Emily checked her rearview mirror, expecting the Miata to pull up behind her at any moment. She kept going until she was well out of Mandarin Cliffs. As she drove, she reached for her cell, swerving to avoid oncoming traffic. How in the hell did you turn off the damned locator beacon? She stopped on a side street and pulled over. She switched the phone on and fiddled with the settings until she found LOCATION SHARING and set it to OFF for every one of her apps. She hoped that would do it.

Then she drove on, checking her rearview mirror and looping through backstreets. The farther behind that she left the dot that marked her last tracked location, the calmer Emily grew.

She tried to sort her thoughts. Frank could have tinkered with her friend-finder app. She left the phone lying around the house all the time and he knew her passcode. But why would he have added Quinn? It seemed more likely that Quinn had added herself. She could have done it the other night when Emily was sloppy drunk. They’d been together in Quinn’s kitchen when Frank texted, asking Emily to stop for a coffee. She couldn’t remember the details of what had happened next, but it seemed likely that she’d left her phone on Quinn’s kitchen counter when she’d gone to the bathroom before leaving. Quinn could easily have picked it up and made the change.

All roads seemed to lead back to Quinn Newell. Quinn hadn’t needed Emily’s help decluttering her garage; she’d needed someone to declutter her life and take the blame for her husband’s murder.

As Sergeant Stanley liked to point out, moving Walter Newell’s body, especially once it was rolled up in a wet area rug, would have been a two-person job. Had Ryan helped Quinn, with an eye toward becoming her third husband? Or maybe Quinn’s helper had been her first husband, Michael Safstrom, whose body had never been recovered. Or maybe it was Rafe Bartok, the actor in coffee-stained loafers, who Frank had said was one of Ryan’s clients? She swallowed hard. Or could it have been Frank?

Emily felt her thoughts spiraling out of control, conjectures caroming off one another. If Becca were here, she’d have been calm, thinking clearly, and asking the right questions. Her mother would have had a rational take on it, too. But best-case, Becca and Lila were right now finessing a delicate meeting with a head librarian, leaving behind books and prints that Mr. Murphy, with more than a little help from his wife, had “borrowed” from South Hadley’s District Collection.