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  Ford’s eyes shifted to the floor, then back to hers. “Of course,” he said. “Can you give us a few minutes? I’d like to make sure he’s up to it right now.”

  Brenna’s eyes fixed on the gazebo. A drizzle continued to fall from the slate-gray sky. “I’ll need to see where it happened,” she said.

  Ford seemed to notice the rain for the first time. “Of course.” He looked down at his watch, then at his gleaming Ferragamos. “The garden path’s a bit boggy this time of year. I’m afraid we’re running very late.”

  “Let me give her the tour,” Staggers said, standing up suddenly. “I watched the sheriff’s people do their thing. I can fill her in, if Ms. Kennedy has no objections.”

  Staggers moved with casual elegance through the French doors and into the house. Brenna left her briefcase and followed, assuming that was his intention. Staggers noticed her behind him as he opened the front door, headed for the driveway. “Oh, no, sorry,” he said. “I was just getting a golf umbrella from my car. I may have a pair of Totes in there, too.”

  “That’d be great,” she said. “I left home in such a hurry—”

  “Wait here.” Without apparent concern for his loafers or the hems of his tailored pants, Staggers stepped through a half-dozen puddles between the front door and the trunk of his Thunderbird. He returned with the red-and-white Ping umbrella already open and offered her an oversized pair of slip-on rubber boots. Raindrops clung to the stiff strands of his too-black hair and sparkled like diamonds on the silken shoulders of his suit jacket. She looked down at her favorite flats, $90 even at the Joan & David outlet where she’d found them. “Chivalry lives,” she said. “Thanks.”

  Staggers hoisted the umbrella. “Shall we egress?”

  Chapter 5

  Christensen probably wouldn’t have noticed the stain, except that he’d propped an unshaded lamp on a moving carton to light the dim office while he unpacked. Its harsh light flooded that corner of the white ceiling, which was discolored by an off-white patch the size and shape of a kidney. His every instinct told him to ignore it, but he couldn’t forget how the toilet-seal leak worried Brenna.

  He shoved his desk across the floor until it was just underneath the stain, then took off his shoes and climbed onto the desktop. The patch didn’t feel wet, but then the toilet hadn’t been flushed much in the past year. He pressed hard with his fingertip.

  Solid enough to overlook for now.

  The doorbell rang. At least that works, he thought as he checked his watch. Probably Simone’s mom dropping the kids off after the birthday party. He smoothed his hair and beard and picked his way across the front-hall clutter toward the door. Annie burst in as soon as he unlocked it.

  “Chuck E. Cheese swore at me,” she said.

  Taylor was right behind her. “A really bad word,” he added. “She didn’t hardly do anything, either.”

  Christensen looked up. Pamm D’Orio, Simone’s mom, forced a smile. He’d treated people for post-traumatic stress who looked more collected. Her dark hair, bound so neatly into a bun when she’d picked the kids up three hours earlier, had erupted and hung in undisciplined strands over her ears and forehead. She brushed a particularly unruly one off her face. A smear of tomato sauce marred her left shoulder, and on the thigh of her faded jeans was a cola-colored shoeprint. Two other children were waiting among a thicket of helium balloons in a minivan at the curb.

  “I brought it to the manager’s attention, but—” She waited until Annie and Taylor moved deeper into the house. “It wasn’t entirely unprovoked. He’ll be okay.”

  “Who?”

  “Chuck E. Cheese. The guy in the mouse suit. The manager said it’s not the first time the tail caused problems.”

  “Oh shit, Pamm.”

  “It’s fine, really. They have one of those little spaceship rides that lifts the kids about six feet off the ground, and the tail somehow got wrapped around the joystick. In a perfect half hitch.”

  Christensen swallowed hard. “Like the one she just learned in Indian Princesses?”

  She nodded. “His back was turned, and when it went up it sort of dumped him.”

  “Oh, Jesus.”

