He’d helped Morey put down that gravel, running the Bobcat, dumping the loads, trying not to tip the thing over backwards when he lifted the blade. The gravel itself was a wild extravagance, trucked from some pit near the Canadian border, where quartz and agate and other minerals had colored the rock with sparkling streaks of pink and purple and yellow. He’d nearly passed out when Morey had told him what it cost.

But the cheap rock is all gray, Martin, and the old woman hates gray. This is from the camp, I think. Everything was gray there, and nothing sparkled. You see how this gravel sparkles in the sun? This, she will like. This will make her happy.

It was the one and only time Morey had ever said anything about their time in Auschwitz, and Marty had felt privileged to hear it. More privileged to know the reason for the colored sparkles in the gravel path. Hannah didn’t like it much, thought it looked unnatural, even though it was the opposite; and Jack simply thought it was gaudy. But Marty knew the story, kept it close like a gift, and Lily raked the path almost every day.

He’d never been able to define the relationship between Morey and Lily. If it was love, it was a different kind than what he had found with Hannah. He tried to remember if he had ever seen them kiss, or hug, or even touch hands, and came up empty. And yet there were these strange little kindnesses between them – the colored gravel for Lily; the strange spicy cucumbers she made every single morning of her life for Morey, who was the only one who would eat them.

He found Jack and Officer Becker in the windowless office behind the potting shed. The lamp on the desk was turned on, casting long shadows on the walls, leaving absolute patches of darkness in the corners.

Jack was sprawled on the cracked vinyl sofa shoved against one wall, his face silly and red from booze and sun, the omnipresent glass in his hand; Becker was standing in the outside doorway, half in and half out of the building, so that the first fat raindrops splatted on his uniformed shoulders. The inside door that led to the potting shed was closed and bolted.

‘Hey, Marty!’ Jack patted the cushion next to him, making the vinyl crackle. ‘Take a load off.’ He produced another glass from the floor by the sofa, and a bottle of Morey’s Balvenie that he’d obviously filched from the house.

Officer Becker stood aside so Marty could pass. ‘Detective Rolseth told me you’d be armed, sir. Are you carrying now?’

Marty nodded and lifted the hem of the white linen shirt, exposing the.357 uncomfortably tucked in the waistband.

‘Not the best place to holster that, sir.’

‘Tell me about it. You missed the shift change.’

The young cop talked without looking at him, his eyes constantly on the move through the deepening shadows outside. ‘I thought I’d get you all settled in the hotel, then call my relief.’

Marty nodded, pleased. He liked the way Becker handled himself, the way he was taking his assignment seriously. ‘I’ll be glad to have you with us.’

‘Thank you, sir. Is everyone ready?’

Marty glanced over at Jack, who was more intent on his drink than their conversation. ‘I’d like to take a private minute here with Jack, if that’s okay with you.’

Becker didn’t seem too happy about that, and lowered his voice. ‘To tell you the truth, Mr Pullman, after spending the afternoon with Mr Gilbert, I was looking forward to having him safely locked in a hotel room with a man at the door. He pretty much hops all over the place, and he doesn’t seem half as concerned as he should be, for a man who dodged a bullet this morning.’

‘Relax, Supercop,’ Jack slurred from the sofa, who had apparently been listening more closely than Marty thought. ‘This guy doesn’t like an audience. Shoots old women alone in their houses, or hides behind a tree and takes potshots, cowardly bastard.’

Becker, who probably knew very little beyond that someone had taken a shot at Jack, raised a questioning eyebrow at Marty, who nodded.

‘That’s the history so far.’

‘All right then. I’ll step away from the building, give you gentlemen some privacy, but I’ll keep the door in sight at all times.’

‘Thanks, Becker.’ Marty watched him move out among the rows of potted arborvitae until he looked like just another shadow, thinking that at least he wouldn’t get wet. Those first few raindrops had made it look like the sky was going to open, but it had stopped almost as soon as it began.

He closed the door, crossed to the desk, and sat down in the chair, shaking his head at the glass Jack was holding out for him at a precarious angle, sloshing good scotch all over the floor. ‘No thanks.’

Jack shrugged and started drinking it himself, even though he held his own glass in his other hand.

‘Did you call Becky to tell her where you’d be?’

‘Becky, my wife?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘Well, gee, Marty, that would be like calling Mr Filcher at the butcher shop and telling him where’d I’d be, and he’d say what the fuck do I care? So if you want me to call somebody just to listen to that, I think I’ll go for the butcher.’

‘You’re not making a lot of sense.’

‘Probably not. Half a bottle of scotch’ll do that to you. The way I figure it, I’ll be dead of alcohol poisoning in about ten minutes, and shooting me will be redundant.’

‘Not funny.’

‘Sure it was. Lighten up. The thing is, Becky gave me the one-finger salute last night – and that was before the gunfight at O.K. Corral. Sayonara, fuck off, see you in court. Wouldn’t even let me in the house, so I slept in the pool house, took a shower with the garden hose.’

Marty blew out a breath and reached for one of the partially full glasses Jack was juggling. ‘Sorry.’

‘No prob. I hated that house anyway. Faggot designer Becky hired did the whole master bath in a frog motif. Can you believe that? S’like trying to take a shit in the middle of a Budweiser commercial.’ He drained his glass, filled it again. ‘You want me to top that off for you?’

‘No. I want you to tell me why Morey went to London.’

Jack looked at him. ‘Excuse me?’

‘Or Prague. Or Milan. Or Paris.’ He tossed over Morey’s passport, and Jack jumped when it hit his lap.

‘What the hell is this?’

‘That’s Morey’s passport. I found it in a tackle box in a closet.’

‘Dad had a passport?’ Jack opened it up and squinted hard. ‘God, this is small print… Is this Paris or Prague? Goddamn Frogs can’t even use a stamp without blurring it…’

‘It’s Paris. He was there for a day. Not much longer in any of the other places. Since when was Morey a world traveler?’

Jack kept drinking as he flipped through the pages. ‘Jesus. He went to Johannesburg?’

‘Are you telling me you didn’t know about those trips?’

‘These?’ Jack tossed the passport on the cushion next to him. ‘Nope. Didn’t know about them. Is that it? Can we get out of here now? It’s hotter than hell with the door closed.’

‘Why would Morey hide his passport in a tackle box? Why would he make a bunch of overseas trips and then turn around and come back the next day? What the hell was he doing in all those places, Jack?’

‘I knew it. I knew this would happen. Was I right? You can take the man out of the cop, but you can’t take the cop out of the man, and now you’re doing all that detective shit. So what now, Marty? Are we going to play interrogation again? You want to move to the equipment shed? We got a bulb hanging from a wire in there. You could swing it back and forth, do the movie thing…’

Marty closed his eyes and took a sip out of the glass without thinking. ‘I was thinking maybe we could skip all the crap and you could just tell me the truth, Jack. I know it’s not normally done in this family – hell, maybe not in any family – but I tried it on Lily the other night and it turned out okay.’