“She’s a horticulturist,” Lane gritted out.

Samuel T. held up a palm. “My apologies. As for Chantal, I’ll draft an ironclad, nondisclosure agreement, force her to disavow the parentage and ensure no contact for her or the child with anyone under this roof—”

“Even if Chantal signed something like that, I’m still not writing that check.”

“Lane. Don’t be an ass. This woman has the kind of lawyer who will rake you and this family through the press like you won’t believe. And your mother doesn’t know about the pregnancy, does she?” When Lane shook his head, Samuel dropped his voice. “Then let’s keep things that way, shall we.”

Lane pictured the woman who had borne him, lying in state in that satin bed of hers upstairs. It was tempting to believe that he could keep her insulated from all parts of this, but the nurses who tended her round the clock were all out in the world, reading newspapers, listening to the radio, on their smartphones.

But there was a greater problem, wasn’t there.

It seemed ironic to be pouring Family Reserve into his glass as he said, “We don’t have the money.”

“I know there is a spendthrift clause in your trust. My father put it there. But that kicks in only if you get sued by a third party. At your direction, however, your trust company can set up a payment plan. Buying her silence is likely to be cheaper than the fallout. You have a very picky board of old boys who believe mistresses should be neither seen nor heard and suicide is a criminal weakness—”

“We have larger problems, Samuel T., than that pregnancy. Why do you think Gin is marrying Richard.”

“Because she needs a man she can control.”

“It’s because she needs the money.”

Under other circumstances, it would have been amusing to watch light dawn on Marblehead, the comprehension bringing a pall over his old friend’s face.

“What are you … ? I’m sorry, what?”

“My father jumped for a lot of reasons, and some of them are financial. There’s a shitload of money missing from the household accounts, and I fear the Bradford Bourbon Company is running out of cash as well. I, literally, don’t have the money to pay Chantal, now or over time.”

Samuel T. swirled his bourbon around, then finished it. “You’ll have to excuse me, but … my brain is having trouble processing that. What about your mother’s stock portfolio? What about—”

“We’re sixty-eight million in the hole right now. Personally. And I think it’s the tip of the iceberg.”

Samuel T. blinked. Then he held out his empty glass. “I beg of you, may I have some more?”

Lane refilled the guy and then helped himself again. “I’ve got a buddy of mine here from New York trying to figure it out. Jeff Stern, you remember him from U.Va.”

“Good guy. Couldn’t hold his liquor like a Southerner, but other than that, he was okay.”

“He’s upstairs weeding through the company financials, trying to figure out how bad it all is. It would be a mistake for us to assume that my father hasn’t misappropriated almost everything. After all, about a year ago, he had my mother declared incompetent and took over her trusts—God only knows whether there’s anything left anywhere.”

Samuel T. shook his head for a while. “Do you want me to be sympathetic or tell you what I’m honestly thinking?”

“Honest. Always be honest.”

“It’s too bad your father wasn’t murdered.”

“I beg your pardon? Although not that I’m arguing with you—and I wish I’d been the one to do it.”

“Under most policies, suicide won’t let you collect, but if someone killed him? As long as none of the beneficiaries did it, the money would be yours.”

Lane laughed. He couldn’t help it. “You know, this is not the first time I’ve thought fondly of homicide when it came to that man—”

From out front, a horrible scream cut through the morning like a gunshot.

“What the hell is that?” Samuel T. barked as they both jumped to their feet.

NINE

“—Scheisse! Meine Güte, ein Finger! Ein Finger—”

As Lane bolted out of the house with Samuel T. tight on his heels, bourbon splashed from his rocks glass, and he ended up tossing the stuff into the bushes as he leaped off the stone steps. Over on the right, Lizzie was crouched above a hole that had been dug in the ivy bed, one hand planted in the earth, the other shoving her partner back as Greta continued yelling and pointing in German.

“What’s wrong?” Lane said as he came running.

“It’s a …” Lizzie took off her floppy hat and looked up at him. “Lane … we have a problem here.”

“What is—”

“It’s a finger.” Lizzie nodded to the raw patch in the ivy. “I think that’s a finger.”

Lane shook his head, as if maybe that would help what she’d said make sense. And then both his knees cracked as he got down on his haunches. Leaning in for a closer look into the shallow hole—

Holy … shit. It was a finger. A human finger.

The skin was marked with dirt, but you could see that the digit was still intact all the way around—and the thing was fat, like it had swollen up since it had been cut off or … torn off, or whatever. The nail was even across the top and the same flat white as the flesh, and the base, where it had been severed from its hand, was a clean slice, the meat inside gray, the pale circular dot on the bottom the bone.

But none of that was what really interested him.

The heavy gold ring that was on it was the issue.

“That’s my father’s signet ring,” he said in a flat tone.

“Oh … shit,” Samuel T. whispered. “Ask and ye shall receive.”

Lane patted his pocket and took out his phone, but then didn’t dial anything.

Instead, he looked up, up, up … and saw his mother’s bedroom window directly above where the finger had been buried in the dirt. As Lizzie’s hand went to his shoulder and squeezed, Lane glanced at her.

Keeping his eyes locked with hers, he addressed his lawyer with the obvious. “We need to call the police, right?”

As Gin and Richard Pford came out into the sunshine, Samuel T. put his palm up. “You two, back in the house.”