“I don’t think so,” Lucy said. “You and I have stress; someone like Sam Miller goes to Barbados. I don’t believe it was suicide.”

“Oh, Lucy. Just leave it alone. It’s none of your business. Promise me.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Lucy, lifting the cookies one by one onto a rack to cool.

“You know perfectly well what I mean. You can’t just leave things alone. Well, for your information, there are people called police who investigate these things.”

Bill paused to take a swallow of coffee and noticed Lucy’s jaw had become set in a certain way he’d come to recognize. “Lucy, don’t be like this. I’m just saying I don’t think you need to get us involved.”

He got up from his chair and stood behind her, slipping his arms around her waist and nuzzling her neck with his bearded chin.

“It’s Christmastime. Let’s just enjoy the holidays, and the kids. We don’t have to get involved with Sam Miller’s”—he turned her around and looked straight in her eyes—“unfortunate death.” As he put his hand on her chin and tilted her face up to meet his kiss, a high-pitched voice broke the morning stillness.

“Mommy and Daddy alarm. Stop that kissing!”

Seven-year-old Elizabeth squirmed her way between them, demanding, “Elizabeth sandwich! Elizabeth sandwich!”

Bill caught her under her arms and lifted her up between them while Lucy covered her sleep-warmed pink cheeks with kisses. Elizabeth squealed and giggled in delight. Elizabeth’s happy cries attracted her little sister, Sara, who wrapped herself around Lucy’s legs, and her older brother, Toby, who leaned against the doorjamb with all the sophistication a ten-year-old could muster and asked, “Are we really having cookies for breakfast?”

It seemed to Lucy as if years had passed before she finally drove Sara to nursery school and returned to the empty house, hoping to catch a few hours of sleep. She had the foresight to turn on the answering machine, but it seemed as if she had barely dropped off when she was awakened by a loud banging and rattling at the back door.

Wrapping her log cabin quilt around her, Lucy staggered down the back stairs and across the kitchen to the door. Through the lace curtain she could see a massive blue shape: Officer Culpepper: Opening the door, she realized there was someone else with Culpepper, a slim, serious man wearing a Harris tweed sport coat under an unbuttoned London Fog raincoat.

“Sorry to wake you up, Lucy. A few questions have come up that we need you to answer. This is State Police Detective Horowitz. May we come in?”