Felice led me back to the darkening playground. The crows I’d noticed before were still hanging around, and more were flying in by the minute. The growing mob reminded me of the scene from The Birds where crows gather ominously on a jungle gym while the oblivious heroine smokes a cigarette. I had never seen the entire movie, but I knew the sequence, and I suspected that if I watched the whole film, my sympathies would lie entirely with the birds.

Felice perched her butt on a swing. She gripped the chains holding the seat to the crossbar and began to rock back and forth.

“I’m sure Bibi told you she adored her grandfather,” she said at last. “That’s been her line since he went missing. She didn’t tell you he was changing his will, leaving most of his estate to the college he used to run.”

I tried to keep disbelief out of my tone. “He was rewriting his will?”

“It sounds like Miss Marple, I know.”

“Did Bibi tell you why he was doing this?”

“The current president of Bollingbrook—that’s the college where he was dean—had flown to Maine with an appeal. They were going to name a new library in his honor if he made a big enough donation. Chamberlain was too much of an egomaniac to resist. He wasn’t going to disinherit Bibi completely or anything. He knew she makes decent royalties off her books, and she’ll get money when her mom dies—if she dies. Lady Mariëtte told you she’s Rhodesian, right? That woman counts herself as part of the master race. She plans on living to 120.”

“Bibi told you this?”

“She was high at the time. I am sure she’s regretted it every day since. We’re not as close friends as people think. We never hooked up, because that ain’t my bag. I’m only telling you this in case I’m found shot someday. Bibi Chamberlain is quite a marks-woman.”

Again I sensed that Felice was lying to me, not about Bibi’s proficiency with firearms, but this story about a new will was outlandish. All I had to do was call the president of Bollingbrook to ask if he’d made an appeal to the professor. So why was Felice wasting my time spinning a transparently ridiculous story? She must have known I would see through it.

I didn’t hear a beep, but Felice pulled her phone from her pocket, glanced at the screen, then tucked it away without a word of explanation. Evidently it wasn’t the text she was dreading from Levi.

“What were you saying?” she asked.

“I wasn’t saying anything. You were telling me a story in which an old man is murdered before he can rewrite his will.”