The kitchen telephone receiver dangled from Margaret’s manicured fingers, swinging like an executioner’s pendulum against the pale wallpaper. Outside, the autumn wind rustled the red oaks along Kanuga Road, but inside our house, the air had turned into dry ice.

Beverly’s champagne glass hovered midway to her painted lips, the bubbles rising in thin, mocking columns. Her husband Trevor, whose heavy hand had slapped my shoulder with the condescension of a man who thought thirty-six years of marriage could be appraised like scrap iron, had his jaw slackened so far his yellowing teeth caught the afternoon glare.

The voice crackling through the telephone earpiece wasn’t merely loud; it was shrill, panicked, vibrating with the raw terror of a high-end luxury vehicle broker who suddenly found himself staring down the barrels of the state police.