She shook her head. “They hate each other. There is no way the two of them cooked this up. He wouldn’t. Bill knows how much I want him home.”

It was as if her lover had spurned her for another. “I think they want Levi home more.”

She let out a brutal gut punch of a laugh. “My grandson is dead.”

Rosemary returned to her seat at the desk, a show of grief knocking her legs out from under her, but Darren couldn’t tell if she believed what she’d said.

“What about Monica Maldonado?” he said. “Did you hire her firm or did Sandler Gaines do it or is there even a difference?”

“I’m not sure any of this is your concern.”

“It is if she’s missing.”

“My, but hasn’t your stay in Jefferson given you a sweet tooth for tall tales. Been reading too many of our ghost stories, Mr. Mathews?”

“It’s Ranger.”

She gave a tiny shrug to suggest she couldn’t be bothered with that.

“Are you trying to tell me you never had any contact with her?” he said.

“Not at all, Ranger. You said yourself she was seen leaving my dinner party, where, if I remember correctly, she told several of my guests she was intent on seeing the lake, that she had made plans to rent a small boat from one of the local vendors in the town of Uncertain to explore it before she left Texas.”

“A boat?”

“I believe several of my dinner guests can attest to her expressing that sentiment.”

“You know what I think? I think Monica got cold feet about what she was being asked to do out here, talked to you and Sandler about it, and when you realized that she might tell Margaret’s family what was really going on and that they would refuse to sign—”

“And what? I murdered the poor girl?”

“I didn’t say anything about murder.”

He remembered again the noises he’d heard, the deep, repeated thumps. Had someone banged her head against the wall, knocking her unconscious or worse? Was that how her hair comb had broken in two? Darren had come out of his room that night and noticed that the elevator was already on the second floor, so he took the stairs. Was Rosemary already in the process of spiriting her away? It was hard to imagine, unless she’d had help. He got a sudden picture of Clyde parked in front of the Cardinal Hotel, forever at Rosemary’s beck and call.

“Ranger, dear boy, do you know how many people go missing on that water? She could have had an accident. She could have eaten some bad oysters, for all I know or care. It will not change what is happening in Hopetown.”

“And if Leroy doesn’t sign the sale papers?”

“He will,” she said. “Or he goes to prison.”