(8) Asleep Beneath the Trees [Conclusion]

Hermann 'Bear' Claus looked up from the open file folder on his desk when Felicia came into the office with the mimeographed report on the Arden assignment.

"The latest," she said. "Sanguineus is at the ranch with his prospect. He wants to know if you'll be going out there this weekend."

Claus took the report and leaned back in his swivel rocker. "No, the Funan business has taken an unexpected turn," he said. "He'll be doing the traveling this weekend. A preliminary visit to Singapore. I want to see his prospect here in New York, tomorrow. Tell him to bring her with him on the flight to La Guardia. She can stay here while he's in Funan. His assistant will be Sally Anne Bern. Let her know about the change in the schedule. She should be through with her geological course in California by now."

"Yes, she messaged me earlier today. Oh and I need to know if Dariana Campobello has qualified. If so, then her Intel orientation can be scheduled for next week."

"I haven't decided yet," Claus said with a twinkle in his eye. He knew what his decision would be, but for the sake of professionalism he would hold off a while longer. "Fred Rolgo will be here on Monday. I'll let you know about Campobello after my meeting with Fred. He has a special insight into her personality and background that I must take into account. Anything else?"

Felicia tapped her chin with her fountain pen, an habitual reflex when a question of some import was posed to her. She was one of those tightly wound Basque women whose ambition brought her to New York from the too complacent society of southwestern Spain. Her energy was always more than it needed to be in any situation. Claus liked her hardwired positive attitude, her pleasant brunette looks, her slightly immodest dress, and most especially the contact she had in the NSA; an uncle on her father's side who had been an Interpol agent for nineteen years. As Claus was about to find out, her contact had provided a nice cushion for a hard landing.

"Uncle Tomas told the county D.A. that the unidentified remains in the burned out car at the Blue Pelican is Eleanor Lyme."

"And the district attorney believes that?"

"Not too surprisingly. They identified the driver's remains as being John Huffins, there being no doubt about that, and it was known that he shared a room with Ms Lyme."

Claus nodded. "The thermite explosive Sanguineus used absolutely melted the body of the woman, as he intended. Even her teeth melted. How was Tomas able to convince the D.A. that the body was any particular person? There was nothing to go on except the presumption that it was Huffins' roommate."

"He told the D.A. that the method of identification was classified, since the case concerned terrorism."

"That's always a handy excuse," Claus said. "Is this in the report?" He taped the stapled document that lay on the file folder.

"It was predicted. But I found out from Uncle Tomas at lunch that the D.A. has gone along with it."

"So then, we're off the hook. Good. Thank you, Felicia. Tell Gina to get hold of Dr Wingate. I'll see him at three this afternoon, if he's free."

"Yes, sir."

When she left the office Claus turned his attention to the report, the memory of Felicia's bare back gradually fading as he read about the death of the cemetery superintendent.

The police put it down as a burglary. The one piece of evidence pointing to the killer was a five inch length of blond hair. 'This will almost certainly lead to Penny Arden,' the report said.

Well, thought Claus, we needn't be worried about that.

The most satisfying part of the report was the revelation that the Liam-Lucy analysis method had been cracked by NSA communications experts, thanks to their secretive raid on the Nob Hill house that yielded the essential clues. The assassinations, as messy as they had been, made all the surviving principals happy. Claus could breathe easy.

Sanguineus watched the bay stallion being ridden expertly by the woman he had recruited as a Red Rum prospect.

He was sitting in the shade of a dilapidated barn at the ranch, drinking a glass of tea, dressed only in jeans, thinking that he had perhaps equalled Rolgo's prospect, this Dariana spitfire from Havana. His own prospect had a colder nature, but that would help to keep her head cool in a hot spot.

"You were bred for the saddle," he said to her when she had dismounted.

"Wasn't I," said Eleanor.

It was three weeks later that Helen Arden arrived at the mansion. She had gone ahead with the plan of her late lamented sons, Ross and Liam, to build a nine-hole golf course on the south lawn. It was a fine day.

She stood on the south veranda with her walnut cane and felt the breeze off the seacliffs in her white ringlets. She was fond of the briney smell and the childhood memories it brought.

Helen had decided to move back into the mansion and sell her Monterrey home. There were so few Ardens left in the world that she even contemplated adopting some children for her cousin's daughter to raise, here at the mansion, if she could talk the flamboyant woman into it. Helen didn't like her. But bright, talented children in the roost would help her to shine with something like benevolence upon Morgana Arden-Straatmann.

Helen went cautiously down the veranda steps. She paused to note the progress of the groundskeeper attending to the prize roses along the path to the tennis courts. Then she continued on down the gentle slope of the lawn where she had a good view of the golf course.

The bulldozers had configured it, but as yet the fairway grass had not been put in, and the greens were covered with artificial grass carpets, to better test the angles of various lies.

Helen stood in the shade of one of the two pine trees that the course designer had spared. She watched laborers with shovels refining the big hole that would one day soon be a water hazard.

After a minute she noticed the little patch of daffodils that grew under the two pines, one patch under each tree, near the border of the bare earth beneath the low-hanging branches. She wondered who had planted the flowers, and what they signified.

Helen wasn't sure why, but this had her reminiscing about Penny and Nellie. They had been missing now for over a month, and with the bizarre discovery of Liam and Lucy in the 'Penelope' crypt, and the finding of poor Ross's body at the base of the cliffs, Helen felt a cold certainty that her two nieces were also the victims of a mysterious foul play. It was no wonder that Morgana did not want to live at the mansion. The news pundits were having a field day passing judgment on Arden House, calling it cursed and haunted.

What nonsense, Helen thought. She was inclined to believe that the shyster the family hired, that villainous John Huffins, had got involved in a mob activity and drew into it Ross and Liam, and the girls too, perhaps.

The bell rang.

Helen turned and walked slowly back to the veranda, where a maid was setting the table for lunch.

The breeze off the ocean stirred the daffodils. The sun shone sparkling on the upper branches of the twin pines. In the shade of them, at the base of the trunks, where the grass had died long ago, the ground lay sleeping.

(7) Asleep Beneath the Trees

A strong and impatient hand gripped Penny's arm. It jerked her to her feet while twisting her wrist just enough to keep the revolver pointing away from her captor.

The passage seen in the haphazard beam of her flashlight, and in the thin halogen light of her captor, was smoky with the stinging gas. She was being hustled up to the door. It was partly opened. Its side opposite the hinges was blackened. Her captor kicked the door wide open and pushed her through into the clear crisp night.

She stumbled but kept on her feet. She had dropped her flashlight in the doorway, where it shone over a stretch of grass like a painted line.

She heard a soft phut! sound to her left, then a high whining gasp of dismay.

A man fell to the ground, his right leg twitching and his left hand rubbing his chest. He lay on his back under a dwarf pine. A woman, breathing in loud sobs, knelt beside him.

Penny turned, her gun lowered, and watched her erstwhile captor strip the oxygen mask off his face, toss it behind him, and walk up to the kneeling woman with an automatic pistol in his taut right hand. He pulled her roughly away from the now motionless man. The woman fell over on her side and raised herself on one elbow, her other arm bent over her face and head. She was whimpering in a pleading fashion.

Penny took off her mask and dropped it. She walked dumbfounded to the unconscious man under the pine, said "Liam" in a hoarse voice, and looked over at the woman. Penny could hardly believe it was Lucy, but though the face was hidden there could be no doubt about the identity.

Nor was there any question about who the gunman was.

She stared at the man she knew as Ricklen Cruor in a rush of conflicting emotions. She saw in the set of his face that was turned toward her his positive regard for her. She had forgotten about her providing him the oxygen mask that had saved his life. She thought only of her sexual arousal and that he must be having a similar reaction; or why would he look at her so benignly?

"Were you expecting these two?" he asked her.

Penny hesitated a moment. Then she nodded, smiling. "But I'm having a hard time believing that they intended to follow through with this. I had a thought that it might be someone else."

"So, you know all about their involvement?" he asked.

She nodded again, jumping in alarm when the gun in his hand went off with its soft grunting cough. She bent down and put her Remington on the grass a little way from her feet, as Lucy collapsed and lay absolutely still.

"What happened to Nellie?" asked Sanguineus. He was pleased that Penny had disarmed herself. It meant she trusted his judgment. She knew she was of value to him.

"Nellie killed Ross and then killed herself," she said.

"Why did she kill Ross?"

Penny suddenly realized her mistake. But she didn't think it really mattered, not now with his favorable opinion of her. She fluffed out her hair and stood with her hands on her hips. "Alright," she said. "John and Eleanor killed her. They killed Ross, too."

"With your help?"

Penny considered. She had one quick glance at his expression in the moonlight. She sensed that he already knew the answer. It hadn't upset him, apparently, but she would play it safe and diminish her role in the deaths. "A little. I mean, I knew it was going to happen. I didn't warn her. I didn't really care about Ross. And Nellie, you know... we were never very close."

"It isn't necessary to make excuses."

Sanguineus motioned for her to stand away from the revolver. She dropped her hands from her hips, turned her back to him, took two steps, and said over her shoulder: "Why are you here? Don't you have a golf course to design?"

"The customers are dead, except for you." Sanguineus picked up the Remington. "I believe the house will be yours, if you can outsmart the family lawyer."

"You'll make that easy for me, won't you? There will be something in it for you." She smiled back at him. Then she turned to look up at the moon, as though nothing could be more romantic than the spot she was in.

Sanguineus saw how the lunar crescent seemed to crown her head. "You intended to do away with my client, Liam, and his wife Lucy," he said. It was a remark rather than an accusation. "You were going to put them in the crypt, I suppose."

Penny held her arms out to her sides and let them fall, slapping her thighs. When Sanguineus didn't make any comment she turned around to face him. "Your client?"

He walked up to her, a gun in each hand. Penny tried not to pay any mind to that.

"Liam hired me to kill 'Eleanor Carnivore' once I had discovered the identity of her victim, either you or your sister. I'm to kill her accomplices also."

Penny blanched. She turned quickly around to stare at the moon again, her hands pressed to her cheeks. "I was going to do what you've been hired to do," she said. It was a shaky voice trying to keep itself steady. "I don't trust John and Eleanor to keep their end of the bargain, either. I can help you... dispose of them, you know. They expect me to meet with them when this is all over with."

