Her face wasn’t any more conventional than her body. There was something off-kilter about the arrangement of her features, although it was difficult to say exactly what since her nose was straight, her mouth well formed, and her jaw strong. Perhaps it was the outrageously sexy tiny black mole that sat high on her cheekbone. Or maybe it was her eyes. Those who had seen them before she’d slipped on her rhinestone sunglasses had noted the way they tilted upward at the corners, too exotic, somehow, to fit with the rest of her face. Arturo Flores had frequently exaggerated those amber eyes, sometimes painting them larger than her hips, sometimes superimposing them over her wonderful breasts.

Throughout the funeral, Phoebe seemed cool and composed, despite the fact that the July air was heavy with humidity. Even the rushing waters of the nearby DuPage River, which ran through several of Chicago’s western suburbs, didn’t provide any relief from the heat. A dark green canopy shaded both the gravesite and the rows of chairs set up for the dignitaries in a semicircle around the black ebony casket, but the canopy wasn’t large enough to shelter everyone attending, and much of the well-dressed crowd was standing in the sun, where they’d begun to wilt, not only from the humidity but also from the overpowering scent of nearly a hundred floral arrangements. Luckily, the ceremony had been short, and since there was no reception afterward, they could soon head for their favorite watering holes to cool off and secretly rejoice in the fact that Bert Somerville’s number had come up instead of their own.

The shiny black casket rested above the ground on a green carpet that had been laid directly in front of the place where Phoebe was sitting between her fifteen-year-old half sister, Molly, and her cousin Reed Chandler. The polished lid held a star-shaped floral spray of white roses embellished with sky blue and gold ribbons, the colors of the Chicago Stars, the National Football League franchise Bert had bought ten years earlier.

When the ceremony ended, Phoebe cradled the white poodle in her arms and rose to her feet, stepping into a shaft of sunlight that sparked the gold metallic threads of her bustier and set the rhinestone frames of her cat’s-eye sunglasses afire. The effect was unnecessarily dramatic for a woman who was already quite dramatic enough.

Reed Chandler, Bert’s thirty-five-year-old nephew, got up from his chair next to her and walked over to place a flower on the casket. Phoebe’s half sister Molly followed self-consciously. Reed gave every appearance of being grief-stricken, although it was an open secret that he would inherit his uncle’s football team. Phoebe dutifully placed her own flower on her father’s coffin and refused to let the old bitterness return. What was the use? She hadn’t been able to win her father’s love while he was alive, and now she could finally give up the effort. She reached out to give a comforting touch to the young half sister who was such a stranger to her, but Molly pulled away, just as she always did whenever Phoebe tried to get close to her.