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She laughed, leaned over, kissed him on the mouth, and was out of the door of the Crown Vic. “Tomorrow, Ben?”

“Sure. Great. You know, that little black dress of yours would look even better hanging on my bedroom doorknob.”

“What a guy-type visual. Be still my racing heart.” She gave him a little wave and walked up the sidewalk to her mother’s house. He waited until she unlocked the front door and disappeared inside before he drove away.

Callie turned to set the house alarm, wondering why her mother hadn’t armed it when she’d gone to bed. She walked upstairs, and paused a moment by her mother’s bedroom door, listening. Slowly, she pushed the door open and stepped into her mother’s lovely bedroom. The white spread shone stark and cold in the moonlight pouring through the window.

She walked to the bed to make sure her mother was all right.

The bed was empty.

She turned on the lights, searched for a note, then walked to her own bedroom to look for one.

She picked up the bedroom phone to call Bitsy when she saw the blinking message light. She pushed the play button. There was a call from her mother’s manager at the Tyson’s Corner store, one from the dry cleaner, a message to call her lawyer about Stewart’s will, and finally, the last message. “Margaret, this is Anna. Come to Janette’s house right away. It’s an emergency.”

Anna had called an hour and twelve minutes before.

What emergency? Callie started to call, then slowly laid the phone back in its cradle. It was no surprise they were meeting at Janette’s house because there was no family to juggle around at her house since her divorce some ten years before. The five friends frequently met there.

What emergency? Callie didn’t pause, bundled back up in her coat and gloves, and headed out to her car.

Janette Weaverton lived in Emmittsville, Maryland, not more than a twenty-minute drive this late at night.

There weren’t many people on the road, and she made good time. She pulled into Janette’s driveway behind her mother’s Mercedes nineteen minutes later.

Besides her mother’s Mercedes, Callie saw four familiar cars parked in Janette’s driveway.

There were a lot of lights on in the house. Callie walked to the front door, quietly opened it, and stepped into the warm front entrance hall. She eased the door shut behind her. Janette was a minimalist, everything spare, utilitarian. She remembered as a child that Janette had loved girlie-girl stuff, but that had changed after her husband had left.

Callie heard women’s voices as she walked toward the living room. She paused just outside the open door when she heard Juliette’s voice: “And just what are you proposing to do now?”

Callie heard her mother say, “Calm down, Juliette. It won’t help if we all fall apart. It’s been a shock, but we’ll deal with it. Let’s talk about this. We’ll figure out what’s best.”

“But Stewart was your husband, Margaret,” Bitsy said. “How can you be so damned calm about it?”

“What do you want me to do? Shoot her for stupidity? Poor judgment in men? That’s nothing new, is it?”

Anna said, “How can we be certain the FBI are convinced that he acted on his own? Don’t forget he wasn’t alone in that car—”

Margaret said patiently, “Agent Savich said Günter told him it was a woman he’d picked up in a bar, for camouflage. That was the last door and he closed it. He never implicated any of us in any way.” She paused a moment, then said, “Günter told his grand lie to protect you, to protect all of us. It’s all in Callie’s headline story for the Post. He committed the murders to show how skilled and fearless he was, that he could even kill a Justice of the Supreme Court in the library itself.”

Janette said, tears thick in her voice, “But he was crazy, deranged, just look at what he did—he should have been killed at the Supreme Court, at Quantico. He was completely out of control.”

Callie stepped into the living room.

Five pair of eyes stared at her.

“Callie!”

“Hello, Mother,” Callie said, then nodded at the four women. Anna, Janette, and Bitsy had been crying. Her mother