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coming up the road.
    Think of the devil and the devil arrives. In this case at the wheel of a Turbo Porsche in racing green—a model Gurney thought sold for around $160,000. The sleek vehicle crept past the barn, past the pond, slowly up the pasture hillside, to the small parking area next to the house, its hugely powerful engine purring softly. With a mixture of cautious curiosity and a bit more excitement than he’d want to admit, Gurney went out to greet his guest.
    The woman who emerged from the car was tall and curvaceouslyslim, wearing a satiny cream blouse and satiny black pants. Her shoulder-length black hair was cut in a straight bob across her forehead like Uma Thurman’s in
Pulp Fiction
. She was, as Hardwick had promised, “drop-dead gorgeous.” But there was something more—a tension in her as striking as her looks.
    She took in her surroundings with a few appraising glances that seemed to absorb everything and reveal nothing.
An ingrained habit of circumspection
, thought Gurney.
    She walked toward him with the hint of a grimace—or was it the customary set of her mouth?
    “Mr. Gurney, Val Perry. I appreciate your making time for me,” she said, extending her hand. “Or should I call you Detective Gurney?”
    “I left the title in the city when I retired. Call me Dave.” They shook hands. The intensity of her gaze and strength of her grip surprised him. “Would you like to come inside?”
    She hesitated, glancing around the garden and the small bluestone patio. “Can we sit out here?”
    The question surprised him. Even though the sun was now well above the eastern ridge in a cloudless sky and most of the dew was gone from the grass, the morning was still chilly.
    “Seasonal affective disorder,” she said with an explanatory smile. “Do you know what that is?”
    “Yes.” He returned her smile. “I think I have a mild case of it myself.”
    “I have more than a mild case. From this time of year on, I need as much light, preferably sun, as possible. Or I really do want to kill myself. So if you don’t mind, Dave, perhaps we could sit out here?” It wasn’t really a question.
    The detective part of his brain, dominant and hardwired, unaffected by the technicality of retirement, wondered about her seasonal-disorder story, wondered if there was another reason.
An eccentric control need, a desire to make others conform to her whims? A desire, for whatever reason, to keep him off balance? Neurotic claustrophobia? An effort to minimize the risk of being recorded? And if being recorded was a worry, did it have a practical or paranoid basis?
    He led her to the patio that separated the French doors from theasparagus bed. He indicated a couple of folding chairs on either side of a small café table Madeleine had purchased at an auction. “Is this all right?”
    “It’s fine,” she said, pulling one of the chairs out from the table and sitting on it without bothering to brush off the seat.
    No concern about ruining her obviously pricey slacks. Ditto the ecru leather handbag she tossed on the still-damp tabletop
.
    She studied his face with interest. “How much information has Investigator Hardwick already given you?”
    Hard edge on the voice, hard look in the almond eyes
.
    “He gave me the basic facts surrounding the events leading up to and following the … the murder of your daughter. Mrs. Perry, if I may stop for a moment. I need to tell you before we go on how terribly sorry I am for your loss.”
    At first she didn’t react at all. Then she nodded, but the movement was so slight it could have been nothing more than a tremor.
    “Thank you,” she said abruptly. “I appreciate that.”
    Clearly she didn’t
.
    “But my loss is not the issue. The issue is Hector Flores.” She articulated the name with tightened lips as though biting down defiantly on a bad tooth. “What did Hardwick tell you about him?”
    “He said there was clear and convincing evidence of his guilt … that he