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beginning another day in paradise, some heading for the golf courses, others ready to fish or sail, many lugging beach umbrellas, chairs, and coolers. Elderly ladies rocked placidly.
    She curved around the broad sweep of central steps that led up to the second and third floors. Behind the stairway stretched a short hall with several shops. She paused for an instant to look through the window of a women’s casual wear store, Her Best. She admired a pristine white hip-length cotton blouse with ornate lace on either side of a V-neck and three-quarter-length sleeves with lacy cuffs. Maybe she’d stop and shop on her way out. She reached the door that opened to the terrace. She stepped out into the heavy heat and passed umbrella-shaded tables and deck chairs by a long pool. The springboard snapped. The diver executed a back one-and-a-half somersault. Although it was still early, the pool was perhaps a third full of swimmers, side clingers, and relaxed inhabitants of assorted floats. The poolwater shimmered in the brilliant sunlight. To one side was a basketball hoop and a small paved area. A woman jumped rope with a steady rhythm, face creased in concentration. Annie recognized Rae Griffith. There was no sign of her husband. Rae looked like a woman engaged in a serious exercise program, oblivious to her surroundings.
    Annie didn’t try to attract her attention. She wasn’t here to see Rae. She was here to see Alex Griffith. Annie continued to the end of the terrace. She shaded her eyes and admired a sweep of grass framed by pines. An oyster shell path up the middle led to a white gazebo. She nodded in approval at the rows of folding chairs on either side of the path. These would be perfect for tonight. She walked up the path and climbed the gazebo steps. The lectern was in place and tonight a portable mic would be available. She looked out at the empty chairs and pictured the scene, dusk falling, cash bars set up. Before the program began, there would be plenty of room for people to mill around, say hello to friends, enjoy the small bright white lights twinkling in the live oaks.
    The inn was shaped like a square-edged U, with a wing on either side. Some ground-floor rooms looked out on the patio and pool. Ground-floor rooms in the outer west wing faced a side parking lot. The more desirable outer rooms, in the east wing, had individual patios that looked out on a thick cluster of loblolly pines.
    Annie started down the gazebo steps, then paused as she recognized a trim figure coming around the end of the west wing. Marian Kenyon’s thin shoulders were hunched. She was moving fast, canvas shoulder bag banging against one hip. Marian was always in a hurry, with a story to cover, a deadline to meet, quick to pick up on the unusual, the dramatic, sometimes the poignant, sometimes the heartbreaking. Marian talked in fast, staccato bursts, brown eyes bright in a gamine face beneath a mop of unruly dark hair.
    As Annie watched, Marian covered half the space between the end of the wing and the expanse of the patio, clearly on her way to the crushed oyster shell path on the far side of the east wing.
    Annie’s partially lifted hand fell. She’d been ready to call out, but now she had a clear view of Marian’s face in bright sunlight, a face Annie had never seen, pale, set, hard. Usually Marian exuded life. She brimmed with vitality. The woman striding toward the end of the wing looked bleak and driven, with hollow eyes, jutting cheekbones, lips pressed together.
    Annie hurried down the steps. Scarcely formed thoughts flitted in her mind . . .
something wrong 
. . .
Marian’s face 
. . .
a look of fury, dread, implacable resolve 
. . .
what had happened?
 . . .
why is Marian here? . . . have to help her . . .
    Annie reached the path that ran behind the east wing. Ground-floor rooms had small private patios separated by head-high, stuccoed