Sanguineus felt a rising annoyance. In other, less hardened men it would be frustration; but not knowing the truth behind a client's motive made Sanguineus angry. Liam had made a fool of him.

He said what had been gestating in his head from the moment the cyanide gas was released in the mausoleum. "This whole idea about a secret sorority dedicated to a perverse 'good life' was the brain child of Liam Pierce Arden, with help from John Huffins, and maybe his sociopathic redheaded girlfriend. Liam and Lucy used their highly vaunted analysis method to scare the NSA into thinking a homegrown terrorist group was in the works. There was no real evidence, of course, but Liam turned fabricated rumors into a viable suspicion. How much were you aware of this at the beginning?"

Penny walked a few feet to a statue of an angel. She ran a finger along the gleaming white marble. "Sleeping Beauty awake and standing on the grave of..." She bent down to read the gravestone inscription. "Of Horace Wright. Beauty romanced him and then she killed him. The good life. The best way to die, Horace would say."

"Is that your answer?"

"I guess it is. More or less. It was all Nellie's idea. And Eleanor thought it was cool."

Sanguineus waited for Penny to look at him. He waited for that smile. Then he said, "Thought? Or thinks?"

"I think she's against it now. But that's because Liam and John had a better idea. Get possession of the property that had been bequeathed to Ross. He's the only biological child of Helen and Avery Arden. We cousins don't count. So John gets power of attorney when he makes Ross believe that the Arden family finances are in sorry shape."

"It's an obvious homicidal scam," Sanguineus said, "and it wouldn't fly five minutes were not the NSA behind the hits. They get what they want, and so does the Liam group. This is not an uncommon enterprise. But I don't like being used."

"Used? Aren't you paid for this? Well certainly you are. What difference does it make, whether you're kept in the dark or told everything straight up?"

"Don't go dumb on me. I was set up. It was in Liam's deck of cards all along to get rid of me. I'll admit I was expecting Huffins and Eleanor tonight, but I planned to pop Liam as soon as it was convenient, if there was the least smell of a double cross."

Penny leaned back against a wing of the angel, the sickle moon in her ear. "And me? Were you... Are you...?"

Sanguineus had already decided what to do about her. He put her at ease with a shrug, saying, "You shared one of your oxygen masks. Were it not for that I'd be dead. I don't return evil for good. You're safe with me, trust me or not."

Penny came up to him. Her voice was eager but her eyes held that curious puzzlement. "I'll do whatever you ask of me," she said.

Sanguineus put the guns in his jacket pockets. "Let's get the amateur crooks in your crypt," he said, "and then get the hell out of here."

"What about John and Eleanor? They're at the Blue Pelican."

Sanguineus smiled grimly. "Did you give a key to Liam? To Lucy?"

"No," said Penny. "The cemetery superintendent did. He needs money. He'll give a key to anyone who pays him for the favor. Didn't you?"

"Then our first stop tonight is a visit with the superintendent. He lives in a rental cottage near the beach, and he lives alone at present. His wife's in the hospital."

"And--?"

"You'll do the honors. He was instrumental in the attempt to kill a Red Rum operative. The payment for that, in this case, is hot lead."

Penny stepped back from him, her eyes wide and searching. "Red Rum? With root beer? Ha. Never heard of it. An operative, are you? Well, there are things Liam didn't tell me. I thought you were just an opportunist. That's what Eleanor said."

"Pick up the woman, the fireman carry. I'll follow with my deceased client. The gas should be cleared out enough by now, and won't irritate our eyes too much. But we'll put the masks on for good measure."

"What's the 'fireman carry'?"

(6) Asleep Beneath the Trees

Sanguineus heard voices. He went back to the transverse passage and waited beside the step ladder.

Outside three figures stood by the mausoleum door, two men and a woman. One man, the shorter one, the older one, handed something to the woman and turned away.

"If you are who you say you are, then there is no irregularity," he said in an anxious tone.

They paid him no more attention. He walked as quickly as his arthritic legs allowed, out along the stretch of damp grass between the rows of statuary.

The other man found the door to be unlocked. He waved away the key in the woman's hand. Instead he took what she had removed from her coat pocket. He twisted the end of it and nodded at her to get away from the door. She walked backwards several steps, her clasped hands at her chin.

The man opened the door just enough to toss into the passage the canister he had activated. Then he closed the door, motioning to the woman, and, taking the key she held out to him, he locked the door.

He listened. His worried smile meant to the woman that he heard, or thought he heard, the canister releasing its deadly gas.

Three hours earlier, in a room of the Blue Pelican Motel, Eleanor came out of the bathroom in a leopard-spot terrycloth robe, a towel wrapped around her hair. She frowned at John Huffins, and opening her overnight case she put back the expensive bottles of shampoo and conditioner.

Huffins was sitting in an armchair at the round table, in a white undershirt and red-striped boxer shorts. He was of average height, a bit flabby around the waist, hairless everywhere except for a bristle of greying brown hair over his ears and along the nape of his neck. His face was like that of a bloodhound: big sad eyes and an extensive nose of a slight purplish color due to a pigment disorder. Overall he had a benign and not unpleasant appearance, and his smile, which was almost a permanent feature, suggested a tendency toward adoration.

His smile was tentative this evening, seeing the soured look of Eleanor. He crossed his bare legs and patted his knee.

"I had no idea you were so fond of Nellie," he said, avoiding her hard stare. His smile turned thoughtful. "We had to have a reason why Ross Arden went looking for his favorite cousin. You should have known from the beginning that Nellie was the one. I don't see why you can't have a good relationship with Penny. After all, she's in on this. We couldn't have gotten rid of Ross and Nellie without her."

"She doesn't like me," Eleanor said. "You can't think fondly of someone who doesn't like you."

"And what about Ricklen Cruor? You don't blame me for arranging his imminent death, do you? It is quite necessary."

"No, of course I don't blame you, he's probably with the FBI. I just hope--"

"How many times do I have to tell you, El, there are no FBI snoops involved in this. The NSA would not want--"

"I just hope you're right about Rick's death looking like the work of Ross, and that the way Ross died will seem to have been the reaction of Nellie, who slept with Rick, who had a real liking for him, and who hoped... But that she would commit suicide after killing Ross--" There was a critical question mark in her eyes.

"Relax, El. The NSA will cover for us. The police will see it the way the NSA wants them to see it. A murder suicide. After all, it is 'Penelope' the NSA wants dead, and they are now quite convinced that Nellie was the mastermind of the Good Life Sorority."

Eleanor stood staring at Huffins as if she were still trying to figure him out, or if she was having second thoughts about the wisdom of going along with him. Softly she said, "I had no choice. It was an offer I could hardly refuse. Kill 'Penelope' or face the goon squad from the NSA."

Huffins smiled broadly, nervously. "Oh there is more to it than that. A depth of politics. You would have to know the Ardens influence in certain quarters to understand that side of it. But our concern is more mundane. With my power of attorney in the Arden affairs, we will take possession of the mansion and its acreage. A ten-point-five million dollar windfall, if I must remind you."

"Which we have to split with--"

"No no, not split. Twenty percent goes to Penny. We've agreed. And one million clear for--"

"THAT'S what I don't understand," said Eleanor testily. "THEY are tight with the NSA, and how could this spy agency not know that it's all about money?"

Huffins waved a deprecating hand. "Of COURSE they know it's all about money. But what better way to ensure the cooperation of needed participants than to allow for a substantial monetary reward? Really, El, it's your nerves talking, not your normally good sense."

"It's hardly good sense thinking that all is working out just wonderfully when WE DON'T KNOW WHERE PENNY IS!"

"Relax," Huffins said, exasperated. "Where is that big laughing smile I have grown to love? Penny has fled possibly, out of fear or anxiety, but she knows she must come to me for her cut. If she doesn't, then you and I are twenty percent richer."

Penny thanked God for the stone mason. Her flirtations, her promises couched in innuendo, and her tripling of his fee resulted in a hinged entrance into the crypt that was not noticeable to the uninformed eye. The step ladder might look a little suspicious, she thought, but that could not be helped. She needed it to get up into the crypt.

Inside there was a foam rubber pad, a lightweight cotton sleeping bag, and three oxygen masks just in case the small air hole above the secret entrance was not adequate. She had to assume that she would be lying in the crypt for at least two hours before THEY arrived. She smiled thinly at the thought of them lying together in the crypt: together in death, as they had been in life, a very practical togetherness that had nothing of romance in it.

Penny laid the 30,000-candlepower flashlight and the Remington .32 revolver on her stomach. She waited in a tight darkness that did not frighten or depress her. It excited her. It was an expression of that desired good life that had no judgmental light blinding her cynical confidence. It was the sort of thing that Nellie used to talk about when they were teens.

'Good' meant a manageable mix of carefree living and an enjoyable but systematic breaking of the rules, of laws that forbade any connection between good and evil. She remembered Nellie saying that each were an antidote for the other; bad made good tolerable, and good made bad accessible and safe.

Penny touched the underside of the crypt top. It was not like the bark of a tree limb, and yet here she lay, the Sleeping Beauty awaiting the coming of Prince Goodlife. She closed her eyes. To imagine herself under a tree, on the bare earth, in the shade of a sun she couldn't see through the thick matte of leaves, stirred her senses. There is nothing more invigorating for the senses than to be trapped, to yearn for what you can not actually see or touch or taste. You smell it, and it affects you like a letter from a faraway lover.

She remembered Nellie painting the diptych, the twin trees, the twin Sleeping Beauties, and she recalled her, Penny's, own feelings about the concept. The cemetery superintendent had it right. Trees kill grass. Get out from under the web of branches into the sun. Get out and grow. Follow the maze of hedges. Discover life and its indifferent, even amoral, challenges, where 'good' is the act of living free and unfettered, and evil is its spice. The only really bad thing was to lie sleeping, to succumb to a lack of vibrant activity, from a lack of sun, like grass under a tree.

Penny noticed that the small hole was now rimmed with light. Her heart raced. Someone had come into the mausoleum, someone to whom the superintendent had given a key.

