AHILL HATED SURVEILLANCE VIDEOTAPES. THE ANGLES WERE weird, the quality was very iffy, and mostly they were boring. They were also invaluable if anything interesting happened within the camera’s range. So far, he hadn’t found anything interesting.

The pay phones in the Galleria were located all through the mall, some of them close to the parking decks, some of them around the escalators. The one from which Judge Roberts had been called was near one of the escalators. If the gods had been smiling on him, the Galleria would have had surveillance cameras aimed at the huge main concourse; no such luck. He’d had to settle for the stores near that particular pay phone. The security cameras aimed at the store entrances were the only ones that could possibly pick up the traffic at that pay phone.

Most of them were complete washouts. The angle was wrong; one camera had malfunctioned and showed nothing new on the tape for a couple of weeks, which told Cahill how often it was checked. Most surveillance tapes ran on loops; if you didn’t get to them before the loop was completed, they would begin taping over whatever was at the beginning. Wait too long, and everything in the desired time period was gone.

The best part about them was that they were timed and dated. He had the exact time of the call made to Judge Roberts, so he didn’t have to watch each entire tape. Allowing for discrepancies in the timers, he began fifteen minutes before the targeted time, and watched for fifteen minutes afterward. That was half an hour on each tape, taking note of the people who walked past the store entrances, comparing them to the next tape, and the next one. He finally hit paydirt: a man in a light-colored suit used that particular phone and the digital time on the tape put it within two minutes of what the telephone company said was the time of the call. Cahill continued watching, and no one else used that phone for at least five minutes. The next user was a young girl in baggy jeans and huge, clunky boots.

Bingo. The man in the light-colored suit was the most likely suspect.

That was the good news. The bad news was that the angle was awful, and showed only the lower two-thirds of the body.

Back to all the other tapes, trying to catch a glimpse of a man wearing a light-colored suit as he walked past the stores on his way to that phone.

Finally he came up with an image, blurred, the face turned away, but at least he had something. When the picture was enhanced, maybe they would be able to pick out something that would lead them to the guy. Maybe Sarah or one of the family would recognize him.

“Sarah, please, stay,” Barbara said, leaning over to take both of Sarah’s hands in hers. They were in the suite’s parlor, alone, amazingly. “The house will have to be closed up and sold, and none of us can spare the time right now. We talked it over, and all of us are strapped for time. There’s so much to be done with the legal aspects, Blair is still in school, Randall’s granddaughter has to have open-heart surgery—we need you. Your salary will be the same.”

Sarah squeezed Barbara’s hands. “Of course I’ll stay. You don’t have to convince me. I’ll be here as long as you need me.”

“You’ve been a godsend; you have no idea. If you hadn’t been here, I don’t think I could have coped.” Barbara was tired, her face drawn with grief, but she was dry-eyed.

“Do you have any idea how long—”

“At least a month, maybe more. We have to settle his affairs, his personal effects have to be packed, things put in storage. We don’t want the house to sit empty until it sells; houses deteriorate so fast without someone living in them. It may sell immediately, but it may not.”

A house on Briarwood, in the old-money section? Some people would be reluctant to buy a house in which a murder had occurred, but the location and the house itself would probably overcome that. Sarah would be surprised if it was on the market for a full month before someone snapped it up. This was a perfect interim situation for her: she could afford to take her time looking for a new position anyway, but this way she wouldn’t have to dip into her savings. She wouldn’t have to pack in a rush, but could do that gradually, too. Instead of an abrupt uprooting, she could ease into a new job, new quarters, new responsibilities.

“I assume you want the grounds kept up, and the house cleaners in on a regular basis.”

“Oh, of course; the house will be much easier to sell if it’s looking well kept. It’s so difficult to think of selling it,” Barbara said, her voice trailing away. “He lived there almost fifty years. I grew up there. It’s a wonderful old house, full of memories, and he took such good care of it. Mother designed it, you know. It’s her dream house.”

“Is there no way you could keep it in the family?”

