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Rhonda got out of her car and walked toward the steps to the porch.

"Sheriff," I said, rising. "We're short on chairs here." I looked at Miss Lane. "Shall we three adjourn to the rear deck? Coffee is available, and I could use a refill myself." I gestured with my empty mug.

We went into the front hall, where I refilled my mug and they filled theirs, and then we went back outside and around to the rear deck, where we sat at one of the tables. Everything on the deck was damp with dew, but I had anticipated this and I'd brought a stack of napkins from the supply in the hall.

When the three of us were seated and sipping our coffee, I wondered who would speak first. It was pretty clear that each of my guests would have been much happier if the other one had not been there.

For me, I was thinking how pleasant it would be if I managed to finish my entire cup of coffee in silence. That did not seem likely.

The reporter finally turned to the sheriff. "Rhonda," she said, "do you have any comment on the death at the college?"

Rhonda shook her head. "Not yet." She turned to me. "Is your employer going to look into that?"

I shrugged. "She may not even be aware of it. I do know that she is writing against at least one pressing deadline."

The sheriff was regarding me thoughtfully. "It does seem like it's her kind of case. The death of an exchange student, in a locked room, apparently with no way in or out."

"And the knife," Kate Lane put in. "With the word 'Revenge' on the handle in Spanish."

"How did you find out about that?" the sheriff demanded.

"I do have my sources," the reporter said happily.

Rhonda frowned. "I have no comment on that case."

The reporter continued to look pleased. "Any update on the Deacon case?" she asked.

"The Deacon sisters and Prescott Owens are in the hospital, recovering from their injuries."

"Are they in custody?"

"Nobody is in custody at this moment."

"And Dr. Deacon–"

"Right now, all indications are that he and his brother killed each other."

She did not raise the question of which brother had died first, and nobody asked. If Kate Lane was not aware of the possible significance of that information, I didn't see any reason to send her in that direction.

Some minutes later, after I had put the dirty coffee mugs in the kitchen, I went back to the room. My employer had finished her coffee and she was taking her shower, so I did a quick check and the knife which had been thrown at our porch two nights before, the one with "vingança" on the handle (which was Portuguese, by the way, not Spanish), was no longer where I had hidden it.

 
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My employer opened her eyes, just enough to see the morning sun streaming into our room. She groaned and threw her forearm across her eyes as she said, "Your tasks for this morning: One: Get me some coffee. Please. Two: Take your coffee and have it somewhere other than here. I'm expecting at least two callers this morning, and you're going to talk to them, not me. I'm far too busy. Deadlines and so on.

"If you have your coffee on the rear deck, please leave a note on the front door saying that's where you are. And make sure this door is locked."

"Who are you expecting?"

"Rhonda, and Kate Lane – probably in that order. Rhonda will want to give you information. You can take it or not – that's your call. I have nothing for her, and I don't care about the case – any case she may want to talk to me about."

 
Some time later, I was sitting on the front porch, in the rocking chair. My coffee mug was on the worn two-by-six of the porch railing.

No note on the front door would have discouraged Kate Lane from ascending the stairs and knocking on our door (at a minimum). Better to head her off on the ground floor.

The sky was slowly becoming overcast, and the air was damp and a bit chilly. I thought, idly, about going upstairs to get a sweater, but now that I was seated I was comfortable and reluctant to move.

Contemplating the easy availability of more coffee in the hall, whenever I needed it, I noticed a thin layer of condensation on the glass of the front door. I could still see the notch where the knife had landed the night before last.

My employer's coffee was ready on her bedside table. She had apparently gone back to sleep. I'd put a saucer on top of the mug, to try to keep the coffee warm for her.

I did wonder who had washed the four dirty mugs from the conference yesterday morning. They were clean and back among the collection in the hall, so somebody had dealt with them. I would have wagered a modest amount of money that it had not been my employer

Sitting in the rocking chair, sipping my coffee, enjoying the cool breeze, I remembered the woman who'd been sitting there two nights before.

She'd appeared to be tall and slender, with long, dark hair, wearing dark clothes and, possibly, wire-rimmed glasses.

Could she have been mistaken for my employer in the darkness? Is that why someone had thrown a knife at her?

I thought this was likely.

Had we met her before? I was pretty sure we had, but of course this was just... Well, my employer would have called it guessing, and "guess" was a dirty word in her lexicon.

A little while later, Mrs. Jessup, our landlady, poked her head out to wish me good morning, and I rose to return her greeting.

 
Kate Lane drove up and parked in front of the inn. I wondered if my employer had been right about Rhonda visiting this morning as well.

