He turned onto the dirt-and-gravel road that wound around a wooded hill leading from Hawthorne to Route 50, the main east-west highway. This far west of Washington, D.C., it was called Mosby’s Highway in honor of Colonel John Singleton Mosby, the Confederate rebel who was also known as the Gray Ghost. After the highway sliced through the top of Virginia, it continued due west, practically a straight arrow across the country passing through small towns in America’s heartland until it ended in Sacramento, California, three thousand miles from where it began in Ocean City, Maryland.

There were days when I wondered what would happen if Quinn and I stayed on Route 50, instead of taking the turnoff for home, if we kept driving until we reached California. Maybe continue a bit farther until we arrived at the Pacific Ocean.

“Hey.” Quinn said. “Are you still with me?”

“Yes. Sorry. Just thinking.”

A nearly full moon was starting to rise on the horizon and in the pale silver wash of light, I could see him frowning. He looked as if he were trying to work out the logistics of who had been where when Prescott died.

“Why couldn’t Victoria have waited to talk to Prescott until after the party?” he asked. “What was so urgent, so important? Assuming she did go see him.”

I yawned. The caipirinhas, the Madeira, and the warmth of the heat from the car radiator were making me drowsy. “Maybe she was upset that she and Clay didn’t get to announce their engagement at the party. I suspect Prescott might have ruined their moment with his own announcement about a family board meeting in the morning. You said yourself that Scotty and Alex were so angry they shouldn’t be around sharp knives. Not the time to break out the champagne and celebrate an upcoming wedding.”

“So maybe she’d had a few too many caipirinhas and she went downstairs to talk to Prescott without Clay there?”

“Look, Kit said the rumor going around the Trib staff at the party was that Prescott wanted to sell the paper, along with some of the other newspapers that belong to Avery Communications. And Grant told you the Averys are in such financial trouble that once they auction off the art, jewelry, and furniture that was promised in the Caritas Commitment, they’re not going to be able to hang on to Hawthorne. A lot of this news and new information seemed to bubble to the surface this afternoon,” I said. “Victoria knows the art world better than any of the family because of what she does for a living. Maybe she wanted to appeal to Prescott without any of them around, ask him not to completely dismantle the incredible art collection they owned, not throw the baby out with the bathwater. A few caipirinhas can make anybody bolder, more reckless.”