“I don’t think so. None of us want to move back here, and of course the estate taxes are horrendous, even divided three ways. The house will have to be sold to help pay them. None of us can afford to keep the house and pay that much additional tax. I know Daddy would have liked for one of us to have it, but the way things are—” She shrugged helplessly, and moved on to another topic.

“When the police let us into the house tomorrow, Randall and Jon and I are going to select some mementos. Daddy left directions for the main things, of course, but there are some smaller items that we want. Randall and Jon can take their selections home with them, since they’re driving, but would you box mine up and ship them to me?”

Sarah got out the small pad that was always in her bag, and made a note. “Do you want me to arrange a meal there tomorrow? Leona will be more than happy to prepare any meal you like.”

Barbara hesitated, then shook her head. “I don’t know exactly what time we’ll be there, or how long it will take us to go through things. I don’t even know how many of us will be there.”

“I can arrange something,” Sarah said. “A big pot of soup, and sandwiches, if nothing else.”

“That would be wonderful. Or we could all go to Milo’s. Shaw is beginning to complain because he hasn’t had a hamburger yet.”

Sarah felt a private little zing at the mention of Milo’s. Maybe one day she wouldn’t associate Cahill’s kisses with the hamburgers, but right now the two were closely linked in her mind. She felt a sudden intense craving for a hamburger herself.

Staying in Mountain Brook meant she would be seeing him again. She didn’t know if that was good or bad, but she definitely knew the idea was exciting.

Barbara didn’t know it, but the cleaners were at the house now. The rate for cleaning on Sunday night was higher than during the week, but Sarah thought it was well worth it for the Judge’s family to be able to get into the house as early as possible tomorrow, since Barbara and her brood had a late-afternoon flight back to Dallas. Sarah planned, after leaving the Wynfrey, to go to the house to check that the cleaning job was adequate, but then she was going back to the inn to spend the night. Even though her quarters were totally separate, she wasn’t ready yet to be alone there. Going back wouldn’t be easy, she thought.

Nor was it. The cleaners were already gone when she got there later that night, and she had to force herself to go inside, to walk down the hall and look into the library. A strong sense of déjà vu seized her just outside the door, and she froze; when she looked inside, would the Judge be sitting there in his recliner, his blood and brains splattered against the far wall, and on the carpet? Would the smell still be there?

No, the smell was gone. She would be able to tell from here if it lingered, wouldn’t she? The odor had been pervasive, finding its way down the hall, into the breakfast room, even the kitchen. All she could smell now was something clean and citrusy.

Steeling herself, she entered the library. The cleaners had done a good job with the carpet and wall; they had evidently cleaned the carpet in the entire room, so no one could tell by a clean spot exactly where they had removed a stain. The recliner was gone; she had no idea where it was. Maybe the police had it, though what they would want with the recliner, she couldn’t imagine. Or perhaps the cleaners had removed it from the room for some reason; maybe the odor was impossible to remove from leather.

Tomorrow she would ask the whereabouts of the recliner. It might be in the garage, but she wasn’t going to look for it tonight. Slowly she backed out of the room, turning out the light and closing the door. She didn’t imagine she would ever again enter that room, for any reason.

She hadn’t collected the mail since Wednesday, but someone, probably Cahill, had brought it in and put it on the kitchen island. He’d have gone through the mail, of course, to see if there was anything suspicious, any correspondence that bore looking into. She flipped through the stack; if there had been anything unusual, Cahill had taken it with him, because all she saw was the normal bills, catalogs, and magazines.

She left the mail on the island and went upstairs to her quarters. Everything was subtly wrong, out of place; someone had searched every inch, so she supposed she should be grateful for the relative neatness. At least the contents of drawers hadn’t been dumped on the floor and left. She straightened the books in the bookcase, neatly stacked the few magazines, put the potted plants back in place, adjusted the position of a vase, some framed pictures.

In the bedroom, her bed had been stripped. She gathered the discarded sheets to put in the wash, then went into the bathroom and began methodically putting it to rights. She couldn’t put her life back the way it was, but she could reconstruct her immediate surroundings.

She put out fresh towels, and arranged all her cosmetics the way she preferred.

