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approach to the practice of law crystallized his disappointment in the morality of a legal career and made becoming an honest craftsman seem a more honorable way to make a living. So he bought a boat repair shop in his hometown. Specializing in antique wooden boats, he did beautiful work, work to be proud of. But his mother had quit glowing whenever his name came up.
    Then, just when Joe had thought he’d escaped from the glare of the media, Clementine Ripley was murdered in her “showplace home in toyboy ex’s hometown.” The tabloids came back.
    The crime was solved—that’s how Joe and I met each other again. Then Ms. Ripley’s lawyers dropped another bombshell. They revealed that she hadn’t changed her will after her divorce from Joe. Joe inherited her entire estate, plus he was named executor. The tabloids stuck around.
    To complicate matters further, Clementine Ripley left an extremely involved estate. Joe was having to spend several days a week with accountants, attorneys, court appearances, even finding a new home for her champion Birman cat, who now lived in Chicago with a former housekeeper. Joe swore he wasn’t going to keep any of the money—and he said there wasn’t going to be much left, anyway—but it was forcing him to spend a lot of time concentrating on his ex-wife’s affairs.
    Not on his own affairs. Not on my affairs. On Clementine Ripley’s affairs. The woman was haunting him.
    The tabloid press was haunting him, too. They seemed to have some conduit into Warner Pier. Any little thing Joe did popped up in the tabloids. The previous week he had talked to the mayor, to see if the city was interested in owning the fifteen-acre Warner Pier estate Clementine Ripley had left behind. Two days later the headlines read, TOYBOY HEIR OF FAMED ATTORNEY SEEKS BUYER FOR MANSION.
    Our mayor, Mike Herrera, swore he hadn’t told anybody but the park commissioners. How had the tabloid found out?
    Neither Joe nor I wanted to see ourselves splashed across the National Enquirer —TOYBOY HEIR OF FAMED LAWYER ROMANCES TEXAS EX–BEAUTY QUEEN WHO WAS WITNESS TO EX–WIFE’S DEATH. So I understood why Joe and I were having a telephone romance. But I was getting tired of it.
    Jeff went up to bed, and I said good night to Aunt Nettie and went up, too. I didn’t get undressed, but I wrapped up in a comforter and read by my bedside lamp, which is rather dim. I got interested in my book, forgot Joe, and barely heard Aunt Nettie moving around as she got ready for bed.
    Then, across the hall, I heard Jeff’s bed creak. His door opened, he came out, and he stopped outside my door.
    Instantly, I remembered what Joe had said about putting a chair under my doorknob.
    My heart jumped up to my throat. I told myself I was being crazy, but that didn’t do any good. Joe’s warning had created suspicions, and it was no good denying they existed. I was scared.
    I lay still, not breathing, just listening. It was ludicrous. Jeff was on one side of the door, listening to me, and I was on the other, listening to him.
    I didn’t breathe again until I heard Jeff move on and start down the stairs.
    Stupid, I told myself. Even kids have to get up to go to the bathroom now and then.
    I wondered if Jeff was going to the bathroom. Or if he was going to Aunt Nettie’s room. That gave me another stab of fear.
    So I listened carefully to his progress through the house. I’d spent a lot of time in that house. I could tell who was walking where without moving anything but my ear.
    Jeff crept down the steps to the living room, then turned toward the dining room. He went into the kitchen.
    Good. He was going to the bathroom.
    But when he got to the kitchen, he stopped. He fumbled with something that thumped. Was it the hall tree where all the winter jackets had been hung?
    I heard a click. I was sure the sound was the lock of the back door.
    The door opened, then shut. I heard Jeff’s footsteps cross the back porch, then scrunch through the