Then a voice from up the stairs, tentative, shaky. “Sugar? Who was it, Sugar?”

Big's head turned toward the stairs and Little could hear him breathing. Big slipped out of his loafers and hurried up the stairs in his stocking feet, a man on the hunt.

Little stepped up the hall, grabbed a corner of a seven-foot-long Persian carpet and dragged it back to the black woman's body. And from upstairs, three more impacts: a gasping, thready scream, and whack! whack! whack!

Little smiled. Murder-and the insurance.

Little stooped, caught the sleeve of Peebles's housecoat, and rolled her onto the carpet. Breathing a little harder, Little began dragging the carpet toward an interior hallway that ran down to the kitchen, where it'd be out of sight of any of the windows.

A pencil-thin line of blood, like a slug's trail, tracked the rug across the hardwood floor.

Peebles's face had gone slack. Her eyes were still open, the eyeballs rolled up, white against her black face. Too bad about the rug, Little thought. Chinese, the original dark blue gone pale, maybe 1890. Not a great rug, but a good one. Of course, it'd need a good cleaning now, with the blood-puddle under Peebles's head. Outside, there'd been no sound of murder. No screams or gunshots audible on the street.

A window lit up on Oak Walk's second floor. Then another on the third floor, and yet another, on the first floor, in the back, in the butler's pantry: Big and Little, checking out the house, making sure that they were the only living creatures inside.

When They knew that the house was clear, Big and Little met at the bottom of the staircase. Big's mouth under the nylon was a bloody O. He'd chewed into his bottom lip while killing the old woman upstairs, something he did when the frenzy was on him. He was carrying a jewelry box and one hand was closed in a fist. “You won't believe this,” he said. “She had it around her neck.” He opened his fist-his hands were covered with latex kitchen gloves- to show off a diamond the size of a quail's egg.