Back in the bedroom, she remade the bed, then opened the double closet doors and began rehanging her clothes, arranging them so what she wore most often was close to hand. Her shoes were a jumbled mess; she pulled all of them out of the closet, then sat down on the floor and paired them up, putting them back in the closet in neat rows.

She really hated that someone had gone through her underwear drawer. She was a bit of a fanatic about her underwear, courtesy of two brothers who had loved to tease her by hiding it, or by tying her bra to a forked stick to make a slingshot. Older brothers were a real trial. She wished now she had a video of Noel with her very first pair of lacy panties stuck on his head; she’d love to show it to his Marine buddies. Her brothers had never treated Jennifer like that, but then she would only have cried, and that was no fun. Sarah had chased after them with fury in her eyes and murder in her heart; if she’d ever caught them, blood would have been shed.

Sarah had been forced to hide her underwear for years, stuffing it in unlikely places so Daniel and Noel couldn’t find it. Once they were gone, she had reveled in being able to have a real underwear drawer. She always neatly folded each garment, and the lacy, sexy stuff was in its own drawer. She didn’t segregate by color—she wasn’t that far gone—but it truly annoyed her to see her careful stacks all messed up and mixed together.

Cahill had probably searched her underwear drawer personally. He looked like the type who would enjoy something like that. She could just see him holding up a pair of black lace—

Oh, yes, she could see him. A wave of heat washed over her. She knew she was in real trouble, when the idea of him going through her underwear turned her on instead of making her angry.

Maybe she should forget caution and just go for broke. She’d never devoted herself to a relationship before, but maybe Cahill was someone she could truly love. Maybe there could be something real and permanent between them, and she was in danger of losing it because she couldn’t stop listening to her head instead of her heart. Yes, he’d just come through a rough divorce; a year wasn’t enough time to emotionally recover; he’d admitted as much himself. Yes, the odds said he was a bad risk right now. But sometimes you lucked out, and won by going against the odds.

So the real question was did she have the guts to give it all she had, to stop holding back? She had always used the Plan as an excuse for walking away before a relationship could really go anywhere; that excuse was real, because she truly wanted to execute the Plan; but the other part of her reason was that loving someone meant giving away some of your personal control, and she had always prized that above any man she was dating.

If she became involved with Cahill, she might eventually walk away from him, but she wouldn’t walk away heart-whole. He could do some damage to her. She suspected she could love him as she had never loved anyone before, if she let him get close.

No matter what she decided, there were risks—big ones. She could either risk loving him and losing him, or she could risk missing out on the love of her life because she was afraid.

Sarah didn’t like thinking herself cowardly, in anything.

“Do you recognize this man?” Cahill asked the next morning, letting a blurry photograph slide from a big envelope down onto the breakfast table. The photograph had been enhanced and enlarged, and it was still piss-poor. It was, however, all he had.

Sarah looked at the photograph and gave a decisive shake of her head. Randall, Barbara, and Jon all crowded around and stared at it. “I don’t think so,” Randall said doubtfully. “Not without seeing his face. He doesn’t ring any bells, though. Why?”

“He made the last call to your father, from a pay phone in the Galleria.”

Barbara jerked back as if stung. “You mean he might be the killer?”

“I can’t make that assumption,” Cahill said evenly. “I’d like to, but I can’t. But your father might have said something to this man about a visitor he was expecting, or any other detail that might help. I’d definitely like to talk to this guy.”

They all stared at the photograph again, as if concentration would wrest an elusive memory from their brains. The man in the photograph was trim, wearing a light-colored suit, with neat pale hair, either blond or gray. His head was turned so that the camera caught only the line of his left jaw and cheekbone. Unless you knew the man well, it would be impossible to recognize him from that picture.

Sarah handed Cahill a cup of coffee and tilted her head for another look at the photograph. “He’s wearing a suit,” she said. “The weather was warm last Wednesday.”

Both Randall and Jon looked up, their attention caught. “It was too warm to wear a jacket,” Jon said, “unless you were wearing a suit for work.”

Barbara looked puzzled. “So what?”