"Hey, Marshall," the reporter said cheerfully as she reached the three steps up to the porch.

"Good morning, Miss Lane," I said. I rose and offered her the chair, but she declined and half-sat on the flat railing.

"What brings you here this morning?" I asked as I sat down again.

"I wanted to find out what Miss Sleet thinks of the new case, at the college."

"As far as I know, she's not aware of any new case, at the college or anywhere else. I know I'm not. In any case, she's not available – she has deadlines."

She digested this. "Do you know how the Deacon case worked out?"

"Sheriff White interviewed me last night, and I know that Dr. Deacon is dead, but I don't know anything beyond that."

Of course, if the window in our room had happened to be open, my employer (if she were awake) would have been able hear this conversation. I was tempted to glance up and check, but obviously I couldn't do that with the reporter in front of me.

Kate Lane paused, as if this conversation wasn't going in the way she'd anticipated. As she started to speak again, I held up a finger and pointed as a police cruiser pulled up and parked behind her car.

 
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"Do you want to know what I'm thinking?"

The sheriff shrugged, conveying that she didn't know (or possibly that she didn't care).

"The Deacon girls have just lost their father, and their uncle for that matter. Maybe we should go to their house, right now, and inform whoever happens to be there."

"And see who's there, and what's going on." She stood up, shoving her notebook into her back pocket. "Let's go."

The state police had arrived by then, and we paused on our way out so the sheriff could confer with the officer in charge. I stood a distance away, politely giving the impression that I couldn't hear anything, although of course I could. Nothing interesting was said.

Then, as we drove along Main Street, at less than the sheriff's usual breakneck pace, I noticed Elsa's van in front of the Wagon Wheel. Their roast beef sandwiches were not going to please her.

Seafood was pretty reliably fresh in Claremont, but red meat was, at best, unreliable.

Thinking about roast beef, I remembered when my employer and I had spent a few days (hiding out from the army, in fear for our lives – a long story) on a fazenda in Bellona, and we'd eaten beef, a couple of times, from an animal which had been slaughtered just a day or two before.

It was as different from ordinary restaurant beef as fresh swordfish is from canned tuna.

Not that any restaurant in Claremont was going to have beef like that–

"O'Connor!" the sheriff said sharply, and I realized that we were parked in front of the Deacon house, which showed no life or lights. The entire street was dark and silent.

I started to open the car door when the two-way radio demanded Rhonda's attention. She took the handset from the dashboard and demanded to know what was up.

As she spoke – mostly yes and no and terse requests for more details – I got out of the car and leaned on the hood.

Somewhere along the line I had miscalculated. Why was I leaning against a police cruiser, in front of this dark and depressing-looking house? I had been asked to provide whatever information I had and I'd done so – as a responsible citizen and as someone who, for professional reasons, wanted to maintain good relations with local law enforcement – but, like my employer, I was not a public convenience, or a public employee, and I certainly didn't care about any of the Deacons.

I was still slightly buzzed from the beers I'd consumed earlier, on an empty stomach. I decided to blame everything on that.

Rhonda ended her call and got out of the car. After a moment's study of my face, she said, "Do you want the new news, or are you out?"

"I'm out," I said. "This is not my case."

She nodded. "Fair enough. I wish I could say the same." She gave me a sketchy salute. "Have a good night."

"You, too."

 
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"Can I know what's been going on here?"

That's the question I almost asked, but I stopped myself.

Instead, I said, "FYI: If the body downstairs is Fred Deacon, it may turn out to be important, to some people, to determine which brother died first."

That focused her attention back on me.

I continued, "I should say, as a caveat, that none of this is, so far, documented fact."

She gestured that I should continue.

"I have read that Dr. Deacon inherited his family's money on the death of his father. He believed that this was a good system, to keep a family's estate together. So, the story goes, his own will states that his money, on the occasion of his death, should go to his brother, his only living sibling. Or, if his brother should predecease him, to his brother's elder daughter."

"Oh, crap. I see where this is going."

"Exactly. Fred Deacon, on the other hand, having been his brother's poor relation for all these many years, divided his own estate equally, in his will, between his two daughters."

The sheriff, apparently holding back something either obscene or blasphemous, or both, paused, and then she said, "We don't get these kinds of cases except when Miss Jan Sleet is in town, so it's rude of her not to be available when we get stuck with one."

I made sure not to express any opinion about this.

"On the other hand, I am not implying–" "–Of course not–" "–that I need her help to solve this."

She looked at her notebook.

