Then I told Levi to hold on, that help was coming, and that I was going to walk back into that house through the front door like an old fool who’d wandered by at the wrong time.

Because I had realized something, crouched in that basement. The fastest way to end this wasn’t to fight three people and an armed man in a house full of guests.

It was to give them exactly the kind of greedy old man they already believed I was — and let their own greed walk them straight into the arms of the law.

Chapter 6 — The Doddering Guest

Ten minutes later I rang the front doorbell with a cheap box of holiday chocolates in my hands, my back bent, my step shuffling.

Delia went pale when she saw me, but she couldn’t turn me away in front of fifteen laughing guests without a scene, and Delia hated scenes she didn’t script.

So I shuffled into the living room, admired the enormous tree, praised the champagne, and let Irving needle me for sport — he was wearing my son’s gold graduation watch on his own wrist, and he made sure I noticed.