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foresight to place it before leaving the bedroom. “My brooch.”
    “Is that all that’s keeping it on?”
    It surprised her that her memory would replay Duncan Hatcher’s suggestive remark at this moment, when her husband was looking at her curiously, waiting for an explanation.
    “I was going to leave it here on your desk with a note so you’d see it before you left in the morning,” she said. “I think some of the stones are loose. A jeweler should take a look.”
    He advanced into the room, looked at the pin lying in her extended palm, then into her eyes. “You didn’t mention loose stones earlier.”
    “I forgot.” She gave him a small, suggestive smile. “I got distracted.”
    “I’ll take it downtown with me tomorrow and drop it off at the jeweler.”
    “Thank you. It’s been in your family for decades. I’d hate to be responsible for losing one of the stones.”
    He looked beyond her at the bookcase. “What were you reaching for?”
    “Oh, one of your volumes up there isn’t lined up properly. I just happened to notice it. I know how finicky you are about this room.”
    He joined her behind the desk, reached up, and pushed the legal tome back into place. “There. Mrs. Berry must have dislodged it when she was dusting.”
    “Must have.”
    He placed his hands on her upper arms and rubbed them gently. “Elise?” he said softly.
    “Yes?”
    “Anything you want, darling, you only have to ask.”
    “What could I possibly want? I don’t want for anything. You’re extremely generous.”
    He looked deeply into her eyes, as though searching for something behind her steady gaze. Then he squeezed her arms quickly before releasing them. “Did you have your milk?” She nodded. “Good. Let’s go back to bed. Maybe you’ll be able to sleep now.”
    He waited for her to precede him. As she made her way toward the door, she glanced back. Cato was still standing behind his desk, watching her. The glare of the lamp cast his features into stark relief, emphasizing his thoughtful frown.
    Then he switched off the lamp and the room went dark.

Chapter 3

    D UNCAN DIDN’T NEED THE LIGHTS ON IN ORDER TO PLAY.
    In fact, he liked to play in the dark, when it seemed that the darkness produced the music and that it had no connection to him. It was sort of that way even with the lights on. Whenever he touched a piano keyboard, he relinquished control to another entity that lived in his subconscious and emerged only on those occasions.
    “It’s a divine gift, Duncan,” his mother had declared when he tried to explain the phenomenon to her with the limited vocabulary of a child. “I don’t know where the music comes from, Mom. It’s weird. I just… I just
know
it.”
    He was eight when she had determined it was time to begin his music lessons. When she sat him down on their piano bench, pointed out middle C, and began instructing him on the fundamentals of the instrument, they discovered to their mutual dismay that he already knew how to play.
    He hadn’t known that he could. It shocked him even more than it did his astonished parents when he began playing familiar hymns. And not just picking out single-note melodies. He knew how to chord without even knowing what a chord was.
    Of course, for as far back as he could remember, he’d heard his mother practicing hymns for Sunday services, which could have explained how he knew them. But he could also play everything else. Rock. Swing. Jazz. Blues. Folk songs. Country and western. Classical. Any tune he had ever heard, he could play.
    “You play by ear,” his mother told him as she fondly and proudly stroked his cheek. “It’s a gift, Duncan. Be thankful for it.”
    Not even remotely thankful for it, he was embarrassed by his “gift.” He thought of it more like a curse and begged his parents not to boast about it, or even to tell anybody that he had the rare talent.
    He certainly didn’t want his friends to know. They’d think he was a sissy, a dork,