It was enough to drive you nuts.

Now he was getting himself twisted up over a woman none of them knew they could trust if things got sticky. He, for one was going to keep a close eye on Sybill Griffin.

And not just for Seth’s sake. Phillip might have the brains, but he was just as stupid as the next guy when it came to a pretty face.

“AND YOUNG KAREN Lawson who’s been working down at the hotel since she hooked up with the McKinney boy last year saw it written down, in black and white. She called her mama, and as Bitty Lawson’s a good friend of mine and my longtime bridge partner—though she’ll trump your ace if you don’t watch her—she called me right up and let me know.”

Nancy Claremont was in her element, and that element was gossip. As her husband owned a sizable chunk of St. Chris, meaning she did as well, and part of that chunk was the old barn those Quinn boys—a wild bunch if you asked her—rented for their boatyard—though God knew what else went on in there—she knew it was not only her right but her duty to pass on the succulent tidbit that had come her way the previous afternoon.

Of course, she’d used the most convenient method first. The telephone. But you didn’t get the pleasure of face-to-face reaction over the phone. So she’d brought herself out, dressed in her brand-new pumpkin-colored pantsuit, fresh out of the J. C. Penney catalog.

There was no point in being the most well-off woman in St. Christopher’s if you didn’t flaunt it a bit. And the best place to flaunt, and to spread gossip, was Crawford’s.

Second-best was the Stylerite Beauty Salon over on Market, and that, as she’d made an appointment for a cut, color, and curl, was her next stop.

Mother Crawford, a fixture in St. Chris for all of her sixty-two years, sat behind the counter in her smeared butcher apron, her tongue tucked firmly in her cheek.

She’d already heard the news—not much got by Mother, and nothing got by her for long—but she disposed herself to hear Nancy out.

“To think that child is Ray Quinn’s grandson! And that writer lady with her snooty airs is the sister of that nasty girl who said all those terrible things. That boy’s her nephew. Her own kin, but did she say one word about it? No, sir, she did not! Just hoity-toitying around, going off sailing with Phillip Quinn, and a lot more than sailing, if you ask me. The way young people carry on today without a snap of their fingers for morals.”

She snapped her own, inches from Mother’s face, and her eyes glittered with malicious delight.

Since Mother sensed that Nancy was about to veer off the subject at hand, she shrugged her wide shoulders. “Seems to me,” she began, knowing the scatter of people in the store had their ears bent her way, “that there are a lot of people around this town who ought to be hanging their heads after what was being passed around about Ray. Whispering about him behind his back when he was living, and over his grave when he passed on, about him cheating on Stella, God rest her, and having truck with that DeLauter woman. Well, it wasn’t true, was it?”