“Well, it hasn’t, and until it does, that looks suspicious.”

“What else?” I asked, knowing there had to be more. I could hear her breathing on the other end, the click of a lighter and the sharp inhale as she lit up.

“They’re saying your alibi won’t hold up.” Another drag. “They’re saying that you lied about your whereabouts.”

There it was.

“Why do they believe that?” I asked, amazed that my voice sounded as calm as it did.

“I don’t know, but it’s firm. Add the money factor into it and it looks solid.”

“You’re talking about…”

“Yeah, yeah. The fifteen million.”

“Word spreads fast,” I said.

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“Are there other suspects?” I asked.

“You know, I’d have been worried if you’d not asked that question.”

“Are there?” I pressed.

“Yeah. There are. There were several business deals where the other guy got the short end. Forgive me for saying this, but your father was a real ass. He was sharp but not exactly scrupulous. He screwed over a lot of people.”

“Anybody in particular?”

“A few. But nobody else with such an obvious incentive. Some criminal defendants who got out around the time he was killed. They’re being checked out. The DA was pulling out all the stops until some question came up about your alibi. Now Mills has forced his hand. He’s not backing you anymore.”

I was not surprised. Mills must have been all over Douglas about my going to the crime scene. She’d let me be there because he’d asked her to. Nobody would care about that if the case was shot because of it. In the end, it was her call. She’d swing if the wind blew the wrong way on this one. Normally, I’d have felt badly for Douglas, because our friendship had caused this problem, but not now. Now I couldn’t have cared less.

Douglas would prosecute the case, whoever they arrested. Jean or me. That meant that Douglas was coming after the family, and the past was irrelevant. I remembered him from the parking lot, the way his face had hung so slackly around his ripe-plum nose. I was meat to him now; he’d swallow me or spit me out, just like anybody else.

“Who says my alibi is no good?” I asked, knowing she couldn’t help me.

“Don’t know. But it’s somebody with a reason to know different. The cops believe it. Mills says she liked you from the get-go. She’s all but accused you of hampering her investigation. But the pressure’s on her. Everybody knows she let you onto the crime scene. Now she sees cracks in your story, and word is, she’s like a kid in a candy store.”

“Mills is a bitch.”

“I try not to go there, but I can’t disagree. I know she hates lawyers, but I can’t blame her for that, either.” She said it jokingly, but it fell flat. “Sorry,” she said. “Just trying to cheer you up.”

“My wife can swear that I was with her all night.” I just wanted to try the alibi on, see what she would make of it.

“Biased testimony, Work. Any prosecutor worth a lick could shoot holes in it before breakfast.”

She was right. Barbara’s testimony was better than nothing, but not by much, especially in light of Ezra’s will. A jury could well imagine a wife would lie for her husband. Throw in fifteen million dollars and it was a given.

“There’s a bright side to all this,” Tara told me. “Want to hear it?” She went on before I could answer. “Do you know this lawyer, Clarence Hambly?”

“Yes.”

“He’s saying that you knew nothing about the will. That your father gave explicit instructions that you not know of it under any circumstances. That’s taken some of the wind out of Mills’s sails. Hambly is very credible.”

I pictured the old man staring down at me from his lofty height, a twist of distaste on his patrician mouth. But just because Hambly believed it didn’t make it so. That’s what Douglas would argue to the jury. I could hear him: I would never doubt the word of this upstanding gentleman. He would beam at the jury and place a hand on the old man’s shoulder to show that they were on the same side. I am quite certain that he never discussed the will with this defendant. He’d stop and point his meaty finger, damning me. But there are other ways, ladies and gentlemen. And the defendant is a smart man, an educated man. Here he’d raise his voice. A lawyer! Who for ten years shared an office with the decedent. Who for thirty-five years had access to the poor man’s home… His own father!

That’s how he’d play it. It’s how I would. He’d need a motive.

Fifteen million dollars, ladies and gentlemen. A lot of money…

“And don’t forget the obvious,” the reporter said. “They still don’t have a murder weapon. It’s a big hole.”

Not as big as the one in my father’s head, I thought, amazed at my own callousness. If anything, my dislike for the man had grown since his death. “Is there anything else?” I asked.

“One more thing,” she told me. “It’s important.”

“What?”

“I don’t think you did it. That’s why we’re talking. Don’t make me regret it.”

I understood what she meant. If word escaped that she’d told me these things, her sources would dry up. She could face criminal charges.

“I understand,” I told her.

“Listen, Work. I like you. You’re like a little boy playing dress-up. Don’t get caught with your pants down. It wouldn’t be the same without you. I mean that.”

Unsure what to say, I thanked her.

“And when the time is right,” she said, “you talk to me and me only. If there’s a story, I want an exclusive.”

“Whatever you want, Tara.”

I heard her light another cigarette. She muttered something under her breath. Then her voice firmed.

“This last bit’s going to hurt, Work, and I apologize. But it’s out of my hands.”

A horrible pit opened in my stomach, and I felt my heart drop through it. I knew what she was going to say before she said it. “Don’t, Tara,” I said. “Don’t do it.”

“It’s my editor’s call, Work. The story’s going to run. It won’t be specific, if that helps. Sources close to the investigation say… that sort of thing. It won’t say you’re a suspect, just that you’re being questioned in connection with the murder.”

“But you’ll use my name?”

“I can buy you a day, Work, maybe two, but don’t count on it. It’s going to run and it will be front page.”

I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice. “Thanks for nothing.”

After a long silence, Tara said, “I didn’t have to tell you at all.”

“I know. It doesn’t make it any easier.”

“I gotta go, Work. Take care.” She hung up.

I sat in silence for a long time, thinking of what she’d said. I tried to picture it, the train wreck that was now bearing down on me, but I couldn’t. The next day, or the day after that. It was too huge, too intense. I thought of the other things she’d said-because I had to. I absolutely had to.

Black Talons. They were hard to come by. That Ezra’s own gun had been used against him now seemed a certainty. I thought of my last visit to his house, of the bed upstairs and the place where someone had curled up to rest or to weep. Jean had been there, looking for some kind of peace, I guessed. It was where it had started, on the night that now seemed so long ago. She would have gone there for the gun; we all knew that’s where he kept it. How many times, I wondered, had she returned to that place, and what did she think while there? Would she undo the past if she could?

Then there was the fifteen million. No one would believe I had no use for it. It would appear to be an obvious and self-serving lie. And the cops knew that I’d not been home with Barbara. That presented a huge question. Where had that information come from? Suddenly, I thought of Jean, how her mouth had worked wetly beneath those kaleidoscope eyes… Done is done… Daddy’s dead and done is done.

But I couldn’t keep my mind off Tara. Why was she helping me? What was it she’d said? That I was like “a little boy playing dress-up.” That’s how she saw me, a little boy in his father’s suit. She was right, I realized, but for the wrong reasons. It looked like dress-up because my father’s suit would never fit. The problem, however, was not the size of the man, but the choice of suit, a truth I was gradually coming to accept. The vultures were circling, looking for a carcass, a body to feed the clanking machine that was justice. And I knew for fact that my father could never have put himself in the sights. He could never have made that sacrifice. I prayed that I would be strong enough to do what had to be done. I pictured my sister, and found that it helped. But the panic was still there, waiting, and I pushed the thoughts away, pounded them down with something like hatred.