“Yes, he’s right. What of it?” she said. “Does he think I want my mother to die? Does he think I even care about the money?” She shook her head and turned away from him, but then she turned back and there was new hardness in her eyes. “Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Did you think he was right—that I killed Uncle Nigel on purpose?”

“Of course not,” Keegan said—but his answer came a beat too late. He knew it lacked the ring of certitude. “Of course not,” he said again. He picked up the glass, but Eve’s eyes flooded, and he put it back down, feeling like a fool.

“I can’t believe this,” Eve said. “You of all people.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “That just came out wrong.” He nudged her glass of whiskey closer to her.

She waved his words away with a quick flick of her hand. “You just lost your own mother,” she said. “And I’d guess this house is quite a windfall for you.” She gestured angrily around the room—at the doilies and figurines and the tarnished spoons lined up in their rack. “Did you want your mother to die?” Hot tears ran down her cheeks. “What a horrible, horrible thing to say about a person.”

Keegan leaned forward and pushed his nearly empty glass to one side. “It was just something the lieutenant said,” he told her. “I just thought you should know.” Keegan reached across the table and took Eve’s hands again, and she didn’t resist. “I’m sorry,” he told her. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

She looked at him, searching his eyes. “You’ve got to believe me, Jim.”

“I believe you,” he said. “Of course, I do. We’ve both got to trust each other. We won’t stand a chance if we don’t.”

Again, she regarded him steadily with her red-rimmed eyes. “I’m sick all this happened,” she said. And then, in a softer voice: “And I’m sick I got you tangled up in it. You don’t deserve any of this.”

“It’s all right,” Keegan said. “We’re going to be all right.” He nudged the glass closer to her again. “Go on,” he said. “Drink a little. It’ll make you feel better.”

She picked up the glass, sniffed at it with her damp nose and raised it to her lips.

SHE STAYED ANOTHER hour. Maybe it was the bourbon he had given her, but she had come to sit next to him, and now she was nestled against him, diagonally, with his arm drawn around her.

“When this is all over, can we go away somewhere?” she asked him after a long silence. “Just the two of us?”