“Wes got that far: that Zane had an appointment to meet somebody behind the Garvey house.”
“He was trying to blackmail all of us,” Hildy said, helpfully. “He must have had something on her.”
“He had a file on Diane’s death,” Liz said. “He brought it to me and tried to convince me she’d been  murdered. He said if we didn’t stop the video, he’d do a human-interest piece on it, investigate it, solve  the mystery, create a scandal. Except I didn’t push Diane, and neither did my son, so I sent him away.”
“My God,” Sophie said, watching Virginia’s face. “You did push Diane.”
“You just shut up,” Virginia said. “You’re just like her, but I did not push her.”
“You met him on the path because he was trying to blackmail you, and you shot him,” Liz said. “How  did you get him to the farm dock? He would have been heavy. Unless ...” Liz frowned in thought.
“Unless you convinced him to let you take him home.” She nodded. “That was it, wasn’t it? You told him  you’d take care of him and you rowed him across the river, and when he got out onto the dock on his  own, then you shot him. You mothered him to death. That would be like you. And you got Stephen to  cover your car accidents, and me to harass my son about Sophie for you, so you could certainly get that  stupid man to travel to his own death.”
“You shot him from a boat?” Hildy looked at Virginia with disgust. “That’s why you missed at close  range and why the angle was so off. You shot him while you were standing in a boat. What kind of idiot  are you?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Virginia said. “But I want you to know I’m deeply hurt by  this. And I’m leaving.”
She looked deeply enraged, to Sophie.
“Of course, we can’t prove any of this,” Hildy said gloomily to Liz, as Virginia reached past her to tug at  the door.
She’s going to get away with it, Sophie thought, and then she saw Liz smile her cobra smile.
“We don’t have to prove it,” Liz said. “We’ll just talk.”
“What?” Hildy frowned, and then brightened. “Oh. Yes. We will. We’ll talk a lot, Virginia.”
Oh, excellent, Sophie thought.
Virginia stopped tugging on the door.
“About how much you hate Sophie,” Hildy went on happily. “About how you don’t have an alibi for the  shooting.” Hildy let her eyes slide to Virginia’s face. “About how Rachel ran to L.A. to get away from  you.”
Virginia’s face went red. “She didn’t. Rachel and I are very close. And—”
“We’ll tell everybody what a lousy mother you are,” Hildy said. “We don’t have to take you to Wes.
We’re taking care of this ourselves.”

“Unless,” Liz said.
Virginia turned to her, seething.
“At the council meeting today,” Liz said. “We’re going to be watching your vote very closely.”
“You can’t—” Virginia began again.
“Yes, we can.” Hildy was practically bouncing on her toes now. “One wrong vote and we hit the  phones. And people will listen. They always listen, don’t they, Virginia?”
Virginia eyes darted from Hildy to Liz. She looked like a trapped mink, and Sophie would have felt  sorry for her if she hadn’t been such a miserable excuse for a human being.
“Cross me again and I’ll destroy you,” Liz said to Virginia. “Don’t ever come after my family again.”
“I didn’t—” Virginia said.
“And that includes Sophie,” Liz said.
Sophie felt a catch in the back of her throat.
“Right, that’s the other part of the deal,” Hildy was saying. “You have to stop trying to kill Sophie. She  gets a hangnail, and we pick up the phone.”
Virginia drew a deep breath in through her teeth and looked at Sophie like death.
“Don’t even think about it,” Liz Tucker said. “You touch her, you say one word against her, and I’ll  bring you so low not even Junie Martin will give you the time of day.”
“Jeez,” Sophie said.
Liz looked at Sophie for the first time since they’d arrived. “Don’t ever cross a Tucker.”
“No ma’am,” Sophie said.
The council hall was full by the time Phin got there, and the crowd was clearly not a happy one, but only
Ed and Frank sat at the council table.
Amy and Sophie came in and sat down in the front row.
“ ‘This isn’t the junior chamber of commerce, Brad,’ ” Sophie said to Amy.
Amy nodded, looking around at the marble and walnut. “ ‘Thank goodness we’re in a bowling alley.’ ”
Nervous, Phin thought, and couldn’t blame them.
Sophie turned and saw him. She stuck her chin out, and he thought, Oh, good, still frosty. Then

