"Are you saying you didn't find anything?" Kathy was still on the search.

"You know I can't answer that. All I can tell you is that Bill knows how to handle himself. And his team is on his side."

Suddenly April felt very tired. She couldn't talk about Tiger Liniment or missing millions or anything else with Kathy. For a second she let her thoughts wander to last night, when she'd taken her turn at examining Birdie Bassett's body. The staggering thing about this murder was that the killer had choked his victim-there were bruises on her neck-but that wasn't the cause of death, and he hadn't yoked her as he had Bernie. It was clear to her what he'd done because she knew the move. He killed Birdie with a karate technique few black belts had the deadly strength to execute. One punch, one kill. This time he signed a clear signature. Now she was sorry she hadn't asked Gloss whether Bernardino's killer was left-handed or right-handed. As soon as they knew that, they'd know if there was one killer on the loose, or two.

She shook her head. One punch, one kill. The move everyone practiced, and that looked so great on TV, came with the caveat of "Don't try this," along with a bunch of other moves it was stupid to attempt when a mugger held a knife to your throat or a gun to your head. The truth was, karate only worked to give a potential victim a second or two. Ninety-nine out of a hundred amateurs could not gain enough time to get away from an opponent with a gun or a knife.

Dr. Gloss had sniffed the body for the odor of Tiger Liniment, but Birdie Bassett's body had smelled only of its own waste that she'd excreted at the moment she'd died. And she'd smelled faintly of perfume, blood oranges and roses.

Kathy made an impatient noise, and April changed the subject. "Can you add anything to what we know about Harry?"

"Forget Harry. I want to know what's the link between the two victims?" Kathy returned to the question that prompted her call. She wanted her brother well off the hook. That was all she cared about right now.

"Both victims had a spouse die recently. They'd both inherited big money." April's voice cracked on the words big money because she didn't want this bit of news to surface in the media. "Keep this to yourself, Kathy. Let's not make it a circus, okay?"

Then April shivered with excitement. No one in the investigation had copped to the fact that both victims had money and both were alums of York University. Marcus didn't know it, and Mike didn't know it. Only she and Kathy knew it. April loved having an edge, even if she'd keep it for only about ten seconds. There was nothing overtly competitive about her.

"Tell me about Harry." April was back on Harry, relishing the few moments of relative peace in the car with her maniac driver before she'd have to move into the murk of the new victim.

Kathy clicked her tongue. "Bill told me about the racehorse. That's a crock, you know."

"You mean, your dad wouldn't give Harry a few hundred grand to buy a horse?"

"Not a few hundred anything!" Kathy exploded.

"Even in special circumstances?"

"No!"

"What about Bill-would he give money to Harry?"

"Are you nuts?" The suggestion made Kathy ballistic.

April paused to give her another moment to speculate. Come on, Kathy, don't make me hurt you, she thought.

"Look, I've been thinking about it a lot," Kathy admitted finally.

"Uh-huh." April was sure she had.

"I don't know. The truth is, Dad had been acting a little off before he died."

"How off?"

"I told you this before. Obviously he was secretive. You know Mom was into the lottery, but I didn't know how it works. Call me crazy. I didn't know it came in so fast, and I didn't know what he did with it. I know he was depressed about his future. He kept talking about living in a hotel, sitting on a park bench. Crazy stuff. I didn't know he was looking for a house in Florida. There was a lot of stuff I didn't know."

"Do you think he was feeling guilty?"

"For surviving Mom? I'm sure. He thought he'd neglected her."

"What about that and distributing money to Bill and Harry? Maybe guilt for excluding you was what you heard in his voice."

"Jesus, April. Don't go there. I knew Dad. He was my buddy. Why would he do that to me?" But Kathy wasn't sure now. April could hear it in her voice.

"Maybe your dad had a plan for you, too," she said. "Maybe the check was supposed to be in the mail and just didn't get to you."

"He would have told me," she said quietly. "He was a careful man. I'm sure he would have told me."

April had planned to save this for a time when the two of them were sitting face-to-face, but she went ahead because she didn't know when that time would be. "He didn't tell you everything, Kathy. He had your mother cremated."

"Oh, Jesus. That's a crock, too. Where did you hear that?"

"We know he did," April said softly. She didn't have to offer proof. It was in the computer if Kathy cared to look.

"Oh, sure, and where are the ashes? She had a funeral. I saw her buried. She didn't have an open casket because of how bad she'd looked. But I did see her buried."

"I know you did. What did you see her buried in?"

"A casket, of course. Where are you going with this?" Kathy was furious, but she sounded nervous, too.

"Okay, good. She was buried in a coffin. Maybe our information is wrong. Look, Kathy, I'm sorry about all this. We'll straighten it out, okay?" Lorna was buried in a coffin? April shivered. Something wasn't right; she could feel it.

"Where are you going with this, April? I need to know what you're doing," Kathy demanded.

"I'm doing whatever I have to, Kathy. Your father was a friend of mine." April was puzzled. What picture was she seeing?

"Fuck you. It doesn't sound like it," Kathy muttered before she hung up.

Thirty-eight

April's stomach knotted up as they continued north on Park Avenue. She felt bad about Kathy. Something was way off between her and her dad, also between her and her brother. It appeared that Kathy had been out of the loop as far as the family finances were concerned, and she sounded concerned about the murder rap threatening her brother. But April knew her distress went a lot deeper than that. Now she had to worry about her mother's ashes. What was that all about? April was getting a creepy idea, but she pushed it away as traffic slowed them down in Midtown.

By the time they got to Fiftieth Street, she'd stopped brooding about the Bernardinos. Ten minutes later, when she and Woody got to the tenth-floor Bassett apartment, she had other things to be concerned about. For one thing no uniform was there to secure the victim's home. Here was another unsettling parallel with the Bernardino case. The heirs had gotten here first.

"Okay, okay. I heard you. Come in if you're coming in." Brenda Bassett opened the door for the two detectives, then quickly turned her back on them.

April stepped inside and was stopped dead by the magnificence of a rose-colored marble floor in a gallery hung with oil paintings of horses and dogs in various hunt modes and dead animals in small still-lifes. Also portraits of richly dressed people picnicking on flawless lawns in front of grand houses. A huge chandelier lit the hall. Under the chandelier was an ornate table inlaid with tortoiseshell, mother-of-pearl, and brass. Under that was a thick Oriental carpet in bright blues and reds. Way over the top, it was just the sort of place to which a cop from a string-decorated house in Queens could really relate. It was the kind of display that only big money could swing.

Brenda Bassett walked around the center table to a mahogany door on the other side. She was a tall woman, probably close to six feet in high heels, and thinner than a healthy person should be. Ms. Bassett had no bosom and no fanny, and it struck April as perverse that someone with so much money wouldn't eat. To the Chinese, food was pretty much everything. Most memories of luxury and excess were of eating, never of going hungry.