  “It’s fine. The mouse head is padded—it’s like a helmet, the manager said—so the guy’s fine.” Finally, she smiled. “It was a really bad word, though.”

  He drew a deep breath. How to handle this? “I’ll talk to them.”

  “Taylor’s clean, I think. He was playing Skee-Ball when it happened.” She nodded toward the minivan. “Better run.”

  “We had a problem there once before. They’re going to have her picture posted at the door, like at the post office.”

  “Say hi to Brenna,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Pamm, I’m sorry,” he called, but she didn’t turn around.

  He caught Annie by the arm as she blew past him, headed upstairs.Taylor passed them both, didn’t even slow down. “I think we need to talk about what happened, don’t you?”

  She sat on the bottom step and looked up at him. Her victim face. “He swore at me. I was scared.”

  “I’m sorry you were scared. Why do you think he used bad language?”

  She cupped her chin in her hand and pouted. “He’s not really a mouse.”

  “Annie—”

  “He’s a rat.”

  He stooped to look her in the eye. “How would you feel now if he’d gotten hurt?”

  Her lower lip trembled. She bit it to keep from crying, and he knew he’d said enough. When he hugged her, she smelled like ketchup.

  Chapter 6

  A flagstone path ran along the south side of the massive house, past an industrial-sized air-conditioning unit. It was raining harder now, but Staggers showed no interest in joining her beneath the umbrella as he led the way. An overhanging willow branch drenched him as he brushed past, but if the soaking caused him any discomfort it didn’t show.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to share this?” she asked. “It’s really coming down.”

  “I’m copacetic, thanks.” He didn’t turn around.

  The path split at the rear corner of the house. To the left, the flagstones led between the barbered shrubs along the back wall toward the patio and the six-foot hedgerow that bordered the gardens and central lawn. She couldn’t see over it, but she could smell the roses blooming on the other side.

  “Spring comes earlier in Fox Chapel than where I live,” she said, savoring their perfume. “It must be a zoning thing.”

  Staggers stopped and turned around. “How’s that?” Strands of damp black hair clung to his forehead, revealing the bald spot beneath his artful comb-over. She could tell by his eyes her humor hadn’t connected.

  “The roses. They bloom early here.”

  “They do?” He shrugged. “Mrs. Underhill loves the gardens.”

  “So she walks out here a lot?”

  His dark eyes narrowed. “She does?”

  “No, I’m asking. Does she?”

  Staggers seemed to weigh the question far more carefully than she intended. “Why do you want to know?”

  Brenna let it pass. He was either really dense or really paranoid, characteristics not uncommon in the private-security trade, but neither lent itself to casual conversation. Or maybe he was just playing dumb. “So what do you do exactly?” she tested.

  “This and that.”

  “I mean, how long have you worked for the Underhills?”

  “You ask a lot of questions.” His eyes narrowed again, but suddenly his face was split by a relaxed smile. “But of course, that’s your meatier. You’re on our side.”

  Métier?

  “Sorry if I seem a little overprotective,
” he said. “I’ve been dealing with cops for the last twenty-four hours. They have a propensity to twist things.”

  Brenna shifted the umbrella to her other hand. “You have an excellent vocabulary.”

  Staggers apparently took it as a compliment. “I’m taking a course. We’re supposed to practice. I’m a believer in self-improvement.”

  Dense, she decided.

  “ ‘The power to change is within us. Plug in!’ ” he said. “Know who says that? William DeForce. I’ve got the whole Summon Your Creative Potential audiotape series—that’s the one with the Word Power Plus tape—plus the Burning Path fire-walking primer. I personally think the man’s a genius.”

  “A genius,” Brenna repeated.

  “Damn straight. You read his first book?”

  Brenna shook her head.

  “Brilliant.”

  “Really?”

  “Get Behind Me and Stay There. Changed my life, I’ll be the first to tell you.” Staggers offered a conspiratorial wink. “Next paycheck, I’m going for the gusto: the whole ten-tape Ten Days to More Effective Decision-Making. Then look out world.”

