THEY ARRIVED AT THE TRADITIONAL BRICK TWO-STORY HOUSE on a corner overlooking the golf course to find the widow waiting for them. Thin and drab in a blue print dress, Sarabelle stood in the doorway, arms crossed in defiance. For all her feminine frailness, she could be a formidable adversary, Booker decided. Melinda had better watch her toes.

“I phoned both boys and left a message that you were coming.” Her jaw kicked up and her pale eyes shone like quicksilver. “Until they arrive, I suggest we stand on the porch and admire this fine evening.”

“If you’re scared of Booker, I’m here for protection,” Emaline shouted.

“Either we wait for my boys or we do this another time.”

“No problem waiting for your sons,” Booker assured her. “You certainly have an elegant home, Mrs. Fowler.” Pushing the sheriff’s spiral tablet into his back pocket, he hoped to avoid turning a simple interview into a confrontation.

Pride softened the woman’s face. “Thank you. We love it here.”

“Been at Lakeside a while, I take it?” The property had been handsomely landscaped, with a gazebo, swimming pool, tennis court and the overall appearance of stability. If this was the Fowlers’ weekend getaway, their Houston residence must be a wonder to behold.

“Charles and I had this house built twelve years ago. Before that, we summered in a small place on Bass Lake, which we rent now to weekenders. Houston is where I work, but Lakeside Estates is home.”

Booker appreciated the distinction. “Home is where the heart is?”

“Something like that.”

“If you like it so much,” Emaline said, “why the devil don’t you move here full time? Masonville has a school you could teach at.”

“We planned to retire next year. At least, I intended to retire.” She lowered her gaze to a simple gold band on her left ring finger. “Chuck would have gone on working until he was ninety. He believed the adage about idle hands.”

A Chevy sedan trailed red dust into the air as it sped down the road and into the driveway. Jeremy stepped out, looking like a storm cloud.

“What’s going on, Mama?”

He strode up beside her and stood in the spacious doorway, two pieces of the same puzzle.

“It’s all right, son.” Sarabelle patted his back. “Mr. Krane wants to ask some questions. I thought you and Aaron should be here, as well, to save this man the trouble of speaking to us individually.”

Sure she did. Booker merely smiled and nodded.

The widow stepped aside for him and Emaline to enter, then led the way to a formal sitting room. The traditional décor, like the landscaped yard, had an understated, professional quality about it. Booker’s decorator friend would have added more color—tealstone, no doubt.

“I’ve made tea. Would you bring it in, Jeremy?” When he continued down the hall, Sarabelle waved her unwanted guests toward a pair of chairs flanking a mahogany end table.

“Sit down. Please. No reason not to be civilized about this. I understand Coroner Birdwell appointed you some sort of investigator, Mr. Krane?”

“Temporarily. To provide the sheriff with added manpower until the question of your husband’s death is resolved. I’m sorry to barge in like this.”

“I’m happy to do whatever I can to help,” she said.

As long as her two sons were present to support her story.

Jeremy arrived from the kitchen, carrying a tray.

“The sheriff said Pop’s death was an accident. Birdwell should leave it at that.” The boy set the tray on a low claw-foot coffee table. “With all the questions and insinuations floating around, Mama hasn’t had time to grieve in peace.”

Outside, a car door slammed. Sarabelle used silver tongs to plunk ice into tall crystal tumblers. She had the hands of a lady, Booker noticed, slender and well kept.

“Your father died because of that woman, Jeremy, and I want her in jail.”

“Mama—”

“Son, you’ve been away, involved in school and theater. You hadn’t seen the way your father changed.”

“Mama’s right,” Aaron said, appearing in the doorway, Diet Coke in hand. “A year ago, Pop would’ve snapped up any reasonable investment. But all this year, he’s been cashing and stashing. I wouldn’t be surprised to find Ms. Swivelhips’ name on all Dad’s bank accounts.”

“Aaron!” Sarabelle’s hand shook, spilling tea from the pitcher. “You knew about that?”

Emaline grabbed a napkin, mopped up the tea, her ears recording every word the Fowlers uttered, Booker figured. He started to interject a question but clamped down on it. The family was doing a good job of dragging out its dirty laundry without any help from him. Listening was an art, and while Emaline was something of a master at gathering intel,

Booker was no slouch, either.

“Mama, if you hadn’t kept your head in the sand, you’d know, too,” Aaron said. “You couldn’t go anywhere in fifty miles without running into Dad and his mistress sneaking around together. I heard them in a booth next to mine in Normanville one night.” He gestured with his Coke toward a town roughly twenty miles southwest. “They didn’t know I was there. Melinda talked about unloading land that hadn’t appreciated fast enough and buying other property. Said she often stumbled across deals that needed quick decisions.

Said with him, meaning Daddy, on the road all week, she needed access to his working capital.”

“They were merely discussing your father’s investments,” Sarabelle argued, but her gray eyes glittered with tears.

