Sara nodded warily, taken aback by the gentleness in his face as he looked at her. "I'd like that, Jess."

For the rest of the afternoon and evening, a steady procession of police cruisers arrived at Sloan's house and disappeared after a little while. Boxes of pizzas and sandwiches from fast-food restaurants accumulated on the living room table as Sloan's friends on the force invented excuses to come by and say hello.

Sloan knew better.

They had come to show their support and to cheer her up. It worked until Sloan went to bed that night. Alone in her bed, there was nothing to distract her from remembering Noah. She fell asleep thinking about the times she'd lain against his side after they'd made love, her head on his shoulder, his hand idly caressing her, until they both slept. Or made love again.

48

Paris wasn't fooled one bit by Detectives Cagle and Flynn's courteous tone. They were sitting in her living room the day after her great-grandmother's funeral, and they were trying to make her incriminate herself in her great-grandmother's murder.

"I'm sure you can understand why we're baffled," Flynn was saying. "I mean, if Sloan killed Mrs. Reynolds, why would she wipe her prints off her own gun and then 'hide' the gun where we couldn't miss it? Her prints on her own gun wouldn't have incriminated her. The gun incriminated her because it fired the shot that killed Mrs. Reynolds."

"I told you before," Paris stated, "I don't know the answer to that."

"Sloan said the gun was still in its original hiding place, not under the mattress, on the morning after Mrs. Reynolds's death. She checked. Do you think someone else could have put the gun under the mattress?"

"Who?" Paris countered angrily. "The servants had all been sent home by you. The only people in the house that morning who didn't work for you were Paul Richardson and Sloan, my father and me, and Gary Dishler."

"That's the confusing part," Cagle put in.

"Yes, isn't it?" she countered. "You obviously don't think Paul Richardson or Sloan could be guilty."

"Richardson is FBI and he has no motive. Your sister has an unblemished record as a police officer and she was working for him. Believe me, if all that weren't true, your sister would be staring at a lifetime in prison. Now, let's see, who does that leave us with—who had a motive for wanting to see your great-grandmother dead and Sloan in prison, and who was here to move the gun under the mattress?"

Paris stood up, ending the interview, and motioned to Nordstrom, who was hovering in the hallway. She was through with being nice to people who treated her badly. "Nordstrom," she said coldly, "please show these men to the door, and lock it behind them. They are never again to be allowed past the gates."

Flynn dropped his friendly pretext. "We can get a warrant."

Paris nodded toward the door. "Do it, then," she said. "But until you have one, kindly get out and stay out!"

When the front door closed behind them, Cagle looked at Flynn with a wry smile. "That was a genteel way of saying 'fuck off,' wasn't it?"

"Yeah. I'll bet she was just as genteel when she pointed that Glock at her great-grandmother's chest and pulled the trigger."

Paris wasn't feeling genteel. She was panicked. She paced slowly back and forth across the living room floor, trying to think of who the murderer could be. She wasn't as willing as the police were to discount Paul Richardson or Sloan. Paul was obviously a liar and a phony, and he was fully capable of using people ruthlessly. He knew how to use a gun, and he would know how to fix things so it looked like someone else was guilty. He had no heart. He had broken hers. The problem was… he actually seemed to believe that Paris had killed her great-grandmother.

Sloan was as dishonest and heartless as he was. She'd pretended she wanted Paris to think of her as a real sister; then she tricked her into loving her like one. She'd filled Paris's head with touching stories about their mother and made Paris yearn to be part of their family in Bell Harbor. In retrospect, it was easy to see that Sloan had only accepted their invitation to come to Palm Beach so that she could smuggle an FBI agent into their midst, and then they could both try to destroy Noah.

Absently rubbing her throbbing temples, Paris went over what the detectives had said and what they'd implied. They seemed to be absolutely convinced that Sloan was telling the truth, and that whoever put her gun under her mattress was the killer. The police were convinced it wasn't Sloan or Paul, and Paris knew it wasn't her father or herself.

That only left Gary Dishler.

At first the idea seemed absurd, but the more she thought about it, the more she realized how little she actually liked the man. When he'd come to work for her father a few years ago, his position as assistant had been well-defined, but now he seemed to be in charge of everything. Generally, he treated her father with deferential respect, but there had been a few times when she'd heard him use a clipped, impatient tone that was completely inappropriate. She'd seen him lose his temper with a housemaid and fire her on the spot because she'd touched some papers on his desk.

The more Paris considered it, the more unpleasant and unsavory Dishler seemed to her. She couldn't imagine why he would want to hurt her great-grandmother, but she wasn't entirely sure he was incapable of it.

Her father was going through condolence cards in a spacious second-floor study with connecting doors to his bedroom on one side and to Gary Dishler's office on the other. The hallway door into Dishler's office was open, but the connecting door was closed. Paris carefully closed the hallway door into her father's study so they'd have complete privacy. "We have a problem," she said as calmly as she could.

"What is it?" he asked, slitting open another envelope.

Paris sat down on a chair in front of his desk. "Do you know how Gary really felt about Great-grandmother? I know she was rude to him from time to time."

"She was rude to everyone from time to time," Carter pointed out philosophically. "What has that to do with Gary?"

Paris drew a fortifying breath. "The police were here a while ago. They believe that whoever put Sloan's gun under the mattress also killed Great-grandmother, and they are convinced it wasn't Sloan or Paul."

"Don't get involved with all that, Paris. It will drive you crazy if you try to sort it out. Let them handle it."

"I don't think we can afford to do that."

He looked up, frowning. "Why not?"

"Because the police are already convinced I did it. I had the biggest motive and the best opportunity."