“Who are you?” she demanded, wary.

“J. D. Rafferty.” He bent to pick up the hat he’d lost in the scuffle, never taking his eyes off her. “I live up the hill a ways.”

“And you’re in the habit of just walking into people’s homes?”

“No, ma’am.”

“But you saw me come in, so you just thought ‘Hey, what the hell? I might as well go scare the shit out of her’?”

He narrowed his eyes. “No, ma’am. The lawyer asked me to look after the stock. I saw you come in, saw the lights. Didn’t want anything funny going on while I was down here.”

Mari cast a damning glance around the room, stricken anew by the utter destruction. “Looks to me like something already happened, Mr. Rafferty. And I don’t happen to think it’s particularly funny.”

“Kids,” he muttered, staring at the broken frame of a bentwood rocker. He detested waste, and that was what vandalism was-waste of time, energy, property. Waste and disrespect. “Town kids get a little tanked up. They go riding around, lookin’ for trouble. Don’t usually take ’em long to find it. This happened a week ago. I called the sheriff. A deputy came out and wrote it up, for what that’s worth.”

Putting off the inevitable, Mari went to the ficus that had foiled her escape and righted it carefully, her hands gentle as she stroked the smooth trunk and touched the dying leaves.

“I didn’t catch your name while you were kicking my shins black and blue,” Rafferty said sardonically.

“Marilee. Marilee Jennings.”

“Mary Lee-”

“No. Marilee. It’s all one word.”

He scowled at that, as if he didn’t trust anybody who had such a name. Mari almost smiled. Her mother wouldn’t like J. D. Rafferty. He was too rough. Crude, Abigail would say. Abigail Falkner Jennings thrived on pretention. She had given all her daughters pretentious names that only snooty people didn’t stumble over-Lisbeth, Annaliese, Marilee.

“She’s dead,” he declared bluntly.