Footsteps? It sounded like the scrape of shoe leather on the rough stone flags of the passage floor. Was it Ricklen? Was he actually here, or had Huffins lied to THEM, to bait them in, to put them in a situation most conducive to their deaths? No, she didn't think Huffins had lied. Ricklen was here.

THEY knew that the golf course designer was a criminal of some obscure sort; Eleanor had said as much. This Ricklen Cruor knew enough of the scheme to want to get his hand in, to remove any obstacles in his way. Would he... Would he be the Prince who... He had certainly 'awakened' Nellie. Would he do the same for Penny? She thought: What a coincidence, that I should be lying 'asleep' under the 'tree,' and HE should come...

She heard a pop! sound. There came a sudden scraping of shoe leather. Then a stinging stench reached her. Immediately she put on an oxygen mask and adjusted the strap. What had happened? Had THEY--?

In a panic she flicked on her flashlight, unlatching the hinged access. She pushed against the square of concrete and began wriggling out of the crypt, twisting around onto her stomach and groping a hand for the step ladder; the broad and intense beam of light sweeping across the back wall.

The step ladder had been moved. She cursed into the mask, her eyes watering.

A dull thudding noise echoed softly down the passage from somewhere ahead, presumably by the metal entrance door.

Penny now had both hands on the floor, her body half out of the crypt. The flashlight and revolver, and a spare oxygen mask, clattered on the stone flagging. The beam of light shone providentially on the overturned step ladder at the other side of the passage, and on the figure of Ricklen Cruor kneeling beside it, doubled over and retching.

Instinctively Penny tossed the spare mask at him. Then with a sharp pain in her knees she slipped completely out onto the cold floor.

(5) Asleep Beneath the Trees

For breakfast at the café Sanguineus had a sausage omelet, toast with orange marmalade, a half avocado, and hash browns. Eleanor ordered a cinnamon roll, which she ate with a fork, a tiny bite at a time, and black coffee. Her laughter was a thing of the past. Now, with the rising sun split into thin bars across the table by the Venetian blinds, she sat composed like a zoo animal that knows nothing of life beyond its cage.

She watched Sanguineus eat and she occasionally smiled at him. He made small talk about the architecture of golf courses. He was encouraged by her look of disbelief.

"What's the problem?" he asked.

"What is it you REALLY do?"

"Lie," he said.

This almost made her laugh. Her smile was open and tremulous, but he saw again in her eyes that sharp glint of steel.

Eleanor held her coffee cup level with her chin. "I phoned John last night, right after I got back to the motel, here, at the Blue Pelican. I always stay here when I come to the beach. I'm from back east, you know. Delaware. I asked John about you. I asked him to find out what he could. He called me back just after I got into bed. He said there's no public records of you, not since 1987. Your last last known address was Laredo, Texas."

"Well, I'm a private person. What about yourself? Do you put your life story on billboards?"

She sipped her coffee, eyeing him humorously over the rim of the cup. "I'm independently well off," she said, "thanks to my rich husband's early demise. A car accident on the New Jersey turnpike. I gave myself a complete make-over. I intend to be free, and carefree, and just wealthy enough to go wherever I want to, and do whatever I want to. I want to dance on the edge of cliffs. I want life to be risky. I would hate to have TOO much money. No, just enough to plan ahead a few months. Do you like that? Do you have a similar philosophy?"

Sanguineus motioned to the waitress to bring more coffee. He did this to give himself time to think of an answer that would further open up the ego of Eleanor Lyme. He decided to be as truthful about himself as possible without giving any secrets away. When his cup was refilled he put in a dash of cream and stirred it with his spoon, aware that the rare red leopardess was impatient for a reply.

"Living by the rules is not an option for me," he said. "Rules are traps. Sand traps and water hazards. Why use a golf club when I can shoot the ball with an air rifle? And why aim for the hole in the green, when I can drop it in the back pocket of something more rewarding, more interesting?"

"You mean victims?"

"Are they victims, or are they products on a shelf?"

"I'm not sure what you mean. Are you an embezzler, a con man, a sophisticated thief?"

"I'm an opportunist," he said in a stern voice. He saw her surprise when he looked at her with a trace of menace in his expression. "But I'm not a passive one. If there are obstacles, I don't wait for them to change into something less daunting. I uproot them. When I see an opportunity I don't detour my way around things. I plough my way forward, on the most direct route. Does this attitude appeal to you?"

Eleanor set down her cup. She looked around at the clientele. Then turning her head toward the blinds she said, "I don't believe in dreams. You won't find me sleeping in the shade of a tree, dreaming. I don't believe that any Prince Charming will come around and kiss Sleeping Beauty awake. I wouldn't trust him even if he DID come around."

"And what do you do to those whom you don't trust?"

The moment he said that he feared he might have overplayed his hand. What saved him was the coarse tone of voice he used and the harsh look on his face. She was more attuned to his expression than to his words. There was a brief flash of annoyance in her eyes, but her search of his own stern eyes mollified her.

She shrugged, picked up her cup and said, "I stay away from those I don't trust."

"You trust John Huffins?"

"The more someone likes you, the more you can trust them. I don't believe everything he tells me, but it's not because I think he's deceiving me, but that he makes mistakes in his judgment now and then."

"You're sure of that?"

"I sense it," she said emphatically. "Where are you going when you leave here?"

"San Fran. I've a client to see."

"What about?"

"I'd rather not say."

"So, you don't trust me."

"It's not that," Sanguineus said, and snapped his fingers for the check. "It's that you haven't a need to know. And due to the nature of the meeting, the less you know the better. Where do you call home?"

"Santa Barbara. It's where John's law firm is located. I have a condo there, in the hills. Whatever you tell me stays under my hat. The more open you are with me, the more I can trust you."

"I don't have a need for you to trust me," he said, and immediately congratulated himself for playing the right card at the right time. He knew now that he had succeeded in coming across to her as someone who was not trying to gain her confidence. If she had suspected him of being an FBI agent, or any sort of investigator, she no longer harbored that suspicion. He saw it in the softening of her eyes and in the alluring curl of her lips.

He was not surprised when she said, "Would you like to come up to my room?"

"Yours or mine," he said.

In the deep darkness of the mausoleum he heard a squeak and a faint scratching sound. He stood away from the step ladder and turned on the pen flashlight. It was what he expected. A rat. It scurried down the passage and vanished in what was probably a hole in the base of the wall near the door.

A rat.

He frowned at the memory of making a rough love to Eleanor in his room at the motel next to the café.

At first he had his mind on the scheduled meeting at Nob Hill, and what little he had learned in his talk with her. But her ferocity in bed challenged him delightfully. All else was forgotten. He wrestled her down in a tangle of sheets. Each tried to undress the other, giving in to an impatient lust that conjured just enough bare flesh to satisfy itself. They knotted themselves in positions that were dictated by their state of undress, cursing the restrictions in an amusing exchange that had their mouths straying over dishevelled cloth, biting and gnawing on brief exposures of skin, then finding themselves again, sucking kisses that grated on their teeth as a mutual fireball of passion grew in intensity. He held back desperately until he felt her body shivering and her gasping breath thundering in his ear. He let loose then, not caring whether she had taken precautions, and joined her in a last euphoric death.

The rat.

He looked at the green glow of his digital watch. It was three minutes after midnight.

Anytime now, he thought. He weighed the gun in his hand.

(4) Asleep Beneath the Trees

Sanguineus noted the time. It was eleven fifty-five. He took a last look out at the moonlit stretch of cemetery. The length of grass between the statuary lay a crisp silver below the lunar crescent, naked but for a single crow preening a wing.

Sanguineus closed the mausoleum door. He brought the step ladder over to a spot beneath the ceiling light. He climbed up and unscrewed the bolts of the yellow plastic shade, lowered it, and licking his fingers he gingerly turned the bulb until it went dark. He put the pen flashlight between his teeth, replaced the shade, and stepping down he took up the short ladder and carried it back to the end of the passage, his way lit by the pencil-thin beam of halogen light.

On the way his thoughts dwelt on the night he spent at the mansion...

He was on the verge of falling asleep when the creaking of the bedroom door roused him.

In the faint blush of light from the curtained window he watched the svelte figure coming toward him. He stretched out his arm that was nearest that edge of the bed to which the figure approached. He was certain it was Penny. As the warm naked body came down upon him he took hold of the sleek, scented hair, surprised at its length.

It was not Penny.

"Oh, are you disappointed?" Nellie whispered in his face as his fingers ran through her mane. His response was to wrap his arms around her and roll her roughly over him to the opposite side of the bed.

She had hardly breathed a word before his muscled length pinned her down and his throbbing stiffness began to probe the hot dampness of her passion. Her words were blown away into his mouth as he hungrily kissed her.

Afterwards, when their passion had burned down to a drowsy memory, they slept like two cats in a box, pushing against each other to hog more room.

Just as dawn broke Nellie got up and hurried out, or so Sanguineus supposed. It was the day's first bright ray through the east window that fully wakened him.

He wondered now if the beam of light that guided him between the stacks of crypts was what had brought that memory so vividly back to him.

There was a transverse walkway at the back of the mausoleum passage, about ten feet to left and right. The space allowed for the construction of several more crypts.

Sanguineus set the step ladder in the righthand space and sat down. He reached under his jacket for the butt of his Glock .38 and its squat suppressor. He held it on his knee and turned off the pen flashlight. He was engulfed in total darkness, in an eerie black silence smelling of stale death.

As he listened for any tell-tale sound, half his mind was remembering the events of that morning.

He had flown back to Atlanta after the meeting at Nob Hill, and just three days later, before dawn that morning, in his rented house trailer, he received a notification on his social media site. It was from Felicia, Red Rum's new Intell secretary. Her public post on the site was ostensibly about African wildlife. It told of a photo safari's search for a rare red leopardess and its mate. It had been spotted moving toward the fabled Elephant Graveyard.

Sanguineus caught the next flight out from Atlanta to San Jose, California. From there he drove a rental Corvette to Seaside, checked into the Blue Pelican motel, and contacted the cemetery superintendent.

Now, in the pitch blackness of the mausoleum, he recalled the 'rare red leopardess' at the Arden estate party two weeks ago...

