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“We were leaving for Hawaii on Wednesday. Now—I have to call her father and brother. Oh, God, how are we going to make it without Vanessa?”
    #
    Lucy and Patrick stood in the dining room, dishing up lukewarm dinner. “I don’t think he killed her,” Lucy said quietly.
    “It could be an act.”
    “Could be.”
    “You don’t think so?” he asked.
    “No. You didn’t see him with her body. I don’t think that could be faked.”
    They sat at one of the round tables. “Maybe we’re wrong,” Lucy said. “Maybe that mark isn’t an injection.”
    “It wasn’t a bee sting.”
    “We won’t know until an autopsy.”
    They ate for a moment in silence. Lucy added, “The lodge here is struggling. Steve said his father spent their savings keeping it afloat.”
    “Upstairs, Beth and Grace were talking about selling.”
    “Beth was,” Lucy reminded him. “Grace was worried about Steve.”
    “What if Vanessa wanted to buy the Delarosa?” Patrick said. “With Trevor’s money, she could easily afford it. Probably could with her own money.”
    “A place like this, with all the land, so close to Kirkwood? It’s worth a lot.”
    “Then why is Steve so worried? He could get a loan on it.”
    “I don’t know—maybe there already is a big mortgage.”
    “We can look into that easily enough. But what if Steve heard that Vanessa wanted to buy the lodge? Maybe she persuaded Grace or Beth. Steve wouldn’t want to sell—”
    “You’re suggesting he killed her?”
    “If Grace owns the place after his dad’s death, then she could sell whenever she wanted.”
    Grace might have been worried about Steve’s health. She could have thought selling the lodge was the right thing to do. “But,” Lucy said, “we don’t know if she owns the land, or Steve, or both.”
    “We can find out.”
    “We’ll need to go to the recorders office, or—”
    “Or I can look around here.”
    Lucy frowned. “You need to be careful.”
    “I know what I’m doing.”
    She didn’t want to believe Steve was a killer, but he seemed so distraught. Perhaps his mysterious illness made him act rashly.
    There was something premeditated about Vanessa’s death. Who keeps hypodermic needles lying around? Who has poison at their disposal—and knows how to use it?
    “You need to be careful, too, sis.” Patrick said.
    A crash from the kitchen had Lucy and Patrick bolting up from their chairs. Patrick pushed open the swinging door into the kitchen and found Kyle DeWitt on the floor, struggling to stand.
    Patrick squatted next to him and helped him sit up. “Whoa, Kyle, hold on a second. What happened?”
    “I just felt dizzy.”
    “And fainted?”
    “I guess.” He touched his forehead. A bump was already forming.
    Lucy walked over to the refrigerator for ice and stepped into a puddle of spilled juice amid broken glass.
    “Sorry,” Kyle said. “I dropped my glass.”
    Grace rushed in. “What happened?”
    “I’m fine. Really.” The guy looked embarrassed. “Just slipped.”
    Grace stared at the mess on the floor.
    “I’ll clean it up,” Lucy offered.
    “No,” Grace snapped, “I’ll do it.” She strode over to a cabinet and grabbed some rags and a broom and dustpan.
    Lucy and Patrick exchanged glances. She was wound tight. Maybe they all were tonight, with a dead body in the root cellar.
    “You fainted ,” Patrick said. “You didn’t just slip.”
    Grace said, “We’re at a seventy-five-hundred-foot elevation. The air is thinner up here.” She knelt to pick up the biggest pieces of glass.
    Lucy said, “Grace is right. The thin air could affect you, especially if you overexert yourself. Usually symptoms of high-altitude sickness don’t occur until eight thousand feet—”
    Grace cut her off. “That’s arbitrary. People are affected differently.”
    “True,” Lucy said, though she didn’t completely agree. The human body processed oxygen at different ranges comfortably; it was when the atmosphere started to