“She was his friend.”

Sara’s eyes flashed. “She was my sister!”

As if that gave her prerogatives. Dani moved in closer to her aunt. “Sara, what happened that night?”

She pushed back her hair, maintaining her composure.

“You and Roger went out to look for Mother after the lawn party. Did you find her?”

Even as she stood as still and sleek as a mannequin, tears spilled once more down her porcelain cheeks. Dani felt her own composure starting to give way. She made herself go to her aunt. “Sara,” she said, touching her rounded shoulder. “What happened?”

“I killed her,” Sara whispered.

Dani shut her eyes, and her aunt fell onto her shoulder, sobbing, quaking with guilt and relief, and Dani had to hold her, had to stand firm, or they both would have collapsed.

“God help me,” Sara said over and over. “I killed my own sister.”

Zeke got to the little yellow house with the welcome goose on the front door too late.

Quint was sprawled on the living-room floor, dying. Forcing back any emotion, Zeke called the police and found a towel in the downstairs bathroom. He pressed the towel to Quint’s abdomen. The wound was bad. Quint’s face was gray from the loss of blood.

“Hang on,” Zeke said.

“It’s too late.”

Zeke knew it was. “We’ll just sit here together and wait for help.”

“Whole thing was a setup. I thought Joe’d found out what I’d been a part of. Thought he’d turn me in. Hell, we were just kids. I…” He swallowed, panting, still fighting. “I was stupid.”

“Save it.”

“For what? Think the devil doesn’t know what I’ve done? You gotta know, Zeke. Your brother never broke. He did his job.” Quint licked his lips, shuddering with pain. “He was the best.”

Your brother never broke…

The land mines of his past, Zeke thought, his arm-his entire body-shaking as he held the towel to Quint’s wound.

“I watched the terrorists take him out. He was a hero, Zeke.” Quint sobbed hoarsely, without tears or energy. “I lied. I made a name for myself on his back. Him-his men-everybody was dead but me.”

Because this man was dying, and Joe was already dead, and he didn’t know what else to do, Zeke said, “What’s done is done, Quint.”

He raised himself up off the floor and gripped Zeke’s arm with what must have been all his remaining strength. “Joe was my friend!”

“Let it go,” Zeke said gently.

“I only wanted justice.”

Zeke could hear the sirens not too far away. “Quint, who did this to you? Who shot you?”

“Didn’t mean to hurt anybody,” he said weakly, his voice barely audible. “Damn, Zeke…she was there all along.”

Quint was fading but still lucid, and Zeke felt himself go so rigid he thought he’d crack into pieces. “Do you mean Lilli?”

“In the fountain…didn’t want to say anything with her husband and daughter right there.”

“Quint-who shot you?”

His eyes focused on Zeke, clear and alert and dying. “You’ll fix it?”

He couldn’t fix a wound like the one Quint had. He couldn’t fix a mother who had died twenty-five years ago. That kind of knight in shining armor just didn’t exist. But he nodded. “I’ll do what I can.”

The siren was getting louder. Once the police and ambulance arrived it wouldn’t be easy to get away. And he had to. There were other lives at stake, and nothing more he could do in the grape-colored dining room.

Quint Skinner was dead.

Dani was on her feet, pacing, forcing herself to concentrate, to hold herself together. There was a breeze against her back, and on North Broadway a couple of little girls walked down the sidewalk dragging a red wagon. Suddenly she wished she could be nine again, hiding from her grandfather, thinking up ways to make her mother happy.

“I ran into her on her way home,” Sara said. She’d composed herself and returned to her wicker chair; the cat had climbed back into her lap. “I told her I’d broken off with Joe. She was disappointed-I could tell. She liked him. So I told her he was the one who’d blackmailed her.”

“Did Mother believe you?”

“No, of course not. She wanted to hear it directly from Joe. So we walked up to the old bottling plant where he and his brother had pitched their tent, only they were already gone.”

To tell Mattie that her father in Cedar Springs was dying.

Dani crossed her arms over her chest, hugging herself, trying not to think about herself, her own shattered dreams. No more amnesia scenario. Oh, Mama…

“What about Roger?” she asked.

Sara’s blue, crystal, tearless eyes focused on Dani. “Roger?”

“You two left the party together.”

“Oh, yes. He was there. I mean, he walked up to the springs with us. He stayed at the pavilion while Lilli and I headed over to the cliffs so we could talk in private.” She swallowed, stroking the cat. A part of her seemed relieved finally to talk. “We argued, Lilli and I. We so seldom did. My parents discouraged open disagreement, and there was such a big age difference between us.”

“What did you argue about?”

“Everything,” Sara said.

Dani fought back her impatience, controlled her grief. “You saw her wearing the key?”

“Yes, it-she said it proved Joe didn’t want money, because he’d given it to her. I was upset that he had. He’d found it for me, not her. It shouldn’t have mattered that I’d just ended our relationship.” She checked her anger, her mascara smudged under her eyes, her normally perfect makeup looking garish against her pale skin. “It was just one more thing we argued about. Lilli got very frustrated with me-she just couldn’t bear to hear the truth about Joe.”

“Did she say who she thought was blackmailing her and Nick?”

Sara shook her head. “She refused to. She said we should just go on back, and I should let her take care of everything.”

“Then she was trying to protect you-”

“No!” She dumped the cat off her lap. “She was protecting herself! I knew she was sneaking around behind Father’s back, performing in Casino. Why Nick picked her I’ll never understand, but I don’t care.”

Dani stood in front of Sara and touched her hand, the nails perfectly manicured, a pale pink. “Sara, what happened to Mother?”

“She fell.”

“On the rocks?”

“Yes!” Fat tears rolled down her cheeks, but she remained eerily still. “I was so upset. I must have backed her up too close to the edge of the rocks, and then when she tried to tell me what to do-I shoved her. I didn’t mean anything by it. It was just a reaction.” Tears continued to drop down her cheeks, mingling with the others, dripping off her chin. She didn’t seem to notice. “It was an accident…it was so dark out there…”

Dani held back her own tears. “Then what happened?”

“Well, I…I buried her, of course.”

“Where?”

“At the pavilion.” The whites of her eyes were red, the eyelids swollen, and her speech was slurred. “I thought I’d get the courage to confess everything, but Father-he already despised me. I was too wild, I wasn’t his perfect Lilli. And Mother had just died, and I needed him, and then I thought, would it be exciting for Lilli just to have disappeared?”

Dani didn’t argue with her. It was far, far too late for what Sara Chandler should have done the night her sister fell.

“She’d be a mystery instead of just another dead heiress.” She smiled at Dani. “Do you think people would have made such a big deal about her role in Casino if she hadn’t been a missing heiress? You see, I gave Lilli what she really wanted. Because of me, she got her fame, her mystique.”

“But, Sara-”

“No, it’s true. Don’t you see? Without me, Lilli wouldn’t have achieved the status she has.”

Dani took her aunt’s hands into hers and held on tight. “I’m not disagreeing with you, Sara, but I need you to listen just a moment. Okay? Just listen.”