She dressed in a new set of male clothes. The towels went into the plastic bag with the needle, gloves, and booties. A few necessary moments were spent examining the scene, ensuring that only the appropriate evidence remained.

She checked the time. Another two hours before discovery would most likely take place. One should never, she knew, rely on everything going smoothly.

She retrieved her portable lock and alarm. One last look back at Richard. She said a silent good-bye and pulled the door shut. She locked it, using a key she had taken from Richard’s key ring. The clients would not expect to find the door locked at the time of their appointment. If they became angry rather than worried, and stormed off thinking Richard had forgotten their appointment, she would gain a little more lead time.

Eventually, though, the body would be discovered.

No time to linger. She had a busy day ahead of her.

Besides, she wanted a cigarette. She was not, in general, a smoker, but murder always made her want to light up.

She was perfectly aware of what a psychiatrist might have to say about that.

Tuesday, May 9

9:05 A.M.

LAS PIERNAS

EXCUSE me, Dad,” Giles Fletcher said, and stood to take a cell phone call.

“That’s incredibly rude,” his sister Edith muttered.

Graydon Fletcher merely sat back in his soft, overstuffed armchair in the sunniest of the many rooms of his mansion, and considered the two adult, middle-aged children who were in his company now.

Through the French doors just opposite the chair, he could see one of the most beautiful gardens on his estate. Giles said, “Just a moment,” to his caller and stepped outside. He closed the door behind him, looking tense as he resumed his conversation.

Edith was the designer and keeper of the garden just beyond where Giles paced. Designer, Graydon thought, was not the right word. Originator, perhaps. The garden had been her idea.

A wild hodgepodge of plants, it was the children’s garden. Over the years of its existence, any of Graydon’s children, grandchildren, or great-grandchildren were free to plant a flower or a vegetable or any other plant they might choose, with very few restrictions to inhibit them: They could not harm another child’s plant, nor could they plant anything illegal or anything that might easily prove poisonous to the children and pets of the Fletcher family.

The children’s garden flourished in colorful chaos, a chaos that required more work of Edith than the estate’s more orderly gardens and greenhouse, and yet she never complained. To Graydon’s eye, plants that would have been viewed as rather unattractive on their own somehow added to the beauty of the whole. Edith, who neither had children of her own nor had adopted, gave the same loving care to each plant in this garden.

Graydon found her company restful.

Far more restful than that of his eldest son, Giles. Unusual to see him so agitated. Giles, so bright, so driven, capable of achieving anything to which he set his mind. Graydon knew that the family meant everything to Giles, but watching him now, he worried that Giles’s devotion was placing him under a strain.

“If he didn’t look so nervous, I’d swear he arranged that call to get out of his argument with you,” Edith said, setting aside a gardening magazine she had been pretending to read during that disagreement.

Graydon smiled. “I think Giles knows escape would not be so easy. He doesn’t get his way in everything, you know.”

She looked as if she might respond, then went back to her magazine.

Neither of them were his biological children. None of the twenty-one children whom he had embraced as his adopted sons and daughters, nor any of the uncountable others who had lived here over the years as foster children or on a less official basis, were his biological children.

Both Graydon and his late wife, Emma, had been the only children of wealthy parents. After Graydon and Emma married, in keeping with ideals they shared on the subjects of education and child welfare, they established an innovative private school-Fletcher Academy. The school was widely held to be the best private school in the area and ranked among the top five in the state. The Fletchers always made room within it for promising students who could not have otherwise afforded such an excellent education.

When Emma and Graydon Fletcher discovered they could not have children of their own, they became foster parents. Those children who stayed with them without the prospect of finding another home, they adopted. Others came to them less formally-children, Emma said, who had houses to live in, but not homes. Graydon and Emma showered them with affection and attention, listened to their worries and calmed their fears, taught them to care for one another when no one else might care for them. They challenged each child to discover his or her own talents and kept their lively family busy with projects and activities.

Children abandoned or labeled hopeless became achievers who learned the benefits of cooperating with others. No one could blame Graydon and Emma for their pride in them. Given the lost children of Las Piernas, they had returned successful leaders, business owners, and professionals. The Fletchers used their wealth and growing family connections to help these children find places in the world, to pursue dreams, to be of use.

The Fletchers had been amply repaid for their generosity, Graydon believed. While a few of his children had chosen to be independent of the family and settled elsewhere, most were in close contact with him and lived nearby. Every house on this street was now owned by one of his children. They took care of one another, helped one another with problems, invested in one another’s businesses. They generously donated to the academy, adopted children in addition to their own, took in foster children. Graydon smiled, thinking of how pleased his late wife would have been to see their dreams being carried forward.

After Emma died, he found he wanted to spend more time with his grandchildren and less with paperwork. He handed over the day-to-day administration of many of his business and charitable interests to his children. Which was why Giles was here now. Giles was in charge of Fletcher Academy.

Giles finished his call and continued to stand outside, looking at the garden. When he turned to come back in, he was frowning.

“Do sit down, Giles,” Graydon said as he reentered the room. “I hope you haven’t received any bad news?”

“No, no…just business.” He sat on the edge of a nearby chair. “It’s a busy day.”

“You’ve done great things for the academy. I hope you know how much I appreciate that.”

Giles seemed to relax a little. He looked at Graydon earnestly. “I am going to do so much more. As you know, in the last five years, the Fletcher Day School has helped us to identify preschoolers who are especially promising. That means that more and more students of the academy are going to be the best and brightest in the area, and when others see how well its graduates are doing, we’ll get the best students not just in Las Piernas or California, but in the nation.”

“Is that your goal?”

“That’s one goal. Don’t you see, Dad? We already have graduates who have become politicians, architects, CEOs, lawyers, doctors, researchers-”

“Gardeners,” Edith said dryly, earning a scowl from him.

Graydon smiled. “Yes, and construction workers, waitresses, plumbers-”

“Yes, yes. But more important-”

“My dear Giles, if you think a plumber is not important, I can only pray the pipes in that old house you’ve bought are in better shape than I imagine they are. What have I taught you?”

“That everyone is important, all jobs are important. And I agree. All I’m saying is that I want to help children whose potential would allow them to flourish if they were given the kind of education they can receive in our school.”