She wore red-and-white striped leotards and a sleeveless cotton pullover of leopard-spot print with string shoulder straps. She had her curly red hair in bangs and a ponytail. Eleanor Lyme was a beautiful woman with Nefertiti features. Her long neck was graced with a choker necklace of jade and pearls.

The lawyer, Huffins, never left her side. Either he nibbled on her ear or was whispering to her, often, no matter where she took herself in the house or on the grounds. He was right there with her. He hardly looked at anyone else, and when she spoke and laughed, her drink held high as if in a toast, he stared at her like primitive man worshipping the sun.

Sanguineus was frustrated. He wanted a few minutes alone with Eleanor, having some loaded questions to ask her and some comments that would bring out her thoughts in the form of reflex body language.

Finally he had his chance. John Huffins went to the bathroom.

It seemed that Eleanor had been waiting for her own opportunity to escape him. She had spent the day looking at Sanguineus, or discreetly moving about the property hoping to run into him. But Huffins had been like a ball and chain around her ankle, holding her back, slowing her down.

Sanguineus had caught her glancing at the lawyer with daggers in her eyes even as she laughed at things he said or what other guests said to her. There was never a moment when she wasn't smiling open-mouthed, laughing or on the verge of laughing. And yet none of her theatrical merriment shone in her eyes. It was like her eyes were controlled by some hidden spirit of hers.

Of course Sanguineus knew what that spirit was about. It was haunting the idea, the plan, to dispense with 'Penelope.' It was this spirit of hers that Huffins had raised with his insinuations that 'Penelope' was a danger to her and must be permanently put away.

At that time Sanguineus believed Huffins to be acting on the orders of an NSA manager. Sanguineus had just one concern: discover the identity of 'Penelope,' either before or after the hit. So when he saw Huffins heading off down the hall, he gave an inviting nod to Eleanor and sauntered leisurely out to the veranda.

"Mister Golf Course Designer!" he heard her say, laughing. He kept walking until he came to the veranda steps around a corner of the house.

"Rick, is it?" she asked, coming up to him like a puppy greeting its master.

"Ricklen, but Rick is close enough," he said, surprised by the degree of her enthusiasm. "Is it Eleanor, or Heleanor?"

"What--? Ha!"

She stood quite close to him, leaning with her forearm on the veranda railing. He made a point of gazing studiously back at her. He wanted her to think that he was more than what his job suggested. He wanted her to be suspicious of him in a positive way. He wanted to come across as something of a rogue.

"John Huffins isn't your type," he said bluntly, like a man who knows he hasn't much time to make his mark. She reacted as he had hoped.

"He's a bore, but he's useful," she said.

"In what way? In getting you out of trouble?"

"Trouble is my guardian angel, Rick my boy. It isn't very smart to be careful about how one lives. If you're afraid of cliffs you'll never get anywhere, because success means living on the edge."

"And your angel catches you when you fall?"

"No, when I jump!" She laughed at his response to that. He smiled in a knowing way, as though they were sharing a secret.

"How exactly is Huffins useful?" he wondered, leaning in close to her. "He's a lawyer. He knows the loopholes. He knows what can be gotten away with. Do you consult with him? Is he your advisor?"

Eleanor opened her mouth in a silent laugh. "Have you been talking to someone about me?"

"Who would that someone be? You know I'm not acquainted with Huffins."

"Ross, or his two hottie cousins. Forgive me, Rick, but we--" She went blank for a moment. "But I don't think you're the golfing type."

"You're right, I'm not. I'm a scam artist. I'm here to see how deep Ross's pockets are. He'll put down half the cost of the golf course up front. And I'll spend it on the good life."

Eleanor looked pleasantly shocked. A laugh fluttered in her throat. Her seductive neck tautened. She brushed the edges of her bangs away from her greenish eyes. "God I could talk to you all day, but John will be hunting me down, and he'll cling to me like a barnacle."

"Get rid of him," Sanguineus advised. "His usefulness comes at too high of a price."

Eleanor looked serious for the first time in his brief experience of her. She scrutinized him openly. "You know Penny and Nellie. Don't you?"

"No better than I know you."

"I feel you're reading me like a book. I want to know..."

Eleanor stood up straight and looked at the guests on the veranda and out on the lawn, under the pavilions. She sighed, saying to him, "I want to know what it is that's got you interested in us... I mean, in me, in me in particular."

"Is that so mysterious? You're a gold digger. Penny wants out from under the Arden family thumb and to do her own thing, with plenty of money to do it with. Are you any different? I know I'm not any different, except that I have no patriarch breathing down my neck. Neither do you, or am I wrong? Aren't you your own woman?"

"You're damn right I am. And no one's going to stop me."

"What makes you think anyone would want to?"

Eleanor laughed a harsh insinuation. "I can't tell you that. But maybe... but maybe if you'll meet with me early tomorrow morning at the Blue Pelican Cafe... say, eight o'clock?"

"Just you and me?"

"John has business to attend to in the morning, in San Jose. I think Ross wants to spend the night at John's beach house, but that shouldn't be a problem. He'll be going with John, probably. It's something about tax write-offs."

Sanguineus nodded. His heart was pounding, but he maintained a casual interest, as if he had nothing better to do than meet with her for breakfast.

"Alright then," he said. "The Blue Pelican Cafe."

(3) Asleep Beneath the Trees

Nellie rubbed the bar of resin along her cello bow as she walked up to Sanguineus. He stood leaning against the doorframe of the music chamber, contemplating the room's acoustical design. His drink glass was empty. When Nellie noticed this she set the bow and resin bar on one of the audience chairs and came purposefully up to him. He smiled at the sudden change in her demeanor.

"It was a rum and cola?" she asked.

"Yes. Very kind of you."

"You were very patient listening to my poor efforts," she said with a faint smile. She stood holding his glass in both hands, searching his face.

"I have a fondness for bass instruments," he said and stepped into the room. He was careful not to come closer to her, and he intended for her to realize it. It made her smile widen and warm up.

"You like the lower registers," she remarked in a tone of approval. "Me too. There's something insincere about the high notes."

"I know what you mean. They should be played sparingly, and then they have an honesty about them, a cry from the deep emotion of the bass."

"And your favorite instrument?"

"The piano."

"Do you play?"

"Clumsily. But it's relaxing."

Nellie stood still a moment longer, gazing down at the glass. Then she strode to the drink cabinet. She dropped two cubes of ice into the glass, added a jigger of rum, and topped it off with a dark soda that she thought was cola. "Oh my, I poured in root beer instead!"

"Let's try it," Sanguineus said. Now he walked up to her and stood close enough to feel her warmth, and she his. Their fingers touched when he took hold of the glass in her hand. Slowly she let go of it.

He took a sip. She watched him with bright eyes.

"Interesting," he said.

"May I?"

He handed her the glass. She took a lingering sip, her eyes narrowed, her brows lowered. "Hmm," she said. "This just might catch on. What should we call it?"

"Nellie," he said, "on the rocks."

"Oh, I am!" She laughed in a low voice, a laugh like a sustained note on the cello. "I feel like I should be living on the beach, in the tidal pools, not up here in a blood-red house."

Nellie handed him back the glass. He took it as slowly as she had let go of it.

"Why is that?" he asked.

His question intrigued her, he could tell. It was quite forthright for a guest whom she did not know well at all to ask her such a personal question. But upon reflection she realized that her comment could not help but elicit an intimate response. He could see that she was scrambling in her mind for an answer, something true but not too revealing.

"Life... shouldn't be comfortable," she said, and reached over to take up her bow and resin bar. "There is no excitement, no inspiration, no challenges, in being comfortable. One just ends up going to sleep."

Sanguineus recalled what Penny had said about her sister. 'It's Nellie who likes things easy.'

"But you describe yourself as being on the rocks," he said.

"I meant stuck. Stranded. Marooned. Music is the only thing I'm good at. But until I get a place in a philharmonic orchestra I'm... on the rocks. Here. Too comfortably stuck. I should just up and leave. Go somewhere challenging. Difficult. Somewhere that gets my blood moving."

Sanguineus smiled. "What's stopping you? It wouldn't be a financial hardship for you to go out on your own, would it?"

The look on her lovely face changed from a light airy expression to a very serious one. She was staring at the hard cold line of his smile. "If I go, it won't be wrapped in velvet," she said as though angry at herself. "I would leave with just enough money to get settled somewhere in a cheap apartment. I'd have to get a job, you know, like waitressing. To support myself while I continue my cello practice."

"But you have friends and contacts who would want to look after you," Sanguineus said in the same serious manner.

Nellie put on her lips his own stony smile. "Probably, yes," she said. "Maybe I'd change my identity. Then I'd truly be on my own."

"You'd be cutting yourself off from your loved ones."

"Oh, I think they'd understand. And those who don't understand aren't worth my time anyway."

Penny came in and said to Sanguineus, "There you are! Ross is spending the night at the Huffins house. Our lawyer. What do you think of him?"

"Who?"

"John Huffins." She went to the drink cabinet, paying no attention to her sister. Nellie eyed her narrowly.

"I like his dry sense of humor," Sanguineus replied. "Try a rum and root beer."

Penny looked over at him. "Are we experimenting tonight?"

"Some of the best discoveries were accidental. Plastic, for example."

"Plastic was an accident?"

"More or less. And look how it has taken over the world."

"Is that a good thing?" She picked up the root beer bottle and smiled crookedly at him.

"It has replaced wood in many things," he said. "Think of the trees that have been saved."

"Trees can be a nuisance. They shed. They block the sun. They look like skeletons when their leaves fall. Are you serious about root beer in the rum? Never mind, I don't like rum. I'm having a gin and tonic. Then I'm going to bed. Aren't you ever going to leave that bow alone, Nellie?"

"I spend less time with my bow than you spend with your golf clubs."

The two sisters looked at each other as if each were a stray dog encountered on the street. There was a gleam of interest marred by distrust, but not, Sanguineus thought, by dislike.

Penny shrugged. "I heard you saying something about going away on your own," she said to Nellie while glancing at Sanguineus. "Living the hard life. I don't think the hard life would appeal to you very long. The good life is better."

