"Angry enough to shoot your horses?"

"Well, if they were, why would they shoot those horses? The stable pony's worth maybe five hundred dollars. Neither of the other two horses showed much promise. Heroic Hope can't run again, but insurance covers it. If you wish to damage me, you shoot Hugger Mugger-no amount of insurance could replace him."

"Me either," I said. "Maybe they were chosen because their loss would not be damaging."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"True," I said. "If someone didn't want to damage you they could just not shoot the horses."

A good-looking woman with close-cropped hair and high cheekbones and blue-black skin came in pushing a tea wagon. There was coffee in a silver decanter and white china cups and a cream and sugar set that matched the decanter. She served us each coffee and departed. I added cream and two lumps of sugar. Clive took his black.

"So what kind of security did Jon Delroy do for you?" I said.

"Why do you ask?" Clive said.

"Because I don't know."

"And you find that sufficient reason?" Clive said.

"Admittedly, I'm a nosy guy," I said. "It's probably one of the reasons I do what I do. But that aside, doing what I do is simply a matter of looking for the truth under a rock. It's under some rock, but I don't usually know which one. So whenever I come to a rock, I try to turn it over."

"Doesn't that sometimes mean you discover things you didn't need to know? Or want to know?"

"Yes."

"But you do it anyway?"

"I don't know how else to go about it," I said.

Clive looked at me heavily. He drank some coffee. Outside the window some birds fluttered about. They seemed to be sparrows, but they were moving too quickly to reveal themselves to me.

"I have three daughters," he said. "Two of whom have inherited their mother's depravity."

"Penny being the exception?" I said.

"Yes. They have not only indulged their depravity as girls, they have married badly, and marriage has appeared to exacerbate the depravity."

Clive wasn't looking at me. He wasn't, as far as I could tell, looking at anything. His eyes seemed blankly focused on the middle distance.

"Depravity loves company," I said.

I wasn't sure that Clive heard me. He continued to sit silently, looking at nothing.

"Among Delroy's duties was keeping tabs on the girls," I said.

He was silent still, and then slowly his eyes refocused on me.

"And dealing with the trouble they got into, and their husbands got into," he said.

"Such as?"

Clive shook his head. Outside, the birds had gone away and at the window there was only the flutter of the curtains in the warm Georgia air. I put my empty coffee cup on the tray and stood up.

"Thanks for the coffee," I said.

"You understand," he said.

"I do," I said.

TWELVE

SINCE IT WAS evening, and I wasn't being feted at the Clive estate, I had the chance to lie on the bed in my motel and talk on the phone with Susan Silverman, whom I missed.

"So far," I said, "only one sister has made an active attempt to seduce me."

"How disappointing," Susan said. "Are there many sisters?"

"Three."

"Maybe the other two are just waiting until they know you better."

"Probably," I said.

"I have never found seducing you to be much of a challenge," Susan said.

"I try not to be aloof," I said.

We were silent for a moment. The air-conditioning hummed in the dim room. Outside, in the dark night, thick with insects, the full weight of the Georgia summer sat heavily.

"Are you making any progress professionally?" Susan said after a time.

"I'm getting to know my employer and his family."

"And?"

"And I may be in a Tennessee Williams play… The old man seems sort of above the fray. He's separated, got a girlfriend, looks better than George Hamilton, and appears to leave the day-to-day management of the business to his youngest daughter."

"What's she like?"

"I like her. She's smart and centered. She finds me amusing."

"So even if she weren't smart and centered…" Susan said.

"Actually, that's how I know she's smart and centered," I said.

Susan's laugh across the thousand miles was immediate and intimate and as much of home as I was ever likely to have. It made my throat hurt.

"What about the other sisters?" Susan said.

I told her what I knew.

"You have any comment on a woman married to a man who prefers little boys?" I said.

"It would probably be preferable if she were married to a man who preferred her."

"Wow," I said. "You shrinks know stuff."

"In my practice, I know what my patients tell me. I know nothing about Stonie and whatsisname."

"Cord."

"Cord," she said. "And there is no one-fits-all template for a woman married to a man who prefers boys-if what SueSue told you is true."

"SueSue says that Stonie is so sexually frustrated that she is a threat to every doorknob," I said.

"Maybe she is," Susan said. "Or maybe that's just SueSue's projection of how she herself would be."

"And Cord? You figure he married her to get cover?" I said.

"Maybe," Susan said. "Or maybe he married her because he loves her."

"I could not love thee half so much, loved I not small boys more?"

"Sexuality is a little complicated."

"I've heard that," I said. "What bothers me in all of this is that I've got a series of so-far inexplicable crimes, committed in the midst of this family full of, I don't even know the right word for it-dippy?-people. I mean, there ought to be a connection but there isn't, or at least I can't find it."

"You'll find it if it's there," Susan said. "But most families are full of dippiness. Perhaps you don't always find yourself so fully in the bosom of a client's family, and thus don't have it shoved in your face from such close range."

"Maybe. Do you think there's a connection?"

"I have no way to know," Susan said.

"Do you think a man who prefers boys, or a woman who is married to a man who prefers boys, would have a reason to kill some horses?"

"As I've said, mine is a retrospective profession, as is yours. We're much better at explaining why people did things than we are at predicting what they might do."

"Our business is generally after the fact," I said.

"Yes."

"You're not going to solve this for me, then."

"No. I'm not."

"And what about my sexual needs?"

"I could talk dirty on the phone."

"I think I'm too old for that to work anymore," I said.

"Then unless you're coming home soon, I guess you'll have to mend your fences with SueSue."

"And if I do?"

"I'll shoot her, and swear I was aiming at a horse."

"I thought you shrinks had too much self-control for jealousy," I said.

"Only during office hours."

THIRTEEN

I WAS JUST finished shaving when I got a call from Becker, the Lamarr sheriff's deputy.

"Got a horse shot over in Alton, in South Carolina. Thought I'd drive over and have a look. You want to ride along?"