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later.”
    The vehicle started to pull away and I jammed my foot on the brake to override Agatha’s control. “Whoa, there. I think I better check this out.”
    I jammed the car into park and opened the door.
    “You should really listen to me. My circuits have calculated all the possibilities and-”
    “Not now, Agatha.” I slammed the door shut, cutting off any further arguing on her part.
    Glancing behind the house, I could see there had been a fire out on the water. It looked like it was just a boat fire. I almost laughed with relief—and here I was expecting them to be pulling Evangeline’s body out of the house.
    I stuffed the envelope back into my tote bag. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to be giving Evangeline an envelope full of cash in front of the cops when she’d clearly had some sort of incident in her backyard. Thoughts of arson committed on purpose to collect insurance money ran through my head. Maybe her suspicions of her husband being in financial trouble were correct?
    I wondered if I should just leave, but one of the cops had already spotted me and was heading my way. Sergeant Harry Hale.
    Unfortunately, Hale and I did not get along. He was an older guy—one of those by-the-book guys that didn’t like people questioning official police department rulings. Like the one concerning my mother’s death.
    I’d never believed my father’s account of what happened that night, or the official investigation’s findings of the American Intelligence Agency, for which both my parents had worked.
    I bit back the bile that rose in my throat as I thought of my parents. I guess you could say they had been spies. Both had worked undercover for the AIA. They’d been my idols and largely the reason why I’d also gone into law enforcement.
    But something had happened a couple of years ago. An assignment gone wrong. My mother had ended up dead and my father, who had apparently been a traitor, a liar and a double agent all this time, ended up in jail.
    I didn’t really care much about my father. He’d betrayed not only his country but his daughter, as well. But I wanted to know the real truth about what happened to my mother. My father said she’d died at the hands of rogue spies, but since I already knew he was a liar, I didn’t know if I could trust that information.
    Since her death had happened right here in town, I’d tried to dig up all I could through the police station, and Hale had been there blocking me every step of the way. It almost made me wonder if he, himself, had been involved.
    “Well, well, well. What brings you here?” Hale had walked over and was now standing in front of me, scratching his balding head. He wore the outdated fashion of plaid slacks and a polo shirt with some little animal on it. A muskrat? Or was it a ferret? I couldn’t tell.
    I faltered. What was I doing there? I didn’t want to tell him about Evangeline’s visit to contract my services, so I made up a lie. Maybe I was more like my father than I thought. “Evangeline Barrows is a friend. I was driving by and saw the commotion. I thought I’d stop in to see if she needed help.”
    His brows snapped together. “A friend? How good of a friend?”
    I craned my neck to see what was going on in the backyard behind him. Police swarmed the yard, scanning the ground with instruments. Drones skimmed one foot off the surface of the grass, mapping out the whole area with a sequence of videos that the police would later use to canvas for clues by eye and also with the aid of software.
    There was a lot of stuff going on at the boat or, I should say, what had been the boat. Now it looked more like a crispy, burned marshmallow floating on the water as opposed to a vessel that would actually carry people.
    I realized Hale was studying me, expecting my answer.
    “Oh, I don’t know her very well. What happened? It looks like a boat caught on fire.”
    Hale turned around to look. “You could say that. When did you last see Mrs.