"Were there any other family members? I'm not aware of any, but you're the one who did the research."

"There's nobody close, either genetically or geographically, as far as I know."

"What about the mother? The girls' mother?"

"She died some time ago. Cancer."

"Aubrey and Fred," she said slowly. "The older brother got all the money and he got the fancy name. Poor Fred, I guess.

"Anyway, here's a question which has been bugging me: Fred Deacon was putting on airs with your boss at the book sale? Letting her think he was well off?"

"Apparently."

"How in the world did he think he'd get away with that? Running a con on her?"

"He didn't – that's my idea. He was approaching her because he had to, so he did everything wrong, to be sure she'd slam him down. She can be predictable in that way, in what annoys her, and she is, after all, fairly well known in this area."

"So, the whole kidnapping thing was a fake?"

"One: Let's assume he's desperate for money, for whatever reason, and he goes to his brother. The priest seems fond of his nieces, as far as we can tell, so there's a chance that, yet again, he will bail out his ne'er-do-well younger brother if one of his nieces is in danger.

"Two: Dr. Deacon is tired of Fred's nonsense, so he says, 'Your daughter has been kidnapped, and you don't want to call the police, for fear of what will happen? Fine. There's Miss Jan Sleet, the master detective, standing right over there. Ask her for help.'"

"Which he did – in a way almost guaranteed to annoy her."

"Which it did."

"Indeed."

 
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Sheriff Rhonda White was not happy.

Of course, she had at least one dead body to deal with – in a church, no less – and it seemed that there were about four things she wanted to be doing at that moment, and no way for her to do them all at the same time.

Then I heard the door behind me open wider and I smelled an aftershave I'd smelled before.

The sheriff looked up. "Dr. Wright," she said.

The coroner stepped into the room, and looked around. There was no place to sit. He gestured at me not to rise, but I hadn't given any indication that I was going to surrender my chair.

After all, he was on duty and I wasn't.

"The body in the pew downstairs is also dead," he said. "Broken neck, apparently, but he's been stabbed as well. I won't know which he died from, if either, until I've done the autopsy."

The sheriff nodded.

Dr. Wright turned to me. "Is your boss involved with this?"

I shrugged, surprising both of us by standing to shake his hand. "To the best of my knowledge, no."

His handshake was firm.

"Well, that's something," he said with a chuckle as I sat down again. He turned back to the sheriff. "Unless you plan to produce any more bodies tonight," he said, "I think I'll take my leave."

She nodded and gestured, dismissing him. As he left, she turned to me. "So, what have you got for me, O'Connor?"

"Quite a bit, and also, as far as I can tell, nothing."

She made a face that I'd seen before. "That's not helpful."

"I know." I leaned back in my chair. "Miss Sleet is not investigating this case, so I'm willing to open the bag. But there isn't a lot in the bag."

"You and the boss lady went to the Deacon house this morning. Who did you talk to?"

I couldn't suppress a smile. "I'm not actually sure." Sensing her impatience – which would have been difficult to miss – I continued, giving her a brief summary of what Miss Deacon had said that morning. Then I pointed at the photographs on one shelf of the priest's bookcase. "Have you looked at those?"

"Family photos. I didn't study them."

"I see two things which seem interesting. Several of the photos show two teenage girls – apparently sisters – at different ages. Some photos show just the girls, others show them with Dr. Deacon, their uncle."

I couldn't resist holding up a forefinger as she crossed the room to look at the photographs. "None of the photos include Mr. Deacon, the girls' father." A second finger. "The brunette girl we spoke to at the house said she was the younger sister, Jennifer, but these photographs, obviously taken over quite a few years, suggest that the brunette girl, the one who we spoke to, is the older sister, Julie, and the blonde girl, with the curly hair, is her younger sister.

"Also, the girl we spoke to – call her Miss Deacon – was wearing a Claremont College T-shirt, which she passed off as her sister's."

Rhonda frowned. "I'm still wondering why you were there in the first place, if Miss Sleet isn't investigating the case."

"I have no idea. After we left the Deacon house, she dispatched me to the office of the Crier, to do research on the history of the Deacon family, and I haven't seen her since. Or heard from her. I've had no communication with her, or from her."

She held up a hand. "I get the idea." She sat down again and tapped a finger on her notebook, looking at the photographs, and then at the wall.

She looked up. "Here's one for you. Nobody called the Deacon house – Fred Deacon's house – on Saturday night. I wanted to find out who made the call about the kidnapping, of course, and there were no incoming calls to that number at all."

I had been wondering about that, but I didn't say so.

 
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