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Memphis who talked with a slight lisp and whose airy hand gestures were of great interest to local craftsmen. Just to listen to that son of a bitch talk, you’d think the only thing on God’s green earth that mattered was winder curtains, one of them said. He could talk about drapers till you never wanted to hear about drapers again. This decorator’s vision of the house clashed with Breece’s and he left in a snit, pressing upon Breece in parting a slip of paper whereon was written the name of the builder of a Beale Street whorehouse. The house had started out vaguely Georgian but ended up with a decided bent for the grotesquely opulent. Gables and peaked roofs and turrets had been added seemingly by Breece’s whim or a coin toss so that the house came to resemble the temple of some old king overthrown solely because of his sorry taste.
    Tyler had been watching the house all day, and so far nothing at all had happened save the movement of light and shadow and he was about ready to give it up when Breece came out of the house and got into a silvergray Cadillac hearse and drove away toward town. Tyler sat for a time waiting to see if there was to be further movement but he didn’t expect any and he was proven right. He came out of the spinney of sassafras he’d been concealed in and wended his way down the slope to thehouse.
    For a time he just wandered around the outside of the house staring upward. He felt a deeprooted contempt for Breece but at the same time he couldn’t help being impressed by the sheer size of the house. Breece had simply outdone himself here, and Tyler wondered at the number of unoccupied rooms and the number of caskets sold and crying kids and widow women it had taken to accomplish this.
    He didn’t know what he was looking for. Or where to look. Something he could hold in his hand, something incriminating. The gun still warm and smoking, the dagger with a drop the color of claret forming at its tip.
    In a land where folks seldom even locked their doors Breece was an anomaly: there was no way in save stoning out a window, and his desire for evidence fell short of that. He tried every door, but they were all locked, and there was no key hidden about that he could find. He looked under matsthat lied welcome, in flower urns, and ultimately decided that the only keys existing rode in Breece’s pocket.
    He came on around the house, wandering through curious oriental-looking hedges he didn’t have a name for and strange dwarf twisted trees and to a covered carport laid in flagstone where sat a Lincoln convertible with the top up. The car gleamed and the flagstones were still damp and he guessed Breece had been washing it, he hadn’t been able to see this side of the house from the slope.
    The hearse made so little noise it was almost too late when he saw it. He couldn’t believe it was already back. Breece must have only gone to the mailbox. Sunlight off its lustrous surface caught his eye and it was already wending its way up the curvingdrive past marble fountains and the stone eyes of arcane statuary and he looked about wildly for somewhere to flee to: the woods were too far away and the way to them open territory.
    At the end of the stone floor opposite the house was a garage or shop but he had no doubt it was locked and no time to try for it anyway and he had barely made the cover of the far side of it when he heard the Cadillac’s tires hissing smoothly on the concrete drive. He sat crouched against the glittering brick wall fearing he’d left some spoor, triggered some crafty snare that would show evidence of trespass.
    He heard the no-nonsense click of the hearse’s door closing, footsteps crossing the flagstones. He grew bolder and chanced a look.
    Breece was standing behind the Lincoln, a tan leather briefcase by his side. He had a set of keys in his hand, unlocking the trunk lid. He raised it and set the briefcase carefully inside and slammed the lid. He stood for a moment as if