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County’s entrenched powers. Her favorite image of Mercer came to mind: On the advice of his television consultants before his last election, the 400-pound sheriff had permed his thinning hair into a sorry mass of dyed-brown curls. The effort was the video-age equivalent of draping earrings on a pig. Brenna stifled a smile.
    â€œWho spoke with them?” she said.
    â€œLeigh and I were hosting a small fund-raiser at our home in Sewickley Heights when we got the call,” Ford said. “We were just back from a rally in Erie, I think, or was it Williamsport? At any rate, they questioned my father even though he was terribly distraught. Lottie, of course. Mr. Staggers. And Enrique and Selena.”
    â€œThe groundskeeper and his wife,” Staggers interrupted. He turned to Brenna. “Says he heard some commotion on the gazebo deck, but he was, like, way the hell out by the greenhouses. A hundred yards, maybe. I mean, from there, how much could he have perceived auditorily?”
    The table went silent. Staggers’s odd turn of phrase hovered like a garish piñata. No one bothered to take a swing.
    â€œWhat’s Enrique’s last name?” Brenna asked.
    Ford and his wife shrugged. Staggers pulled a small black notebook from inside his suit jacket and riffled its pages. “Chembergo,” he said.
    Brenna wrote the couple’s names beneath Vincent Underhill’s. “And Lottie’s?”
    Staggers flipped his pages again, then shrugged.
    â€œWe’ll get that for you,” Ford said.
    She added Lottie the maid and Alton Staggers, then counted the names of the five people on the property at the time Floss Underhill fell. Thinking like a cop always helped. “Now, let me go back a second,” she said. “You said the investigators were just taking statements. But you also said they were asking specific questions.”
    Raskin sucked an ice cube from his highball glass, then spit it back in. “Ah, the
complication,”
he said.
    Leigh Underhill sipped her tea. Raskin and Staggers exchanged an indecipherable glance.
    â€œThey had some specific questions,” Ford said. “Is that a problem?”
    â€œCops don’t ask specific questions unless they’re after specific information,” she said, thinking: Sherm the Worm would never authorize his people to ask uncomfortable questions of one of the state’s most powerful families unless the investigators found serious inconsistencies in the Underhills’ version of events. If Mercer loosed his guys to find out what happened to Floss Underhill, he must have been damned sure there was more to the story.
    â€œWe understand there’s some concern about the groundskeeper’s statement,” Ford said, as though he’d been reading her mind. “That’s one of the reasons we contacted you, Brenna. As I said, we’ve nothing to hide here. But we’re told there are some unexplained inconsistencies that raised suspicions, apparently, and that’s why the police took so many pictures out at the gazebo, why they’re talking to some of our neighbors and friends about my parents. Never mind that my parents have reprimanded Mr. Chembergo at least twice for his drinking. We don’t blame the investigators for following up.”
    â€œThey’re thinking faultily,” Staggers said, adjusting his ring.
    Brenna said, “Explain ‘inconsistencies.’ Those have a nasty way of coming back to bite you.”
    â€œIt’s just Dagnolo’s usual bullshit,” Raskin interrupted. “We all know where this is coming from. Our goddamned district attorney.”
    The Underhills’ political consultant stepped to center stage without hesitation. Ford tried to interject, but Raskin ignored him. “I’m sorry, but the guy’s just a whore. Ford jumped into the Democratic primary six months ago and blew Dagnolo’s doomed little plan to run for