"What's good about everything being brought to you by a servant? You should try carrying your clubs yourself, instead of having a caddy carry them."

"And put a poor man out of work? You're being selfish, Nellie. You think only of yourself. Now, what would a gin and root beer taste like?"

"The hard life," Sanguineus said.

"And how so?" Penny asked, pleased to switch the conversation from her sister to him.

"The hard life doesn't have what you're used to having," he explained.

She raised her glass and rattled the ice in it. "Sounds like the hard life is a series of accidents," she said, turning to smile at Nellie, who looked back at her disapprovingly. "Deliberate accidents, wouldn't you say?"

"No I wouldn't, Penny. And it's time for you to go to bed. It's midnight."

Penny feigned a look of alarm. "My God it is! What would El--"

"Penny!" Nellie raised her bow threateningly. "Try going to bed at a decent hour and maybe you won't sleep all morning."

"Didn't I say I was going to bed after my nightcap? What are you so hussied up about?"

Nellie looked at Sanguineus apologetically. He had walked over to a diptych painting on the back wall: two trees, each with a Sleeping Beauty lying on the ground beneath the laden boughs. He felt her eyes on him. He turned around with the glass to his lips. "Interesting," he said. "I like a good mystery."

Penny walked up to him with every sign of wanting to kiss him. But she did not. She stood with a hand on her hip, her glass held to one side of her face.

"Are you really a golf course designer?" she asked in a sultry voice, acting as if an affirmative reply would sorely disappoint her.

"It's more a hobby than a career," he said, sipping his drink.

"Ah," said Penny in a noncommittal tone. Then a sudden change came over her and she asked brightly, "Do you know our cousin Liam?"

Sanguineus was prepared for the question. "I met him at the Saratoga tournament, back in April. What do you think of his wife Lucy?"

"I don't like her. She thinks she's some sort of brainiac."

"She's an intelligent woman."

"Aren't all women intelligent?"

"I've met a few who didn't quite qualify for that category."

"Like me?" Penny smiled in a daring manner.

"No, like Eleanor."

Sanguineus noticed how Nellie began to vigorously rub resin on the string of her bow, and how Penny simply stared up at him without a trace of emotion.

"Because she laughs too much," Penny said matter of factly. "She laughs at everything. But she's pretty, so John puts up with her."

"Penny," Nellie said, "finish your nightcap and go to bed." She leaned the bow against her cello, which stood near the drink cabinet on its mahogany stand.

Penny looked back at her. "I'm socializing, do you mind? It's what one does in the good life."

Nellie smiled sarcastically. "I wouldn't get too enamored of the good life if I were you. It could all end so abruptly. Good night, Mr Cruor."

"Good night, Miss Arden," he said and watched her go out the door into the hall.

Penny put a hand lightly on his arm. "That's a first. She's left me alone with a man."

Sanguineus looked at her moist, finely sculpted lips. "For how long?" he asked with a hint of meaning.

(2) Asleep Beneath the Trees

The meeting was scheduled to take place in one of the tall narrow Victorian houses on Nob Hill in San Francisco. There was a view of the Golden Gate Bridge from the front yard, ghostly in the fog on the morning Sanguineus and Fredrico Rolgo arrived.

The client, Liam Pierce Arden, greeted them on the porch. He was middle aged, balding, overweight, always smiling in a nervous manner, and spoke as much with his hands as with his mouth.

He wore a green cardigan sweater over a tee shirt, baggy grey trousers with open-toed sandals. On both wrists was a Rolex watch, one to tell the time and the other to give barometer readings and phases of the moon. He was forever glancing at his watches, whether talking or listening. He was very rich, a self-made man, but he gave the impression of one who suffers an inferiority complex. This was due, Sanguineus believed, to the fact that Liam was not born an Arden.

He was an adopted member of the Arden family. His biological parents were a prostitute and a sailor who had known each other for about thirty minutes, and never met again. He lived in an orphanage until age 13, when Ross Arden's mother, Helen, sensed something valuable about him. She adopted him for all the wrong reasons and raised him as though he were an indentured servant.

At 18 Liam Pierce Arden enrolled in a small private college in Sacramento. Two years later he started a business in partnership with his philosophy teacher, Lucy, and married her when they had made their first million.

Their business was peculiar. They had a contract with the National Security Agency concerning a remarkably accurate method of analysis. It was a patented computer program aligned with a unique propositional calculus that no one except Liam and Lucy could figure. It was as highly secret as their NSA security clearance.

Liam brought Sanguineus and Rolgo into the drawing room where they were introduced to Lucy. She looked nothing like a philosopher. She looked more like a kitchen maid. She kept her hands in her apron pockets when not in need of them. She sat in a chintz armchair with her legs crossed under a flower-print skirt, not the least self-conscious about her varicose veins. She had no beauty to speak of. Sanguineus felt that Liam had attached himself to her for the same reason Helen Arden had adopted him: a valuable asset.

The conversation was centered on Helen's two nieces, Penny and Nellie Arden, age 22 and 23, respectively. Like Liam, their father was an adopted member of the Arden family. It was his exceptional artistic talent that got Helen thinking that adoption was the surest way of enriching the family. So when she had determined that her son Ross was anything but exceptional, she scoured orphanages around the state until she discovered a very bright child: Liam Pierce.

Ten days earlier Rolgo had asked Sanguineus to play the part of a golf course designer, a role he had played twice before. The reason was another peculiar thing in a string of oddities surrounding the Arden family. Rolgo had negotiated a contract with Liam. The NSA wanted an Arden family member killed. They believed that one of the two sisters, Penny or Nellie, was involved in a terrorism plot that was aimed at the Professional Golf Association tour, a plot that was only seemingly political. The motive was blackmail, a means of funding what was intended to be an international secret sorority. It was to be a "good life" organization, a hedonistic lifestyle with psychopathic overtones.

One of the Arden sisters had got the ball rolling with a vivacious redhead nicknamed "Eleanor Carnivore." She was suspected by the NSA of being the widow of a wealthy Wall Street financier who had died in a contrived auto accident. She then underwent a change of identity. But this was pure speculation based on similarities and rank coincidence. All the NSA really knew was that a beautiful redhaired woman calling herself Eleanor Carnivore was planning a series of deadly mishaps at PGA tournaments, she and one of the two Arden sisters. Had it not been for Liam and Lucy's sophisticated analysis of very soft and porous information there would not have been any "evidence" whatsoever, just a paranoid suspicion.

During the contractual process Rolgo was told by Liam that the Arden family lawyer had poisoned Eleanor's mind against "Penelope," the NSA code name for the unknown sister, so that Eleanor would think that the girl was intending to rat her out. It was expected that Eleanor would respond by killing... Who? Penny? Or Nellie?

Sanguineus went to the party at the invitation of Ross Arden. The invitation had been suggested by Liam, who had talked Ross into putting in a nine-hole golf course on the family estate, recommending the Atlanta golf architect, Ricklen Cruor. The idea was that Sanguineus would be able to determine the victim should Eleanor act on her intention during the party. If this should be the case, he was to bump off Eleanor. But nothing out of the ordinary happened at the party.

It was three days later, a week before the meeting at the Nob Hill mansion, that Penny and Nellie disappeared after announcing that they were "going off together." The next day Ross Arden had the name "Penelope" carved on a vacant crypt in the Arden mausoleum, along with the current year, 2015.

"And there lies one of the difficulties," Liam said when everyone had their drink in hand and was seated in the plush, shadowy room. "How is it that Ross knows the code name for his two cousins? We think he might have learned it through the family lawyer, Mr Huffins. My NSA manager is the one who recruited Mr Huffins when Lucy and I discovered that his girlfriend was the mysterious redhead. But my manager denies having revealed the code name."

"It's possible," said Rolgo, "that Eleanor knows the code name through the simple fact that she is on the NSA payroll. They don't want us to know this."

Lucy spoke up. "Liam and I thought of that, but our analysis rules it out."

Rolgo and Sanguineus exchanged wry glances that Liam, chuckling, accepted good naturedly. "Suffice to say that Eleanor Carnivore is not aware of the NSA's suspicions," he said, "but has some worries about the FBI. She had the help of a former FBI agent in changing her identity. We are quite sure she killed him, but it would be natural for her to worry that perhaps she didn't kill him soon enough."

Sanguineus asked if he might smoke. Upon receiving enthusiastic permission he went to an open window, lit a Sultan, and turned to the room saying, "It isn't so much a question of how Ross knows the code name as it is the question why he had a crypt carved with that name. We're assuming that Eleanor killed the guilty sister and that Ross had the body interred in the Arden mausoleum. And before we wonder why he didn't put the victim's real name on the crypt we need to figure out why there are no records or witnesses regarding the girl's death and burial. Officially she and her sister are 'off together.' Mr Huffins is missing, and so is Eleanor. Apparently the NSA has washed its hands of the whole affair now that the secret sorority idea is kaput."

"The reason 'Penelope' is on the crypt," said Liam, "is that Ross does not know which of his cousins is the victim. The bodily remains would presumably reveal which one, through dental records or DNA, but he doesn't wish to know. So the question is, why doesn't he wish to know? Our analysis concludes that he is in thick with Eleanor, and that he is very likely involved in Mr Huffins' disappearance."

"That means that Ross DOES know which cousin is in the crypt," Sanguineus said. "It means he was at least partly responsible for the girl's death and saw to it that no one was in a position to note the fact. But why he had 'Penelope' carved on the crypt must have something to do with the NSA, with his belief that this agency wanted the guilty party dead. So he puts the code name on the crypt as a means of letting the Agency know that yes, the guilty party has been eliminated."

Lucy laughed as a way of expressing her irritation. "Oh, we had thought of that," she said.

Rolgo leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. "If Ross Arden were to find out that his golf course designer is snooping around in the mausoleum, it would be a safe bet that he, and whoever he is in league with, would investigate. My idea is to see that Ross Arden does find this out, and to have our operative waiting for him in the mausoleum. The contract stipulates that the killer of 'Penelope,' and the killer's associates, are to be liquidated. What better place for this than a mausoleum?"

Now Sanguineus stood and walked down the passage to the mausoleum door. Standing under the ceiling light he looked at his digital watch. It was eleven-fifty.

