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Her mother favored ginseng. She programmed it sweet, though her mother rarely took much sweetener.

Then she dissolved a killing dose of sleeping pills into the sweet, fragrant tea.

It was all simple, really, and she’d thought about doing this before. Considered it. They would think her mother had self-terminated, out of guilt and despair. They’d think her mother had killed Mr. Foster, Mr. Williams, then hadn’t been able to live with it.

She knew her mother had had sex with Mr. Williams. She’d confessed it the night before the police had come to search. Rayleen was good at hearing things adults didn’t want her to hear. Her mother and father had talked and talked, and her mother had cried like a baby. Disgusting.

And her father had forgiven her mother. It had been a mistake, he said. They’d start fresh.

That had been disgusting, too—just like the sounds they’d made when they had sex after. If anyone lied to her the way her mother had to her father, she’d have made them pay. And pay and pay.

Actually, that’s what she was doing now, she decided as she set the oversized teacup on a tray. Mommy had to be punished for being bad. And by punishing her, it would all be tidied up again.

Then it would just be her and Daddy. She’d really be his one and only with Mommy gone.

She’d have to put her diary in the recycler now, and that made her mad. All because of that mean, nosy Lieutenant Dallas. One day she’d find a way to make her pay for that.

But for now, it was better to get rid of it.

Daddy would buy her a brand-new one.

“Rayleen.” Allika came to the doorway. “What are you doing?”

“I think you should rest, Mommy. Look, I made you tea. Ginseng because you like it best. I’m going to take good care of you.”

Allika looked at the cup on the tray, on the bed. Everything inside her went weak. “Rayleen.”

“You’re tired and you have a headache.” Rayleen folded down the duvet, the sheets, plumped the pillows. “I’m going to make it all better. I’m going to sit with you while you rest. We girls have to take care of each other, don’t we?”

Rayleen turned with a bright, bright smile.

And maybe it was best, Allika thought as she moved like a sleepwalker to the bed. Maybe it was the only way. She let Rayleen smooth out the sheets, let her place the tray, even lift the cup.

“I love you,” Allika said.

“I love you, Mommy. Now drink your tea, and everything will be better.”

With her eyes on her daughter’s, Allika drank.

20

WHITNEY LISTENED, AND HE ABSORBED. HIS HANDS, which had been very still throughout his questioning of his lieutenant, began to tap fingers on the edge of his desk. “The mother suspects her daughter caused the boy to fall.”

“The mother knows her daughter caused the boy to fall,” Eve insisted. “She may have convinced herself, or tried to convince herself, it was an accident. Tried to patch her life back together, suffering from periodic bouts of depression and anxiety. In her gut she knows exactly what I know. It was no accident.”

“No one witnessed the fall.” But Whitney’s face was stony, his eyes dark and deep.

“Dr. Mira, in your opinion, given the scenario, is it natural for a girl to step over or around her younger brother’s dead body, while her parents are hysterical, to play with a toy?”

“That’s a broad question. The child may have been in shock or denial.”

“She was wearing the slippers. Ones she had to go downstairs to get, before she woke her parents.”

“Yes.”

“According to the investigator’s report on the death of Straffo, he died just after four A.M. on the morning of December twenty-fifth,” Eve continued. “Statements given by both parents claim they were up, setting up the gifts, filling the stockings until about two-thirty. At which time, they had a glass of wine, then went upstairs, checking on both children before they retired, at around three. Rayleen woke them at five.”

For a moment Mira thought of the times she and Dennis had been up until the early hours of Christmas morning,