"Have you?"

"What? Now you sound like them! My point is, Davey doesn't know anything."

Andrew winked at her. "But he knows how to unstop a toilet."

She groaned.

"Call a friend. Call Susanna Galway. Tess, if someone did steal a skeleton out of your cellar-"

"Then you need to be home with Princess Dolly. Go. If I get spooked, I'll call Susanna." She shoved him toward the door. "Six-year-olds come before a woman who barely an hour ago wanted to hit you over the head with a beer bottle."

"And five minutes ago wanted to jump into bed with me?"

Her breath caught, her eyes sparkling. There was no denying what they both knew to be true, and she didn't even try. "All the more reason to hit the road."

Andrew did so two minutes later, merging with Beacon Street traffic, noticing that night had come and the air had turned cooler. He drove back onto Beacon Hill.

The drapes on her windows were pulled, her lights on, no one out on her quiet street. He knew he had to leave her, that whether she called her family or friends, or got in her car and came north, was her choice to make. He thought about going back in there, packing her up and stuffing her in his truck- and when they got to Beacon-by-the-Sea, to hell with his guest room.

But that wasn't his call. Not tonight.

Tonight, his call was to go home to his daughter.

Nineteen

There was something about driving around with her dead brother in her trunk that Lauren rather liked. She glanced back at her car parked in front of Andrew's house and felt a terrible thrill. She knew it was sick. But it wasn't as if the bones she'd collected the other night were Ike, his essence, his soul. That part of him was in another place. A better place. She truly believed that.

What was left-it all depended on how she wanted to look at it. DNA. Material for forensic scientists. Evidence for the police. A problem for her husband and his sponsors at the Pentagon, because, of course, the wife of Dr. Richard Montague couldn't be someone who had bones in her trunk, no matter how innocent her motives.

It was her brother. She was the only family Ike had left. She could decide whether his death was something that needed to destroy other people's lives. He'd trust her to make that decision.

"My brother," she whispered to herself as she mounted the front-porch steps. She'd worn a lavender cashmere sweater today, although she could have gotten away with something lighter. But it was cool and damp out on the point, surprisingly still.

Inside the house, Lauren could hear Dolly Thorne running, yelling excitedly, "Lauren's here! Lauren's here!" In a moment, she was at the screen door, waving, even as Harley Beckett materialized behind her. Dolly jumped up and down. She was wearing a crown of glow-in-the-dark planets and stars. "Do you want to see Tippy Tail's kittens?"

Harl opened the door a crack. "What's up?"

"Nothing. I stopped by to see Andrew."

"Not here."

"I see." Even under the best of circumstances, Harl wasn't a great conversationalist. Lauren used to be intimidated by him, but she'd finally told herself that a man capable of restoring an eighteenth-century chair to its original beauty couldn't be that awful, no matter how surly or how many times he'd been shot. She smiled at him. "Well, I have a little present for Dolly."

Harl didn't like that. His eyes flickered with disapproval, but Dolly pushed open the door and shot out onto the porch. "A present for me?"

"It's just a little present. I made it myself." She'd glued multicolored sparkles to a bamboo plant stake, handed it to Dolly with a flourish. "I thought a princess might need a magic wand."

"Ooooooh! It's beautiful." Dolly whipped it around, more like a sword than a magic wand. "Harl, look!"

"What do you say?"

She smiled up at Lauren. "Thank you, Mrs. Montague."

"You're very welcome."

"Do you want to adopt one of Tippy Tail's kittens? Harl says they all have to go to new homes."

"Well, I don't know, I haven't thought about it. I already have three poodles."

"I don't like dogs. I like cats."

Harl placed a protective hand on Dolly's shoulder. "Inside. Your dad'll be home soon." He shifted briefly to Lauren. "I'll turn the porch light on so you don't trip."

Talk about being shoved along your way. Lauren manufactured a cool smile. "Thank you."

But he and Dolly were already through the door. The light came on, as promised.

Lauren didn't want to leave.

She wanted Andrew to know what she'd done for him. Not the particulars. In general.

She popped open her trunk. The black garbage bag was still there. If the weather got hot, would it stink? She thought she could smell death but wondered if it was the nearby ocean, low tide, her imagination.

"Ike. Sweet Jesus."

They'd talked about dying when they were kids.

He'd never wanted to go out quietly, in his sleep. He'd wanted to see death coming.

He had, she thought as she climbed back behind the wheel.

And that was something good to hold on to in this ugly business.

Moving the kittens was Harl's idea. He stayed with Dolly while Andrew rounded them up. The carriage house was pitch-dark, no stars or moon shining through the clouds, no streetlights. He had all the lights on out back at his place, but it didn't help. He wished he'd taken a bigger flashlight and imagined Tess here alone Friday night, hearing a cat yowling through the floorboards.

Tippy Tail didn't appreciate being moved. She clawed him, but he hung on. The kittens stayed asleep in their box.

He dumped them in the pantry, then had a beer in the kitchen with his cousin.

Harl pointed to the cut on Andrew's arm. "Damn cat do that?"

Andrew shook his head. "Barroom brawl."

"Do I want to know the details?"

"No."

Harl grinned. "I didn't think so."

They drank their beers, and Andrew told his cousin what he'd learned in Boston, which was nothing. "Everything checks out with Tess. There's no reason to suspect she made up this skeleton sighting just to rattle our chains."

"Anyone else's?"

"Whose? Ike's, to draw him out? Lauren's? Rich-ard's? He's up for a Pentagon appointment. I don't see why Tess would care about that."

"Someone slips her a few bucks, tells her to think of something that'd undermine Montague's appointment." Harl shrugged, getting to his feet. "It could happen."

"Anything could."

"Yeah. We have to follow the facts." He rinsed his bottle and set it on the counter. "By the way, I called Rita Perez tonight. I'm volunteering at Dolly's school. I figure, hell, I can't have six-year-olds thinking I'm a frigging bank robber."

Andrew hid his smile behind a swallow of beer. "What're you going to do?"

"Help at snack time. Sounds like hell on earth, doesn't it?"

"School's out in a few weeks. If it's that bad, you don't have to go back next year."

Harl grunted as he made his way to the door. "If it's that bad, I'm not going back next week. Screw it. I just hope parents don't complain. I'm not your average first-grade volunteer, you know."

"I won't complain. I'm a parent."

"Yeah. Like you're your average father."

He left, and Andrew checked on the kittens. Tippy Tail was still agitated, but she was in the box, nursing her kittens, no sign she planned to abandon them. He made sure the doors were secured in case she decided to move them back to the carriage house.

On his way to the den, he thought about calling Tess and decided against it. Harl was right. They had to follow the facts, wherever they lead.

Lauren Montague had stopped by with a magic wand for Dolly. Harl said Lauren was pale, on edge. Because of the skeleton report? Did she suspect the remains were her brother's? If she did, why not sound the alarm with the police?