“Just outside Middleburg.”
“That means you left there when—around seven?”
“Around in there.”
“Why’d you want to get here so early?”
She smiled at him then, displaying some remarkably well cared for teeth. “That sounds like something Steady might’ve asked. Not what the hell were you doing here, but why’d you come so early? Well, the reason is I got worried about old Zip.”
“Who’s he?”
“Steady’s nine-year-old hunter. A bay gelding. I didn’t even think about Zip till late last night and then I almost couldn’t sleep for worrying about whether Steady’d got somebody to look after him or even boarded him out somewhere.”
She stopped talking and stared down into her cup, as if she felt the late Steadfast Haynes was due a second or two of silence. Erika McCorkle quickly ended the silence with a question. “He’d be in the barn if he’s still here?”
Letty Melon looked up and nodded.
“I’ll go look,” Erika McCorkle said, rose, opened the kitchen door, examined it briefly and turned back to Haynes. “They came in here,” she said. “The door’s been jimmied.”
Haynes rose and went over to examine the gouged-out doorjamb. Erika left and Haynes returned to the kitchen table.
“Where’d you all meet?” Letty Melon asked.
“Her father introduced us.”
“They at Steady’s burial?”
“No.”
“I heard it was at Arlington. I didn’t go because, well, because Steady and I’d grown to detest each other in a fairly cordial sort of way.”
Haynes nodded.
“Many people there?”
“Not many.”
“Tinker Burns?”
“Yes.”
“Isabelle?”
“She was there.”
“And you. Anybody else?”
“One or two others.”
“I suppose everybody tells you how much you look like him.”
Haynes again nodded.
“When that closet door opened and I saw you—well, for a second there I thought it was Steady. Or maybe his ghost.”
Haynes smiled slightly, drank the rest of his coffee and said, “What d’you think those two guys wanted?”
“Something to steal.”
“That’s a Rolex you’re wearing. You lit your cigarette with a gold Zippo. They didn’t take those. What about your purse?”
“I carry a wallet,” she said, removed it from her right hip pocket and looked inside. “All my credit cards are still here along with about eighty dollars in cash.”
“Want me to call the sheriff?”
She seemed to think about it as she replaced her wallet. After a couple of slow headshakes, she said, “I wasn’t robbed and I wasn’t really hurt—except for some bruised dignity. But I can get over that without any help from the sheriff.” She looked around the kitchen, as if searching for any other major changes her ex-husband might have made. When she was done, she looked at Haynes and said, “He leave this place to you?”
“To Isabelle,” Haynes said.
If he hadn’t been watching for it, Haynes might not have noticed the slight tremor that barely rippled her shoulders. “Isabelle,” she said, pouring another measure of whisky into her glass. She drank the whisky, put her cigarette out, lit another one and said, “I suppose she’ll sell it.”
“Isabelle’s dead.”
She stared at him, eyes wide, as a flush began at the base of her neck and rushed to her cheeks. “When?”
“Yesterday afternoon. In her apartment on Connecticut Avenue. Tinker Burns and I found her—more or less.”
“Well, did you or didn’t you?”
“Tinker found her and when I got there a few minutes later, he took me into the bathroom. Isabelle was lying in a tub of water with her wrists and ankles wired.”
