He didn’t say a word, but his left hand went to his gold cufflinks and gripped them against his sleeve.

Evelyn gathered the four scraps of green paper off the floor, her red fingernails pressing the torn edges together like a small, broken jigsaw puzzle.

“You’ll be sorry by morning, Madison,” she said softly.

I walked down the asphalt driveway to my sedan without looking back.

By nine the following morning, autumn rain was rattling the leaded glass windows of Arthur Vance’s study behind the hardware store on Elm Avenue.

Arthur put down his heavy porcelain mug, took off his wire-rimmed glasses, and polished the thin lenses with a blue microfiber cloth.