Reaching across the desk, he picked up an ashtray that was as big as a dinner plate and as heavy as a nautical anchor.

This was going to feel great.

He stood up, pushed the chair out of the way, and hefted the weight up over his shoulder. Then he swung the thing like it was a baseball bat, crashing it into one of the double-door’d lower compartments.

It was an inconvenient testament to the makers that he had to strike a number of times before the heavy-duty mahogany splintered and cracked. Phase two was all about the bare hands, his fingers clawing into the panels and snapping them off their hinges.

When he was done with the first of four sets, there was wood everywhere and he was panting, but, God, it was satisfying.

And hey, what do you know.

Files.

His knees popped as he got down on his haunches and transferred bundles of papers up onto the wide lowest shelf. There were so many that, to accommodate the load, he shoved pictures of his father out of the way—and yup, that also felt good.

And then, in a moment of hey-wait-let’s-not-confuse-things, he had the forethought to take all the documents he’d gotten out of the “official” records storage and move them off the desk to the conference table across the room. That way, he would know what had come out of where.

Before he sat down and started to work his way through the new batch of files, he ran back to check on Merrimack again. He had told the detective he was leaving, but then had disappeared into the house—only to enter the business center through one of its French doors on the garden side.

He didn’t want Merrimack to come looking for him in here and find all of this.

For godsakes, Jeff was already worried the Feds weren’t going to buy the diversification story that had been “leaked” to the press. And with Lane’s luck, that homicide detective had a lucrative side job handling embezzlement charges for the U.S. Government.

Hey, stranger things had happened.

Like every fucking day since he had come back to Charlemont.

Staring out of the tinted window at the CSI guys, he saw a whole lot of nothing-much, just people in uniforms and latex gloves walking around in the rain, coming and going out—

Oh, check it. They were removing things from the house in plastic bags with seals on them.

He thought of that knife.

Shit. If Miss Aurora had sacrificed one of her beloved knives, it would only have been for a very specific reason. Those blades were her pride and joy, the tools of her trade, the kind of thing that no one ever used but her.

A chef’s knives were private. Hell, even the sous chefs who came in for events brought their own rolls of blades.

No, she had used that Wüsthof for something important.

She had kept it for a good cause.

And she had placed it behind his picture to send a message.

He would never have thought her capable of something so violent. But one thing had always been true about her.

She loved him more than anyone else. Theirs had been a special connection.

And he feared that a mother’s love could turn murderous, under certain circumstances.

“Miss Aurora,” he whispered, “what did you do?”

TWENTY-THREE

When Gin returned to Easterly, she was so sleep deprived and emotionally wasted that she missed the staff road because of her daze—and then lacked the energy to turn the Mercedes around and head back. At the estate’s main entrance, flashbulbs went off as she had to pause for the wrought-iron gates to open, but at least the storms had caused a good half of the news trucks to leave.

As she went up the hill, the mansion’s imposing facade was spotlit by a lick of lightning, the brilliant, jagged flashing making her think of the start of a horror movie.

She parked the sedan right in front and left the keys in it.

Then she waited.

For the butler to come out and retrieve her with an umbrella and a free hand to take her things in.

It was quite some time before she remembered there was no more staff. No one poised for her to give a command to draw a hot bath. Nobody to unpack for her and summon her a light salad and a bottle of Chardonnay.

Getting out, she gathered her Louis Vuitton duffel and her quilted Chanel bag and lugged them up the steps through the rain—and then realized there was no one to take the car around to the garages. No man in a chauffeur’s uniform to wash and detail it after its long trip, or check its tire pressures and refill its tank.

Whatever, she thought as she muscled the mansion’s heavy front door open. The thing had been rained on before. It would survive.

As she stepped in out of the storm, the air in the house was cool and still, and all was quiet. Which was eerie. Easterly had never been a silent house, what with the crowd of people who had lived and worked under its roof—

“You’re back.”

She slowly turned her head. Richard Pford was sitting on the silk sofa in the receiving parlor on the left, his legs crossed at the knees, his fingers bridged up, his elbows tucked into his sides.

“Not now, Richard.” She dropped her duffel and couldn’t believe she had to close the door behind herself. “I’m tired.”

“Isn’t it more, I’ve got a headache?”

“As if that matters with you.”

Another flicker of lightning permeated the windows, turning Richard’s face into something sinister.

“Where were you.”

“Taking Amelia back to school.”

“I thought she usually flies.”

“Not this time.”

“No?” He sat forward. “Too expensive? So you decided you would drive her. What a good mother you are.”

Gin moved her eyes toward the stairs without shifting her face away from him. Was there anyone else in the house? Where were Lane and Lizzie?

“You haven’t been answering my calls, Virginia.”

“I was driving.”

“All the way through the night? You didn’t rest even once?”

“No, I wanted to get home.”

“Back to me, of course.” He put his thin hand over his heart. “I’m touched.”

Richard surged to his feet and picked up something from the low table in front of him. An envelope. A large manila envelope, the kind you’d put through the mail.

Gin took a step back. “I’m going to go up and have a shower.”

“Oh, I can imagine you’re ready for one.” He smiled as he came closer. “I want you to do me a favor first, though.”

She glanced down the hall, hoping to see someone coming out of the door into the staff part of the house.

If she screamed, would her mother’s nurse hear it? Maybe.

But probably not, she decided as thunder answered the lightning’s call.

Richard didn’t stop until he was a foot away from her, and he made a show of opening the flap on the envelope. “I really need you to see these. Tell me, did your brother Lane mention that I’ve moved out?”

Gin narrowed her eyes. “No. Have you?”

“Yes, I don’t think this marriage is working out for me. I left last night and came back today after work to gather my belongings.”

“Where is your car, then?”

“Just under the magnolia tree. I was going to bring my things down, but then I decided to wait for you.”

With a steady pull, he took out some floppy eight-by-ten sheets of—photographs; they were glossy photographs.

Of her and Samuel T. in the Jag at the cemetery: He was holding her hand and they were staring into each other’s eyes—just before he had turned things around to show her her own engagement ring. And then they were driving off. There were others, too, from when they had come out of his penthouse’s building after they had made love.

But the most frame-able, of course, was the one from when Samuel T. had helped her back into the Jag. She had gripped the man’s black tie and pulled him down to her mouth.

“Do you know what else these came with?” Richard said with a voice that vibrated with growing menace. “An invitation by a reporter to comment on them. They’re being printed in tomorrow’s Charlemont Courier Journal—what kind of fool are you trying to make of me!”

She ducked just before he hit her, and then she spun around and lunged for the front door. As thunder roared across the sky, she tried to yank the vast weight open, but Richard caught her by the hair and pulled her back.