Aaron stared at her in silence.

“Your father wasn’t himself,” she relented. “That woman changed him.”

Jeremy stood behind his mother and patted her shoulder. “Mr. Krane, why don’t you ask your questions and go?”

“Great idea, Booker. Get on with it and let these good people get on with their supper.” Emaline had been studying a painting of bluebonnets. Now she ambled toward a hallway that led to other parts of the house. “Sarabelle, I need to visit your facility.”

“First door past the den,” Sarabelle said.

Fumbling in his pocket for the sheriff’s notebook, Booker regretted not establishing the rapport he’d hoped. Rapport was tremendously helpful in eliciting information.

“Mrs. Fowler, you told Sheriff Ringhoffer you came home from church on August sixth and stayed home all day. From other testimony at the inquest, it seems you may have stopped at Ms. McCray’s house that morning, before going to church, that you may have threatened her and your husband, and that later, you followed your husband to town. Is that correct?”

“No. Every word out of that woman’s mouth is a lie.”

“Is there anyone who could corroborate that you went straight to church and were here at home that afternoon?” Several people had seen Sarabelle at church, but no one could say when she arrived.

“If Mama says she was home, she was home,” Jeremy put in quietly.

“I talked to her,” Aaron said. “Called her right here at this number.”

Sarabelle looked at him.

Here it comes, Booker thought. The alibi. I was thirty-six miles away in Bryan, but talked to Mama on the telephone for four hours straight.

“Remember what you talked about?” Booker asked.

“Sure. Labor Day weekend’s coming up, okay? And we always barbecue. I wanted to let her know I was bringing someone.”

“You phoned from the dealership?” Telephone records might show the call. Bryan wasn’t long-distance, but if he used the dealership phone, it might retain numbers dialed.

“That’s right.”

“Mrs. Fowler, your husband took archery equipment with him that afternoon. Did he say what he planned to do with it?”

“No, he didn’t.” She shifted uneasily on the sofa.

“He didn’t mention practicing later?”

“Pop never practiced,” Aaron said. “Unless he had money on a match or was showing off to someone. And he never shot at still targets.”

“Sure he did,” Jeremy said. “He just didn’t tell anyone about it. I’ve seen him shoot in the back room at the store.”

“Not alone,” Aaron insisted. “He was showing off or teaching somebody.”

Jeremy shrugged.

Interesting. “Could your husband have been planning to give someone an archery lesson, Mrs. Fowler?” But why would he go out in the August heat when he could use the air conditioned lanes at the Gilded Trout?

Sarabelle frowned and pleated her skirt. “That’s possible, I suppose.”

Booker studied a blank page of the sheriff’s note pad. He honestly had hoped to establish Sarabelle’s whereabouts for the entire afternoon and scratch her name off the list. He

didn’t want this family suffering any more than it already had.

“Aaron, what time did you talk to your mother that day?” he asked.

“About four-thirty. Busy day. Lot of tire kickers. Then we got a lull.”

“I drove down the road here about six that evening,” Emaline piped, coming back into the room. “Sarabelle’s car was parked in the driveway.”

“Then that settles it. What more do you want?” Aaron demanded. “Mama says she was here, I say she was here, and Mrs. Peters says she was here. The only one who says different

is that lying bitch in Masonville. Find out where she was when Pop was killed.”

“Come on, Booker,” Emaline said. “You got what you need here.”

Not exactly. From four-thirty to six o’clock left a number of hours unaccounted for. Turtle Lake was at most a ten-minute drive from the Fowlers’ house. Booker figured he’d learned all he could at the moment, though. He finished his tea and thanked them for their help.

Standing on the porch again, Jeremy’s Chevy churning up red dust as he headed for the Carey theater, Booker shook Sarabelle’s slender hand and asked if there was anything else she wanted to tell him.

“Mr. Krane, that McCray woman insinuated herself into every part of my husband’s life,” the widow said simply.

Aaron wrapped an arm protectively around his mother. His glare told Booker it was indeed time to go.

As Emaline steered the Wrangler out of the circular driveway, Booker looked back at the widow standing ramrod stiff beside her son. Slender, pale, but not at all frail, Sarabelle’s grip had been as strong as Jeremy’s.

“Okay, my self-appointed deputy investigator, what were you up to with that transparent ploy to prowl through the Fowlers’ house? More than going to the bathroom, I’ll bet.”

Emaline smiled smugly. “I found a family album in the den.”

“Don’t tell me! There’s a black-sheep relative who just got out of jail after serving time for assault with a deadly bow.”

“Don’t be a nincompoop, Booker. I found the boys’ baby pictures, dated at the bottom and taken at the hospital where they were born. I got everything I need to do their horoscopes.”

“No. That nonsense does no good and could do plenty of harm if you spread rumors.”

“Booker Krane, you investigate this case your way. I have my own methods.”

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