  There was an odd charm to him that Brenna couldn’t quite define. She thought of the chubby, hopeless dork in Taylor’s class with the thick glasses and the billowing shorts that were forever bunched up his crack. Life wouldn’t be easy for him, she knew, but it was hard not to root for him.

  “You don’t seem overprotective,” she said. “You just seem really dedicated to the Underhills, that’s all.”

  “They’ve been so good to me. Gave me a job, a place to live. Treat me like their own. And they’ve been through hell these last few years. Can’t go through that with people and not feel some sort of, you know, affination.”

  “That’s nice. So you’re on staff here?”

  “Special projects and things. Troubleshooting. Very utilitarian.” He turned and started walking again. “Between you and me, I think the cops made them pretty uneasy. I’m just trying to help them understand what’s going on at that end.”

  “So you have a law-enforcement background?”

  Staggers seemed to take the question seriously, wrinkling his brow and bringing his hand to his chin, but all that thinking just produced a vague “No.”

  The path curved gently around the outside of the garden, and Staggers turned left into the first gap in the hedge. Suddenly they were surrounded by an orderly march of color—red, pink, yellow, white—perfect rows of rosebushes in early bloom stretching away from them like a thorny carpet. The gardens were even more impressive from here than they were from the covered veranda.

  “Unbelievable,” she said.

  The flagstones led through the roses and into a central lawn, then curved back toward the bordering roses. Beyond that was the gazebo. From ground level it was far bigger and farther away than Brenna had first thought. What she’d imagined from above as a little place to sit and enjoy the view looked more like a rotunda with open walls. If Vincent and Floss Underhill were married there, they probably could have put a couple hundred guests under the roof without much effort.

  Staggers stepped around a pile of clippings. While most of the bushes were perfectly trimmed, the section just ahead was overgrown. “Watch yourself through here,” he said. “Enrique’s been clearing.” He pushed back an overhanging branch and held it while she passed. As he again took the lead, she noticed blood dripping from the hand that had held the branch.

  “That rose must have got you,” she said.

  Staggers examined his hand. It was only a trickle, but mixed with the rain the blood ran in a steady red stream across his palm, making it look far worse than it probably was. A dark thorn was still deep in the flesh just below his ring. He didn’t flinch as he yanked it out.

  They climbed the five steps to the gazebo floor. Brenna turned back to look at the house. “Those are the greenhouses up at that end?”

  Staggers nodded.

  “And where did Mrs. Underhill—” She searched for the right word. “—fall?”

  Staggers pointed first toward a railing at the rear of the gazebo, then led her to it. She checked the location first, to see if sound traveling from where Floss must have stood would flow unimpeded to the greenhouses.

  “You clog?” she asked.

  Staggers seemed puzzled as he wrapped his silk handkerchief around his bleeding hand.

  “The dance, clogging?” she said. She stomped her feet, faking her way through a noisy dance step. The hollow thump of her shoes on the wooden floor resounded in the afternoon rain despite the borrowed rubber Totes. “Like that.”

  Staggers shook his head.

  “Is there a storage space or something under the gazebo, Alton?”

  He nodded. “Why?”

  “Just wondering.”

  Brenna approached the railing and ran her hand along it, sweeping raindrops into the chasm below. The gazebo deck was built out over the rim of the ravine, so that the initial drop was sheer and unobstructed. “Right here?”

  Brenna hated heights, but she looked down. There was a muddy divot ten feet below, where Floss Underhill must have first crashed against the ravine wall. She imagined the terror of falling, falling, seeing the rocky inevitable streaking up to crush you like a bug; the hopeless scrabbling as you tumbled, clutching at roots, tree trunks, outcroppings, anything; or, as seemed quite possibly the case, the mute horror of falling like a rag doll after the spine went numb and the brain lost contact with the nerves.

