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toward the door, seemingly completely at home.
    “Wait.” I hurried after him, hampered by my strappy sandals. “What are we going to do—knock on the door, hope someone answers, and say we want to come in to—what?—search for a manuscript?”
    “Corinne lived alone,” he said, unperturbed by my gentle sarcasm. “There won’t be anyone here, unless the housekeeper’s around.”
    “So we’re going to break in? That’s so much better.” I’d ditched the “gentle” and moved on to unadulterated sarcasm.
    “I thought we’d use the key,” Maurice said, producing one from his pocket.
    “Wha—? How?” I eyed Maurice uncomfortably. He hadn’t lifted the key from Corinne as she lay unconscious on the restaurant floor, had he?
    “Tut-tut, Anastasia,” he said, reading my expression. “I would never. No, I neglected to give this back.”
    “Give it back?” I gaped at him. “You used to live here? You and Corinne—”
    “Were married for about ten minutes in 1964,” he said.
    I stopped at the base of four marble steps that led to the double front doors inset with stained glass. Maurice kept climbing. “You were married to Corinne Blakely?”
    He looked over his shoulder at me. “I was twenty-two. She was twenty-four. I was her rebound relationship after Charles died. Or so she told me when she divorced me eight months later.”
    I kept staring at him. A flush warmed his tanned cheeks and he turned away to fumble with the key. “I never knew,” I breathed.
    “It’s ancient history . . . as relevant as the Phoenicians and the Assyrians or some such. A few people knew, but it wasn’t common knowledge. It was over so fast. . . .” He shrugged. The lock clicked.
    I mounted the steps to stand beside him and he paused with his hand on the knob. “The police?”
    “Yes, they know.”
    “That’s why they’re looking at you so hard. The divorced husband with a grudge.”
    “The divorce happened in the Dark Ages, and I never had a grudge against Rinny.” Maurice sounded unusually testy. He crossed his arms over his chest. “We were too young. I was too young.”
    “Sorry. I didn’t mean I thought you held a grudge, just that the police—”
    “We stayed friends,” he said, tacitly accepting my apology, “throughout her marriages. She shucked husband number six some twelve or fourteen months back. Constancy was never Rinny’s strong suit,” he said with a reminiscent smile.
    “I’d think the police would be more interested in her last husband than in you,” I said.
    “He’s a Hungarian count or Latvian baron or something. He returned to Europe after Corinne tossed him over.” Maurice looked around. “Let’s go in, Anastasia, before the neighbors start to wonder.”
    The nearest neighbor would have to use binoculars to spot us, but I didn’t argue. “Let’s get it over with,” I agreed.
    Maurice reached for the ornate doorknob, but the door swung inward before he could touch it.

Chapter 4
    Maurice sprang back, bumping into me, and I almost toppled down the steps. Only my dancer’s reflexes and core strength saved me. I regained my balance in time to see Maurice slip the key into his pocket as a beautiful young man appeared in the doorway, dark brows arching high and an expression of surprise on his face. Pale skin and silky black hair set off intensely blue eyes. He wore jeans and a rugby shirt, but looked like he should have been dressed in an ascot and spats, like a character from an Evelyn Waugh novel. Not that I’d ever read Waugh’s books, but I’d seen the miniseries. The young man spoke, spoiling the effect with a blatantly mid-Atlantic accent and a scornful tone.
    “Maurice! What the hell are you doing here?”
    “We were just about to knock,” Maurice lied. “What are you doing here, Turner?”
    “I was staying with Grandmama when she—” He broke off, pressing his lips together as if overcome by grief.
    “Thrown out of another school?” Maurice asked