He opened the door a few inches and gazed out at the expanse of moonlit statuary. He was remembering his unusual encounter with Penny and Nellie at the estate the other night, luxuriating in the dregs of the party's aftermath.

His smile was cold and hard.

(1) Asleep Beneath the Trees

"There aren't many trees in this cemetery," Sanguineus remarked.

"Trees kill grass," said the senior superintendent. He had not stopped looking at the moon as it rose above the cliffs overlooking the sea.

"We can't touch the trees growing along the cliffs," he continued, "as these are protected by the park warden. Otherwise we would get rid of them. The cemetery is marked off by hedges, as you can see, which do not kill the grass. They don't make a mess, like trees do. They can be beautifully trimmed. Our foremen and their gangs do an excellent job, I rather think."

Sanguineus was not listening. He had taken a thick envelope from his inside jacket pocket and stood staring at the dull grey wall of the Arden mausoleum. Without looking at the superintendent he handed him the envelope. He kept his hand out, palm up, to receive the key in exchange for the envelope.

When the key was not promptly handed over Sanguineus looked down at the shorter man's moonlit face. "The key," he said. "I haven't much time. It is nearly midnight."

"Yes..." The superintendent took a large flat bronze key from his paisely vest and with painful reluctance put it in the palm of Sanguineus. "If it wasn't for the condition of my poor wife..."

"That will be all."

The superintendent cleared his throat, squared his shoulders, and with a sharp glance at the taller man said quietly, "If you are who you say you are, there is no irregularity."

Sanguineus smiled at the idea that he was ever who he said he was, and that the superintendent's wife just happened to become ill, in need of rehab funds at the Woodridge Center, a day before the bribe was offered. In his profession, nothing was to be left to chance except the weather. And no one was who he said he was.

"I'll go alone from here," he said. "You have been very kind. Thank you for your cooperation."

The superintendent nodded. Since taking the envelope he was hesitant in everything, as though his life had suddenly become full of holes, full of uncertainties that were perhaps not at all what they seemed. He couldn't trust the simplest things to be normal. He tried to formulate his feelings into words, but he was such a stark contrast to this cold fellow that he feared making a fool of himself.

The superintendent made a vague gesture of departure. He walked slowly off to the pathway that led past rows of ornate gravestones and along the pond with a fountain in the middle.

Sanguineus did not turn to watch. He was strolling across the lush grass that bisected the ranks of marble statuary. Ahead was the mausoleum. It was partially covered with ivy. The damp in-shore breeze coated the leaves with a bright sheen of moisture.

In the dark of the overhanging vines stood the recessed metal door. Sanguineus inserted the key in the hourglass-shaped lock, turned it, felt the click of tumblers, and with his other hand he pushed the door inward. It opened silently. He stepped into the utter darkness, feeling the wall for a light switch.

There was none. A sensor caused an overhead light to glow a hazy yellow.

To either side of a passage were crypts, three high, all down the length of the passage, each with a carved name. Sanguineus took out a pen flashlight and read the names on both sides of the passage: Arden Samantha... Arden Henry... Arden Mortimer... Arden Joyce... He read the dates beneath the names: 1953... 1964... 1977... 1981... At the far end, on the lefthand side, was a crypt between the one below and above, a crypt with the name and date he was looking for.

Arden Penelope. 2015.

He ran a hand over the cold stone of the crypt. It was at chest level. The carven letters and numbers were sharply delineated, unlike the older ones, and there was no taint of mildew.

He stepped back, put away the flashlight, and gazed at the mausoleum door which he had left open. He remembered the party at the Arden mansion in Seaside, two weeks earlier.

It was a Victorian house with broad verandas on the first and second stories, and a widow's walk on the third. It was painted a garish red and orange. From a distance, at the edge of the lawn that ended at a rock fence above the beach, the house looked like a festering wart amid the shaggy green elms and the clusters of flowering bushes.

Pavilion tents were erected along the primrose path that led from the pool and tennis courts to the house. Five tents in all. There was food enough to feed an army. Too, there were more servants than guests, or anyway that was the case outdoors. Inside there was an arrangement of couples in all the comfortable corners, with just two or three servants trying to look sedate as they walked as quickly as they could, carrying trays and small white towels.

Ross Arden, the patriarch of the family now that his father had died, invited Sanguineus upstairs, to the second floor study.

They were alone except for a very lovely young woman seated on a stool by a louvered shutter, the sunlight off the ocean reflected in her bluish silver eyes and on her waves of blondish short hair. At first glance Sanguineus thought she was naked. She was all legs and arms and neck, her torso covered in a light beige blouse and shorts. She was barefoot.

"My cousin, Penny," Ross said. "Penny, this is Ricklen Cruor, a golf course designer from Atlanta. He's here to do some preliminary sketches for a nine-hole course on the south lawn."

"I hate sand traps," Penny said and swivelled around to face Sanguineus. She was holding a drink and an unlit cigarette. "And doglegged fairways, too. Do keep everything straight, won't you, Mr Cruor? And we've plenty of sand on the beach. We don't need any on the lawn."

Ross, an athletic man in his early sixties, whose black polo shirt accentuated his white crewcut, shoved his hands in his Dockers and shook his head. "Now now, Penny, we don't want things too easy, do we?"

She was appraising Sanguineus, who wore a grey-striped dress shirt, courduroy coat, white denim jeans and brogues, and who swished the ice in his glass as he returned her open scrutiny. Her smile said she liked what she saw. But her eyes seemed a little puzzled by the hard scarred face with its cold intensity. It was not the face of a golfer, she thought.

Penny turned her head slowly and said to Ross, "It's Nellie who likes things easy. I just don't like getting sand in my shoes, or having to ease up on my wood, like I do at doglegs. I like the long straight shots."

"You'll have them," Sanguineus said. "The contours of the south lawn preclude doglegs, except in the area where the stunted pines grow."

"Ugh, all those pine needles. They kill the grass. Chop those trees down, Ross, and we won't have to have a dogleg fairway, not one."

"A water hazard and, like it or not, some sand bunkers," Ross said with feigned severity. He smiled at Sanguineus. "Bunkers add to the aesthetic quality of a golf course, as much so as water hazards. Tell us you'll spend the night here, Ricklen. There's no decent hotels in Seaside. And the motels are fleabags."

"I'd be delighted to spend the night, Mr Arden."

Ross Arden looked momentarily disappointed, then walked over to a bookshelf to straighten some volumes. It was an attempt to cover up his negative reaction to his guest's acceptance to spend the night at the mansion, and the guest was quite aware of it. Sanguineus filed it away at the back of his mind and held out his lighter for Penny.

She blew smoke out the window, blurring the view of the south lawn.

"I wanted to show you my club collection," Ross said. "Here, on the wall. I have the putter that was used to win the British Open in nineteen twenty-six."

Behind him Penny looked at Sanguineus and mouthed the word 'Fake,' flicking ash on the window sill.

The sun was going down. It gave her eyes a burnished silver look that went well with the puzzlement that still shone within them. Or was it suspicion? Sanguineus wondered, not without a twinge of anxiety. It would not do to have her suspicious of him.

In the downstairs parlor Nellie was playing the cello. She looked like her sister Penny, but fuller in the chest and with longer hair, perfectly straight. She was a year and a week older than Penny but apparently this advantage had no affect on her. The two sisters treated each other like casual acquaintances.

The party was a subdued affair. It slipped away like water from a cupped hand, and by eleven the house was deserted except for the servants and the golf course designer who made a call from his bedroom on the third floor. Ross and his two cousins were driving their lawyer home in the limo. It was strange how quiet and empty the house seemed.

Sanguineus spoke in code to Rolgo. He hung up the receiver while listening to the silence. He was almost certain that the lawyer's date, the redheaded woman with the big laughing voice, was the killer, but he was not sure at all if her victim was to be Penny or Nellie. It would be one or the other. He would just have to wait and see. If he was lucky, the hit would occur before his scheduled flight back to Atlanta.

He was not lucky in that regard. And now, two weeks later, he still did not know the identity of the victim. Penny or Nellie? He closed the door to the mausoleum and walked back down the passage to look again at the name on the crypt.

Penelope.

Penny? But maybe Nellie. No one was talking. No one acted as if anything was wrong with the fact that the two sisters were "away together." No one except the lawyer and his lethal redhead knew who was buried in the crypt marked 'Penelope.' No one cared. There had been no funeral, no report of a death in the family. The stone mason was paid to carve the name on the crypt and that was that.

The client who hired Red Rum wanted to know which of the sisters still lived. He had his reasons, presumably, though he had given none. Well, it was nearing midnight. The mystery would soon be solved.

Sanguineus sat on a step ladder and lit a Sultan. He was remembering, in careful detail, the events of three days ago...

(16) The Day the Sun Came Out [Conclusion]

"A fine view," said Wallace.

He and Gerard stood looking out across the vale, a thousand feet below the edge of the trail. A mile away the bogs and waving grass met the green serrated slopes of the neighboring cairn.

Behind them the ground rose in a gradual incline of crowded heather. Granite rocks topped the rise. Gerard cast nervous glances over his shoulder at the boulders and the lesser outcrops of yellowish grey quartz.

He stepped away from his hiking partner.

"Going somewhere?" said Wallace, turning to him, straightening up and grasping his walking stick in a fair imitation of Moses. "We'll just stand here a bit. I don't fancy going any farther. You know, Gerry, I would never have thought you the type to set aside your calm discretion and act the inquisitor. It disturbs me because your position is not one that can conceal such an anomaly. I can't have you doing the Mr Hyde routine whenever your demon gets an itch."

Gerard looked astonished. "What are you talking about, sir?"

Wallace was amused by what he saw as an attempt at feigned innocence. He gave a soft snort of appreciation for the good try.

"To keep it simple, Gerry," he said, "your involvement in the Tanya Wild evaluation, in the Lusk, an activity and location that was not supposed to be known to you. You must have enlisted Tony D'Arc."

"You're talking nonsense, Wally! It was Thomas Ingols who 'evaluated' Miss Wilde, or the devil knows who she was, if not her or Valentina. I knew nothing about a secret facility until Mr Ingols told me of it last night. You can't blame me for the woman's escape, or for the brutality she was put through."

