“Oh, he can stay,” Rosemary said, reaching for the glass of water Mary proffered before it even hit the coffee table. “Roger Pressman’s my lawyer.”

Darren shot a look at Quinn, who nodded and said, “Roger.”

“Steve.”

The two men knew each other.

Roger Pressman drank his ice water in three gulps and then held out the glass for Mary to get another. The black woman, who’d made no direct eye contact with Darren, returned from whence she’d come without saying a word.

“Any reason why you felt the need to have your attorney present?”

Rosemary waved off the thought. “He just stopped by.”

Again, that look between the two.

Roger smiled and said, “But as long as I’m here.”

Rosemary fiddled with the pearl-drop necklace she was wearing. “Roger handles all personal and professional matters for the King family. This business with Levi is of concern to him as well. I’d feel more comfortable if he stayed.”

Quinn nodded.

But Darren thought the whole thing had an air of cunning. He even wondered if the apparent interrupted afternoon liaison was a put-on. Hadn’t she known Quinn and Darren were on their way? Deputy Briggs, who was sitting in his cruiser outside by the mansion’s carriage house, had phoned ahead.

Darren looked into the older woman’s eyes. They were a robin’s-egg blue, nestled in the pale crepe of her skin. There was something probing there. She was watching Darren Mathews as closely as he was watching her. Twice, her gaze darted down to the badge on his chest. The fact of its presence, of Darren in her house, seemed to catch her unawares each time she looked at him, made her shift ever so slightly in the gilded chair she was sitting in. For that reason, maybe, she addressed Sheriff Quinn alone; Darren was as invisible as the black hands that brought her ice water. “I haven’t seen him,” she said to Quinn. “And I wouldn’t put it past his mother to make up a story like this just to get my attention, to find some way to get more money out of me.”

“I’m sorry,” Darren said. “But how would your grandson going missing be a way for Marnie to get money from you?”

Rosemary directed her answer to Quinn. “Who’s to say she doesn’t have the boy holed up somewhere just to scare me and demand more money?”

Roger put a cautioning hand on her knee. “Let’s not open ourselves up to a charge of slander. We know how opportunistic Marnie and Gil can be.” He had a ruby signet ring on his right hand and a diamond pinkie ring on his left, but no wedding band.

“She gets two hundred a month from me and still has her hand out.”

“Two hundred is not that much money for two kids,” Darren said.