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cigarette, and for the first time Aline noticed her long, thin hands. Graceful hands. Her nails, painted a soft cinnamon, were thick, perfectly contoured, and curled over the tips of her fingers. Too long , Aline thought. And so many rings. There must've been a ring on every finger except her thumb. She lit her cigarette and held it in a self-conscious way, as though Cooper were whispering instructions in her ear.
    "Do you feel up to answering a couple of questions, Eve?"
    "I guess so. Sure. I'd like to get it over with." The words came out in a pother of smoke. She crossed her slender legs at the knees and kicked one bare foot forward, back.
    "When did you find your husband's body?"
    "Sometime after nine, I guess it was. It was hot, and I thought I'd go for, you know, a swim. I . . . I found him then."
    "You didn't call the police department until nine-thirty. What took you so long?"
    Those blue eyes took on a hard, defensive edge. "You ever found a body with no head on it, Aline?"
    Aline admitted that she hadn't.
    "Well, you stop thinking. Something goes weird in your head. Especially when it's the body of the man you've been married to for two years." Her voice quavered—the first sign of grief she'd displayed, except for her moist eyes.
    "When was the last time you saw him alive?"
    "This afternoon. I came home for a late lunch and—"
    "Home from where?"
    "The beach. The one out on Old Post Road. I was sunbathing, and digging for clams. So I came home and he'd just gotten back from court. He was going to have dinner with Ted Cavello tonight at the Hibiscus Inn. That's what he said."
    Cavello: who managed the Cove Marina and owned the marine supply shop there. "A business dinner?"
    She stabbed out her cigarette. Her foot continued to swing. "Listen, I didn't ask, all right? I never asked him about business. But yeah, it was probably business. He's done some work for Cavello over the years."
    "Doesn't Doug have a son by his first marriage?"
    "Yeah. Alan. He lives in Marathon."
    "Did he and your husband get along?"
    She laughed, a quick, fluvial sound, the music of water sliding over rocks in a stream. "Christ, no."
    "Any particular reason?"
    She'd been sitting with her arm extended along the back of the couch, and now she brought it forward and examined her thumbnail, fiddling with the cuticle. "Because of me. Alan thought it was gross that his father married someone young enough to be his daughter. They haven't talked to each other since . . . since Doug and I got married."
    "You were home all evening?"
    She nodded; it made her thick black hair with its salubrious sheen bounce like hair in a commercial for Wella Balsam. "Watching TV mostly. I thought Doug would be home around ten, maybe eleven. Then, like I said, I went for a swim."
    "Who would want to see your husband dead, Eve?"
    She stopped pushing at her cuticle and looked up A small smile shadowed her face, but it was quite possibly the most rueful smile Aline had ever seen. "Probably everyone who knew him."
    Thanks. That's real helpful. "Could you be a little more specific?"
    She lit another cigarette and dropped the match into a crystal ashtray next to its predecessor. "Well, he . . ."
    Just then the door in the other room slid open, shut, and a moment later Murphy strolled into the room. He glanced at Aline, his sunburned face crinkling at the eyes like tissue paper, then his gaze flicked to Eve, and beneath the sunburn his skin took on the consistency of waxed beans.
    His eyes, which were darker than walnuts, paled. All six feet of him seemed to be on the verge of collapse as he blinked, opened his mouth, closed it, shook his head, looked helplessly at Aline. His eyes supplicated. His eyes shouted, What the fuck's going on? How can Monica be sitting there?
    Then his gaze slid slowly back to Eve. His hand jerked up and gripped the door frame. He tried to smile and failed miserably. He tried to move forward and didn't do a very good job of that, either.
    "This