The lean red fox in the road ahead hesitates when my Thunderbird speeds toward him and then he darts back into the bushes he came from. He’s staring after the car when I check the rearview mirror, his head and neck sticking tentatively into the road. He lifts his aristocratic snout in the air as he reemerges, apparently unhappy about riffraff in the neighborhood. Slow down, I tell myself. Even the wildlife deems this errand ridiculous.

And it is. The Kydd knows better than to get involved with a client. And what interest would Louisa Rawlings have in a boy little more than half her age? For God’s sake, she’s old enough to be his mother. Hell, she’s old enough to be his big brother’s mother too.

My head hurts.

But my stomach feels worse. It knots when I pull into the Rawlingses’ driveway. The Kydd’s red pickup is here, right where it was yesterday, roof and hood dew covered. Its windows are fogged, just as they were yesterday, and tiny dew-fed rivers once again trickle down the misty glass.

The front door of Louisa’s house is closed, but predictably unlocked, and I barge in as if I’m a one-woman SWAT team. From the foyer, I hear the steady pelting of water in the first-floor shower. I pause for just a second—haste is often an effective substitute for courage—and then crack open the door to the master suite.

Apparently Louisa got first dibs on the Queen’s Spa. The Kydd is ensconced in her king-size bed, leaning against a mountain of pillows, the lilac sheets pulled up to his stomach. He’s naked above the sheets, one arm draped over Pillow Mountain, his hand pressed against a bedpost, a lit cigarette dangling between his fingers. I didn’t know he smoked.

He jumps about a foot and a half when the door squeaks.

“Jesus Christ, Marty. What the hell are you doing here?” He bolts upright in the bed, yanks the sheets up to his chest, and damn near drops his cigarette underneath them in the process.

“What am I doing here?” I find it hard to believe we’re having this conversation. “What am I doing here? That’s not really the question, is it, Kydd?”

He says nothing for a moment, stares down at the sheets he’s clutching as if he’s never seen them before, and then returns his gaze to me. His expression suggests he’s genuinely surprised to realize he’s not wearing a suit. “Please,” he says finally, swallowing hard and pointing toward the bathroom door. “Give me a minute. I’ll meet you outside.”

“You’ll meet me inside,” I tell him. No need to invite the neighbors to this gathering. There aren’t any neighbors at the moment, of course. But still. “In the sunroom,” I add.

He nods like a bobble-head doll. He’d agree to meet me in Hades right now if it’d get me out of Louisa Rawlings’s boudoir. He throws his long legs over the side of the bed farthest from me, careful to keep the sheets pulled up above his hips.

“And Kydd.”

“What?” He twists back toward me, then jumps up and does a little dance behind the sheets. He really did drop his cigarette this time. “What?” he repeats.

“Don’t forget your goddamned pants.”

“Are you out of your mind, Kydd?” I slam the sunroom doors and don’t wait for an answer. It’s pretty clear that he is. “She’s a client, for Christ’s sake.”

“But she won’t be,” he says. “Not after today.”

“What in God’s name are you talking about? You’re not making any sense.” I don’t normally hiss, but it comes naturally at the moment.

The Kydd’s wearing faded blue jeans and a short-sleeved under-shirt. He’s barefoot and beltless. “Marty,” he says, his tone suggesting this is nothing more than a minor misunderstanding, “Louisa didn’t have anything to do with her husband’s death.”

“Oh, really?”

“Really.”

“This is your professional opinion?”

“It is,” he says, his grin not nearly sheepish enough.

I throw my hands in the air.

“Marty,” he tries again, “she didn’t. And it’s obvious she didn’t. Mitch Walker will see that as soon as he talks with her this morning. That will be the end of this whole damned thing. She won’t be a client anymore.”

The sunroom doors open. Enter Louisa, elegant as ever, even with wet hair. She’s in a pale blue dressing gown—satin. It hangs to her ankles, clings to each curve along the way. “Marty,” she says, sounding genuinely happy to see me. “Good morning.”

Good morning? Has the world gone tilt?

“Oh,” she says, looking from the unshaven, almost-dressed Kydd to me. She seems to recall—slowly—the connection between the two of us. “Oh, dear,” she adds after a pause. “This is awkward.”

“No,” I tell her. “We passed awkward a long time ago, Louisa.”

The doorbell. This is swell. With any luck it’s a delegation from the Board of Bar Overseers, preferably with a Cape Cod Times reporter in tow. A photographer would add a nice touch too. This is a Kodak moment if ever there was one.

Louisa turns to answer the bell, but she hesitates at the sunroom doors. “Perhaps you should wait here, Kevin,” she says to the Kydd.

He nods.

“Kevin?” I repeat, gaping at him.

“It is my name,” he says.

I leave him standing shoeless in the sunroom and follow Louisa’s blue satin sashay toward the persistent chimes of the doorbell. My stomach is already knotted, but the knots develop knots of their own when I see that she’s headed toward the kitchen door. It’s a Cape Codder who’s come to call, a local, and whoever it is has given up on the doorbell and has started knocking. Hard.

Louisa’s kitchen door has a dead bolt at eye level, but apparently it isn’t engaged. The persistent knocks of the visitor push the door partially open as we approach. Louisa gets to it ahead of me and pulls it open the rest of the way. Her polite smile suggests it’s Avon calling. “Can I help you?” she says.

“Mrs. Rawlings?”

I freeze. I know that voice. It’s Tommy Fitzpatrick, Chatham’s Chief of Police.

“Yes,” Louisa replies. “That’s me.”

“You’re under arrest,” he says, “for the murder of your husband, Herbert Andrew Rawlings.”

CHAPTER 14

Tommy Fitzpatrick looks only slightly surprised when I step into the doorway beside Louisa. He stands on the deck, warrant in hand, Detective Lieutenant Mitch Walker at his side. They’re the same height, and in the glare of the morning sunshine they look like uniformed negatives of each other: the Chief fair-skinned and strawberry blond; Mitch Walker swarthy and dark-haired. The Chief’s car sits in the driveway, engine running and lights swirling. Two cruisers idle behind it, a pair of troopers in each.

Mitch Walker recites Miranda warnings at Louisa and the Chief volunteers the warrant to me. I take it, though I know I needn’t bother. Tommy Fitzpatrick does it right—always. He wouldn’t have come here this morning unless one of his minions had jumped through all the proper procedural hoops beforehand. And my involvement in the case has nothing to do with it. Tommy would do it right even if the accused were pro se, representing herself.

Louisa’s smile has vanished. She turns away from Mitch Walker, ignores his monologue. Her dark, moist eyes dart from the Chief to me, panic beginning to set in. “There must be some misunderstanding,” she says, leaning into the doorknob with one hand, fingering her slender throat with the other. Her voice is raspy, barely more than a whisper.

No one answers. Instead, Tommy Fitzpatrick faces me. “Taylor Peterson hauled the body in at about four this morning,” he says, “with his first codfish catch of the day.”

Louisa gasps and I put my hands up, signaling her to be quiet. She covers her mouth with a fist.