Stephen and Virginia came in followed by Hildy and Liz, and he ignored Sophie to concentrate on the  problem at hand.
Stephen looked fat with satisfaction as he stopped to shake hands and nod to the populace, but Virginia  looked tense and mad as hell. Hildy detoured around them and plopped down in the seat across from
Phin. “ ‘Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night,’ ” she said, but she didn’t look nervous at  all.
“What are you up to?” he said, and she beamed and said, “Oh, I’m going to enjoy this.”
Phin frowned at her, but then his mother sat down and shook his concentration. She had that look in her  eye, the one she got right before she mutilated somebody: implacable will mixed with certainty of triumph.
“Mom?” he said, and she shook her head and said, “It’s all right, Phin,” and he sat back, wary as hell.
“All right,” Phin said. “Now all we need is Rachel and we can get started. Where—”
“She’s gone,” Virginia said through her teeth, and Stephen looked at her, startled. “That woman—” She  broke off as Hildy leaned forward and met her eyes. “She’s not here.”
“Okay.” Phin nodded to Hildy. “Keep, the minutes, please.”
“Of course,” Hildy said. “Although I’m only going to write down the intelligent things, so if anybody here  was going to make a stupid speech, he can forget about getting it into the record.”
“Hildy,” Phin said, and Stephen said, “I don’t need the record. I’ve got the whole town here, or most of  it. And the ones that aren’t here will hear about it later.”
“Don’t count on it,” Hildy said, and Phin wondered what the hell was happening under his nose. Besides  his political ruin.
“The first item of business,” Phin said, when they were all settled and the crowd had stilled in  anticipation, “is the streetlight vote that Stephen Garvey wants recalled.” A soft murmur of  disappointment went up from the crowd, and Phin knew how the lions had felt in the Coliseum. “The  motion on the floor is from Hildy Mallow, to purchase vintage reproduction streetlights for Temptation.
Hildy, do you want to address this again?”
“Just what I’ve said before,” Hildy said. “It makes a difference to people when they’re surrounded by  beauty. We owe it to Temptation to look to the future.”
“Anyone el—”
“But we also owe it to Temptation to be fiscally responsible,” Stephen said, and waxed eloquent on  fiscal responsibility for five minutes.
Phin tuned him out and felt uneasy. The crowd was restless, but his mother and Hildy sat back, calm.
That was wrong. “Anybody else?” Phin said, when Stephen had wound down. “No? Call the roll, Hildy.”
“Garvey.”
“Certainly not,” Stephen said.

“Garvey,” Hildy purred, and Virginia turned to look at her.
Across the table from Phin, his mother shook her head and Hildy nodded.
Virginia smiled. “No.”
Hildy turned to glare at Liz, who looked taken aback. “We need a little consensus here,” Hildy hissed at
Liz, who whispered back, “Well, Stephen’s convinced people they’re too expensive.”
The vote split, three to three—Frank voting with Hildy and Ed because fancier streetlights would make  his development look better—and Phin broke the tie, saying, “Yes. Let’s go with posterity.”
“Oh, sure,” somebody from the crowd called. “You care about our kids.”
“That’s progeny,” Phin said. “Posterity is your kids’ kids.”
“Phin,” his mother said, and he shrugged.
“New business,” he said.
“The water tower,” Stephen said, taking him by surprise. “We’re going to have to paint it again. It looks
... well, we’re just going to have to paint it.”
“I like it,” Hildy said. “It’s not as good as the original color, of course, but if somebody hadn’t messed  with it before, we wouldn’t have this problem now. It’s still pretty. Leave it be.”
“You want that thing—”
“Can I have a motion?” Phin said.
“I move we paint the water tower white,” Stephen said, and Virginia started to say, “I second,” and  then stopped.
“We need a second,” Phin said to prod her.
“I second,” Frank said. “What’s going on here?”
“Call the roll, Hildy,” Phin said, before Stephen could get into the water tower as a further corrupter of  the town’s children.
“Garvey,” Hildy said, and Stephen said, “Yes!”
Hildy turned to Liz and whispered audibly, “It does not get painted.”
“It looks awful,” Liz hissed back.
“Hildy?” Phin said. “The roll?”
“Garvey,” Hildy said, and Virginia looked down the table.

Liz nodded and Hildy shook her head.
“Oh, for crying out loud,” Sophie said from behind them, and Liz and Hildy flinched.
The vote split again, and Phin broke the tie by saying, “No, we’re not spending any more time or money  on the water tower.”
“Just what we’d expect from a porn mayor,” somebody in the crowd called out, and Phin said to Hildy,
“How come you paint it and I get the flack?”
“Because I’m a sweet old lady,” Hildy said. “Let’s get to it, shall we?”
“Oh, sure,” Phin said. “If there’s no other new businesses—”
Stephen opened his mouth.
“—I have some. It has come to my attention that this council passed an ordinance that is unenforceable  because of the vagaries in its wording.”
Hildy blinked at him, and his mother looked alarmed.
Phin said, “I move that the council repeal the antiporn ordinance it voted into effect two weeks ago  before we get sued for overstepping somebody’s constitutional rights.”
The murmur from the crowd sounded angry, but Ed’s “I second,” cut right across it.
It was the first motion Ed had seconded in thirty years, and Phin looked at him appraisingly.
“Good to see you got your thumb out of your butt, boy,” Ed said.
“Thanks, Ed,” Phin said. “Discussion?”
“I have discussion,” Stephen snapped. “Somebody clearly violated that ordinance—”
“Can’t talk about that, Stephen,” Hildy said briskly. “We can only talk about the issue on the table.”
“It didn’t violate anything,” Stephen said.
“Yes, it did,” Phin said. “You can’t make a law against something you can’t define. And we didn’t define  pornography. Therefore the ordinance is unconstitutional. We could get sued. For the protection of the  town’s treasury, we have to repeal it.”
“That is the biggest—”
“I’ll call the roll,” Hildy said. “Garvey.”
“No,” Stephen said. “This is—”
“Garvey,” Hildy said over him, and turned razorlike eyes on Virginia.
Virginia looked down the table, and raised her eyebrows, as smug as her husband.