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  Hugo pursed his lips and pushed his glasses higher on his nose. "She was smothered, in layman's terms. Probably had been dead for about five or six hours when I first saw her. He most likely used a pillow; there were fibers on her lips and in her hair that matched up with the police lab reports, although that might have just meant she liked to sleep on her belly."

  "Anything else?"

  From the other room came the high sob of a mourner. "You know, of course, that she was in the advanced stages of cancer."

  Graham nodded. "I'll be speaking to her doctor in a few days. But you found . . . ?" He let his question trail off.

  "A radical mastectomy of both the breast and the lymph nodes. Evidence of radiation for a tumor affecting the optic nerve. Bone lesions all over her body that had been present for some time." He shrugged and looked up. "She wasn't in great shape."

  "You mentioned in your report evidence of skin beneath her fingernails."

  "Her husband's," Hugo said. "But as I've told Miss Campbell, I don't think it necessarily means there was a struggle. There was no other indication of that--no bruises or contusions, and from what I've heard, the room was in pretty good condition too, although I suppose it could have been picked up clean after the fact ..." He smiled ruefully. "You get into my line of work, Mr. MacPhee, and you start to get a sixth sense about things. I'm no expert about police business or matters of the heart, either, but I have a connection with the people I lay out for a burial. I would have been able to tell if Maggie was fighting him. People who are shot or stabbed always die with their eyes wide and scared, their mouths still screaming. Maggie looked like she'd gone off to sleep."

  "Well," Graham said, forcing a smile. "How about that." He realized he had been sitting on the foot of a mahogany casket and leaped to his feet.

  Graham remembered that Maggie's casket had been closed, and white, and delicate. He wondered if Jamie had picked it after he'd been released on bail. He tried to imagine having to do such a thing. Did you proceed automatically, the way you might select a kitchen cabinet or a color to paint your house: the sandy one, no, the black with gold trim? How could you go about choosing something that would hold the half of your heart you had to bury?

  It had taken Angus nearly three full days to get in touch with the branch of the Scottish National Trust that took care of Carrymuir and to convince them that he was indeed a former custodian of the estate, but a week later he presented a package to Allie still bearing the marks of overnight international airmail. "Ye canna possibly thank me for all the trouble I've gone to, lassie," he said, "so dinna fash yourself trying."

  Allie fell in love with the picture, which was still in a cracked obsidian frame and faded with age. It showed two little boys on the front steps at Carrymuir. One was crouching over a game of marbles, the other had his hand on the broad back of a wolfhound. The two boys were about five, and a stranger would have guessed they were brothers, so alike were their rangy builds, their Beatles haircuts, and the shadow of their coloring.

  As far as she knew, Cam had never seen the picture of himself with his cousin Jamie, taken in 1965.

  She had removed the photograph when she got home from the shop, and Krazy Glued the frame back together. It wouldn't be dry till tomorrow, but she slipped the picture back behind the glass so that Cam could get the overall effect.

  He came in, clearly exhausted, unhooked his belt and holster and kicked off his boots. Then he flopped down on the couch, barely noticing Allie at the dining room table. "Rough day?"

  "I was a traffic light for rush hour," he mumbled.

  Allie smiled. "Is that like being a goblin for Halloween?"

  Cam groaned and sat up, hugging a throw pillow to his chest. "I want to know why the DPW has programmed the only goddamned light in Wheelock to go on the blitz at four-thirty."

  Allie rubbed the corner of the frame with her sleeve, making it shine. "Do they really need someone to direct traffic? What happened before there was a light?"

  "People got into accidents." Cam glanced over at her. "What are you up to?"

  She walked into the living room. "I got Jamie's Christmas gift," she said, presenting the frame with a flourish.

  Cam looked at it dispassionately, a word of praise hovering at his lips, and then his eyes flew open. "That's me."

  "And Jamie."

  He grabbed the frame out of her hand. "That's Carrymuir. Where the hell did you get this?"

  His eyes were poring over the picture, as if sheer scrutiny could force the blurry edges of the background into focus, or make the years that had gone between come flying back. "Angus had it," she said, bending the truth just a little.

  Cam looked up at her. For a moment, a play of light from a passing car froze her features, then she again became someone familiar. "Angus owns one picture. It's the one the National Trust made into a postcard."

  "Well, he must have forgotten about this one."

  Cam set the picture down on the couch beside him and shook his head. "You aren't giving this to Jamie."

  Allie smiled. "I knew you were going to want one too. I had a duplicate made up. It should be ready on--"

  "You are not giving this to Jamie," Cam said again. "I don't want him coming up to me and thinking, 'Shit, we used to play with marbles together, he must owe me something now.' "

  Allie crossed her arms over her chest. "You're being ridiculous. Give me that."

  "No," Cam said, coming to his feet. He towered over her, and , she had to crane her neck to be able to maintain eye contact. "I'm sick of hearing about Jamie MacDonald from you and from my

  mother and from the newspapers. I don't want to know that we used to play together in Scotland. I don't want us to have any history whatsoever."

  A cord was pulsing erratically in his neck, and his eyes had darkened to a shade just shy of black. Allie took a step back, recognizing this part of the argument. Here was the point where she usually backed down. Here was the point where she smiled at Cam and told him whatever he wanted to hear.

  "You can't change something that's already been done," she heard herself say.

  He didn't know, never would know, what put him over the edge. He wasn't even thinking about Jamie anymore when Allie decided to take a stand and impart that piece of wisdom. He was thinking of Mia, and what he was guilty of. Cam looked at his wife, beautiful and fierce, and realized that he had finally succeeded in doing what he'd set out to do months before: He had provoked Allie. And now he was overcome by his anger--at himself, for falling in love with Mia; at Allie, for finding this photo which was sure to make its way to the local paper; at Jamie, who had so usurped Allies thoughts that she hadn't been there to stop Cam from tangling up his life to the point where getting free was only possible with a painful, irrevocable cut.

  "Wanna bet?" he said, his voice silkily quiet, and he took the photo from the couch. The healing frame gave under the pressure of his fingers, and the glass shattered around their feet. Cam pulled the yellowed strip of photo out and tore it in half, so that he and the wolfhound landed a good three feet away from Jamie's image.

  Allie shoved him, catching him so off guard he landed back on the couch staring up at her. He watched her throat shake as she tried to control her words. "You bastard. Did you ever once think that what you want and what you need is not necessarily what's best for everyone else?"

  She grabbed her purse from the low parson's bench in front of the window and started for the front door. She kept hearing her words in her head, and wondered at what point the argument had gone from a silly squabble about a Christmas present to a question about her whole life with Cam.

  Everything about her was in some way connected to him. The

  Allie was chopping celery with a passion. "He's a jerk," she said. "I'm not putting up with this anymore."

  Ellen lifted the circles of cucumber off her eyes. She was lying on the kitchen floor so that she'd be able to talk to Allie while she chopped. They had already eaten, but there was a negative aur