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were there. All three made the classic mistake of looking toward the shout as reporters and cameras converged on them. They had no security, and their only defense against the onslaught was to avert their faces and hurry toward the limo. A couple of men in suits, rent-a-cop types, got between the women and the oncoming horde. A uniformed driver—part of the package provided by the funeral home, Finn had no doubt—jumped out to open the rear door for them.
    The tilt of Riley Cowan’s head and her long strides as they ate up the grass radiated anger. Those oversized dark glasses hid her eyes, but her jaw was rigid with tension and her mouth was hard with it.
    â€œI want to hold off approaching her directly for a little longer,” Finn replied to Bax, watching as the trio reached the limo.
    Stonily ignoring the shouting, swarming reporters that her woeful security team was doing a piss-poor job of holding at bay, Riley got in last, sliding into the car behind her mother- and sister-in-law. He got the impression that she was protective of them, which was another interesting thing under the circumstances. Since she’d divorced the Crown Prince, he would have expected her relationship with her in-laws to be less than cordial.
    If nothing happened in a day or two, he decided, he would pay her a visit, but for the moment he preferred to wait and see what, if anything, she would do. Now that Jeff’s funeral was over, she might make a move.
    He would be waiting if she did.
    Softly, softly, catchee monkey.

— CHAPTER —
THREE
    â€œW ill this awful day never end?” Margaret murmured as Riley stopped beside her.
    Under the cover of the rattling of the air conditioner and the murmur of dozens of voices, it was possible to steal a few moments of private conversation even though the house was packed. The older woman was pale and exhausted-looking, with dark circles under her eyes. Riley’s concern for her, already high, ratcheted up another notch.
    â€œThe answer was a big ‘no,’ hmm?” Riley’s voice was equally low. She could tell that just from looking at Margaret’s face. Margaret had been meaning to ask Bill Stengel, their longtime lawyer, if there was any way around the clause in Jeff’s small life insurance policy that precluded a payout for suicide, especially in the face of the family’s contention that he was murdered. When Riley had seen them talking a few minutes before, she’d been pretty sure of the topic.
    â€œBill says the company has to go by the official cause of death.” Margaret sounded defeated.
    â€œFigures.” Riley wasn’t surprised. The way things had been going lately, the surprise would have been any scrap of good news.
    They were in the small dining room of the modest brick house that Margaret and Emma had shared with Jeff after George had gone to prison. With a living room, dining room, kitchen, three bedrooms, and a single bath all on one level, the rental was a little run-down but had the immense advantage of being cheap, which was what mattered most to them nowadays.
    The walls were painted in muddy earth tones, the floors were scuffed hardwood, and the furniture—because the family hadn’t been allowed to keep much more of their previous belongings than a few select personal items and their clothes—had been bought at a secondhand store.
    Margaret looked as out of place in it as a peacock in a chicken coop, but she was adapting with a dignity that, to Riley, was the embodiment of what she’d grown up referring to as class in North Philly. (One thing Riley had learned since marrying Jeff was that people with class never talked about anyone having class. It was the poor shmucks without it, of which she had to admit she was still one, who used class as a descriptive.)
    Case in point: without any outward sign of embarrassment, Margaret was hosting the traditional postfuneral reception in a house that