"I appreciate it," Casey said, closing up her computer and packing it into her briefcase.

Jose sniffed the air. "They got that plumbing going okay, I see."

"Woman's kid flushed down a toy duck," Casey said, shaking her head. "The plumber cost us more than a filing number for a federal appeal."

"That something you go on with a guy or something?" Jose asked. "Tea party, I mean."

Casey suppressed a smile. "Jose? Are you jealous?"

Jose stuffed his thick fists into the front pockets of his jeans, but did not look away. "Not one bit."

"It's a fund-raiser for the clinic at Paige Ludden's. Also, Chase's wife might be there."

Jose raised his eyebrows. "Want me to have a chat with her?"

"It's not like a barbeque," Casey said. "It's ladies, flowers, and little cucumber sandwiches."

"I could wait by her car. Kind of jump out of the bushes like a process server."

Casey shouldered her bag and hollered out to Stacy to print and file the answer to the slander complaint and that she was leaving.

Stacy appeared in the doorway with her arms folded across her chest and said, "We got a call from Isodora, collect."

"Isodora, you're kidding," Casey said. "Why didn't you get me?"

"You were the one who said not to disturb you for any reason."

"She called from Monterrey? Did she leave a number?"

"A church in a place she called Higueras. I did Google Earth. It's northeast of Monterrey. Remote. Over some mountains and down in some river valley. I asked for a number but she said it wasn't her phone and she didn't know."

"What church?"

"She didn't say," Stacy said, "she said 'the church.'"

"Christ," Casey said, "you should have gotten me."

Stacy narrowed her eyes and said, "Some of us listen to what people say."

Stacy turned and walked out.

Casey followed, stopping at the doorway, and said, "I want you to get Sharon and the two of you start calling down there. I want you to find her and figure out a way I can speak with her."

Stacy busied herself with some files, slamming open a drawer and stuffing them in with the same vigor she used to cram the trash down in an overloaded bin.

"Stacy?" Casey said. "We set on that?"

"I'll get to it," Stacy said, and turned her back.

"Great," Casey said to herself in a mutter, turning and heading for the back door only to be blocked by Jose. He took a gentle hold of her elbows.

"You want me in this with you, right? I mean, like a team?"

"Some team," she said. "You see the crap I have to put up with. She could make ten thousand more at a downtown firm, so I have to eat the attitude."

"She did do what you asked," he said quietly. "What about me?"

"What about you?" she asked.

Jose shrugged and said, "Chase's wife. You're the lawyer. I'm supposed to be the investigator."

She looked up at him, and the little nervous tic skittered across his eyelid.

She asked, "Did I ever tell you I was a prosecutor with an eighty-seven-percent conviction record? I didn't get that depending on Barney Fife and company to lock down my evidence."

"Barney Fife?" he said, aping a wince.

"Not you," she said. "Them. The Austin police. I know how to interrogate a witness, is all. Especially a cheating wife."

"Cheating wives," he said. "That I know about."

Casey furrowed her brow, wanting to apologize, but thinking that would make it even worse.

"Let's tag-team the wife," she said. "Let me see if I can work the inside and you keep the thumbscrews in your back pocket."

"What about after?" he asked.

"The wheel?"

"No. After your tea?" Jose said. "No expectations, but maybe something between us? Some kind of spontaneous distraction? A spontaneous combustion type of thing? You know, since we've got the dig tomorrow, anyway, and we'll be going down there together."

"A planned spontaneous combustion?" she asked, arching a brow. "That's arson, right?"

Jose shrugged. "I never made an arson case, so I can't help there."

"I think it is," she said, rigid and stepping around him, afraid of what she'd say if she brushed up against the muscles in his arm, wanting to, not wanting to. "Let's keep it legal. Come on."

"Of course," he said. "Please. Don't mind me."

"I don't," she said, offering a smile before she went out the door so he'd know there were no hard feelings. "Honest."

THE CAST-IRON GATES CLANGED OPEN AND CASEY LET THE BENZ roll through between the fieldstone pillars of medieval proportions. The house, centered on a ten-acre rise in an oval hilltop of grass, dwarfed even the gates. The dome over the central body had been shipped in pieces from a Bulgarian church. That and the three-story fluted columns always made Casey think of the US Capitol building. Luddy had inherited it all from his mother's side and the house, Grace Manor, bore his grandmother's name.

More than a dozen cars hugged the low wall of the circular fountain in front-Jaguars, Mercedeses, two Rolls-Royce sedans-and Casey grimaced at her watch. Cobblestones rumbled beneath her as she sped up the hill and into the circle, where she screeched to a halt and jumped out. With her car blocking the drive, she threw her keys on the seat before dashing up the steps.

A stiff-faced butler led her through the house and into the garden, where the crowd twittered and buzzed beneath a white tent hemmed in by fragrant yellow roses. Notes from a string quartet floated on a merciful breeze and Casey could see the glaze of sweat on her friend's pink cheeks despite the cool glass of champagne that she sipped disinterestedly.

"I am so sorry," Casey said, bussing her friend's cheek.

"Pish," Paige said, indirectly announcing Casey's arrival in her most Southern and charming way, "a working girl like you? We're all jealous as high school lovers, just wishing we didn't have all that we got going on so we could be in the trenches with you, honey. Come right here, you beautiful thing. Too hot for tea after all, and I decided all on my own to break right into the back of Luddy's cellar. Sissy? Here she is, darling."

Paige floated through them, a butterfly flickering, pollinating, and sipping up their contributions like nectar with Casey in tow. Casey let her speech lilt into the drawl of forgotten balls and fetes from another life. Stacy's skeptical face and her expression, "You make me vomit," came into Casey's mind, but she smiled the smile of a grateful beneficiary, shaking the hand of a woman old enough that she wore white gloves and a hat with both a netted veil and flowers.

From Chase's wife, Mandy, Casey received no more than a vacant stare and a forced half-smile that left Paige's fingers in a vise around her wrist as she dragged Casey on to the next woman, whispering hotly in her ear that Mandy was the most extraordinary bitch she'd ever shared a back lawn with. Casey glanced back at the tall blonde in the bright red dress, standing out like a hooker in a girls' choir, and wondered if the woman had the same surgeon as Paige.

Before they'd finished, Casey realized the glass of champagne Paige had armed her with had been emptied and refilled twice, brightening Casey's appreciation of the sights, sounds, smells, and money that the tea party had provided.

Paige finally sat her down in a white rattan love seat before bringing two fresh glasses and resting her own feet beside her, fanning herself with a sigh.

"Honey, you are just a charm," Paige said.

"I didn't do a thing."

"Oh, pish, all that habeas corpus and right-to-appeal jargon? They loved it. They just loved it. You made my job easy."

"You are so good," Casey said, touching her arm.

"It's the least," Paige said, sipping her champagne and shaking her head, "the very least."