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their corners. But the freckles on her nose and cheeks, and the wave of her dark hair still held some flash of youth. Joe figured her in her late thirties, early forties. A little old, but not bad , he found himself thinking, then shook the thought from his head.
    “Mrs. Sander, I work for the Terrel Daily Times , and I wrote James’ obituary for yesterday’s paper. I didn’t want to bother Mrs. Canady, but I was hoping you might be able to tell me more about James.”
    “What do you want to know?” she asked. Her voice was heavy, and her eyes refused to leave the six-foot hole in the earth a short distance away.
    “Well, I’ve heard that Terrel’s Peak has claimed a lot of lives. I was just wondering if James ever talked about being suicidal before this happened. Or, do you know if he happened to be friends with any of the kids who have jumped from the peak in the past?”
    “Was he a copycat? That’s what you want to know?”
    She turned at last to give him her full attention. Her eyes flared from empty pits to fiery black holes.
    “No, ma’am, not exactly. I just want to know what kind of—”
    “What kind of kid jumps off a cliff, Mr….?”
    “Kieran, ma’am.”
    “The kind of kid that jumps off a cliff, Mr. Kieran, was my son, William. The kind of kid that jumps off a cliff is”—she pointed at a slim blonde woman talking with Rhonda— “Monica Kelly’s daughter, Margaret. There is no kind of kid that jumps off a cliff. There are only dead kids who’ve done it. I’m sorry, Mr. Kieran, but I just really don’t want to talk about this right now.”
    Amazing , Joe thought as Karen Sander abruptly walked away to join Rhonda and Monica at the edge of the grave. Within five minutes he had managed to drive two women away from him—at a funeral, where people were supposed to be open armed and comforting. Was it him, or were people in this town really touchy about this cliff?
    And it was damned strange that all three of those women had had kids go cliff-diving without a hang glider. What were the odds? And they all knew Angelica. Maybe he’d haveto pay the palm reader another visit. But this time, he needed to have a little more information before he tried to pump her. He needed a handle to prime the pump. The Times ’ morgue would take days to weed through to find what he was looking for. But with some names to scan for, he could use the library’s microfilm collection of the Terrel Daily Times . He ought to be able to sift through papers fast enough to get the dates and circumstances of the deaths of Margaret Kelly and William Sander. He doubted their obituaries would say much, but it never hurt to check.
    So absorbed was he in following his train of thought, that he didn’t even realize that for the first time in weeks, he was truly, utterly happy. As Joe Kieran walked away from the funeral and unlocked his car door, he was whistling.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    Cindy Marshfield waited to cry until she was home from the funeral. And then it all came out like a June rainstorm. She left her mom downstairs and hid in her room with the door closed. It seemed like someone else’s room now, she thought, lying back on the bed to stare at the ceiling. She’d been away for months, and coming back to her old high school room was like visiting a friend’s home—familiar, comfortable, but not hers. Her eyes filled with tears as she traced the spider-web patterns in the paint on the ceiling and relived the past couple days.
    The call had come while she was at class. Her roommate, Brenda, had actually picked up the phone and talked to Cindy’s mom. It was two hours later before she could relay the news to Cindy.
    “I’ve got some pretty bad news,” Brenda had begun just after Cindy walked into their cramped dorm room. She’d looked curiously over at Brenda, waiting for the punch line that was sure to follow such a pronouncement from her usually giddy friend. But Brenda’s face hadn’t lifted.
    Cindy crossed the