“No, Janie Whitehead came from Dobbs, and I’m almost certain she continued with her family doctor there. Dr. Brewer, I believe. Dead now, of course. I did occasionally treat Jed Whitehead, and I was the first to examine the baby when they found her since her own pediatrician was in Raleigh. Shocking condition!”

He shook his head in wonder. “Amazing, the resilience of the human infant. I scratch my arm and it takes ten days to heal. Scratch an infant and you’d be hard put to find the mark twenty-four hours later.”

He took a deep drink and set the glass on the table.

“But you did see the Whiteheads occasionally?” I persisted. “Besides Jed, I mean. Their yard did touch yours.”

The lush spring greenery at the back of their grounds completely blocked any view beyond, but I knew that poky little rental house was still there.

“No, I can’t say I did,” Dr. Vickery answered promptly.

Mrs. Vickery’s weeding had brought her within earshot again.

“What about you, Evelyn?” he asked. “Did you have occasion to speak to Janie Whitehead in a neighborly fashion?”

“Only to ask that she discourage her baby-sitters from annoying Michael,” she answered coolly.

She didn’t look up from her task. If your radar’s working, you don’t have to see flames to know when you’ve scored a direct hit.

Dr. Vickery appeared unaware of her intent. “Annoying Michael?” he queried.

“That was the spring he painted the picture over the mantle in the breakfast room. My tulips.”

“Ah, yes. Your tulips. But how was he annoyed?”

“Don’t be dense, Charles. Don’t you recall how he hated to have us speak to him when he was concentrating on his art?”

“But surely a young man in the springtime will excuse in a young woman what’s inexcusable in his parents?”

She rocked back on her heels and glared at him, and I wondered if he’d somehow managed to delude himself about Michael? Then I saw by the bland smile on his cruel lips that he wasn’t the one who yearned to be deluded.

I never liked Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and I broke the tension by asking, “What about Howard Grimes?”

“Who?” He turned his handsome head to me courteously and Mrs. Vickery went back to her weeding.

“The man who saw someone in the car with Janie the day she disappeared.” Without going into details, I told him how I’d reviewed the circumstances of Janie’s murder with the SBI.

“The agent said you were his doctor at the time of his death seven years ago. I thought you’d retired much earlier.”

“I continued to see a selected few of my patients who didn’t want to change,” he said. “Howard Grimes was one of them.”

“And he really did have a serious heart condition?”

“Like many a man in Colleton County, Howard Grimes thought he could eat all the salt-cured ham, fried chicken, or hot buttered biscuits he could cram in his mouth, so yes, ma’am, he did have a serious heart condition. Long as he took his pills and watched his diet, he was just fine. Trouble with men like Howard, they can’t help digging their graves with their own teeth.”

He patted his own flat stomach complacently.

“Well, different men have different appetites, don’t they?” I said sweetly.

It didn’t faze him. “Some appetites are healthier than others, Miss Deborah,” he smiled. “Everything in moderation.”

Mrs. Vickery stood abruptly and picked up her kneeling pad. “If you will excuse me, Miss Knott?”

There were two bright spots of color in her cheeks, and even though she’d been snide about my futile attempt to flirt with Michael, I still had to admire her self-control. Been me, I’d have smashed the pitcher over the bastard’s head.

Without waiting for my ritual reply, she marched straight-backed down the terrace and through a set of french doors at the far end.

“Three kids, three fucks,” he murmured after her, so softly that I wasn’t sure I was meant to hear. Then he turned to me with his heartless smile. “Now you sure I can’t pour you a glass of tea, Miss Deborah?”

After that, it was a relief to get out to Seth and Minnie’s, where I found them together in the den, amiably bickering over the fertilizer figures they were inputting on their computerized farm records.

“Oh, good,” Minnie greeted me. “I tried to call you back, but I just kept getting y’all’s answering machine.”

“John Claude thought we might as well close early before the paper came out and wait for things to calm down over the weekend. ’Course if there’s going to be a new batch of those goddamned flyers every morning-”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Minnie beamed. “Your brother’s come up with an absolutely brilliant idea.”

Seth swiveled around from his computer screen, leaned back in the leather chair, and said, “I don’t know how brilliant it is, but it seems to me since it’s Friday night and all the kids are going to be out cruising around anyhow, we might as well tell ’em to keep their eyes open.”

“I’ve already been on the phone to Haywood and Jack,” said Minnie, “and I left a message on Herman’s machine. We can have some of the children watching every N amp;O box in this end of the county.”

I went over and hugged Seth’s neck. “Minnie’s right,” I told him. “You are brilliant.”

“Any brighter and I’d glow in the dark,” he agreed. “Now if you’ll give me five more minutes with my wife on these figures, I’ll get out of y’all’s way and-”

“I didn’t come to talk politics this time,” I said. “I thought I’d do some fishing.”

“What a good idea!” said Minnie. “Get your mind off troubling things for a while.”

“You’re not gonna catch much this time of day,” Seth warned, “but all the fishing stuff’s out under the shelter. You just help yourself to anything you need.”

There’s a decent lane down to the pond I planned to fish, and I could have driven, but I’d had enough of cars, too. I found a bucket, one of Minnie’s old straw hats, and a couple of cane poles already rigged with sinkers, corks, and small fish hooks. Then I set off past rows of vegetables-their garden peas were hanging heavy and I made a mental note to pick a mess to take back to Dobbs with me-across a field of young tobacco, to a path through the woods that brought me out at the head of a long pond a few hundred feet on the other side of Seth’s line.

It had been dug as a water hole back when the big twins were heavily into 4-H projects and thought they wanted to start a herd of beef cattle. Then Seth and Jack fooled around with catfish for a while, and I seem to remember the little twins talking about raising eels for Asian markets. When all those projects petered out, Daddy drained the pond and restocked with bream, crappies, and bass.

Except for a clump of willows, he kept the banks mowed clean of underbrush, but trees grew right up to the mowing strip and were mirrored in the still water. I sat down with my back against a willow trunk and let peacefulness wash over me. Tractors rumbled in distant fields somewhere beyond the trees and a nearby mockingbird was singing his territory. Otherwise there was only a low steady hum of insects, lizards skittering over dry leaves, towhees scratching for bugs-the country equivalent of elevator music.

It’d been too damn long since I’d gotten off by myself like this, and I blanked my mind of everything except sky, trees, and water. Seth was right. It was still too middle-way the day to expect fish to bite. Further down the bank stood a sweet gum with a bare dead limb that stretched out toward the water. A kingfisher perched at the very end and was silhouetted against the fluffy white clouds.

Up in the sky, a red-tailed hawk spiraled lazily on thermal updrafts. Yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind…

I fitted my back more comfortably against the willow trunk and thought maybe I’d just rest there a while, listening to birdsong and crickets… rest till the kingfisher’s dive signaled fish activity below the surface of the pond… till…