“Jesus,” Cade exploded. “And for that you picked a fight with a madman. We don’t in this firm go around brawling, or insulting people like Dalton Mooring. We couldn’t survive. After seven years you still have no mature concept of your responsibilities. I helped build this firm, dammit, and I won’t let you tear it down just because you had the good luck to marry my daughter.”

A retort came to my tongue and died there. “The point is,” I finally said, “that without Jason as a suspect, Henry’s in trouble.”

“My God, you’re fresh from fighting with Jason and you still think he couldn’t kill?”

I shrugged. “I suppose it’s possible. He’s violent, his feelings about Lydia are a tangle of pathology, and the girl’s his only alibi. That has a strange look to it: she’s mother, lover, and cheerleader all rolled into one. But incest is hard to accept.”

“I’ve known Jason since he was a child,” Cade said coldly, “and I assure you that he could kill his mother and the rest of it, too. All it would take is something to make him feel that Lydia had abandoned him. Like that will.”

“That’s wading pretty deep in the Freudian slime.”

“Christ.” Cade gave me a slow, disgusted look. “Did you see Lydia’s picture?”

I rested the cold drink on my hand. “Is that why you gave Kris Ann the revolver?” I asked. “Or to make some other point?”

“She should be able to protect herself.” His voice was contemptuous. “With you out stirring up Jason and God knows who else, I’m damned glad I did. He’s insane and now you’ve gone out of your way to draw his attention. Someone has to protect my daughter from your own carelessness.”

I flushed. “I’ll let her keep it, for now. But the next time you want to introduce guns into my house, ask first. Ask me.”

Without answering, Cade took a long sip of his drink, watching me over the rim until he put it down. In a tone of polite inquiry, as if continuing another conversation, he said, “Nothing’s worse than being poor, is it?”

I looked at him, surprised. “I don’t know. There are a lot of things I haven’t tried.”

“Nothing’s worse,” he repeated. “That’s why you came here.”

“I came here for Krissy.”