When he was halfway down Barrow Hill, deeper in the woods, out of sight of the house now, Gurney’s phone rang. He recognized Hardwick’s number.

“Hello, Jack.”

“Both your cars are here, but no one’s coming to the door. You hiding in the basement?”

“I’m very well, thanks. And how are you?”

“Where the hell are you?”

“Coming down through the cherry copse, quarter mile to your west.”

“Hillside with all the yellow leaf blight?”

Hardwick had a way of getting under Gurney’s skin. It wasn’t just the little jabs themselves, or the pleasure the man seemed to take in delivering them; it was the uncanny echo of a voice from Gurney’s childhood—the relentlessly sardonic voice of his father.

“Right, the one with the blight. What can I do for you, Jack?”

Hardwick cleared his throat with disgusting enthusiasm. “Question is, what can we do for each other? Tit for tat, tat for tit. By the way, I noticed your door is unlocked. Mind if I wait for you in the house? Too many fucking flies out here.”

Hardwick, a solidly built man with a ruddy complexion, a prematurely gray crew cut, and the disconcertingly blue eyes of an Alaskan sled dog, was standing in the center of the big open room that composed half of the lower floor. At one end was a country kitchen. A round pine breakfast table was tucked in a nook next to a pair of French doors. At the far end was a sitting area, arranged around a massive fieldstone fireplace and a separate woodstove. In the middle was a plain Shaker-style dining table and half a dozen ladder-back chairs.

The first thing that struck Gurney as he entered the room was that something in Hardwick’s expression was slightly off.

Even the leer in his opening question—“And where might the delectable Madeleine be?”—seemed oddly forced.

“I’m right here,” she said, coming in from the mudroom and heading for the sink island with a half-welcoming, half-anxious smile. She was carrying a handful of asterlike wildflowers she’d picked on their way down from Barrow Hill. She laid them by the dish drainer and looked at Gurney. “I’m leaving these here. I’ll find a vase for them later. I need to go upstairs and practice for a while.”

As her footsteps receded to the upper floor, Hardwick grinned and whispered, “Practice makes perfect. So what’s she practicing?”

“Cello.”

“Ah. Of course. You know why people love the cello so much?”

“Because it has a nice sound?”

“Ah, Davey boy, now there’s the kind of direct no-nonsense insight you’re famous for.” Hardwick licked his lips. “But do you know what it is exactly that makes that particular sound sound nice?”

“Why don’t you just tell me, Jack?”