She folds the paper slowly. “I’m going to do something you may not believe. I’m going to do it because I don’t believe my father killed Del Payton. I can’t believe that. But if it should turn out that he did, I won’t protect him.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The papers you requested under discovery. Business records, all that?”

“Yes.”

“You got sanitized versions. There’s another set of files. One that nobody sees. Not the IRS, not anybody.”

My heart jumps in my chest. “You realize that withholding those papers from the court—”

“Is a felony? I’m not telling you this to hear the Boy Scout oath repeated back to me. Before I tell you where those files are, I want a promise from you.”

“What?”

“Any evidence of illegal activity that doesn’t directly pertain to the death of Del Payton, you’ll forget you ever saw.”

“Livy—”

“That’s nonnegotiable.”

“All right. Agreed. Where are these files?”

She bites her bottom lip, still resisting the deeply bred urge to protect her family’s secrets. “Ever since I was a little girl, Daddy kept his sensitive papers in a big safe under the floor of his study. He called it his potato bunk, whatever that means. If he’s hiding anything from you, it’s in there.”

“How can I get a look in there? He’s home tonight. Isn’t he?”

“He’s probably upstairs by now. Mother’s been flipping in and out for the past few days. He’s probably up there feeding her Darvocet and Prozac cocktails.”

“What about the off-duty cops he called?”

“They won’t look twice at you if I drive you in.”

She looks sincere. But it’s anger that’s driving her now. Her relationship with her father has always been one of extremes, love and hate commingling in proportions that change too fast to be assayed. To see the secret safe in Leo Marston’s study, I’ll have to go back to Tuscany. And at Tuscany, on this night, Leo could kill me and tell the police anything he wanted. He could even have one of his cops kill me. My only real protection would be the woman standing before me.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” I ask.

She folds the paper in half, then twice again, into a tiny rectangle which she slips between the buttons of her blouse and into her bra. Her eyes shine with utter resolution.

“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”

CHAPTER 38