Klay followed Eady and his tide of Jack Russells through a door into the summer kitchen. Eady continued through the room and stepped into the main house, causing the dogs to surge ahead of him. “Good dogs,” he called, and shut the door.

Klay and Eady stood alone in the summer kitchen with its thick whitewashed stone walls, deep-set windows, and cool Mexican-tile floor. It was appropriate that it would happen here, Klay thought. This had always been his favorite room in the house. It smelled of woodsmoke, fresh fish on newspaper, and cloves. Klay’s father used to say that smell was the most powerful of man’s senses. The smell of this room was what Klay conjured when he thought of home. Not lilies or embalming fluid.

This was the room where Eady and Ruth shared morning coffee sitting at the round maple table. A bottle of Lagavulin and two glasses were on the table now. One of the glasses, with liquor already in it, was in front of the spindle-back chair Eady favored. Klay took the chair opposite. Eady’s fishing hat lay in the seat of a third chair on top of the day’s Washington Post, folded to the crosswords.

Eady filled two glasses of water from the sink, served Klay, and sat down. His hair didn’t look as if he’d recently worn a hat.

“Could use this,” he growled, pouring Klay a whiskey. He raised his glass, hesitated when Klay didn’t join him, then drained his scotch in a swallow. He set his glass down on the table in front of the third chair, but did not release it. Klay looked at Eady’s hand. It was too close to the table edge, too close to the hat in the third chair. “That the way you want to play this, Vance?”

Eady tilted the glass to look into it, tapped it hard on the table, and refilled it. He folded his hands in front of him and turned to look out the small window.

It was a bright, clear day. Klay knew the view without taking his eyes off of Eady. Below the window was a flower garden with a bird bath held up by a concrete cherub whose arm had broken off. Farther on, down the hill, was Eady’s trout pond.

“Do you remember how you started, Tom?”

“You are a murderer,” Klay said.

Eady unfolded his hands. “Not at the magazine,” he continued. “How you and I started. Your training . . .”