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house made her angry enough to shout. “You stay away from my mother, Ian, do you hear me?”
    “The whole world can hear you, sis.”
    “And stop calling me sis.” She looked around her, annoyed that she had allowed him to get to her, and took a deep calming breath. “Let go of the door,” she said between clenched teeth, “or I swear I’ll—“
    “A hundred thousand dollars, Abbie.” He was dead serious now. “That’s what I want for my silence. I’ll give you time to think about it, and while you do, take a look at this.” He pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket and handed it to her. “It’s just a copy, so don’t think tearing it to pieces is going to do you any good.”
    It was a letter, written a week or so before the Palo Alto fire. It was addressed to her grandfather and signed by her mother. In the letter, Irene told her father how badly Patrick was treating her. “I hate him so much, Daddy,” she had
    written at the end, “there are times I look at him when he’s sleeping and all I want to do is kill him.”
    “Where did you get that?” Abbie asked in a shaky, voice.
    Ian’s smug expression had returned. “From the kitchen table where Irene left it for a minute, not knowing I was there. She had threatened to tell my father about the pot she had found in my room, see, so I took the letter and made your mother a deal. I wouldn’t show my dad the letter if she kept quiet about the pot.”
    “And she agreed?”
    He laughed. “Of course she agreed. She knew damn well what my father would do to her once he saw that letter.”
    ‘ ‘How did one sheet of paper survive the fire when everything else in the house burned to the ground?”
    “I buried it in the backyard, along with some of my other stuff. After the fire, I went back and dug it out. I don’t know why I hung on to that letter all those years. With my dad dead, it had become useless, but for some reason I kept it. Then a couple of weeks ago, out of the blue, my good buddy Earl Kramer calls, and I knew that letter would come in handy.”
    Abbie’s tone turned skeptical. “You had it with you, in prison, all this time?”
    “No. It was in a suitcase I left with a friend. When I got out, I went to claim my things and there it was, exactly where I had left it, tucked in a book.”
    “This proves nothing,” Abbie said, shaking the letter and hoping she sounded more convincing than she felt. “People make threats all the time.”
    “Yes, but how many carry them out?”
    “I’ve already told you, my mother did nothing wrong! She risked her life to—“
    “Tell it to a jury.”
    He let go of the door and Abbie slammed it shut, afraid of what she might do to him if she listened to one more word. She tried to insert the key into the ignition, but her hand shook so badly, she had to try three times before she finally made the connection. Then the powerful engine came to life and she tore out of the parking lot.
    Five
    Her white-knuckled fingers gripping the steering wheel, Abbie drove down the familiar route home on auto mode, unable to stop thinking about Ian’s ridiculous demands. A hundred thousand dollars. Was he out of his mind? She didn’t have that kind of money. Except for thirty thousand dollars in zero coupons she had earmarked for her son’s education, and her prize money from the Bocuse—thirteen thousand dollars she had invested in a bank CD—she had nothing. Not even an IRA.
    A cold fear settled in the pit of her stomach. Whether or not Ian’s accusations were true, and she was certain they weren’t, he had the upper hand and he knew it. Just as she knew that he would have no qualms about carrying out his threats. The man had no conscience. The question was, would the police believe Earl Kramer? A man on death row? They might if they started questioning the McGregors’ neighbors, provided they were still around, and found out about Irene’s unhappy marriage, the countless arguments they had heard over those