jessie looked she was reminded of her friend. The tiles were still piled in neat rows waiting for Inga to finish installing them in the bathroom. The paint cans she was using to spruce up the kitchen were still under the cabinet. Her tool belt dangled from a hook in the pantry.

  And now she was dead.

  Murdered.

  Outside, a few policemen were still combing the yard. Orange tape had been stretched from pole to pole surrounding the property, marking off the area as a crime scene. News crews had descended, and a couple of intrepid reporters had tried thrusting microphones at Jessie when a police cruiser dropped her and Monica and Todd off. But they’d all stayed mum, rushing past the reporters and barricading themselves in their houses. In the morning, Jessie knew, MURDER IN SAYER’S BROOK would be bannered across the local paper, and the local television and radio shows would lead off their newscasts with the story of Inga’s death. The whole neighborhood, the whole town, would learn that a murder had taken place on Hickory Dell.

  And once more, in the center of the storm, would be Jessie Clarkson.

  “Oh, Aunt Paulette, why? Why Inga?”

  Jessie cried harder, as her aunt, kneeling in front of her, wrapped her arms around her. She had no answer. If she saw anything in her psychic visions, she offered none of it to Jessie. For the moment, she just held her.

  The police station had been a nightmare. They’d all been interviewed separately. Two officers, a man and a woman, had taken Jessie into a room and had her repeat her story three times. They looked at her with stone-cold eyes, as if they suspected her of killing Inga. The female cop was worse. She was a small, beady-eyed woman, who admitted at one point that she remembered Jessie from the whole mess with Emil. The implication, Jessie felt, was that the cops still believed she’d had something to do with Emil’s drug and porn ring, and that she may have known more about the murder of Screech Solek than she’d ever let on. And so now they suspected she knew more about Inga’s death than she was saying, too.

  But the cops’ suspicion of Jessie had been understated compared to the grilling they gave John Manning. When Jessie emerged from her hour behind closed doors, she could hear the heated, raised voices from the room down the hall. Other cops were forcing Manning to repeat his story, over and over, clearly trying to find an inconsistency. Although an investigation had found no evidence to link Manning to his wife’s death, it was clear that police still believed him to have been involved. As Jessie sat on a hard plastic chair beside Todd and Monica, none of them saying a word, Manning’s voice, loud and hostile, echoed down the corridor.

  “I’ll tell you this for the last time, and then, if you detain me here any longer, I will demand my lawyer be present,” Manning had boomed. “I want to help in any way that I can to find the person who killed that poor girl, but I will not sit here any longer and have you insinuate that I—”

  “No one’s insinuating anything, Mr. Manning,” came the quieter voice of a police detective. “We would just like you to tell us one more time about what happened tonight when the girl visited you.”

  “As I’ve told you now three times,” Manning growled, “she came over, we sat in my parlor, I gave her some books, we flirted, we laughed, we made vague plans to get together again, and then she left.”

  “With the books?”

  “Yes, with the books.”

  “But no books were found anywhere near the body. Or anywhere, so far, on the property.”

  “I am aware of that,” Manning said. “You’ve told me that repeatedly.”

  Finally, they let him go. He stormed out of the room and looked straight past Jessie and the others. Jessie noticed the way Todd’s eyes had followed him, ac-cusatively.

  They were all driven back to Hickory Dell, Manning and Caleb in a separate cruiser from Jessie, Monica, and Todd. They were told that their properties would remain crime scenes for the time being, and that investigators would be in and out of their homes for the next several days. They’d get search warrants if necessary, but everyone involved—except for Manning—agreed that the police would have all the access they needed.

  “I just can’t believe she’s gone,” Jessie said now, a fresh cascade of tears falling down her cheeks. “She’s been my rock, my best friend, for so long.”

  Aunt Paulette held her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. “My poor baby,” the older woman said, near tears herself.

  “How fast life can change. This morning all I worried about was whether the neighbors would accept me returning here. Now I all can think about is who killed Inga, and why, and if whoever did it is still around, and if we’re safe.”

  “While you were gone, honey, several policemen came through and checked the house from top to bottom,” Aunt Paulette said. “They even went into Abby’s room, and the little angel slept peacefully right through it. They found nothing to be concerned about. And now there are cops all over the place outside. We’re safe here.” She smiled. “I sense no danger myself.”

  Jessie shivered. “Have the police notified the neighbors ?”

