Cab finished his tea and put the plastic glass on the sidewalk next to his chair. He heard a bark and saw a wire-haired fox terrier scramble around the corner of the house. The dog eyed him suspiciously but then curled up next to Gladiola’s legs. Its tongue lolled as it panted in the heat. The dog tentatively licked the side of Cab’s damp glass, then knocked it over and dug a nose inside for the ice.

‘So you spent a lot of time in the Fairmont house?’ Cab asked.

‘Sure did.’

‘What was it like?’

She pursed her big lips. ‘Weren’t a real happy place.’

‘How so?’

‘Nobody got along. Not Mr Birch and his wife. Not Mr Birch and her son. It was a marriage for show. I always had two bedrooms to clean, know what I mean?’ She reached down and scratched the dog’s head. ‘Didn’t help that Mr Birch was a first-class pussy hound. Liked to rub up against anything with tits and an ass.’

‘Did that include you?’

She swallowed tea and wiped her mouth. ‘Yeah, he grabbed what he could when nobody was looking. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t want to get fired. I never let him poke me, if that’s what you’re saying.’

‘Did Diane know what he was like?’

‘Wives always know,’ Gladiola said.

Cab thought about himself and Diane. He wondered if husbands knew when the shoe was on the other foot. ‘Rufus said there was some kind of problem at the estate that summer.’

Gladiola nodded.

‘When was this?’ Cab asked.

‘Guess it was a couple weeks before Labor Day.’

‘And what happened?’

‘It’s not like I know the details,’ Gladiola said. ‘I wasn’t in the room.’

‘You know something.’

She played with her hair. Her eyes were tired. ‘It was a Saturday night. Ms Fairmont had some kind of brunch thing on Sunday, so I was cleaning. The house was quiet. Most nights that summer, it was like a train station, people everywhere, ’cause of the campaign. But there was some money thing over in Tampa, and most of the campaign folks were there.’

‘So who was in the house?’ Cab asked.

‘Guess it was me and Mr Birch and Ms Fairmont. And the muscle man.’

‘Garth was there?’

‘Oh, yeah. Like I said, he was always there.’

‘What about Drew?’

She shook her head. ‘He was off partying. Drinking. Drugs. Whatever he did in those days.’

‘So what happened?’ he asked again.

‘I was in the dining room, and I heard shouting. Real loud. Real angry. Mr Birch and his wife, they were upstairs, and they were going at it.’

‘What were they saying?’

‘Couldn’t hear that. All I heard were their voices thumping in the walls. Must have been, I don’t know, fifteen or twenty minutes. Then …’

‘Then what?’ Cab asked.

Gladiola eyed him and gave a little shiver. ‘Screaming.’