“So he’s white-collar,” Cahill explained. “Professional.”

She sighed. “All of Daddy’s friends were white-collar professionals.”

“Retired,” Sarah put in. “That man isn’t retired.”

“He’s younger than Daddy, then, but that’s obvious from the picture. Either that or he’s had a face-lift.” Barbara pointed to the fairly firm jawline.

“Take what you know,” Cahill prompted. “Younger than your father—say, no older than early fifties—professional. The hair is probably gray, or blond that’s going gray. He’s in good shape, trim, I estimate about six feet tall. No one comes to mind?”

They all shook their heads, regretfully.

“Well, if you think of anything, let me know.” Cahill replaced the photograph in the envelope. “Don’t concentrate on his close friends, but on someone he would know only casually.”

“Sarah would be more help there than any of us,” Jon said. “We’ve all lived away from the area for years, so we don’t know anyone he may have met recently.” He made a wry face. “By ‘recently’ I mean the last ten years, at least.”

“Longer than that.” Barbara sighed. “Dwight and I moved to Dallas before Shaw was born, and he’s nineteen. Make that twenty years. I’m afraid we won’t be any help there, Detective. Sarah is your only hope.”

Everyone looked at Sarah, who shook her head. “He knew so many people. He was forever nodding to someone, then saying he didn’t remember his name but he worked with so-and-so. He never really talked about anyone other than his close circle of buddies.”

“So unless this guy”—Cahill tapped the envelope—“calls again, he’s a dead end.”

“I’m afraid so, at least as far as I’m concerned. One of the neighbors might recognize him, or you might try the Judge’s friends. They were a pretty close group.”

“I’ll do that.” He looked at the others. “I need to get back to work, but is there anything I can do for you here?”

Barbara gave him a sad, gentle smile. “We’re just packing up photographs and personal items that we want to keep. Thank you for all you’ve done, the advice you’ve given. I know you’ll do everything possible to find whoever killed Daddy.”

“Yes, ma’am, I will.” He glanced at Sarah. “Would you walk out to the car, Miss Stevens?”

The day was warmer than the day before, but still chilly enough that she grabbed a jacket on the way out. The sun was bright, picking out the fresh, bright colors of spring, the pink of the azaleas, the tender green of new leaves, the white and pink dogwoods. Sarah squinted at the brightness, lifting her hand to shade her eyes.

“What is it, Detective Cahill?”

“Nothing much, I just wanted a minute alone with you. What are your plans for now? They’ll be selling the house, right? What are you going to do?”

“I’m staying here, for now. They all have to leave this afternoon, so I’ll handle all the packing, getting things ready for the house to be put on the market.”

“You’re staying here? In the house?”

“I can look after things better if I’m here, on-site.”

“Will it bother you to be here alone?”

“It bothers me that the Judge is dead. It bothers me to go into the library, because I keep seeing his body there, and smelling... smelling things. But it doesn’t bother me to be alone. I think what happened was targeted specifically at him, though I have no idea why. So I’m not in any danger.” She paused, struck by a fleeting expression on his tough face. “Am I? Is there something you haven’t told me?”

“No, nothing. I think you’re safe. It’s just that you have more guts than most people. A lot of men I know wouldn’t want to stay here by themselves.”

“So who says men have more guts than women?”

He grinned at the challenge in her voice. “No one. Men just tend to do stupid things out of pride. Now that I’ve admitted we’re all idiots, will you have dinner with me tonight?”

“What? Go out with an idiot?”

“Think of the entertainment value.”

“You have a point.” She smiled up at him. “I’d like that, then. What time, and where are we going?”

“Six-thirty, and we’ll go someplace casual, if that’s all right with you.”

“Casual is great.”

He winked at her as he got in the car. “See you at six-thirty.”

Her heart was lighter as she went back inside the house. She still grieved, but life did go on; the awful thing about clichés was that they were usually right. The terrible pain and depression had lifted, and she was already looking ahead, focusing on the future. She had chores to accomplish, affairs to be put in order, a job to find.

But more immediately, she had a date with Cahill.