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  “Wes said she says she just went for a walk.” Phin raised his head and looked at Davy. “Tell me she’s not that damn stupid.”

  “I wasn’t there,” Davy said. “As I understand it, they were shooting on the dock, and Sophie thought she saw somebody watching, so she went to see. Amy would like that to be Sophie’s idea, but my bet is, Amy leaned on her. The movie is making Amy crazy, but it’s family that makes Sophie stupid. You should be able to relate.”

  Sophie came out on the porch. “You still here? I thought you’d have gone back to the smart people by now. Davy, Wes wants us.”

  Phin looked at the bruise on her forehead and the misery in her eyes and felt like hell. “You are not allowed to leave the house again until you get your driver’s license.”

  “I already have a driver’s license.”

  “That’s what you think,” Phin said, turning to stare back across the yard. “I’m making Wes take it.”

  Davy stood up. “Don’t scare the mayor again,” he told his sister and went inside.

  After a moment, Sophie sat down beside Phin. “I’m sorry if I upset you.”

  “You didn’t upset me,” Phin said. “You took ten fucking years off my life.” She leaned into him a little, and he felt her warm weight against his shoulder. She was so close and so important, that he put his arm around her and kissed her, very softly because she’d been hurt.

  She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry if I scared you. I scared me, too. I even lost my rings.” Her voice shook a little and he kissed her again.

  “I’ll get you new rings,” he said against her mouth, and then Wes came out and said, “I want Sophie in here now.”

  Phin sat on the arm of the couch with Sophie close against him, and Amy leaned on the fireplace and stared malevolently at him. Warm little family you got, honey, he thought and then remembered his mother. Never mind.

  “A couple of things,” Wes said. “Somebody filled Zane full of sleeping pills.”

  Sophie straightened against Phin, and he thought, Great, now what did they do?

  “Enough to kill him?” Phin said, and Wes scowled and said, “No. But there’s more.” He turned back to Amy. “There was mildew smeared deep into that letter-man sweater. I’d like to see your shower curtain.”

  Amy froze, and Davy said, “I made them get rid of it. It was so gross I couldn’t stand it.”

  “You know,” Wes said, “you’re pissing me off.” He looked at Amy. “You got anything you want to tell me?”

  Amy stuck her chin out. “No.”

  Wes nodded. “I know damn well you moved that body, and I need to know where you found it.” He never took his eyes off Amy’s face. “Don’t lie to me.”

  Amy flushed, and Sophie looked miserable.

  Phin took her hand. “Sophie’s sick,” he said, and pulled her outside, away from her family. “Okay,” he said, when they were back on the porch step. “You don’t have to tell me a damn thing, but don’t go down for them. There’s a limit to what you do for family.”

  “I don’t think there is,” Sophie said miserably. “We didn’t kill him, Phin, I swear, we didn’t.”

  “Okay.” He put his arm around her. “Don’t get upset. How’s your head?”

  “It hurts,” she said, and he kissed the scrape. “We moved the body,” she blurted, and he looked back over his shoulder to see if Wes was close enough to hear. “I can’t stand lying to you.”

  “That why Davy came for you,” he said, and Sophie nodded.

  “Amy wanted to film on the dock, but the body was there, so she moved it into the trees, and then we moved it to the Tavern.”

  “Amy’s been leaning on you for too damn long,” Phin said grimly. “When are you going to let her clean up after her own mistakes?”

  “When are you going to let Dill?” Sophie said. “When she gets her driver’s license? I don’t think there’s an age where you say to the people you love, ‘You’re on your own.’ ”

  “No, but there’s an age where you say, ‘I’m on my own,’ ” Phin said. “And you’re there. Can I tell Wes?”

  Sophie closed her eyes. “I don’t want to betray my sister.”

  “As long as she didn’t shoot Zane, you won’t,” Phin said. “Wes isn’t going to arrest her for moving the body, he’s after bigger fish.”

  She shuddered. “That damn shower curtain. I see it in my dreams.”

  “You don’t think she shot him, do you?” Phin said, and Sophie was quiet for too long.

  “No,” she said finally. “But I think she might have given him the sleeping pills. Davy got revenge once using sleeping pills, and we’d just been talking about it. I don’t know.” She put her hand to her head. “You know, this really hurts.”

  “You need quiet,” Phin said and stood up. “Come back with me. I’ll have Ed give you some stronger pain stuff and you can sleep upstairs at the bookstore.” Sophie closed her eyes. “I can’t leave Amy.”

  “You have to leave Amy,” Phin said. “It’s the only way you’re going to survive.”

  The council meeting the next day was depressing, even more depressing than telling Wes the Dempseys had moved the body or leaving Sophie at the farm with her conniving sister. Stephen asked to table the streetlight vote for another week so he could present more evidence of Phin’s fiscal depravity and neglect of civic duty. Then, during the new business, he tried to pass a formal thank-you to Phin for working so closely with the movie people, said thank-you to be printed in the Temptation Gazette. The motion went down when only the Garveys voted for it, the rest of the council viewing them with deep suspicion. Stephen fumed, his hands shaking, and then he played his last card.

  “I have an announcement,” he said. “I’ve talked to the people at Temptation Cable and they’ve agreed to preempt their usual programming so that we can show the ”Return to Temptation“ video at eight next Tuesday night.”

  “Uh-oh,” Rachel said from beside Phin.

  “Have you asked the people who made the movie, Stephen?” Phin said. “They have rights, too.”

  “I’m sure they’ll be thrilled,” Stephen said smugly. “Why wouldn’t they be? A chance to preview their film to a receptive audience. And besides”—his voice dropped a little—“We should see what they’ve done. We gave them a permit, after all. I’m just doing my civic duty.”

  You watched them film on the dock, Phin thought. What do you know?

  But he already knew.

  They were making porn.

  Half an hour later, Phin stopped by the police station and told Wes about the cable premiere.

  Wes stubbed his cigarette out on the edge of one of the coffee cups that littered his desk “They know about this out at the farm?”

  “I doubt it,” Phin said. “I haven’t heard any screaming. Rachel will tell them when she gets out there. You want to go out?”

  “No,” Wes said, sourly. “Amy won’t tell me anything anyway. When you go, find out if they have a .22.”

  “Everybody has a .22,” Phin said. “Hell, I have a .22, or at least, my dad did.”

  “I know,” Wes said. “I ran the registration forms. There are almost four hundred of the damn things in this county alone.”

  “An armed populace is a secure populace,” Phin said. “Also, this is southern Ohio. What did you expect?”

  “You have one, Frank has one, Clea’s dad had one, which could mean it’s still at the farm, Ed has one, Stephen has one, hell, even Junie Miller and Hildy Mallow have one—” He stopped, caught by an idea. “Your entire city council is armed.”

  “That, I didn’t need to know,” Phin said, standing up.

  “I went to Cincinnati today,” Wes said, and Phin sat down again. “No bank book anywhere, although Zane showed it to a couple of people on Friday.”

  Phin winced. Missing money and Dempseys were a no-brainer.

  “Also, he had the whole council investigated.” Wes tossed a thick folder across the desk to him. “He had a crackerjack