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her bed, from all accounts. Sarah did not strike her name, neither did she believe her father would have
been concerned with her affairs. And Michael? Maybe, she decided. Her father had been very fond of
Michael, often treating him like the son he never had. Michael's wife Bernice?
She shook her head, not believing for a second that her father would have cared about anything that
Bernice had done in the past or might do in the future. Unless Michael was also affected by it. But
Michael was fond of his wife. Sarah remembered clearly the shock she had felt when Michael confessed
to her six years earlier that he and Bernice were not exactly lovers any longer, but that he was quite fond
of her.
When she asked if they planned to divorce, he had been shocked. "What for?" he had asked. "She likes
her life; we're comfortable; and the children need a stable home. Neither of us had that, Bernice nor 1,
and we both think it's important." Bernice was tall, a good physical match for Michael, good genetic
material for the children, who were all tall and fair and very handsome. Did Bernice have a lover? Did
Michael? If so, any affair was very discreet, and outwardly the younger Kellermans were the ideal
couple, the all-American family.
Sarah put their domestic arrangements out of mind again, and thought of the list she was trying to
compose.
Too short, she thought with dismay. Her own two children, Uncle Peter, Michael, maybe his wife.
Carlos and Rosa?
She kept her own name on the list. He would have cared desperately if anything had come up
concerning her, and, she reminded herself, innocent people seldom were convicted, but they were
frequently accused.
And finally, Blaine. A few weeks ago she would have stricken his name instantly, but Dirk's words ran
through her head: "He had help all the way." And she knew the Blaine he had talked about was a
stranger to her; the Blaine she had known had done it the hard way, alone.
She had to find out what her father had hired the detective to do, find out what she had reported, what
her father had meant when he said this wasn't a court of law. There had to be a way to find out.
ON SATURDAY MORNING Carlos and Virgil brought the cart with the rocks down from behind the
greenhouses where Carlos had taken them to be scrubbed, sanitized and preserved. Sarah stood on the
veranda watching.
No' one spoke; Carlos and Virgil worked well together, not needing any instructions or suggestions.
Virgil left again and headed back toward the sheds for a hose. Carlos pulled a tarp off the rocks and
then stood still looking UL the rocks, the cart, something; finally he cast a glance toward her of misery
and indecision, and then reached down and picked up a big straw hat, one of her father's hats. He
handled it almost reverently.
Silently he approached her and handed the hat to her.
For a moment she felt only bewilderment, but then understood; when he cleaned up the pool, hauled
away the rocks and plants, he had taken the hat, too. She remembered seeing it that morning, on the
edge of the pool, She cleared her throat and then thanked him, and went back into the house, up the
stairs, and to her father's room, where she put the hat away on a closet shelf.
There was another one up there just like it. She would have to go through the closet, sort the clothes,
give away usable items... Later, she said to herself, and went back to the veranda.
Carlos knew where every rock belonged in the PO, some of them had supported shelves for plants that
did not like deep water; some had held individual heavy tubs to keep the plants at exactly the right
depth. The pump had to be repositioned, the hose reconnected to the waterfall. She watched him and
Virgil for another minute or two, and then saw the burning bush of Winnie's hair, as she leaned over,
adjusting her camera on a tripod at a more distant pool. Sarah nodded, and went back through the
house, out the front door, and started to walk toward Uncle Peter's house.
It was a little more than a hundred feet to the road along the driveway that curved in such a way that the
house was not visible to any passerby. Her father had redone the original drive to provide a little privacy.
At the blacktop road, the town of East Shasta was off to her right, half a mile away, and the drive to her
uncle's house was about a hundred feet to the left, across the road. She turned toward it, not hurrying,
not at all eager for the scene she expected.
The old Kellerman drive went in for twenty or thirty feet, and then turned to parallel the road into town.
At an early date this had been the road, but the county had come along and straightened out a crook
here, a rise and fall there, and when they were done, the road was thirty feet farther north, and this
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