As I got into the Volvo, I was thinking that Boomer was smarter than he looked. He’d heard “Sheepshanks” once, and he’d used it, several minutes later, without stumbling. Usually, when I met a stranger, I had to go into my spiel about how it was English, spelled just like it sounded, and weren’t those British names quaint?

The Volvo knew its way to the Larimer place, as it happened, as well as the cemetery. At five minutes after four, I drove up a circular driveway and under a portico that made Greer’s seem downright miniature by comparison.

The house itself looked antebellum, and therefore wildly out of place in a shit-heel town in the belly button of Arizona. I must have been there often, as a child, but I couldn’t work up a memory to save my life. Maybe, I speculated, my folks and the Larimers hadn’t been close. The disparities between their lifestyles would surely have made things awkward.

I left the cemetery map on the seat, grabbed my purse, and headed for the massive front door, with its lion’s-head knocker. If there was a butler, I could send him to fetch my garbage-bag suitcase.

As if. My real plan was to wait until it got dark, sneak out, and carry my stuff into the guesthouse by the back door. If guesthouses had back doors.

Before my hand came to rest on the gleaming lion’s head, the great portal opened, and Clive stood in the gap, flanked by marble floors, a grand, curving staircase and a very beautiful woman seated in a wheelchair.

“You came,” he said fondly.

I smiled, though my stomach was quivering. I hadn’t even stepped into the house yet, and already I felt like an impostor, up to no good. God, why hadn’t I bought a suitcase, or better yet, borrowed one of Greer’s gold Halliburtons?

“Sorry I’m late,” I said. “Traffic.”

“Come in,” my uncle commanded good-naturedly. “We’ve been waiting for you.” He turned, looked down at the aging goddess in the wheelchair. Blond hair perfectly coiffed. Makeup artful. Pearls at the neckline of her black St. John suit. “Barbara, look who’s here. It’s Mary Jo.”

I didn’t correct him. In a place like that, “Mary Jo” sounded a lot better than “Mojo.” I met Barbara’s blue eyes, nodded and waited. She went over me like a CAT scan, but I supposed it was natural, after all that had happened.

“Welcome home, Mary Jo,” she finally said. I don’t think I imagined the faint note of reserve in her voice.

The Larimer mansion was about as likely to be my home as the White House, but I figured it would have been rude to say so. The woman had problems enough, stuck in that wheelchair, without some long-lost relative giving her backtalk in her own foyer.