  “Big drop,” she said, leaning against the railing, catching herself when the top rail gave slightly against her weight. Clutching the rail tighter, she backed off and nudged it with her hip, this time with more weight. Wood splintered.

  “Alton, how long has this been broken?”

  “The cops were asking about that, too,” he said. “I don’t know.”

  Brenna looked to her right. Staggers was about ten feet away, watching her little experiment. She moved away from him, to the next section of railing. She turned and leaned casually against it. It didn’t give at all. She wandered to the center of the gazebo floor, very casual, then back to the section of railing to the right of where Floss Underhill went over. Again she leaned heavily against the top rail. Solid as a rock.

  “Ready to head back up?” Staggers said.

  “Another minute.”

  Back to the broken section. Brenna scanned the hillsides. “Wonderful view,” she said, filling her lungs with the cool, moist air. “Don’t you think?” She ran her fingers along the back side of the top rail, feeling for the connecting bolts. The wood was smooth the entire length. She leaned out, her stomach clenching as she did, and glanced down at the back sides of the supporting posts. Halfway down the one on the left, the wood around the bolt was splintered. Something heavy had been shoved against it from the deck side.

  Staggers hadn’t taken his eyes off her. “We should get back up to the house,” he said.

  Brenna tried to imagine all the possible scenarios, beginning with Ford’s own theory. Floss Underhill, unusually coherent, suddenly recognizing the hopelessness of her condition, slips away from her vigilant husband and heads straight for the gazebo to throw herself to her death.

  Negligence? Endangerment? Dagnolo wouldn’t dare. She could defend against charges like those in her sleep.

  She tried again. The groundskeeper, a disgruntled employee, sees the old woman wandering alone in the gardens. He coaxes her into the gazebo to get out of the rain. Then what? Decides to kill her? The railing splinters as they struggle? Maybe, but why? Right now, Brenna just couldn’t see any logic in it.

  She tried again: In a moment of unthinking rage after years of devoted care to his demented wife, Vincent Underhill snaps.
He shoves Floss and she stumbles backward. Her momentum carries her over the railing, splintering it, and into the ravine. Then, according to the groundskeeper, he leaves? Knowing she’d probably die down there? A jury might sympathize with Vincent Underhill. They’d find a way to acquit.

  She tried, finally, to imagine the worst case, as Dagnolo no doubt would: The overwrought Vincent finally snaps, picks his wife up off her feet, carries her to the railing, and drops her into the ravine, his forward motion carrying him into the railing and splintering it. Then, the deed already done, convinced it’s for the best, he leaves. That wouldn’t seem impulsive, and certainly not accidental. It had a brutality, a coldness that was missing from the other possibilities—something Dagnolo would love. That’s just the sort of thing that bugs a jury. If it ever came to that, the groundskeeper’s version and the physical evidence were going to be critical. She thought of the crime lab’s interest in Floss Underhill’s fingernails.

  “Alton, do you know if the police found any scratches or marks on Mrs. Underhill? Or anyone else?”

  Staggers shrugged. “They’re waiting for you up at the house. We should go.”

  “No idea?”

  Staggers walked away without looking up. They retraced the path to the house without talking, with only the sound of their shoes on wet stone and the rain’s monotonous rhythm on her umbrella.

  Vincent Underhill met them at the front door after having watched their approach from the rear veranda. Brenna twirled the golf umbrella to dislodge the raindrops clinging to its dome, folded it, and handed it to Staggers. She peeled the Totes off her feet and handed those over, too. “Thanks so much,” she said, expecting him to set them to dry beside the front door. Instead, he headed back out into the downpour with the umbrella and boots tucked under his arm.

  “He’s a good man. Loyal to a fault,” Vincent said as they watched Staggers slog to his car and return the rain gear to the trunk. Brenna felt the former governor’s eyes on her even before she turned to meet them. “Loyalty is something this family cherishes, Ms. Kennedy. We expect it, but we also reward it.”