“It comes down to this,” Drew says in a steady voice. “The police are going to start probing Kate’s life. And if they probe deeply enough, they might find something that connects me to her.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. A diary? Pictures?”

“You took pictures?” Why am I asking? Of course they did. Everyone does now. “Did you videotape yourselves too?”

“Kate did. But she destroyed the tape.”

I’m not sure I believe this, but right now that’s not the point. “What about Ellen?” I ask, meaning his wife.

His eyes don’t waver. “Our marriage has been dead for ten years.”

“You could have fooled me.”

“I did. You and the rest of the town. Ellen and I mount a major theatrical production every day, all for the sake of Tim.”

Tim is Drew’s nine-year-old son, already something of a golden boy himself in the elementary school. Annie has a serious crush on him, though she would never admit it. “What about Tim, then? Were you going to leave him behind?”

“Of course not. But I had to make the break from Ellen first. I’ll die if I stay in that marriage.”

They always sound like this before the divorce. Any rationalization to get out of the marriage.

“I don’t want to say anything negative about Ellen,” Drew says softly. “But the situation has been difficult for a long time. Ellen’s addicted to hydrocodone. She has been for six years.”

Ellen Elliott is a lawyer who turned to real estate in her midthirties, a dynamo who focuses on the upscale antebellum mansions in town. Originally from Savannah, Georgia, she seems to have pulled off the rare trick of breaking into the inner cliques of Natchez society, something outsiders almost never accomplish. I’ve never known Ellen well, but the idea of her as a drug addict is hard to swallow. My mental snapshot is a sleek and well-tended blonde who runs marathons for fun.