  “They told me as soon as the sun starts to come up, they will begin knocking on doors. Gert Gorin was over here, however. No surprise. So I’m sure she’ll be letting everyone know what happened herself.”

  So much for starting over with the neighbors.

  “Oh Aunt Paulette,” Jessie cried, running her hands through her hair in a sudden burst of fear and despair. “It makes me feel . . . oh God . . . it makes me feel like Emil has come back.”

  “Oh, baby, you know that’s not possible. Emil was shot to death in Mexico in that big drug bust. Police identified his body.”

  “I know,” Jessie said. “But the way Inga died . . . her throat slit. It was the way Emil killed that man. It just feels so . . . so . . . terribly familiar.”

  “Baby.” Aunt Paulette wrapped her arms around Jessie again. “You’ve got to stop thinking that way. It’s a horrible, horrible coincidence.” She stroked Jessie’s blond hair. “There was a policeman here while you were gone, a very nice man,” Aunt Paulette told her. “He said it looked like it was a random act. Somebody who was prowling around, maybe looking to rob a house, and who came upon Inga in the woods. Maybe he tried to assault her, and she fought him off. So he killed her. And now, this policeman believed, the killer is miles and miles away. He was sure to hightail it out of here, because he didn’t want to get caught.”

  “Still,” Jessie said, “it doesn’t make any sense. We are far, far away from any crime areas. . . .” She shuddered. “Five years in New York City and never once did I encounter any major crime.”

  “It can happen anywhere,” her aunt told her. “I think we should have security systems installed. Monica and Todd have one. We should get them for our houses as well.”

  “Yes,” Jessie said. Her eyes drifted over toward the staircase. “And Abby never stirred?”

  “Not once. I stood beside her bed as the detectives searched her room. She slept like an angel.”

  “Oh, God, Aunt Paulette, what am I going to tell Abby? She adored Inga.”

  “We’ll know better what to say in the morning, baby.” The older woman took Jessie by the hands and encouraged her to stand. “I know it’s going to be hard, but you need to get some sleep.”

  Jessie stood. She felt more tired than she had ever felt before in her entire life, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep. Still, she allowed Aunt Paulette to accompany her upstairs, where Jessie made a deliberate effort to avoid looking at Inga’s room. The door was closed, for which she was thankful. She couldn’t have managed looking at Inga’s things tonight. With Aunt Paulette following behind, Jessie tiptoed into Abby’s room, where the little girl slept soundly. The thin sheet covering her rose and fell with each gentle breath she took. Jessie bent down and kissed her daughter on the forehead.

  Dear God, she thought, as the tears started again. How am I ever going to tell her?

  EIGHTEEN

>   “That’s right,” Gert Gorin was saying into the phone even before the sun was fully up. “Dead. Her throat was slit practically from ear to ear. No, they don’t know who did it. But I’m sure it must be a revenge killing, or somehow connected to all that nastiness Jessie Clarkson was involved with six years ago. How can it not be?”

  She was speaking to Rose O’Connell, who lived across town, and who kept Gert apprised of all the goings-on over there as fully as Gert kept her up on Hickory Dell. Gert had known Rose wouldn’t mind in the least being awakened at the crack of dawn with such juicy news.

  “I mean, imagine!” Gert exclaimed. “Right across the street from me! A girl murdered in cold blood!”

  Rose opined that Gert must be terrified.

  “Well, Arthur has a gun,” Gert said. “I just hope he remembers how to use it. With my luck, he’d shoot himself in the foot instead of aiming at an intruder.”

  In fact, Gert was less frightened than she was exhilarated. This latest development was even more exciting than the drug search of six years ago, which, of course, had turned up nothing. A real, actual murder meant that Gert could be on the phone all day, telling everyone all the salacious details.

  “The sheet they covered her with when they carried her body to the ambulance was just sopping with blood,” Gert informed Rose. “I mean absolutely drenched. It didn’t look white. It looked red. Oh, and you should have seen how angry John Manning was when the cop car dropped him back off at two in the morning. He looked like a snarling bull. He was—”

  Rose interrupted her to suggest that Manning could’ve killed the girl.

  “That’s also a possibility,” Gert admitted. “Don’t think I didn’t consider that. I remember very well all the cops who were here the day poor Millie was found dead face-first on her concrete patio. Can you imagine all the broken bones she must have suffered falling three floors smack down onto concrete? But of course, they never found proof that Manning had pushed her.”