“The profit motive,” Sam said. “Our Pulitzer Prize winner could use money. Think he knows its connection to Lilli?”

“Yes, I do. Joe could have shown him the photograph of her and Lilli in the balloon-or Quint could have just come across it while they served together-and he recognized the key in Dani’s picture in the paper, just like Naomi did.”

“Would you remember what kind of necklace a woman was wearing in a photograph you saw twenty years ago?”

Zeke gave that some thought. “Maybe if the woman was a missing heiress and the other woman she was with was a legendary actress and I was looking for a way to the top.”

“Or maybe if your army buddy pointed the key out to you for some reason.” Sam stretched and added quietly, “The Pembrokes could use money, too. John, Nick, even Dani. But it doesn’t fit the facts for one of them to be after the gold key for profit.”

“No,” Zeke said.

“And I gather the Chandlers don’t need money. So what if this thing’s not about profit? What are the other possibilities?”

A yellow cat had crossed in front of Sam’s car and scampered up a maple. “Lilli Chandler Pembroke.”

Sam hadn’t said anything for a moment. “There are two angles to consider. One, someone doesn’t want the truth about what happened to her to come out. Two, someone’s after the truth.”

So they considered both angles for a while, tossing ideas back and forth in the quiet night.

“One thing we know for sure,” Sam said. “Joe’s dead. Whoever’s doing what around here, it can’t be him.”

Zeke had spelled him for a while, then headed back to Dani’s Hansel and Gretel cottage. Her tale of Nick’s blackmail was just another fact to fit into his host of theories.

On his way out of the casino museum, he stopped at the gift shop. Reproductions of the newspaper headline announcing Ulysses Pembroke’s horse as the winner of the first Chandler Stakes were almost sold out.

Zeke bought one, just for the hell of it.

Nick and Mattie were at the teak table in Dani’s cottage garden when she returned with Beatrix Chandler’s diary.

“I’ll never do that again,” Nick said.

Mattie scoffed. “I still don’t believe that was your first time in a balloon. I could swear I took you up once years ago.”

“You did not. I must be senile to have let you whisk me off like that. No wonder people think you’re eccentric. If I’d known you were this crazy-hell, I’d have shot you off your moral high horse years ago. You’ve got no room to talk about me being reckless.”

“Now, Nick, it wasn’t so bad.” Mattie stirred a spoonful of sugar into a mug of coffee; she and Nick had helped themselves to Dani’s pantry. “When I die, I’d love to have my ashes sprinkled over the Adirondacks from the basket of a beautiful hot-air balloon.”

Nick grunted. “Do that to me, and I’ll come back and haunt you. I swear I will. I’m going into the ground in a pine box, not dumped from the sky like an ashtray.”

“You two are morbid,” Dani said.

Her grandfather grinned at her. “Wait till you’re my age, urchin. You’ll find the prospect of living forever’s a good deal more frightening than that of dying. I know more people in the Great Beyond than I do here.”

Mattie handed him the sugared coffee. “That’s because you’ve lived so bloody long.”

“To harangue you, my dear.”

Dani had had enough. Grabbing a handful of wild blueberries from a basket Mattie had brought down from the main house, she jumped up and started inside.

“Off somewhere?” Mattie asked.

“The springs. I won’t be gone long.”

Concern darkened her grandmother’s face. “But if you were attacked there-”

“I wasn’t. Ira was.”

“Still, don’t you think you should wait for Zeke?”

The suggestion made her raise her eyebrows, and she grinned at Mattie. “What for?”

“He’s a trained professional. If someone out there wants to hurt you-”

“Given her gene pool, Mattie,” Nick said, “Dani’s not likely to appreciate anyone swooping in to her rescue.” His black eyes focused on Dani with a measure of amusement. “Are you, urchin?”

What he was saying, she knew, was that she had a tendency to be defiant and independent to a fault. That she was reluctant to trust anyone, including Zeke Cutler.

“I’ll be back,” she said.

“Is there any particular reason you’re going out there?” Mattie asked. She had her mug to her lips and was blowing on the hot coffee.

“Just checking on a couple of things.”

One thing in particular. According to Zeke, his brother had found the gold key at the pavilion at Pembroke Springs, no doubt right where Louisa Caldwell Pembroke and Beatrix Chandler had buried it. In Beatrix’s diary, she stated that she and Louisa had carefully replaced the tiles they’d dislodged. Decades later, however, again according to Zeke, the fountain had been a mess, with broken and missing tiles, the area overgrown and dug up in places. Fountains and pavilions throughout the old estate had been vandalized over the years. But when Dani had begun her restoration of the grounds after Pembroke Springs was on solid financial footing, she’d been surprised at what good shape the pavilion near the bottling plant was in.

Who, in the years between her mother’s disappearance and then, had cleaned up the place? And why?

She asked Mattie, “Did you have any work done out at the springs before I took over?”

“No-why?”

“I’m not sure, but it’s not important right now. I’ll be back in a little while.” She smiled. “You two, behave yourselves.”

Zeke headed to Quint’s rented house to check with Sam once more before making his way back to the Pembroke. He’d lay out all his theories for Dani, Nick, Mattie, John if he was out of the hospital. They’d put their heads together. See what they came up with.

Sam had moved across the street, down from the cute yellow house. Zeke pulled up behind Sam’s car. There was no sign of his friend, but Zeke wasn’t concerned. For all he knew, Sam was perched on Quint’s rooftop, peering down his chimney.

As Zeke approached Sam’s car, the driver’s-side door swung open, and Sam fell out onto the street.

Zeke took out his gun and ran to him.

Sam reached for the door handle, grunting with pain and effort as he tried to pull himself up. Zeke got to him. He took Sam’s weight and saw the grayish cast to his skin and the blood soaked into his tangerine polo shirt and the leg of his sand-colored jeans. Around them, kids skidded by on bicycles. A mother yelled.

“Looks worse than it is,” Sam said, sweating.

“What happened?”

“Shot.”

“Quint?”

They were already moving toward Zeke’s car. Sam was not a light man. He shook his head, shuddering. Zeke could almost see his friend’s pain. “I didn’t see who did it. Came up from behind.” He grimaced as Zeke held him against his car, opening the back door. “Thought I was dead this time.”

“Did you see Quint?”

“No.”

“I’ll check on him after I get you to the hospital.”

As always, Sam’s professionalism was in full gear. “I can wait.”

But Zeke got him into the backseat and checked his wound. A clean shot to the shoulder and one to the thigh. Blood everywhere. Sam couldn’t wait. Slamming the door, Zeke climbed into the front seat. The hospital wasn’t far.

In the backseat Sam didn’t make a sound.

“Just keep your mouth shut,” Quint ordered.

Stretched out on the stone bench inside the pavilion, John watched his kidnapper loosen another section of Spanish tile with his crowbar. He’d decided Quint was mostly a lot of hot air. Oh, he could kill John. Just like he could have killed Dani when he’d had the chance. One whack with the crowbar would do the job. But John didn’t think he’d do it. Whatever Skinner was up to, it wasn’t about profit and murder. At least not entirely.