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and secure more grandchildren. “Helen Stokes. Bless her heart.”
     
    Steve raised his eyebrows, arrested in the act of pouring. “How did you hear about that?”
     
    “Judith Griggs—you remember Judith, from the book club?—lives right down the street from the Stokes place. She saw the lights last night, and then the yellow tape this morning. She went over with a pan of her monkey bread, because that Paul Ellis is supposed to speak to the book club next month, and she was afraid maybe something had happened to him. But it was Helen.” Eugenia took a plate of French toast and bacon out of the microwave and set it on the counter in front of Steve. “So, what happened?”
     
    Steve looked down at the plate and then up at his mother. “Attempting to bribe a law enforcement officer, Ma?” he asked dryly.
     
    “Certainly not,” Eugenia said, blushing.
     
    “Good.” All he wanted was hot coffee, a cold shower, and a couple of extra strength Tylenol. But he went through the motions. You had to go through the motions. He dumped syrup over his plate. “Thanks for breakfast.”
     
    “Is somebody dead?” Gabrielle asked.
     
    Shit. If he’d had any appetite, that would have killed it.
     
    “A neighbor lady, honey,” his mother replied. “Nobody you know.”
     
    Gabrielle’s dark gaze fixed on her father’s face. “Was she sick?”
     
    Teresa had been sick. Ovarian cancer. Two short months, while Steve begged and threatened and cajoled and raged, and then she died.
     
    “Not sick,” he said.
     
    “An accident?” Eugenia asked.
     
    “Looks like it.”
     
    It looked like . . . trouble.
     
    Steve had no witness, no weapon, no visible bloodstains, nothing to suggest homicide. Only a prickling under his skin, like a numb leg twitching to painful life, and a memory of skinny Bailey Wells with her arms around Paul Ellis.
     
    Something stirred in Steve’s belly. Anger, maybe.
     
    He scowled into his cup. He wasn’t emotionally involved. He didn’t want to be emotionally involved. Compartmentalize. Depersonalize. Detach.
     
    Eugenia ran water over the frying pan in the sink. “Dotty’s going to want Bailey out of there now, you mark my words.”
     
    Steve set down his mug. There was a daughter in Atlanta who needed to be notified—Regan. And an estranged son, Richard, in Chicago. “Who’s Dotty?”
     
    “Dorothy Wells. Her daughter Bailey works for Helen’s husband.”
     
    Well, hell.
     
    “She told me she was from New York,” Steve said slowly.
     
    “She may be. But her family’s right here in Stokesville.”
     
    “Why don’t I remember her?”
     
    “She’s a whole lot younger than you,” Eugenia said frankly. “Ten years at least. I’ll bet you remember her sister, though. Leann Wells?”
     
    “Nope.”
     
    “Beautiful girl,” his mother said. “But she’s married now. To Bryce Edwards. He sells insurance, I think.”
     
    He let her talk. He needed to know his territory, to re-learn the fabric of town life so he could see the patterns and the pieces out of place. You never knew when some tidbit dropped in friendly conversation, in the checkout line or over coffee, could become the connecting thread in a crime.
     
    Eugenia glanced over her shoulder. “So you talked to her? Bailey?”
     
    He remembered Bailey’s thin, pale face, her shock-dilated pupils, her unnatural composure. Her hands on the back of Ellis’s shirt. He hadn’t missed her initial stiffness when her boss grabbed her . . . or her awkward softening. He just didn’t know what to make of it yet.
     
    “She was at the scene. Of course I talked to her.”
     
    “How is she taking it?”
     
    “I’d say pretty well.” He watched Eugenia dry her hands on a towel, his mind turning over. “So, Dorothy Wells doesn’t approve of her daughter’s living arrangements?”
     
    “Steven Burke.” Eugenia pursed her mouth. “Are you attempting to pump your own mama for information?”
     
    He lifted