Meanwhile, the silence around the table began to grow heavy. Kate shoved the half-full mug toward Muravieff again. “Try it with some milk.”

“Thank you,” Muravieff said in a faint voice, and stirred in three spoons full of sugar, as well. Her impeccably plucked brow smoothed out after the next sip, and she even went so far as to pick up a cookie. When Kate cleared the table after Muravieff left, the cookie was still there, nibbled around the edges to the frosting and no further. You can never be too rich or too thin, some divorcee had once said, and Muravieff seemed to be taking the dictum to heart. The rich only listened to the other rich.

Kate hooked a toe beneath one of the four matching dining chairs that surrounded her table like the advance troops for an upscale interior decorator and crossed her feet on the seat. She had her shoes off, she told herself, and it was her damn house. “Ms. Muravieff-”

“ Charlotte, please.”

“Okay, Charlotte, and I’m Kate. You want me to get your mother out of jail. I’m guessing she’s been convicted of a crime, as opposed to just having been arrested?”

“Yes.”

“What was she convicted of?”

Charlotte hesitated, licked suddenly dry lips, and said in a low voice, “Murder.”

With difficulty, Kate refrained from rolling her eyes. “Who did she kill?”

“She didn’t kill anyone.”

Kate realized that she was dealing with someone who actually believed in the benefit of the doubt. “Okay, who didn’t she kill?”

Again, Charlotte hesitated. She dropped her eyes to the mug clamped between her thin fingers. This time when she spoke, her voice was so low that Kate couldn’t hear her. “I beg your pardon?”