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for my phone , and I handed it over. “I can describe better where we are. Then I think we should try to reach Noah.”
    “Call Noah first.” Cora Lee quit leaning on her cane. She glanced at the other two, then me, walked to the doorway and looked into the hall. “You locked the passageway door to your house, didn’t you, Elizabeth? I can see the front doors and also the back ones from here, and about the only other way out of this house is through my father’s conservatory. You don’t suppose whoever was here with Monty hasn’t left yet?”
    Elizabeth’s hand seemed to freeze in place as she started to punch the buttons on my phone. “The conservatory door’s locked with a padlock.”
    “How about the cellar? Could someone get out that way?” I looked around, wondering where the steps might be.
    “The only inside cellar steps are in my house and the only outside door is padlocked. I think we’d better leave. I can make those calls from the other house.”
    “Wait.” Cora Lee hurried back into the room, avoided the corpse, and stopped at the buffet to stare at the little glasses. “I thought so. Why, those are my mother’s. The original Smithwood Syllabub glasses.” She took a step closer to the buffet, but Elizabeth grabbed her arm.
    “Those glasses aren’t going anywhere, but we are. Right now.” She let go of Cora Lee and crept over to the door. She peeked around it toward the back doors then took a step into the wide hallway. “Seems to be all clear. Cora Lee, you go first. You have the cane.”
    I thought Cora Lee might balk, but after a second, she nodded, raised her cane up over her head, ready to strike, and bolted for the hallway, out the front door and onto the porch. Elizabeth, clutching my cellphone, was right behind her. Aunt Mary paused for a second, glanced at me and hurried after them. I looked quickly around the room, at the beautiful but dusty buffet, at the glasses on it and finally at the corpse and shuddered. There were details here I would need to remember later. I wasn’t married to a policeman for nothing. I took another deep breath, swallowed the gag it produced and headed for the front door. Elizabeth was waiting for me. “Follow Cora Lee,” she said. “Get inside my house and close the door but don’t lock it. Not yet.”
    “What are you going to do?” Aunt Mary sounded breathless. Actually, she sounded scared. So was I. “Elizabeth, this is no time for heroics. Let’s go.”
    “Oh, I’m coming. I want to make sure this door locks. It’s supposed to lock when it shuts, but I don’t trust it. I don’t know how that person thinks he’s going to get out, but it’s not going to be this way.”
    I opened my mouth to say something but couldn’t think what it might be. Aunt Mary pointed her light at the steps and Cora Lee started down, her cane lightly touching each step. Elizabeth gave the door one final tug and followed Aunt Mary, who was taking the stairs faster than I’d seen her do in years. I wasn’t far behind.

 
    Chapter Four
    T he four of us sat in Elizabeth’s house, in the large room she called the gathering room, and waited. We had immediately checked the doors to make sure we were locked in and whoever was out there was locked out. Only then had Elizabeth phoned 911. Then she called Noah. He arrived first.
    The tall young man who walked through the door had been transformed from the handsome, immaculate man I’d met at the airport. Noah had been in the barn when he got the call, feeding horses and mucking out stalls, and he looked it. His jeans were dirty, and his flannel shirt hung open over a sweaty blue T-shirt that clung to his well muscled shoulders and arms with a tenacity that would have inspired envy in the heart of any red-blooded male contender in a wet T-shirt contest. His black boots were manure-stained, as were his jeans that fit tightly over slim hips. He looked and smelled like a horse handler ending his day.
    “Sorry. I was just