Ali went on to tell Marissa about the terms of the scholarship-how much she would get and the GPA she’d need to maintain to receive it in subsequent years. When Ali left the house at four-thirty, she felt a real sense of relief and accomplishment. Months earlier, when Arabella Ashcroft had first broached the subject of Ali taking over the administration chores on the Askins Scholarship, Ali had been reluctant. Now, having seen firsthand the tremendous difference the award would make in smoothing the road for Marissa, Ali felt thankful to be involved.

As late as it was, Ali went straight home to Andante Drive, where she was astonished to find Leland Brooks’s Mazda pickup still parked there. Several scatter rugs, freshly laundered and hung out to dry, decorated the rail on the front porch. From inside, she heard the wail of a vacuum cleaner. She opened the door and found the furniture pushed to one side of the room while Leland vacuumed where it had once stood. When she shut the front door, he turned off the noisy machine and faced her.

“Why are you still here?” Ali asked.

“Because I’m cleaning,” he said simply. “As I told you, I came to get an idea about the kitchen situation-about cooking and serving equipment as well as dishes. Those all appear to be quite adequate. As for the rest of it, your quarters wouldn’t pass even the most rudimentary inspection. If you expect to have your home ready to receive guests by Thanksgiving, I’m going to need to spend some time here, whipping it into shape. Vacuuming will do for today, but what this carpet really needs is a thorough shampooing. I’ve reserved a shampooer for first thing tomorrow morning.”

Ali felt a pang of guilt. She and Chris were reasonably neat and conscientious about putting things away, but neither one of them excelled at the kind of deep cleaning required to measure up to Leland Brooks’s fastidious standards. That was one of the drawbacks about living with a professionally trained butler. He called the shots in the nicest way imaginable, but he still called the shots.

“How are things at the construction site?” he asked, carefully wrapping up the power cord and attaching it to the vacuum’s stem. Ali tended to shove the vacuum cleaner into the broom closet and toss the cord in after.

“When I left,” Ali said, “my understanding was that once the wallboarders finished work today, our job would be shut down until Mr. Forester gives the word.”

“That’s probably just as well,” Leland said. “It also means that it won’t be a problem if I’m working over here for the next little while, giving the place some spit and polish.”

“About that,” Ali began. “It seems to me that Chris and I should be responsible for cleaning up our own mess.”

“Madam,” Leland said, “for the past several months, while I’ve been stuck at the construction site, you’ve barely tapped my potential. I’ve been quite frustrated. Bored, really, almost to the point of giving notice. I’m sure you wouldn’t want that, so let me tackle the work here and get it done. It will give me a chance to show you what I can do-what I’m capable of.”

“What about the part where you offered to clean Billy Barnes’s clock?” Ali asked with a smile. “Was that part of showing me what you can do?”

“Boasting for its own sake is in very bad taste,” Leland said. “But I was trained by the Royal Marines, and I still know the moves. Over the years, I’ve had to use them more than once.”

“The next time Jacky shows up, I might let you use some of those moves on him.”

“You think he’ll be back?” Leland asked.

“Of course he’ll be back,” Ali answered. She handed him Marissa Dvorak’s file folder. “By the way, I talked to Marissa Dvorak and made up my mind. She’s this year’s recipient.”

“That stands to reason, since Miss Marsh turned it down,” Leland replied. “Would you like me to prepare a press release to that effect?”

“Yes, please,” Ali said. “I told her you would.”

Leland nodded. “Very well.” He looked around the room. “I got a start on things today, but since I’m going to be shampooing the carpet tomorrow, I hope you won’t mind if I leave the furniture where it is.”

Ali knew Leland Brooks was more than capable of pushing the leather couch around, but there was no need for him to do so twice. “Of course not,” she said. “This is fine.”

“You can expect me here bright and early,” he said. “You may want to be out and about. As for your Cayenne, if you’ll pardon my saying, that could also use a good detailing.”

“Trying to keep me in line must be a real trial for you,” Ali said.

“On the contrary, madam,” Leland said with a fond smile. “Occasionally, I find it quite stimulating.”

As soon as Chris knew Leland Brooks had left, he ventured upstairs. “Is the cleaning Nazi gone?” he asked. “He was here working up a storm when I got home from school. What was that all about?”

“Thanksgiving,” Ali told him. “With everything that’s going on with the contractor, we came to the conclusion that there’s no chance of having dinner at the new house. Leland came over here to see about whipping this one into shape.”

“You’re not going to let him clean my studio, are you?”

“He will unless you stop him,” Ali said with a laugh. “Since he seems to be a force of nature, I’m not sure that’s possible.”

Chris took a soda from the fridge and hustled back downstairs. Ali was in the bedroom changing into her comfy sweats when her phone rang. Caller ID told her the number was restricted.

“Ms. Reynolds?”

“Yes.”

“It’s B.”

The B. in question happened to belong to Bartholomew Quentin Simpson. Named after his maternal grandfather, Bart Simpson had been ten years old when the other Bart Simpson first appeared on local TV screens, thereby consigning Sedona’s Bart Simpson to a peculiar form of childhood hell. Subjected to unending teasing, he stopped answering to any name but his first initial, since using both of them, B.Q., didn’t work for him, either. The one initialed B. had retreated into the solitary solace that computers had to offer. By seventh grade, he had taken apart his father’s old Commodore 64 computer and put it back together.

By eighth grade, B. Simpson had taught himself to write computer code. To his parents’ dismay, he had dropped out of high school his junior year after selling his first video game to Nintendo. He had gone to work for them long enough and well enough that he’d been able to “retire” at age twenty-eight. He had returned to the Sedona area, where, although he had never played golf, he bought himself a golf-course-view home. Rather than hitting the links, he had started his own computer security firm called High Noon Enterprises. His company motto was “It takes a hacker to catch a hacker.”

Now that B. Simpson was back in town, he easily could have been one of Sedona’s most eligible bachelors, except no one really knew he was there. He lived alone and worked odd hours, usually coming into the Sugarloaf for breakfast just as Edie and Bob Larson were closing down for the day. It was Bob who had brought B. Simpson’s painful childhood history and the existence of High Noon Enterprises to Ali’s attention.

“The way I understand it, he’s sort of like an Internet version of an old-fashioned gunslinger,” Bob Larson had told his daughter. “As much time as you spend online, you should probably have someone like him in your corner. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone shipped you one of those awful viruses. Or worms.”

In the end, Ali had signed up with B.’s High Noon Enterprises more to shut her father up than because she was worried about being hacked. In the three months since she’d been a paying customer, it had seemed like a needless expense. As far as she could see, preventing cyber crime seemed about as exciting as watching grass grow.