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odd couple apart and see if she could find out why they didn’t speak to each other. ‘Do you mind if we go across the street and sit in my car?’
    â€˜Not a bit.’ Nicole walked back to the tinny door at the front of the RV and pushed it open. All her movements were lithe and decisive.
    Sarah turned to Tom in the chair beside hers and said, ‘Will you just wait right here, please?’
    â€˜For what?’ He was getting red again, hating to be told what to do.
    â€˜For me to come back,’ she said, keeping her voice level and her eyes fixed on him in a neutral stare.
    â€˜Oh, well, hell yes, where am I going to go anyway?’ He rattled the coins in his pockets. ‘I just feel as if I should be doing something!’
    â€˜You are. You’re helping us find out what happened,’ Sarah said, to the top of his head.
    He looked up quickly at that and said, ‘Oh, I know!’ and went back to scanning his shoes.
    Like most homicide investigators Sarah sometimes claimed that nothing surprised her very much any more. But she thought, as she caught up with Nicole and led her to the department car, that if Delaney thought Tom Cooper was a piece of work on his own, he should really see him with his sister.
    Meeting each other for the first time after hearing about the death of both their parents, most siblings would rush to each other, hold on hard and try to give comfort. Sarah and her sister had often ridiculed the stand-offish behavior of their brother, but now she thought, Even Howard the Stick would give me a hug at a time like this. The Cooper siblings had stood half an RV length apart without saying one word to each other. Didn’t say hello, never met each other’s eyes. The mutual avoidance was so total it didn’t even convey anger. Loathing? Maybe, but it seemed more like dread. As if the sky might crack open and rain lava if they spoke one word to each other.
    The contrasts were interesting, too. Tom Cooper was aggressive in a pushy, sneering way that Sarah thought might be a cover for insecurity. Nicole moved and spoke with the quiet authority of a person accustomed to having the final say. Right now, along with her self-assurance, she had the slightly distraught air of someone who has mistakenly locked herself out of a house in a cold rain – an obviously intelligent person taken aback by a shocking event. Sarah thought her demeanor seemed much more appropriate than her brother’s, except that she hadn’t offered him any more comfort than he’d given her.
    She had been driving home this morning after a Sunday in Phoenix with friends, Nicole explained, when she got word ‘from somebody at the police department, I didn’t get the name,’ that there was a ‘problem’ at her parents’ house. ‘Neither one of them answered their cell, so I called Phyllis. She told me to pull off the road, and as soon as I was parked she told me what had happened.’ Nicole rested her forehead briefly on two fingertips. When she raised her head and looked at Sarah, her eyes were bright with unshed tears, but her voice was steady.
    â€˜She asked me if I wanted to close the stores for a couple of days, to show respect. I said, “What would they have wanted?” and right away we both said, together, “Keep ’em open, take care of the customers.”’ She gave a little dry bark of a laugh, halfway between irony and pride. ‘She said she’d see to it, and I should go ahead and take care of . . . whatever there is to take care of. Every organization,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘should have at least one Phyllis.’
    â€˜Reliable?’
    â€˜Like a rock. And smart and tireless.’
    â€˜Do your parents . . . were they still working in the two stores?’ Sarah remembered them well, the busy, capable couple to whom she’d paid so many dollars when she was decorating her big