"Probably didn't want to be lured away from the horse."

"Hugger Mugger," Becker said.

I looked at him. He was expressionless.

"Of course Hugger Mugger," I said. "What other horse are we talking about?"

Becker grinned.

"So nobody sees anything. Nobody but the guard hears anything," Becker said. "We're looking for footprints, but it's been raining hard since yesterday afternoon."

"Crime scene isn't going to give you much," I said.

"You Yankees are so pessimistic."

"Puritan heritage," I said. "The family's been told?"

"Yep. Told them myself."

"How were they?"

"Usual shock and dismay," Becker said.

"Anything unusual?"

Becker shook his head.

"You been a cop," he said. "You've had to tell people that somebody's been murdered, what would be unusual?"

"You're right," I said. "I've seen every reaction there is. Delroy been around?"

"Not yet," Becker said.

We were quiet for a while, standing in the rain, partly sheltered by the tree, looking at how dead Walter Clive was.

"Why'd you call me?" I said.

"Two heads are better than one," Becker said.

"Depends on the heads," I said.

"In this case yours and mine," Becker said. "You been a big-city cop, you might know something."

I nodded.

"Between us," Becker said, "we might figure something out."

I nodded some more. The rain kept coming. Walter Clive kept lying there. Behind us a van with Columbia County Medical Examiner lettered on the side pulled up and two guys in raincoats got out and opened up the back.

"Here's what I think," I said. "I think that you are smelling a big rat here, and the rat is somewhere in the Clive family, and they are too important and too connected for a deputy sheriff to take on directly."

"They're awful important," Becker said.

"So you're using me as a surrogate. Let me take them on. You feed me just enough to keep me looking, but not enough to get you in trouble. If I come up with something, you can take credit for it after I've gone back to Boston. If I get my ass handed to me, you can shake your head sadly and remark what a shame it was that I'm nosy."

"Man do that would be a devious man," Becker said.

"Sho' 'nuff," I said.

NINETEEN

IT WAS STILL raining when they buried Walter Clive's cremated ashes. It had rained all week. After the funeral, people straggled into the Clives' house and stood under a canopy in the backyard looking glum and uncomfortable as they ordered drinks. I was there, having nowhere else to be, and I watched as people began to get drunk and talk about how Walter would have wanted everyone to have a good time at his funeral. People began to look less glum. Just the way old Walt would have wanted it. Penny was running things. She was sad and contained and doing fine. Jon Delroy was there in a dark suit. The family lawyer was there, a guy named Vallone, who looked like Colonel Sanders. Pud and SueSue, still sober, stood with Stonie and Cord. They were dressed just right for a funeral. Everyone was dressed just right for a funeral, except one woman who wore an ankle-length cotton dress with yellow flowers on it. Her hair was gray-blond and hung straight to her waist. She wore huge sunglasses and sandals. Penny brought her over.

"This is my mother," she said, "Sherry Lark."

"It was nice of you to come," I said, to be saying something.

"Oh, it's not Walter. It's my girls. In crisis girls need their mother."

I could see Penny wrinkle her nose. I nodded.

"Yes," I said.

"Walter was lost to me an eternity past, but the girls are part of my soul."

"Of course," I said. "Have you remarried?"

"No. I don't think marriage is a natural thing for people."

She was drinking what looked like bourbon on the rocks. Which was probably a natural thing for people.

"So is Lark your, ah, birth name?"

"No. It's my chosen name. When I left Walter I didn't want to keep his name. And I didn't want to return to my father's name, about which I had no choice when I was born."

"I had the same problem," I said. "They just stuck me with my father's name."

She paid no attention to me. She was obviously comfortable talking about herself.

"So I took a name that symbolizes the life I was seeking, the soaring airborne freedom of a lark."

She drank some bourbon. I nodded and smiled.

"I relate to that," I said. "I'm thinking of changing my name to Eighty-second Airborne."

She didn't respond. She was one of those people that, if you say something they don't understand, they pretend you haven't spoken.

"Come along, Mother," Penny said. "You really must say hello to Senator Thompson."

Penny gave me a look over her shoulder as she moved her mother away. I smiled neutrally. I had a beer because I was sure that's how old Walt would have wanted it. I took a small swallow. A black woman in a little maid's suit passed a tray of stuffed mushrooms. I declined. Smoked salmon with endive and a dab of crиme fraоche came by. I declined it too. The governor of Georgia came in. He went straight to Dolly, the bereaved mistress, and took her hand in both of his. They spoke briefly. He kissed her cheek. She gestured toward her son, and Jason and the governor shook hands. Dolly's face was pale beneath her perfect makeup, and the attractive smile lines around her mouth were deeper than I remembered.

The rain drummed steadily on the canvas canopy roof, and dripped off the edges in a steady drizzle. Dutch, the family Dalmatian, made his way through the crowd, alert for stuffed mushrooms, and found me and remembered me and wagged his tail. I snagged a little crab cake from the passing tray and handed it to Dutch. He took it from me, gently, and swallowed it whole. I watched Stonie and Cord. They stood together, looking very good, and taking condolences gravely. But when they weren't talking to someone, they didn't talk to each other. It was as if they had been accidentally placed together in a receiving line, one not knowing the other. Pud and SueSue were also receiving condolences. But they were less grave. In fact they were now drunk. Pud's face was very red. He was sweating. He and SueSue appeared to be arguing between condolences, although SueSue's laughter erupted regularly while she was being condoled. There was a smell of honeysuckle under the canopy and a faint smell of food coming from the kitchen as the hors d'oeuvres were prepared. Dutch sat patiently in front of me and waited for another hors d'oeuvre. I gave him a rye crisp with beef tenderloin on it, and horseradish. He took that in as quickly as he had the crab cake, though he snorted a little at the horseradish.

"You'd eat a dead crow in the street," I said to him. "And you're snorting at horseradish."

He pricked his ears a little at me, and waited. Penny came back alone. She was carrying a glass of white wine, though as far as I could tell, she hadn't drunk any.

"I apologize for my mother."

"No need," I said.

Penny laughed.

"The last hippie," she said.

"How are she and Dolly together?" I said.

"We try to see that they're not together," Penny said.

"Was Dolly in your father's life when Sherry was around?"