If she had enough confidence to play men like she was playing me, what in God’s name was she doing with a dweeb like Mitch? “Stephanie—”

“That’s better.” She may have moved an inch or two closer to me. It was getting harder and harder not to look directly into her face.

“I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but your husband and I aren’t exactly friends. He’s stuck with me because someone called in a favor—”

“The Senator.”

“Yes.”

“And you know, of course, that Mitch owes his own job to the Senator.”

“I’d say that’s the common belief here on the Cape.”

“Mitch was a staff attorney on the Senate Judiciary Committee down in D.C., did you know that?”

“I’ve been told that, yes.”

“Were you also told he got the Senator out of a jam?”

“I figured it was something like that.”

“Sort of like you did.”

It was time for me to look away again. The wind, I saw, was beginning to pick up on the water. Tiny waves were being formed. I knew the pattern. They would get bigger.

“Which means”—her fingers moved, encircling my arm a little higher than the elbow and then pulling me toward her—“the two of you ought to be working in common interest, don’t you think?”

“Stephanie, do you know what I do for your husband? Do you know how long I’ve been doing it?”

“What I know is that Buzzy Daizell used to sleep with your wife.”

The touch on my arm was no longer cool. Now it was like the handcuffs that had been put on me in Costa Rica. “Maybe that’s why we’re no longer married,” I said.

“Is it? Because I saw you and her go into the bathroom of my house that time. I thought, man, what kind of couple is this? They go screw in someone else’s bathroom? They couldn’t even wait till they got home?”

Screw. Stephanie White, my boss’s wife, said “screw.” I didn’t know where she had come from, why she was dressed this way, why she was addressing me the way she was. I didn’t know what to say.

“She had issues.” I spoke over the top of her head. Over her hat. “She liked bathrooms.”

“I started thinking about you differently then. I started wondering what you were really like, George.”

I apparently gave something away because Stephanie’s mouth twisted. Did her hand squeeze me again? I pulled my arm away, just in case. “You thought I liked my wife having sex with other guys?”

“I thought maybe you had an open marriage.” From the way she tilted her head, I gathered I was to understand she was casting no judgments.

Stephanie, the sharp-featured ice queen, was open-minded about open marriages. Stephanie, who was married to a guy with a preposterous mustache and a wardrobe full of short-sleeved white shirts. What was she doing? What was she offering the swinger in her husband’s basement? The perspiration rolled down my sides.

“And then it occurred to me that maybe that wasn’t it at all. Maybe you didn’t know what was really going on.”

I felt a strange relief when she said that. My body temperature seemed to drop two or three degrees in an instant. “So you’re telling me now in case I’m supporting Buzzy against your husband.”

“Because if you are, George, his affair with your wife is going to come out. And I suspect it won’t just be him who’s embarrassed.”

“Are you threatening me, Mrs. White?”

“I’m just saying, George, there are reasons why we should work together.”

“You’ve got my secret. Tell me yours.”

It was her turn to be surprised. Or at least to act it. “What makes you think I have one?”

“I think Mitch does.”

She shook her head. “Well, if that’s true, you’re not getting it out of me.”

She was still standing close, closer than a stranger would, closer than a boss’s wife should. A sudden breeze came up and blew back her hat. She threw her hand to her head to hold it on and her back arched and there was no longer any doubt about what was and was not under her yellow tank top.

I had a moment, or maybe she gave me a moment, and then she took off the hat and spent some time straightening her hair before she put it back on. Hair that I always thought was mousy was now glimmering in the sun. “You’re a strange man, Mr. Becket,” she said.

Not half as strange as you, I thought.

She went from straightening her hair and her hat to straightening her skirt. “I have a question for you,” she said. She positioned herself directly in front of me again. She did it deliberately. Everything she was doing was deliberate. “What do you think is going to happen to my husband if he loses his job?”

“Get another one.”

“Here? On the Cape? He’s not from here, you know.”

“Former D.A. He’ll have criminal clients flocking to him.”

“Let’s not kid ourselves, George. Mitch is not a courtroom lawyer. And he doesn’t exactly have a lot of friends in this area.”

“Except the Senator.”

“That’s right. And the Senator wants Mitch to stay in his job. So why is it that you, as the Senator’s other friend, are trying to keep him from doing that?”

“I’m not. I’m trying to find out who killed Heidi Telford.”

“That’s not quite what you told Mitch was your reason for going to Hawaii, was it?”

I was telling so many half-truths these days it was hard to remember what I had said to whom.

“Your reason for talking to Howard Landry wasn’t so you could help Mitch and it wasn’t so you could put to rest the rumors that he covered up for the Gregorys, was it, cowboy?” Her finger thumped my chest. It left a mark. First yellow, then red. “Don’t think,” she said, her finger lingering, “we don’t know what’s going on.”

We? Who was we? She and Mitch?

Stephanie’s hand came up and I flinched, remembering what had happened with Leanne in Costa Rica. But this time the touch against the side of my face was gentle. “So what I want to know is,” she said softly, “what you’ve found out.”

I let her hand stay. I looked directly into her sunglasses again and said, “I’ve found out that Heidi was at the Gregory compound that night.”

Nothing changed. The hand did not move.

“That she was probably there with Peter Martin. That in all likelihood Jamie Gregory and Jason Stockover and maybe Paul McFetridge and possibly Ned Gregory know exactly what happened to her and how she ended up on a golf course with her head stove in.”

Was there a change now? Did her fingers curl so that her nails were digging into my cheek ever so slightly?

“And I’ve found out that Howard Landry was just about to put this all together when he was whisked away to Hawaii with promises that his every fantasy would come true. Just, Mrs. White”—I took her hand away, let it drop—“like you are trying to do to me.”

“You flatter me, George.”

I couldn’t see behind the dark lenses, but I imagined her eyelids fluttering. There was a hint of that in her voice. She laughed suddenly, and there was a hint of flutter there, too.

“I have a proposition for you, Georgie.”

“No.” I said it quickly.

She laughed again. “That wasn’t what I meant. What I meant was, what if I could get you promoted within the office? What if I could get you promoted to felonies?”

“You?”

“Well, Mitch isn’t going to come right out and tell you. It would look too much like what you think he’s been doing already. But if you believe Buzzy Daizell has a better position waiting for you, maybe we could head that off. Get you the same thing without changing ad”—she touched my chest—“mini”—she touched me again—“strations.”

“You’re making me an offer?”

“It can be made to happen.” She turned her shoulder slightly, moved her chin so that it was aligned with her shoulder. All edges and angles.

“In exchange for what?”

“In exchange for reporting to whoever you’re reporting to just what you’ve found. Which is nothing.”

I leaned down until my face was so close to hers that her lips opened in expectation, and then I said, “She was just a young girl, Stephanie.”