She’d slowed down so they were both walking, but almost in place. “I saw you seeing me.”

“Wondering what I was thinking, no doubt.”

“I think I know what you were thinking.”

“No, no,” he said. “It wasn’t like that. Well, not exactly not like that. I just . . .” He searched for words, then he shrugged. “Just wanted to get to know you.”

“And here we are. You’re doing that.”

“So what’s your name? Where do you work? Do you work? Are you—my God, you’re not married, are you?”

She had to laugh. “Single,” she said.

“In a relationship?”

“Not at the time.”

He feigned great relief, mopping his brow. “I didn’t think so, but still, it’s a relief. My little voice wasn’t wrong.”

Jeanine stopped walking. “Little voice?”

He read the worry on her face and laughed. “No, no, not that kind of little voice. I’m certifiably sane. It’s the kind of little voice almost all men have. It says, ‘You’ve got to get to know this woman.’ ”

His widened smile fairly screamed normal! Everything about this guy was normal. Flawless.

Little voice. That was okay. She sort of had one herself.

He seemed relieved now that they were standing still. “My name’s Thomas Gunn. I’m thirty-nine, divorced once, a long time ago, no children. I’m in real estate, and I’m moving to Nevada in three weeks. I’m a member of a partnership that’s going to build condominiums.”

“Isn’t it a bad time to be doing that?” she asked. “With the economy the way it is.”

He gave his Wheaties-box smile. “Not if you build them convenient to the casinos. Those are the kinds of buyers who’ll take a chance.”

Jeanine had to admit to herself that that made perfect sense.

“I’m Jeanine Carson,” she said, “unemployed art restorer and sometimes financial consultant.”

“I’d have guessed model,” he said. “Or actress.”

“And I’d have guessed you were an actor or professional athlete.”

They simultaneously laughed and shook their heads, acknowledging without saying that each of them knew the other was full of bullshit.

Not lies, but bullshit. For Jeanine there was a critical difference. Bullshit was play. Lies were . . . something else. Lies were what damaged people. Diminished them.

In a way, bullshit was the opposite. If all parties involved knew it was a game, what was the harm?

“What’s your little voice saying now?” Jeanine asked.

There was no hesitation. “That I should ask this beautiful woman to have dinner with me tonight.”

“That’s all?”

He cocked his head to the side, as if listening.

“Just what I thought it would say,” he told Jeanine. “It told me anything beyond dinner is totally up to the lady.”

Jeanine flipped an errant strand of hair out of her eyes in a way she knew men liked.

Patience. Caution. At least a show of resistance. More than she’d put up so far, anyway. She knew the rules. The ancient warnings.

It was just that there was, as they say, something about this guy.

She said, “I like your little voice.”

17

Sarasota, 1992

Dwayne paused in the dark hall outside the bedroom where his father and Maude were sleeping. His heart was like a huge bird beating its wings in an attempt to escape his body.

He knew they’d be sleeping deeply now, exhausted. They’d had sex, and then sent Dwayne downstairs to get the drinks, a whiskey sour for Maude and a Jack Daniel’s on the rocks for his father. Then they’d told him to return to his bedroom.

He lay there for over an hour, most of it listening to his father snore. Maude didn’t snore, but Dwayne knew she would also be asleep. He knew the sleeping habits of both of them.

And he knew their plans.

In the morning Dwayne’s father and soon-to-be stepmother were going to board a flight to Las Vegas. There they were going to be married and spend the weekend drinking and gambling. Dwayne had heard them talking about this as he lay exhausted beside them, keeping their voices low because they thought he was asleep and wouldn’t hear.

But this was simply a confirmation. He’d learned to use the big house’s air-conditioning vents as listening devices. The afternoon after Dwayne first heard of their marriage plans, Maude told Bill Phoenix about them inside the cabana.

Bill Phoenix and Maude had laid plans of their own. A month after Maude’s marriage to all that money, Dwayne’s father would die in a boating accident. Maude would be wealthy, and after a few months she would marry Bill Phoenix and he’d be wealthy. They would dole out money to keep Dwayne in a good boarding school, out of the way until he graduated and found employment, and then they could properly ignore him.

Maude suggested that Dwayne might be in that boating accident with his father, but Bill Phoenix said he didn’t like killing a kid. Maude had said, “Whatever. We can wait a while.”

Dwayne knew he couldn’t afford to wait.

So when he went downstairs to the kitchen to get the drinks, he slipped his jeans on and taped a long kitchen knife to his lower leg. And he added one extra ingredient to the drinks—some sleeping pills he’d ground up between two spoons.

Now, in the dark hall outside their bedroom, Dwayne sat cross-legged, listening, his bare back against the wall. He’d removed his jeans and was nude. Fingerprints didn’t matter. After all, he still lived here.

Dwayne’s father’s snoring had evened out, and from Maude there was only silence. Dwayne took a deep breath, holding the long knife in his right hand and staring at it. The knife was going to solve all his problems. He was sure of it.

Gripping the knife loosely against the carpet, he crawled silently into the bedroom.

His father’s snoring was louder now, and would cover just about any noise Dwayne made short of a shout. Between the sonorous rasping of his father he could hear Maude’s gentle, easy breathing. The booze and pills had done their job.

Dwayne stood up and approached the bed.

His father was lying on his back with one arm up over his head. He slept nude, his hairy chest exposed and vulnerable. Maude had rolled onto her side and was facing away from him. She’d put her thin blue nightgown back on put not her panties. The sheet had slipped down to her knees, and Dwayne stood for a moment transfixed by the curve of her buttocks and hips, thinking she looked so much like some of the medieval paintings he’d seen in museums.

Careful not to disturb Maude, he leaned over his father and swiftly inserted the long blade up beneath his sternum to his heart. Dwayne leaned into the knife, twisting and pushing, feeling warm blood on his hands and wrists.

His father moved his legs around some, and stopped snoring and gave several hoarse gasps. Then he was still.

He hadn’t even opened his eyes.

Dwayne was surprised to find himself thinking that his father’s death had been too easy.

It wasn’t going to be that way with Maude.

Dwayne went to the closet and grabbed a handful of his father’s silk ties. He tied a large knot in the middle of one tie, then laid the others on the bed near Maude.

Maude opened her eyes and stared at Dwayne. Her eyes widened as her brain caught up with what was happening. When she opened her mouth to scream, Dwayne shoved the knotted tie into it. He fastened it with a tightened knot behind her neck. She reached for the tie with splayed fingers, but he slapped her hard and brought her hands back down. He rolled her onto her stomach and bound her wrists behind her with another tie, this one with a striped pattern he’d never liked on his father.

She began to kick, but Dwayne expected that and was ready for it. He held her legs together and waited for her to run out of energy. Then he sat on her legs and tied her ankles, then her legs at the knees.