“I can’t believe this,” I murmured.

He shook his head. “I’ve known her so long. And Kris Ann—it will be hard on her, too. I hardly know how to tell her.”

The last was spoken almost to himself. I looked up at him sharply. “I’ll tell Krissy.”

Cade turned to me, arms folded, his face set as if fighting to hold silent. Abruptly, he broke away and called to the man at the door for Rayfield.

A moment later Rayfield appeared amidst the roses, striding toward us deliberately and without hurry. “You ready?” he demanded.

Cade reddened. “You’ll want to know how that will came to be drafted.”

Rayfield took out his notebook. “Go ahead.”

Cade paused, breathing deeply, composing himself into a lawyer. “Mrs. Cantwell called me yesterday,” he began, “to insist on seeing me. I said of course, and she came, around three. Our receptionist can confirm the time, if that’s important. In any event, she sat in my office and asked me to change her will.” Cade’s voice seemed muted by a kind of buried sadness. “Her prior will favored her husband and son in equal measure. Now she wanted to leave everything to Mr. Cantwell.”

Rayfield’s pen skittered across the note pad, face tight with expectation as he watched Cade. Cade continued. “Jason Cantwell’s a deeply troubled boy. He’s had psychiatric counseling and fooled with radical politics. There are other things—I’m frank to admit I don’t care for him. But Mrs. Cantwell refused to give reasons. I did see that she was quite agitated, to the point that her hands shook when normally she was calm and precise.

“It wasn’t a long interview. I asked her if she’d talked with Henry and, when she said no, advised her to. I thought that was best—it was her money, all right, but Jason isn’t just her son. She said she might, but that she wanted the will revised that day. It wasn’t much trouble—just changing some paragraphs—so when she left, I had Miss Millar, my secretary, type it up. I decided to send it to Lydia at home and give her time to consider. If I’d had her come back for it, we could have witnessed the document and the thing would have been done. This way she’d have the weekend and perhaps talk with Henry. So I called her about five and said I’d send it out this morning.” Cade stopped, exhaled, and said, “You know the rest.”

It had been some moments since anyone else had spoken. Cade’s voice had journeyed through calm and sadness in a near-hypnotic rhythm. Rayfield watched him.

“You should be looking for Henry Cantwell,” I said to Rayfield.

He looked over at me strangely. “Any particular reason why you’re this worried?”

“Look, dammit—”