Wallace stared at him blankly. "Ingols? The inquisitor? But Tony was--"

"Tony is a damned hoodlum on the payroll of the Napolitanos. Ingols runs this show of yours, Wally, and you've found that out too late."

Wallace smiled. It was an ugly, sinisterly desperate look, born of a burgeoning fear. He dropped his stick and slipped his right hand in his windbreaker jacket.

"I don't doubt that Ingols pulls all the strings he can get his bloody hands on," he said in a tense voice, his smile cracking into an angry grimace. "But since you are breathing your last breaths, you shouldn't bother lecturing me with them."

He saw a strangely satisfied expression blossom on the wind-chapped face of Gerard, and he was suddenly in doubt, a doubt that struck him like a volt of electricity.

He drew his hand from his jacket pocket and made to-- what? Push the man, shake him, punch him? Gerard was not to know the intention. For at that moment Wallace Lusk Breckenridge stumbled sideways and went over the cliff.

"My God!" gasped Gerard.

He stood paralyzed from a dreadful feeling of guilt. Then he began shaking, trembling in every joint, as a terrible remorse seized him. He fought against an impulse to leave the scene at once. But he had been warned not to leave, or to call the emergency number, for one hour. He must stand there for one hideous hour before doing anything other than suffer.

A gunshot echoed out over the vale.

Gerard dropped to the ground, cowering against the foot of the slope, his hands over his weeping face. His mind froze in a blackness that had one dim light of reasoning in it: Who had fired that shot and at whom?

The young woman lay sprawled on her back behind the granite outcrop. There was a hole in her right temple that oozed a trickle of blood.

Sanguineus set the Ruger Magnum against a rock. With his gloved hands he placed the Mauser pistol, still smoking, on the ground near the woman's feet.

She herself was not wearing gloves. He remedied this by taking a pair of small-size gloves from a back pocket of his jeans and putting them on the woman's surprisingly soft hands, a difficult chore, the fingers utterly lax and uncooperative.

When he finished he stood back and looked at her.

Scotland Yard would be satisfied with putting this down as a murder suicide, once they realized that a very embarrassing scandal might erupt if they chose a more intrepid path of investigation.

Sanguineus started back down the western face of the hill, a ten minute walk to the meandering string of white rocks. From there he could see the blue Peugeot parked off the dirt road, a little beyond the willow where the Dart stood in the brooding pall.

The dark clouds rumbled. A sheet of rain carried by the wind swept over the mountain, obligingly rinsing away the man scent that led away from the slowly stiffening corpse.

Then the clouds tore at themselves, their ragged edges afire from the imprisoned sun.

Sanguineus walked the last fifty yards down to the willow and stood by the backseat door of the retro '65 Dart. He looked steadily at the woman seated at the wheel of the Peugeot.

She got out and began walking toward him.

At sight of her Sanguineus felt a strong sense of familiarity. She did look very much like the woman lying on the mountain. Same hair, same fashion, but not quite the same walk. This is the woman he had met in Central Park and had taken to dinner. He had not seen her again until now, he felt sure. But feelings weren't proof.

She stopped several feet in front of him, just outside the willow's strips of shade, now that the sun was splendid and the sky silent with a sheep flock of clouds.

"Come and have a soda," Sanguineus said.

Her smile was a puzzled one, but this was not the time for her to question or criticize. He had opened the backseat door, and was lifting off the lid of a styrofoam ice chest. So she went over to him, feeling his body heat and smelling the musky manliness that she would not ever forget.

She chose a Coke.

At that Sanguineus breathed a sigh of relief. He put an arm around her and pulled her up tight against him. She laughed.

"Goddamn you, Tanya," he said.

(15) The Day the Sun Came Out

"All this area here was once a thick pinewood," said Wallace Breckenridge, waving his walking stick at the sparse pines and the clumps of heather and gorse, amid which hares were bouncing about and a white-tail deer gazed at them from behind a stretch of peat bog.

This was to their left on the rocky highland trail they had been following for the past three hours. To their right the hill sloped steeply down to a green mossy vale.

MacGalt unslung his knapsack and set it on a patch of cropped grass that the deer had been nibbling when they had come around the outcrops a hundred yards further down.

"Might get a spit of rain soon," he remarked. "Let's take a breather now while we can. Would you like a ginger ale?"

"Mineral water for me, Gerry," said Wallace, leaning on his stick. "The trail climbs up a stiff grade from here, with a cliff on our starboard. Narrows some, too. Yes, a rest will put us in good mettle for some serious climbing."

The day before, at ten in the morning, Sanguineus parked his Dart behind the Chockdaw, a junk yard cluttered with wrecked vehicles, empty oil drums, mounds of the miscellaneous offscourings of a big city, with compressed bales of assorted metals.

He was in time to see Smitchee come out from the tin-roofed office building and detour his way between the ungainly piles to where the yardmen parked. He carried a lumpy gunnysack.

Sanguineus walked up to him at a pair of portable outhouses.

"I hope this is what you want, San," Smitchee said, holding open the sack.

Inside was a modified Ruger Magnun .22 air rifle, sniper-scoped, with a flanged muzzle, and a plain cardboard box of a dozen broad-head studs with thin two-inch stems.

"This will do," Sanguineus said, putting the rifle and studs back in the gunnysack after a quick examination. He placed the sack in the Dart's trunk. "How much?"

"McFarland was up most of the night. Two hundred ten pounds."

Sanguineus leaned against the car, rolling a smoke. "I've another favor to ask," he said. "If a woman comes to you, calling herself Tanya or Valentina, tell her I'm staying in room 204 of the Holyrood. If she wants to know where I'll be tomorrow, tell her this--"

He lit his cig and took out a small notepad and pen. "The highlands. About a mile north of Newbigging, on the A93, there's a bridge over the river, the Old Military Road. A dirt road leads off it for a few miles. She's to take the dirt road, slow and easy. She'll come to my Dart."

He wrote down the directions, tore off the slip of lined yellow paper and gave it to Smitchee. "Tell her to wait there for me. But if she'd rather hang out at the Holyrood, the staff will let her in my room. I've arranged it."

Smitchee screwed up his whiskered face. "You think it certain, this?"

"No, but if one or the other wants to find me, she knows you're the one to pump. And tell her I'll be gone from dawn to dusk, but that I should finish my business in the highlands by noon, if she goes that route."

"Right, then," Smitchee said, holding out the debit card.

By sunrise the Dodge Dart was passing the ski resort on A93. Tanya looked at him with a smile. "A helicopter. Do you think it's them?"

Sanguineus slowed, pulling off on the side and peering through the speckled windshield at the craft that seemed no bigger than a blood-gorged mosquito against the mass of grey clouds. It was angling northwest. The splayed rays of the sun glinted off the tail boom and the sleek white canopy.

"Probably so," he said. "They'll be landing about six miles southwest of the hit site. There's a ranger cabin there. They'll have breakfast before starting up the trail."

"How much time do we have to set up?"

"I'd say an hour for their breakfast, and three hours of hiking. We've got a good four and a half hours. MacGalt knows he's to drag his feet and suggest two rest stops before they get to the cliff area. I'll be parking about a half mile from the sniper site."

"Well, splendid. I hope you like corned beef sandwiches. Did you buy some drinks?"

"The ice chest in the back seat."

They passed Newbigging in the dreary light of a promised rainy day, and a minute later came to the Old Military bridge on their left. All around was ruffled green earth scarred with brooks under a blanket of clouds that held their moisture stubbornly.

The concrete bridge cast no shadow over the sluggish Clunie river that spread its muddy green water over a wide gorge. A short drive and the dirt road appeared like a grainy ribbon stretching northward to what are called mountains in Scotland.

Sanguineus drove leisurely over the dips and bumps. "Thirsty? A Coke or ginger ale? We've four of each."

"Want one?"

"A Coke for me. And I'll try one of your sandwiches."

Tanya scrunched around between the seats and reached back for the styrofoam chest, taking out a Coke and a ginger ale.

"I put horseradish on the sandwiches," she said. "You all right with that?"

"You know I am."

She tilted back her seat and watched him eat as he drove with one hand resting on the steering wheel.

She compared his coldly serious expression with the look on his face last night in bed, in the Lornaglen cottage where he had insisted on spending the night, despite the longer drive they would have in the morning. She had marvelled at his brutal coldness as he pinned her down, ripping her flimsy gauze nightie free of her breasts, the collar scorching her neck as it gave way. A moment after feeling his hand pushing the hem up to her stomach, his stout length of selfish eagerness drove into her, a warm friction on her inner thighs as she pretended to resist him. But the powerful waves of pleasure coming from such a passionate fierceness defeated the pretense, and for once she gave in to him completely.

The previous night had been like a series of storms, a calculated savagery designed to urge the truth out of her. She smiled at that now, watching the green boulderous mountains growing inch by inch as the Dart ambled toward them. But last night it had been different. He was not calculating. He had abandoned every doubt, every suspicion, and ravaged her as if the world was soon to end.

Why the change? she wondered, glancing at him; a break in the dark clouds spearing him with a brief thrust of sunlight. Was it what he had seen in the cottage? Had that changed him? Had the interior looked like a place alien to what he knew of her? Of Tanya Wilde the tomboy?

The dirt road followed an incline between two jagged 3,000 foot mountains, rising sharply in places, levelling out in others. Pine trees and dwarf willows lined the slopes that were studded with saxifrage, creeping tendrils of azalea, and, in the lower reaches, bog cotton. In the background the clouds were a silvered ruddish smoke, visibly churning in the intermittent gusts.

Sanguineus saw it, a quartermile further, a line of white rocks like a prehistoric fence going up along a shelf in the southern face of the mountain.

He said, "That's it. We've got some hiking of our own to do now."

"You're sure? You've been here before?"

"Where's your intuition? Don't you feel I'm right?"

"I'm just nervous, you bastard. Have you forgotten what I went through in the Cave?"

Sanguineus pulled off, under a willow. "Get your mountain climbing legs on," he said, and getting out he went around to the trunk.

(14) The Day the Sun Came Out

"Who were you texting?" asked Tanya, as the private-hire cab pulled to a stop on Candlemaker Row.

