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black leather pumps on her feet. “Fitzroy and I watch KEY News every morning.”
    “And I thank you for that,” said Eliza. “Now, if we could just get the ones younger than us to watch, we’d be in great shape. As it is, network news viewership is declining, even in the morning. Cable news is part of the problem, but more and more people are also getting their information via the Internet.”
    “Well, we don’t get cable and we don’t know how to use a computer,” said the woman. “Fitzroy and I are satisfied with things just the way they are. Where is he, anyway?” She craned her neck to search the room. “Oh, there he is.”
    The man who approached them had thinning white hair and a lined and thin yet still handsome face, and he walked with a slight limp. Standing erect, he firmly shook Eliza’s hand.
    “I’m Fitzroy Heavener, and it’s such a pleasure to meet you,” he said in an even, well-modulated voice. “We are great fans.”
    “I’ve been telling Miss Blake that, dear,” said his wife. “I told her we watch her every day.” The woman’s facial expression clouded, and she lowered her voice. “Of course we were glued to our chairs in July. I prayed for you every night.”
    “Unity, I’m sure Ms. Blake doesn’t want to be reminded of all that,” Fitzroy chided.
    “Please, call me Eliza,” she said, not commenting on the kidnapping. “And I wish I could stay and talk some more, but I have a driver waiting outside and a little girl at home who might not fall asleep until I get there. I just want to find Valentina and Innis and thank them.”
    Just then a shout came from across the room.
    “In the greenhouse! Innis is lying in a pool of blood in the greenhouse!”
    A stream of guests ran out the French doors and across the property.

CHAPTER 15

    E xcuse me. Pardon me.”
    Eliza made her way through the crowd that had gathered at the door. When she managed to get inside, she walked past the pots of plants and bags of soil and fertilizer. As she drew closer to the cluster of people gathered at the rear of the greenhouse, she noticed a single black shoe on the floor in front of one of the antique worktables.
    She could hear Valentina murmuring, “Oh, Innis, Innis. What have you done? What have you done to yourself?”
    Valentina was sitting on the ground, rocking back and forth gently and cradling her husband’s head in her lap. Her legs and hands were smeared with blood. All color had drained from her face.
    Innis, too, was very pale, his mouth open, his head drooping to one side. His limbs were splayed. His hands and bare feet bled from the deep incisions that pierced them. The left side of his crisp white shirt was drenched in blood.
    It took a while for Eliza to grasp what she was seeing. Altogether there were five places where the skin had been sliced open. Innis bore the five wounds that Jesus had suffered at Calvary the day he was crucified. Eliza knew there were stories about holy men and women who had mysteriously suffered the same wounds—wounds appearing seemingly without cause but known by them to have come from God as a bizarre sort of blessing.
    But seeing the hunting knife with its long, sharp blade lying beside his still body, Eliza immediately sensed that Innis had administered the wounds himself.
    Poor, sad, troubled man.
    Is that what Innis had meant when he said that he wanted to unite himself with St. Francis in the most vivid way possible?
    She cringed at the thought. Had Innis gotten so carried away with his religious fervor that this is what he’d done to himself?
    Eliza thought about their walk around the turtle fountain together earlier in the evening. Innis had been distressed, saying he was ashamed of himself. It had never even crossed her mind that he was desperate enough to kill himself. What had happened that was horrible enough to make suicide the only answer?
    Watching the emergency medical technicians arrive and begin working on Innis, Eliza realized