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support her—we had a verbal contract, and it did not expire until mid-July. But you know all of that, don’t you, Rick?”
    Bragg stared and Hart stared back. Then Bragg glanced at Francesca. “I find it highly unlikely that you just returned to town and went to see Daisy to discuss a few bills.”
    â€œI don’t care what you think,” Hart said, finally appearing annoyed. “I never have and I never will.”
    Bragg looked ready to explode—or arrest him. Smiling tightly, he said, “Considering your mistress has been murdered, I think you had better start to care what I think.”
    Hart smiled as tightly, and for one moment, Francesca thought he was about to smash his fist in Bragg’s face.
    Francesca hated the hostility between the two brothers. She gripped Hart’s arm. “A terrible murder has been committed,” she said tersely. “There is no point in the both of you going at each other’s throats. We need to find Daisy’s killer. We owe her that.”
    Bragg gave her an undecipherable look and walked away, running his hand through his hair. Hart faced her, his rigid expression softening. “You don’t need to be here right now,” he said.
    Francesca gaped. “Of course I do!” she cried. She could nottell him, not in front of Newman and Bragg, how worried she was about his apparent involvement. “When we go home, we will go home together,” she whispered.
    Before Hart could object, Bragg returned to them, apparently having recovered his composure. “Let’s leave the subject of why you went to see Daisy aside for the moment. Walk me through what happened when you arrived.”
    Some of Hart’s tension eased. “I left the house around half past eleven, I think. When I arrived at her home, I saw that there were no lights on downstairs. No one answered the knocker, and that was odd. I did not have a good feeling at this point. So I tried the door, found it unlocked and walked in.”
    Francesca could not breathe and her heart raced. The mental note she had made earlier was glaring at her now. Hart had said he had left home at eleven, not half past. Was he deliberately misleading Bragg and the police, or had he, like most witnesses, made an innocent factual error? And she wondered again, if he had really left home at 11:00 p.m., what had he been doing for nearly an entire hour in that house? Was that why he was misleading the police?
    Almost as if he were a mind reader, he turned to Francesca. “What time did you get there?”
    She hesitated, her instincts rising up now. She did not want to lie, but she desperately wanted to protect Hart.
    â€œFrancesca?”
    She wet her lips. “Before midnight,” she lied. “I imagine it was just a few minutes after Hart.” She could barely believe that she was lying to a man she had once loved and still cared so deeply for.
    Bragg rubbed his jaw. “Calder?”
    â€œI found Daisy shortly after I first walked in,” he said, not looking at Francesca now. “It appeared as if she had been stabbed in the chest, many times. No one could survive such an attack, but I did check for her pulse.” He spoke very calmly, as if theywere discussing the next day’s weather, but he was gripping the back of the chair he had been sitting in and his knuckles were white.
    Francesca could not see his expression, because he had looked down, but she gave up all pretense now. Hart was distraught and anguished. He certainly still cared for Daisy, and Francesca was hurt and jealous, dear God.
    But Francesca wanted to comfort him, too, and she moved closer to him. Instantly he glanced at her. She sensed he wanted to reassure her, and any grief he might be feeling was masked. Then he looked at Bragg. “I sat with her for a moment,” he said calmly. “I was in shock. I was very much in shock.”
    Bragg nodded. “There’s blood on your