"You'll see," Sanguineus said.

They got out and stood on the edge of the nighttime stream of pedestrians at the Angus Cafe, a block down from Greyfriars, on the opposite side of the street.

Sanguineus looked at the cab driver through the open passenger side door and said, "Don't wander far. I'll be calling you in an hour, at most."

He shut the door and took Tanya's arm, leading her across the street to what looked like an old stone cathedral. It was the Frankenstein tavern.

An unshaven man dressed sloppily was sitting on a fold-out canvas stool to one side of the entrance, a coffee cup on his knee. He grinned broadly at them as they approached.

"Now lookee here what Bobby dragged off the grave," he said, pointing his cup at Tanya. "Hallo, Val, sweet thing."

He noticed the questioning, brooding looks on both faces that stared down at him in the traffic noise, the chatter of the passing crowd, the echoes of music from the bar. He shrugged by way of apology. "I was told that the Val girl was coming, maybe with you, San, maybe with a lug."

"Told by who?"

"Ingols. He's up there having dinner with MacG and Maggie."

"What's the score?"

"It's a set-up, but not for you or Tanya, if that's you, Tanya? Hell now, it's not the best light out here and you know how you and Val could pass for twins. No, it's a set up for the Top Banana." Smitchee grinned with the cup at his crooked teeth. "I think I know who the bugger is, but I not be saying who."

Sanguineus nodded. "Is it just the three, then, no one else up there?"

"Not unless MacG has a girlfriend. I got the landlady to vouch he don't. He's a live-alone. I don't think it's a red flag, San. Ingols has a job for you, but I must say, he'll think Tanya here is Valentina, and I don't know what he'll want to do with her. You know, though, don't you, that everybody and their brother have been looking for Tanya? Top Banana wants her dead and buried. But then, Ingols is gonna turn the tables on him, so that might mean that Ingols wants Tanya safe. Eh? You think so too?"

Sanguineus looked down the street, up at the steep roofs and clusters of chimney stacks. "I can't think why Ingols wouldn't want her safe," he said, "she's worth ten of his agents." He glanced with appraisal at the fidgety hand that held the cup, then at the narrowed cautious eyes. "But if Valentina is close to the Top Banana or to D'Arc, then Ingols might be a threat to Tanya tonight if he thinks she's Valentina."

Sanguineus turned his head toward her, as if to listen to her breathing.

Tanya slipped her arm through his, her face lifted and her breath like minty toothpaste as her lips parted and her eyes stared steadily into his.

"I haven't seen Valentina since I was recruited by Red Rum," she said. "That was fourteen years ago. But I've had people say to me that they saw me at times and in places where I knew I hadn't been. I never mentioned this to Red Rum because I was afraid they'd think I was crazy. Even Francois Benz said once that he met with me someplace, at the Palais Maillot, if I remember right, and I know I wasn't there. It wasn't me. He thought I was lying to him. But I wasn't lying. He said he showed me pictures of you and asked me if I knew you. He said I denied it."

"When was this?"

"After the Hysterium job, when I squirted that tar and glue shit on you. I tried to find out what happened to Hyacinth Furies, your assistant, but Samson was no help. I thought Benz might know, because he had contacts in Whitestone."

"You're saying that Valentina has been impersonating you all these years?"

"Yeah. Think about it. She could profit off it, pulling off scams in my name, with people I've dealt with through Red Rum. I can see D'Arc involved in it, feeding her information, and she him. And now that Whitestone knows about us, she could screw things up for us by having our analysts and negotiators, our contacts, thinking she is me."

Sanguineus probed her eyes. She was so good at lying that no polygraph expert could trip her up. In her eyes he saw nothing but sincerity. But how much weight could he put on that?

He said to her, "I want you to stay with Smitchee. Go in the bar and have a good time. I'll meet you later."

Smitchee tossed his cup. He got up and folded the canvas and aluminum stool. "That makes me nervous," he said, standing back from them. "Supposing she's Val? Can we tell one way or the other? I don't need Val putting a knife in me ribs. She can go dance with Frankenstein, but me, I be leaving."

"You're staying or I'll knife you myself," Sanguineus said sternly. "Go in with her. Stay together. I'll reimburse you and then some, when I've found out what the fuck Ingols is up to. It looks like MacGalt may be off the hook."

"I'd rather--" Tanya began.

"Rather, hell. Stay with Smitchee. Sing a little karaoke. I'll be back within the hour."

Gerard opened the door and stepped aside. He did not look at Sanguineus after the first eye contact. He closed the door and went ahead into the sitting room where fresh logs had been put in the fire.

Sanguineus glanced at Maggie seated to the left of the fireplace, a glass of wine held demurely in both hands, her legs crossed and her eyes flitting over him like a moth around a candle flame. "Good evening," she said.

Sanguineus said nothing. He was watching Ingols rising from his chair to the right of the fireplace, the blue serge suit catching the light in serpentine glimmers. The small man with the thinning frizzy hair followed his pointed nose to Sanguineus and held out a hand.

"I could wish it was you we evaluated in the Lusk," he said, his handshake firm and dry. He was smiling at the intended humor of his remark, but in his bespectacled eyes there was frustration. "Tanya was all we had hoped she was. Resilient, impregnable of mind, devious in the extreme, self-sufficient, brave as hell. And loyal. Loyal to Red Rum. We got nothing out of her that we didn't already know. And that's another mark in her favor, she was able to intuit what we knew and what we didn't. As a result, Black Eagle has given the ASMA contract to Red Rum. Our director has so informed Hermann Claus. But it was too bad that Tony thought Tanya was his lover, Valentina Vizconde, and aided her in escaping us before we had explained our motive to her and made compensation. We've been looking for her, you may know. Sorry to be so long winded, but I want you to see things clearly. Tony is in custody. And Tanya--? Is this the girl you're with? Or is Smitchee correct in thinking she's Valentina? Frankly, I think they're the same person, Tanya and Valentina. Please, have a seat." He gestured to the central chair that Gerard, presumably, had vacated.

Sanguineus remained where he was, his hand on the Glock in his jacket pocket and his eyes remaining on Ingols.

"What makes you think they're the same person?" he asked.

"Your erstwhile target, MacGalt, had a visitor today," Ingols said, his hands folded in front of him, fiddling with his cufflinks as he spoke. "Valentina. He is quite sure of it. She had told him earlier about her abduction and exhaustive interrogation. She had proof for him of the Lusk, the secret facilities underground at the Parliament. He himself has just been informed of its existence, tonight, here, and is still in a bit of a shock. And yes, he knew about the Donegal contract on him. But he knew that this was a ruse, by us, to get Red Rum involved over here so that the true target could be taken out in the expert fashion that you and Tanya Wilde so perfectly exemplify. Unfortunately we let Tanya slip out before this could be explained to her, as I said. That she is also Valentina Vizconde is a minor issue, though we would like to clear it up."

Sanguineus was more than half-convinced that Ingols had it right. "What evidence did this Valentina show MacGalt concerning the Lusk?" he asked, feeling that the answer might clinch it.

"Photographs she took of Maggie's original drawings of the project," Ingols replied, smugly.

Sanguineus was stunned. Ingols saw this and took off his spectacles, his long nose quivering.

"What?" he said and looked over at Gerard, who sat at the dining table, facing them, a slice of poundcake between his teeth. Then again Ingols looked quizzically at Sanguineus.

"You're wrong about the two girls being the same person," the assassin said, smiling tentatively.

"How do you mean?"

"When I asked Tanya to show me the proof she had about the Lusk, she played a video she had taken with her cell phone, of Heathcliffe Samson confirming it. Now, if Tanya had pics of architectural drawings, why didn't she show those to me, along with the video? The more proof, the better, right?"

Ingols turned slowly, and twisting a cufflink he went up to the fireplace and stood ruminating.

"Hm," said Maggie. "I never thought for a moment..."

Then feeling the eyes of Sanguineus on her she looked up at him and said, "Valentina is staying at Gerard's cottage, outside Lornaglen. I went to see her myself. I'm quite certain it's Valentina."

"Are there other cottages for rent in that area?" asked Sanguineus.

"Yes," said Gerard, standing up with an effort, stiff-legged. "Two have been rented quite recently. Is your Tanya renting one of them?"

"So she says."

"Now, look," Ingols said, turning to face the room. "MacGalt is the expert in psychology, but I do know this. We see what we expect to see. Ever have a dream where you're talking to your, say, Uncle Joe, and after you awaken you realize that Uncle Joe in your dream looked nothing at all like himself? He looked like a total stranger. But in your dream he was unquestionably Uncle Joe. We see the girl as Valentina because that's who we expect to see. Same with Tanya. If Tanya is who we expect to see, then Tanya is who we see. Am I right, MacGalt?"

"Yes, quite. But shouldn't you be getting on about the real target in this caper? I wouldn't want Sanguineus making a mistake to my detriment."

Ingols shoved his hands in his trouser pockets. On his face was that mix of humor and frustration. He said to Sanguineus:

"Claus has authorized this for you. You may wish to confirm it. But let me add what little I am at liberty to say about our reasons behind it. The Lusk was never intended by us to be a hole for Whitestone. We're disbanding the organization. The Lusk is to be a link in the chain. I can't say anything more. Read between the lines."

Sanguineus found Tanya and Smitchee at a corner table in the Frankenstein. They had been drinking as if it were New Year's Eve and were laughing over a basket of chili fries. 

Sanguineus sat next to a suddenly sober Tanya. "Smitch," he said, "I need a stud shooter. Who's the local gunsmith?"

"Ohhh... She's waiting for your order," he said, nodding at the waitress who had followed Sanguineus to the table.

"Fuzzy Navel," she was told, and smearing her smile in the air she hurried off.

"That would be Chance McFarland. But what the hell's a stud shooter?"

"He'll know," Sanguineus said, snapping a debit card on the table. "Take out a hundred pounds for your trouble. I need the stud shooter by ten tomorrow morning. Where do I meet you?"

"The Chockdaw, around back. Best place for that sort of transaction. Call for directions if you need them. But this stud shooter. Just suppose McFarland don't have one?"

"Then you better shit one."