“Right.”

“I’ll check it out.”

After a hesitation, A.J. asked, “How’s it going?”

“It’s going. Look, A.J., I’m in the middle of something. I’ll give you a call later, okay?”

“Of course!” she said quickly.

She clicked her cell shut and put her face in her hands.

The intercom buzzed.

“Miz Alexander,” Emma announced.

Glad for any distraction from her crumbling personal life, A.J. snatched the phone up. “Mother?”

“I found her!” Elysia said triumphantly.

“Found who?”

“Peggy Graham’s sister.”

“I didn’t know you were looking for her.”

“Of course I was looking for her. Who else would know whether Peggy killed herself?”

“How did you find her?” A.J. questioned uneasily.

“Oh, you know,” Elysia said airily. “The thing is, pumpkin, she’s agreed to meet with us this afternoon.”

“Meet with us?”

“Who else?”

“The police, for one.”

“Well, we should find out whether she has anything to say before we turn her over to the law, don’t you think?”

Mindful of Lily’s accusations-and Jake’s warnings-A.J. said, “It doesn’t work that way. I think maybe we should leave this to Jake.”

“It’s always worked this way for us in the past.”

“Mother, you make it sound as though we ran some kind of formal criminal investigation agency. The truth is, we’ve just poked around in other people’s business until they got fed up and reacted-sometimes, if you’ll recall-violently.”

Elysia scoffed at this reminder. “What does it matter what the catalyst for truth is?”

“It matters if we blow Jake’s case or get ourselves killed.”

“I. See.” Could there be two more ominous words in the English language?

“I just think-”

“ ‘Sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.’ ” Elysia interrupted with one of her favorite quotes from Shakespeare-one that A.J. hadn’t heard for a few years, and would have been happy to have kept it so.

“Mother.”

“Say no more. If you’re going to abandon me in my hour of need, I shall have to manage on my own. Fortunately I still remember a trick or two from my days on 221B Baker Street.”

A.J. groaned. Lily was going to love this. “What time is this meeting?”

“I’ll pick you up at the studio just after three,” Elysia said immediately, cheerfully.

Seventeen

“Peg was headstrong. Didn’t like not getting her way.”

A.J. and Elysia were sitting in Mart Crowley’s large, sunny garden sipping iced tea.

The garden was decorated with ball-sized Easter eggs and resin lambs and ducks. A giant blue inflatable bunny was lying like a puddle on the lawn.

Elysia inquired, “Was there any reason to suspect your sister’s death was not suicide?”

Mart’s jaw tightened. “Plenty. Peg was not the kind of person to take her own life. And I never knew her to take a sleeping pill. She was positive, forceful. Does that sound like someone who relied on sleeping pills or would kill herself?”

“Was she in ill health by any chance?”

“Nope. Strong as an ox.”

“She didn’t leave a note or anything like that?”

“No.” Mart added grudgingly, “But even if she did kill herself, she wouldn’t have left a note. Peggy had a real thing about her privacy. She wouldn’t have wanted any publicity.”

“Did you tell the police your suspicions?” asked A.J.

“Sure. They didn’t exactly tell me that everyone said the same thing, but I got the impression that a lot of people have trouble accepting a suicide verdict.”

Elysia meditatively tapped one polished fingernail on the glass-topped table. “Was your sister involved with anyone? Sometimes when romances end badly a person can experience an emotional low.”

“Ha!” At Mart’s harsh laugh the birds in the feeder took flight in bright flashes of color. “Not Peg. She wasn’t the sentimental kind. Oh, she had her disappointing affaires de coeur, but she wasn’t the kind of person to sit around brooding and feeling sorry for herself. No, she did her best to get even with the little ba-creep.”

A.J. had to admire that skilful look of attentive inquiry from Elysia.

“He was an artiste,” Mart said. She waved her hands as though playing pat-a-cake. “A sculptor. You know the kind of thing. Nudes that look like Buddhas and sumo wrestlers. My grandkids do a better job with Play-Doh. She should have known better at her age.”

“What happened?”

“What you’d expect. She paid a fortune for art classes she didn’t need and art supplies she never used. Why not, anyway? They were both consenting adults.”

“Why not, indeed,” murmured Elysia.

“But Peggy fell in love?” A.J. suggested.

Both Elysia and Mart snickered. “Bless your heart,” Mart said. “No, babycakes. Nothing like that. Oh, she was fond of the kid, I guess, but it was just a holiday romance. Except at home. You know the kind of thing.”

Elysia sighed and nodded wisely, auditioning for the part of Woman of the World.

“I don’t think she gave him another thought once it was over and she was busy with her friends and charity work. But then the letters started.”

“What kind of letters?” The penny dropped. “Blackmail?”

“Smart girl,” Mart said to Elysia. “Yes, blackmail. There were pictures. Graphic pictures-and plenty of them. Well, Peg was furious, but what could she do? She had her name and position to think of. Not that Peg really cared about that kind of thing, but you know how people can be. She was on a lot of committees with a lot of stuffed shirts who would have taken a dim view of any hanky-panky.”

“How was she approached? E-mail? Snail mail?”

“Yes. Real mail. The letters were sent from Hamburg and the payments were made to a post office box in Newton.”

“Newton,” Elysia said quickly.

“It’s the county seat,” A.J. pointed out. “We can’t make too much of that.”

“Where did she meet this boy?”

At the same time, A.J. asked, “Did they meet on a cruise by any chance?”

“No.” Mart sounded sure. “No, Peggy never went on a cruise. She was deathly afraid of water. To be honest, I can’t remember where she said she met him.”

“Where did your sister get her hair styled?” Elysia asked.

“Oh that overpriced place in Newton. The Salon or whatever they call it.”

A.J. and Elysia exchanged looks.

“Did she approach this boy after the blackmail began?”

“Ohhhh yes,” Mart said with grim satisfaction. “Did she ever. And she kept approaching him.” She laughed heartily. “He claimed he wasn’t blackmailing her. That it was nothing to do with him. He was romancing some other rich widow by then, and Peg did her best to stick a spoke in that wheel.”

“Did she try approaching the woman directly?”

“No. I asked her about that. She said it wouldn’t do any good. The woman wouldn’t believe her or was too crazy about the kid to care-and Peg hadn’t paid fifty thousand dollars to protect her good name just to reveal it to some stranger who was old enough to know better.”

“Fifty thousand dollars,” A.J. repeated weakly. “What about those blackmail payments? Did your sister ever try to find who was picking them up from the post office box? Whether it was this boy or not?”

Mart said slowly, “I don’t know. She talked about it at one point. I don’t know if she ever really did pursue it. If she did, she didn’t tell me about it. Peg was private. That’s why she let them extort money from her, I guess. Me? I’d have said publish and be damned.” She took a defiant swig of iced tea.

“Would Peg have been likely to confront the blackmailer?”

“It’s possible. If she could have done it safely-I mean, done it and kept her secret.”

“She should have gone to the police,” A.J. said. Both Mart and Elysia gave her scornful looks. A.J. insisted, “She’s dead because she didn’t speak up.”