“That’s right,” he said bluntly. “Past tense. She’s been strangled by someone who looks like he could do this again to some other friend of yours. That’s why we’re talking.”

We stared at each other. “Her mother was a Maddox,” I finally said. “Maddox Coal and Steel.”

He jotted that in his notebook. “What about her father’s side?”

I pointed toward the portrait. “Remember the Grangeville case?”

Rayfield turned to look. “The one way back, where they executed those two Negroes for rape.”

“He was the judge who sentenced them.”

Rayfield’s face was devoid of expression. “You’re not from here, are you?”

I knew where “here” was. “No. Cleveland.”

“And Cleveland’s where your people are.”

“That’s right.”

I’d tracked his thoughts, so I wasn’t surprised when he said in a flat voice, “Grangeville was a long time back,” and shut the notebook. It was then that it struck me that he had asked almost nothing about Henry Cantwell.

“Clean her up,” someone said. I winced, involuntarily, and then Cade walked through the door.

Three

THREE

Cade stopped in the alcove to stare at Lydia Cantwell. No one spoke. Cade’s head inclined in the attitude of patience, as if waiting for her to awaken. Slowly, perceptibly, the stiffness went from his back.

“Mr. Cade.” It was Rayfield, standing next to me.

Cade turned, ashen, gazing for a moment with vague, frightened blankness as though jarred from sleep by a sudden noise. Then his black hawk-eyes settled on Rayfield until they seemed to glare at him from a face all surfaces and angles, like those of some great arrogant bird. Rayfield’s pen clicked, once.

“We’re in here,” he said.

For several seconds Cade watched Rayfield, refusing to move. Finally, he limped toward us. World War II had left a pin in his hip and he moved with torso canted slightly forward, to ease a pain which seemed etched in the squint of his eyelids and the grooves running like scars from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth and then to the square of his jaw. But his hair was still chestnut and his stomach flat: looking down at Rayfield, he seemed younger than fifty-six.

Rayfield held out the will. “You know about this.”

Cade gave him a look of repugnance. “All I know is that an old friend lies horribly murdered in the next room.”

“You did draft this will, though.”

“Yesterday. I said that when you called.”

“Then maybe you could tell me how that happened.”

Cade shot me a hasty glance. “I’ll need to speak with Mr. Shaw.”

Rayfield tugged his ear in a distracted, impatient gesture, looking from Cade to me and back again. Then he nodded toward the door. “You can do that outside.”