"That's one way to put it."

"I've done it, babe. It's not so bad."

Her shoulders sagged, and she almost managed a laugh. "Ty, damn it-"

"Come on. Hop in my truck." He slung an arm over her shoulders, still playing the good neighbor, the buddy who'd been at her side for as long as she could remember, even if it was sometimes so he could push her out of a tree. "Let's go see if someone borrowed your camera at lunch and took incriminating pictures before, during or after poor Louis Sanborn got shot with a.38 in the library."

Carine angled a look at him. "You don't know it was a.38."

"It's an educated guess."

"Whose? Yours or Manny's?"

"Colonel Mustard's. Come on, Carine. Give me a break."

"What else did Manny tell you that you haven't told me?"

"That you'd be a meddling pain in the ass if I didn't keep you occupied." He dropped his arm, opening the truck door. "He fed some line about you having a strong moral compass."

She climbed into the passenger seat, fighting an urge to let him take the disk and see what was on it while she stayed here and stacked wood. "I have a feeling if my strong moral compass was working, I'd have given Gary Turner the disk."

Carine could have popped the memory disk back into her camera and looked at the pictures on its tiny LCD screen, but she waited to boot up the computer in Ty's den, attaching a USB cable to the corresponding port on her camera. A screen came up on the monitor, with a contactlike sheet of all the photos on the disk. It was a fresh disk. The only photos on it, at least as far as she knew, were those she'd taken Wednesday morning on Commonwealth Avenue, before lunch, before she found Louis.

She was supposed to click on what she wanted to do with the pictures-copy them to the hard drive, view a slide show, print them-but she was so stunned, all she could do was gape at the monitor.

The few pictures she'd taken were there, idle shots of the drawing room mantel and chandelier-she hadn't expected to keep any of them. But it was the four pictures she didn't take that had her attention.

All four depicted a mostly naked Jodie Rancourt up against the library wall, her legs wrapped around the waist of an apparently fully clothed Louis Sanborn. His back was to the camera, but there was no question of his identity-or what he and Jodie were up to.

Ty whistled, peering over Carine's shoulder. "I wonder who took these last four shots."

Carine shook her head, stunned. "It wasn't me. Someone must have used my camera while I was at lunch. The pictures-the angle-" She paused, making herself breathe, and tried again. "Whoever took the pictures must have stood in the doorway to the hall. My camera was right there on the radiator."

"Talk about nature photography."

She elbowed him. "That's lame, North."

"Just trying to ease the tension in the room. Damn. You didn't have any idea-"

"No. None. Jodie Rancourt and Louis Sanborn? He'd only worked for the Rancourts for two weeks."

"Doesn't looked forced on her part, does it?"

"No," Carine said. "No, it doesn't."

Ty squinted, eyeing the pictures more closely, then gave another low whistle. "Agreed. I guess you never know what goes on between two people."

But Carine's throat was tight, her heart racing. "My blood pressure must be a thousand over a thousand. Ty, I swear, I never had an inkling they were having an affair."

"Maybe it was a moment," he said, "not an affair."

"Well, it was a 'moment' not long before one of the two people involved in it was killed. Louis asked me if I wanted a ride while I was on my way back from lunch-he and Jodie must have-" Carine hesitated, trying to steady her breathing, calm herself. "They must have had their liaison before he went out."

"Liaison?"

"Ty, please."

"Babe, they were screwing each other blind. Facts are facts. How long were you gone? About ninety minutes?"

She nodded, transfixed by the pictures on the screen, embarrassed for the participants. But if they'd wanted privacy, they could have skipped the library and gone somewhere else. Had there been any clues, any hints she'd missed? Did Sterling know? Turner? "I wasn't in a hurry. There wasn't much going on at the house…that I knew about, anyway."

"Ninety minutes is plenty of time for a quickie in the library." Ty shook his head tightly, obviously as uncomfortable with what they were seeing as she was. "Jesus. What a nasty business. They took a hell of a risk if they didn't want to be caught. Anyone could have walked in on them-"

"Obviously someone did and took pictures."

Carine sank back in the chair, an ergonomic design that she'd helped choose when Ty purchased his computer. The den was tucked in the southwest corner of the house, a sun-filled room with original 1817 twelve-over-twelve paned windows that looked onto the front yard. It was prosaically furnished with a pullout couch, a beat-up leather club chair, a rolltop desk and the computer table. One of Saskia's collages hung on the back wall, depicting images of the White Mountains.

"Do you think Manny knew?" Carine asked quietly.

Ty shook his head. "I don't know."

"What if-" She cleared her throat, her hands shaking as she turned back to the computer screen. "What if he walked in on Jodie and Louis?"

"Manny didn't take those pictures."

"No, but maybe he came in after someone else had. I wonder if he said something to the police, if Turner found out- Gary obviously knew, or at least guessed, these pictures existed. He said he was asking me for the disk on Sterling 's behalf, but I'm not sure now."

"Maybe Turner took the pictures."

Carine sighed. "Lots of questions, no answers."

"It's not our job to come up with answers," Ty said.

She stared at the screen. "I didn't take these pictures."

"I didn't ask."

"Someone will. I don't think there's a way I can prove it, but-I didn't take them. Why would anyone do such a thing?"

"Blackmail. Titillation. To humiliate and embarrass one or both of the two lovers, or the jilted husband."

"The possibilities are endless, aren't they?" Carine quickly completed the process of uploading the pictures to Ty's hard drive, as a backup to the disk in case something happened before she could get it to the police. "We should notify the detectives on the case. If Jodie Rancourt told the police she was out shopping, and instead she was with Louis-"

"She could have told the police the truth," Ty said.

"They might just have kept it to themselves. For all we know, this is old news to them."

"I hope so. I hate the idea of being the rat." Carine popped out the memory disk and disconnected the USB cable. "Gary Turner said to remember he tried to be discreet."

"Right," Ty said skeptically. "Maybe that's why he took the trouble of using a key instead of a crowbar when he broke into your apartment yesterday."

She tucked the disk into her coat pocket. "We don't know that was him."

"A lot happened on your lunch hour, that's for damn sure."

"And I didn't have a clue."

Ty straightened. "We can call the Boston cops on the way to lunch and ask them what they want us to do with the disk."

"Us? Ty, there's no reason for you to get involved."

"Too late. The minute you found Louis Sanborn, I was involved." He headed for the door, glancing back at her, his eyes a soft green, a real green, but as unreadable as if they'd been green rocks. "But you knew that, didn't you?"

"Maybe I did," she said, and slipped past him into the hall.