"Who set you up? Righter? Buford's behind this?' I ask.

Anna nods affirmatively. "I never will forgive him. I told him," she swears.

We go into the living room, where I reach for a cordless phone on an elegant yew wood stand. "You realize, you don't have to be telling me all this, Anna." I try Marino's home number. I will myself to be remarkably calm. "I'm sure Buford wouldn't appreciate it. So maybe you shouldn't talk to me."

"I do not care what I should or should not do. The moment I got the subpoena, Buford called and explained what he needed from me. I called Lucy right away." Anna continues speaking in fractured English as she stares blankly at McGov-ern. It seems to occur to Anna that she has no idea who Mc-Govern is or why she is in her house.

"What time did the deputy show up at your house with the subpoena?" I ask Anna. Marino's phone cuts straight into his voice mail. "Dammit," I mutter. He is on the line. I leave him the message to call me. It is urgent.

"About ten o'clock this morning," Anna answers my question.

"Interesting," I reply. "About the same time Chandonne was transported out of here to New York. And then Bray's memorial service and when I first met Berger."

"In your mind, how does all of 'his connect?" McGovern is listening carefully with her astute, experienced eyes fastened on me. She was one of ATF's most gifted certified fire investigators before she got promoted to supervision by the very people who would eventually cause her to quit.

"I'm not sure," I reply. "Except Berger was interested in seeing who showed up at Bray's service. I'm now wondering if she wanted to see if I would, and if that might indicate she knows I'm being investigated and is checking me out on her own." Anna's phone rings. "Zenner residence," I answer.

"What's going on?" Marino says loudly over his television.

"I'm just beginning to figure that out," I reply.

He knows instantly by my tone not to ask questions but to get in his truck and drive over here right now. It is time for

truth. No games and no secrets, I tell him. We wait for Mm in

front of the fire in Anna's living room, where a tree is wrapped in white lights and garlands and decorated with glass animals and wooden fruit, with presents underneath. I am silently go- ing through every word I have said to Anna, trying to remember what she surely will when Righter asks her under oath about me in front of jurors who have been seated and sworn to decide if I should go on trial for murder. My heart is seized by frigid fingers of raw fear, yet I sound reasonable when I speak. I am outwardly steady as Anna goes into detail about how she has been set up. It began when Righter contacted her on Tuesday, December 14. She spends a good fifteen minutes explaining that Righter called as a. friend, a concerned friend. People were talking about me. He was hearing things that he felt he must check out and he knew Anna and I are close.

"This isn't making any sense," Lucy says. "Diane Bray hadn't even been murdered yet. Why was Righter talking to Anna that early on?"

"I don't get it," McGovern agrees. "Something really stinks about this."

She and Lucy sit on the floor in front of the fire. I am in my usual rocking chair and Anna is on the ottoman, sitting rigidly.

"When Righter called on the fourteenth, what exactly did he say to you?" I ask Anna. "How did he introduce the conversation?"

She meets my eyes. "There was concern about your mental health. That is what he said right off."

I simply nod. I am not offended. Although it is true I wobbled badly after Benton was murdered, I have never been mentally ill. I am secure in my sanity and my ability to reason and think. I have been guilty only of running from pain. "I know I didn't handle Benton's death well," I admit.

"How do you handle something like that well?" Lucy replies.

"No, no. That is not what Buford meant," Anna says. "He wasn't calling about how you've managed grief, Kay. He was calling about Diane Bray, about your relationship with her."

"What relationship?" I instantly wonder if Bray called

Righter_yet one more trap she set for me. "I hardly knew her."

Anna's eyes are steady on mine, the shadow from the fire wavering on her face. I am startled again by how old she looks, as if she has aged ten years in a day. "You'd had a series of confrontations with her. You told me so," she replies.

"Instigated by her," I am quick to say. "We didn't have a personal relationship. Not even a social one."

"I think when you go to war against someone, that is personal. Even people who hate each other have a personal relationship, if you see what I am saying. Certainly, she had gotten very personal with you, Kay. Starting rumors. Lying about you. Creating a bogus medical column on the Internet that made it appear you were the one writing it, making a fool out of you and getting you into trouble with the secretary of public safety, even with the governor."

"I was just with the governor. I don't feel I'm in trouble with him at all." I say this and at the same time find it curious. If Mitchell knows I am being investigated by a special grand jury, and I know he must, then why didn't he accept my resignation and thank God to be rid of me and my messy life?

"She also put Marino's career in jeopardy because he is your sidekick," Anna goes on.

The only thought that flashes is Marino would not appreciate being called my sidekick. As if on cue, the intercom blares, announcing that he is at the front gates.

"Sabotaging your career, in other words." Anna gets up. "Correct? Isn't that what you have told me?" She pushes a button on a console on the wall, suddenly energized. Anger burns off her depression. "Yes? Who is it?" she snaps into the speaker.

"Me, baby." The rude sounds of Marino and his truck fill the living room.

"Oh, he calls me baby again I will kill him." Anna throws her hands up in the air.

She goes to the door, and then Marino is walking into the living room. He left his house in such a hurry he didn't bother with a coat, only a gray sweat suit and tennis shoes. He is

dumbstruck when he sees McGovern sitting by the fire, looking up at him from her Indian-style position on the floor.

"Well, I'll be damned," Marino says. "Look what the cat drug in."

"Great to see you, too, Marino," McGovern replies.

"Someone want to tell me what the hell's going on?" He moves a wing chair closer to the fire and sits, going from one face to the other, trying to read the situation, acting obtuse, as if he doesn't already know. I believe he knows. Oh yes, now it is clear why he has been acting so strange.

We get into it. Anna continues to unravel what happened in the days preceding Jaime Berger's coming to Richmond. Berger continues to dominate, as if she is sitting in our midst. I don't trust her. And at the same time, I feel my life may very well be in her hands. I try to remember where I was on December 14, moving backward from today, December 23, until I land on that Tuesday. I was in Lyon, France, at Interpol's headquarters, where I met Jay Talley for the first time. I run through that encounter, reconstructing the two of us alone at a table in Interpol's cafeteria. Marino took an instant dislike to Jay and stalked off. During lunch, I told Jay about Diane Bray, about my problems with her and that she was doing all she could to persecute Marino, including throwing him back into uniform and on midnight shift. What was it Jay called her? Toxic waste in tight clothes. Apparently, the two of them had run-ins when she was with the D.C. police and he was briefly assigned to ATF headquarters. He seemed to know all about her. Can it be coincidence that the very day I discussed her with him, Righter called Anna and questioned her about my relationship with Bray and made implications about my mental health?