He nodded.

“But Jay wouldn’t want us to grieve, would he? And it’s so mother-lovin’ hot out here.” She dragged her finger down her throat as though to call attention to the dewy skin above the neckline of her black dress. Not that she needed to. If you were a man, and breathing, you’d have already noticed.

Keeping her gaze on Raley, she addressed her husband. “Daddy suggested we go to the club and have a drink.”

“Great idea,” George said, mopping his face with the handkerchief.

“Please join us, Raley. You can ride with George. He and I came in separate cars.” She put one earpiece of her sunglasses between her lips and sucked on it. “You will come, won’t you?”

He wondered if the double meaning of her phrasing was intentional, but he didn’t have to wonder much. “Sorry, I can’t. I have plans.”

“Oh, shoot.” Her lips formed a pout. “That’s too bad.”

“But I would like to talk to George for a minute.”

“Well then…” She reached out and laid her hand on his arm. “So nice seeing you. Don’t be a stranger. Bye.” She dropped her hand and said to George, “See you there, sweetheart.”

George and Raley watched as she rejoined her father, who was bidding good-bye to the group he’d been chatting with. Together she and Les walked down the incline toward a shiny red Corvette convertible. George came back around to Raley. “What do you think?”

“I think you did very well for yourself.”

The other man laughed, ducking his head and looking abashed. “You could say that, yeah.” Then he looked up at Raley from beneath his eyebrows. “Did you ever fuck her?”

Raley was taken aback. “Jesus, George. That’s your wife.”

“Did you?”

“No.”

“Did Jay?”

“I don’t know.”

“Doesn’t matter if you tell me now. He’s dead.”

“I don’t know,” Raley repeated.

George held his stare for several seconds, then muttered, “I never got a straight answer from him about it, either.” He looked away, but when he did, something caught his eye that caused him to wince. Raley turned to see what had caused the facial tic.

Clusters of people were still standing around talking, fanning themselves with their service programs, waiting for the hearse to leave before they did. The circumstances were somber, but Raley didn’t detect anything sinister about the scene, nothing to make George any jumpier than he was.

But then he noted one couple among the crowd, his attention drawn to them because the man’s gaze was fixed on George and Raley while the woman with him was involved in conversation with other people.

When Raley caught the stranger staring, he quickly turned away. Raley looked back at George, sensing the other man’s increased agitation. He asked, “Who’s that?”

“Who?”

“The guy, George. The one who had a bead on us.”

“You mean Pat?”

Raley didn’t buy George’s dumb act, especially when he identified the man. “That’s Pat Wickham?”

“Junior.”

Raley wouldn’t have recognized him. Of course he was older now than when Raley had last seen him-and he couldn’t remember how long that had been. But the drastic change in Wickham’s appearance hadn’t been caused by aging. “What happened to his face?”

“It got fucked up in an accident. Long time ago.”

“Who’s that with him?”

“His wife.”

“He’s married?”

“Got a coupla kids. He joined the department, but he’s a desk jockey. Computers and shit. Not a real cop like his old man was.”

Raley gave Pat Wickham, Jr., a long, considering look, then came back around to George. “Do you two stay in close touch?”

“Not at all.”

“Huh. You and Pat Senior were best friends.”

“True. But after he died, you know how it is.” George looked around as though searching for rescue. “Look, Raley, it’s been great seeing you. But Miranda and Les will be-”

“Has it struck you as odd, George?”

George’s wandering eyes snapped him into focus. “What?”

“Come on. Cut the crap. You know what I’m talking about. The similarity between the night Jay died and the night Suzi Monroe overdosed.”

“Jay didn’t overdose. He was smothered by that newswoman.”

“Was he?”

“Yeah. I mean, that’s the allegation. That’s what I hear.”

“Did you also hear her say that she was drugged? Weird, don’t you think? Britt Shelley echoed exactly what I said the morning I woke up in bed with a naked dead girl and couldn’t remember how I got there.”

George was getting increasingly hot under the collar. He assumed a belligerent stance. “I didn’t mention that ’cause I figured you’d just as soon not talk about it.”

Raley smiled and said softly, “No, George, you’d just as soon not talk about it. See, I don’t think you’d want anybody to know that I told you, Jay, Pat Wickham, and Cobb Fordyce that I’d been given a drug in my drink to wipe clean my memory of that night. Because it might strike them as strange that Britt Shelley has said the same thing about the night Jay died.”

“Date rape drug, my ass,” George said, bringing his florid face closer to Raley’s. “That’s a real convenient defense that can’t be proven.”

“Something I know all too well.”

“Look, she and Jay had a lovers’ quarrel. End of story.”

“She claimed they weren’t lovers.”

George guffawed. Or tried. It sounded more like choking.

“Besides,” Raley continued, “Jay didn’t quarrel with women. Never. He spared himself such scenes. When he wanted to end a fling with a woman, he just stopped calling her. No fuss, no muss.”

“Maybe this gal didn’t know that. Maybe-”

“Jay had only weeks to live. I wonder what it was he wanted to tell a celebrated newswoman that night. Have you thought about that?”

George fumed for several seconds, then said, “He might have wanted to tell her how easy it was for him to get in your fiancée’s pants.”

Raley didn’t flinch. “I think he wanted to give Britt Shelley a big news story with his deathbed confession built in.”

George took another aggressive half step forward. “What would Jay have to confess?”

“You tell me.”

“You’re full of shit, Gannon. You’re holding a grudge against Jay for taking Hallie away from you. If I was still a cop, you know what I’d be thinking? I’d be thinking that maybe you sneaked into his place that night and held a pillow over his face.”

“If I was going to kill him, it wouldn’t have taken me five years to do it. This isn’t about him and Hallie.”

“No?” George sneered. “You know, a few months after you left town, I went by Jay’s place one day. Middle of the day. Broad daylight.”

“Somebody’s going to connect the dots, George. You, Fordyce, Pat Wickham, Jay, Suzi Monroe, me, Britt Shelley.”

“I was about to ring Jay’s doorbell when I saw them through the window.”

“Somebody’s going to make that connection, George, and the common thread is the fire.”

“Your girl’s legs were draped over the arms of a chair, and Jay was on his knees, his face buried in her pussy, and she was loving it.”

“This cast of characters originated with the fire.”

Raley said it loud enough to draw attention to them and halt the conversations taking place nearby. George, his face suffused with heat, looked around, smiling, but his worry of being overheard was apparent.

In that moment of suspended animation, the hearse pulled away. Raley and George, like the others, solemnly watched its slow progress down the hill. No one moved or said anything until it turned at the end of the lane and disappeared behind a dense hedge of evergreens, then a collective sigh of relief could be heard among the last of the mourners.

George mumbled, “Well, that’s that.”

“You wish.” Raley turned back to George and thumped him softly in the chest. “You’d better go have that drink, George. Have two. I think you need them.” Then he smiled. “See you around.”

“But if he’s any judge of smiles at all,” Raley told Britt an hour later, “he’ll know mine wasn’t for grins.”