RIGHT OFF THE BAT, ROGER CARPINGTON did not strike me as a guy skilled in the art of negotiating. Caving is not one of the standard tactics. One look at the picture of himself with Stefanie Knight and he was ready to cut me a check.

“You think I’m here to blackmail you?” I asked.

Carpington, still sweating, said, “What other purpose could you have in mind when you come to me with a picture like this? You’re out to ruin me, that’s obvious. But I’m guessing that you can be dissuaded from that if we can agree upon a price.”

I leaned back in my chair. “I do think that the motive behind this picture, and the other ones I have in this envelope”-Carpington fixed his eyes upon it-“is definitely blackmail, Mr. Carpington, but I’m not your blackmailer. It’s somebody else. Maybe it’s Stefanie Knight. Has she been blackmailing you? Did she tell you she’d tell your wife about your affair if you didn’t pay her off?”

Carpington was wide-eyed. “That’s ridiculous. I’m not having an affair with Stefanie.”

I furrowed my brow, slid another one of the prints from the envelope out halfway, and peered at it. “You’re right. This one here, where she’s got your dick in her mouth, that doesn’t look like an affair. Maybe she’s just a consultant helping you interpret the town’s official plan.”

“You’re a disgusting man,” Carpington said. “Get out of my office.”

“Okay,” I said, and stood out of my chair. “Ta-ta.”

“Wait! Sit down. Sit down. Tell me what it is you want.”

“I want you to tell me about Stefanie. Everything.”

He shook his head slowly. “What do you care? And how do you happen to have these pictures? Do you know Stefanie? Are you working with her?”

“No, I don’t know her,” I said, “although I have seen her this evening.” I watched for anything in Carpington’s eyes, a glimmer. There was nothing. “How I happen to have these pictures is my business for now, but I can tell you that the negatives are safely stored away, and if something were to happen to me, there are people who’d know where to find them.” I was surprisingly good at this.

“I see,” Carpington said. He seemed to be abandoning any plans he might have had to leap across the desk and rip the envelope out of my hands.

“How did you meet Stefanie?” I asked.

He squirmed in his seat. “I met her through a business acquaintance.”

“Let me guess. Don Greenway.”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. I’ve met with Mr. Greenway on several occasions, and Stefanie works in his office. I believe she’s his secretary.”

“You’ve been very supportive of Mr. Greenway’s development proposals.”

Carpington shrugged. “I think people like Mr. Greenway bring economic prosperity to a place like Oakwood. They bring jobs, and families, a broadened tax base, hope for the future of our community.”

I needed some Maalox. “Not everyone agrees with you on that, though. Councilman Underwood, for example, and Sam Spender. Greenway’s had to deal with formidable opposition to his subdivision, particularly the last phase near Willow Creek. He must really appreciate having someone like you, in a position of influence, on the council and all, on his side.”

“Are you insinuating something?”

“You tell me. You’re boffing his secretary. That seems like a pretty good inducement to vote in favor of his development. My guess is, keeping you entertained is part of Stefanie’s job description. But just in case you start getting an attack of the guilts, or ever decide to vote against Valley Forest Estates, Greenway has a little something in reserve, these pictures, to make sure you do exactly what he wants you to do.”

“Oh God,” Carpington said, cupping his hands over nose and mouth. “Oh God oh God oh God.”

“When’s the last time you saw Stefanie?” I asked, ignoring his weeping.

“What? Uh, yesterday. At her house.”

“Over on Rambling Rose?”

“Yes. It’s not actually her house, it’s one owned by Greenway’s company, they built a lot of the homes in that area a few years ago, but she lives there.”

“Is that where you’d have your… encounters?”

Carpington nodded.

“There’s a mirror on the ceiling,” I said. “In the bedroom.”

Carpington looked as though he was getting jealous. “So you’ve been with her, too.”

“No, can’t say that I have, but I’m guessing that’s how they got these pictures of the two of you. The camera was mounted behind two-way glass, looking straight down. I guess Greenway or one of his people was up in the attic while you two went at it, fired off the shots he needed, waited until you were gone, and came back down. Left the film with Stefanie to get developed.”

Carpington fiddled vacantly with papers on his desk. “I’m finished. It’s all over for me.”

“Could be. But for the moment, as long as these prints and the negatives don’t land in the wrong hands, you’re still okay. So I’ve got a few more questions. You saw Stefanie yesterday, at her house. What did you talk about? How was she?”

“We didn’t talk about that much. We just, you know. But she did seem, I don’t know, different.”

“How do you mean, different?”

“On edge, distracted. She had something on her mind.”

“Did she say anything?”

“I don’t know. Why does it matter? Why don’t you just ask her yourself?”

“I’m asking you. What did she say?”

“She wanted to know how much it would cost to fly somewhere. The Bahamas, or Barbados, San Francisco. She was throwing out all these names of places. I asked her if she was going on a trip, and she said maybe. She said she might be going away.”

“Alone, or with someone else?”

“She, she didn’t say. It’s almost like she was talking about running away. Like she was scared. But I may have read that wrong. Maybe she’s just planning a vacation. Maybe she’s going away with her boyfriend.”

“Boyfriend? She has a boyfriend?”

“Well, I don’t know for sure that she does, but I have this sense that there’s someone else. Someone she’s seeing. Or has been seeing.”

“That must hurt,” I said, “the idea that she might be unfaithful to you and all.” I thought Carpington might shoot me a look, but he missed the irony and kept staring down at his desk.

“No, I know what we’ve got and what the limits are. I know she doesn’t like me. I know why she’s doing what she’s doing. I’m not stupid. I mean, look at me. What are the chances a girl like Stefanie Knight would be interested in a guy like me?”

Well, he had me there, but I decided not to say anything. But what I was thinking was, Could this guy have any more motives for wanting Stefanie Knight dead? She was clearly part of some blackmail scheme against him. Maybe she’d been threatening to tell his wife about what they’d been up to. And there was the jealousy angle. Carpington figured she was seeing somebody else.

I was starting to feel better already. I was moving down from the number one spot on the list of possible suspects. “Sure, Detective,” I could hear myself saying in an interrogation room, “I stole her purse, but you want an even better suspect? Check out this guy.”

But all that aside, I didn’t think he was the one who’d struck Stefanie in the head with a shovel. He just didn’t seem to have it in him.

I said, “You think this boyfriend was Rick?”

“Rick?” Carpington, who I thought couldn’t look any worse, moved toward bilious. “Don’t even talk to me about him. He’s a total psychopath. He’s insane.”

“We’ve met. To be honest with you, I don’t care much for him, either. We didn’t hit it off very well.”

“Let me tell you what he did to me. He took me to this house they’d started building-this was back when he and Greenway and Mr. Benedetto first started talking to me about needing some help at the council level and at the planning committee-and all that was done was the basement, which they’d capped off with the beams and plywood for the first floor, and he took me down a ladder to show me-there were no stairs yet-how the first stages of construction are done. And I’m looking around, and I notice Rick’s gone, and so’s the ladder, and I’m trapped down there, in this wide-open basement with a layer of wood overtop, and then Rick drops this snake-and I’m not talking about some little snake or something-but this giant snake into the basement.”