“No, you didn’t. But you wouldn’t let me just go to the police,” she said. “You’re the one who turned this into some big… ordeal. We could have just told the truth in the first place.”

“Look, you came to me,” he said. “You could have called the police from the house. I thought you wanted my help.”

Her face changed. The anger in her seemed smothered by a wave of something like remorse. She shook her head forlornly. “Oh, Jim,” she said. “Isn’t it possible I didn’t need you to rescue me? I just needed you to hold me.”

They fell into a silence. Keegan watched her watch the coffee table. Her gaze grew blank and aloof. He sighed. It was a grand, unholy mess, and he couldn’t think his way to the bottom of it. It was the kiss in the brick entryway—the confusion and the sleeplessness and this goddamned skin-prickling heat. This town is one big bar brawl waiting to happen. “I could use a drink,” Keegan said. “Want me to pour you one?”

Eve’s answer was inaudible, but Keegan thought he’d pour her two fingers of the lieutenant’s Old Fitzgerald, whether she wanted it or not. It would do them both some good.

He came back from the kitchen and set her glass on the table in front of her before he sat back down on the sofa. He took a sip from his own glass and let the smoky flavor coat his tongue. It somehow tasted better now than it had when he was drinking it with Louis Moore.

Eve picked fretfully at the skin around her fingernails. The clock ticked on the mantle. The whiskey was a pleasant scalding going down. Keegan took another large swallow and set his glass on the table.

When their silence showed no sign of coming to an end, Keegan cleared his throat. “Lieutenant Moore thinks you’re playing me,” he said

“Who’s that?” Eve said.

“The detective,” he told her. “The black one.”

She looked at him and looked away. “I barely spoke to the man.”

“He told me that your mother is very sick,” Keegan went on. “He said she’s probably going to die soon.”

Eve bit her lip and nodded, not looking at him, like he’d added yet another bitter weight to her immeasurable burden. “It’s true,” she said. “Liver cancer. They say she’s got a few months.”

Keegan picked up his glass and took another swig. “He says the whole family fortune will come to you the minute she dies.” He set the glass down again and watched her.

Eve looked at him finally—a fiery flash of a glance that took him by surprise. “He thinks I killed Uncle Nigel so I would get his share?” she said. “What kind of a ghoul thinks like that?”

“But is he right?” Keegan said. “It’ll all come to you?”