The women's hands pried apart and demeated each crab completely, in only minutes.

"They get a lot of practice," Ernie said. "I can pick a pound pretty quick myself, but nothing like them. Couple of our girls can fill a pound tub in ten minutes. We wanted to enter 'em into the annual pickin' contest up in Maryland, but they wouldn't go, and that's a d.a.m.n shame, 'cos they woulda won."

"Why didn't they want to go?"

"They said it was unG.o.dly, or some such. To them, crabs, like all food, are some kind of gift from the heavens, and shouldn't be turned into a sport."

More weird philosophy, Patricia thought.

She couldn't imagine more tedious work. Picking crabs all day, every day? But as she looked inside, the women couldn't have appeared more content, chatting quietly amongst themselves as their hands and fingers blurred through the process. In the background-barely audible-an evangelical radio station murmured oral missives from G.o.d.

"Just wait'll the Squatter cookout," Ernie promised. "They got their own recipes for crab cakes, Newburg, and cream a' crab soup that're better than anything you've ever had, even in them upscale D.C. restaurants."

Patricia believed it, and she could even remember a bit of it from her childhood.

Ernie closed the door and showed her back to the path. "Guess we better be headin' back to the house- er, I should, at least. Gotta cut the gra.s.s. What'choo got planned today?"

"Nothing, really. I'll go back with you, check on Judy. Then I might go into town, or maybe go for a walk in the woods." This was another refreshing aspect of being back: not having to follow any agenda. But she knew she should at least check her e-mail and give the firm a quick call. Then she thought: And Byron! I haven't called him in a day and a half! In fact, she'd actually spoken to him only once or twice since she'd arrived. He'll be worried. . . . But when she patted the back pocket of her shorts, it occurred to her that she'd left her cell phone back in her room.

The tree-lined path wended further upward; spangles of heat draped across her face and chest from the sun pouring in through leafy branches above them.

"There's another one," Ernie said without stopping. He pointed to a tree as he walked on.

But Patricia paused.

A small plank, painted white, had been nailed to the tree in what appeared to be a crude decoration. But out here? In the woods? It seemed so peculiar. A simple but ornate drawing adorned the plank, some squiggles and slashes; they seemed symmetrical, in some disordered way "Another one of their good-luck signs?" she asked.

Ernie had stopped just ahead of her, looking back. "Yeah. Ya see 'em every now and then out in the woods. The woods are blessed land to the Squatters."

Patricia peered closer at the design. "It just looks so . . . unusual, doesn't it?"

"I guess," Ernie said without much interest. "It's more creepy than anything, if ya ask me."

Creepy . . . Yes, she supposed it was. The color of the paint used to form the design was odd, too: a tannish slate. Is it even paint? she wondered, touching it. Her finger came away smudged almost black. Doesn't feel like paint. More like crayon.

Then she realized what it reminded her of. Last night . . . The note she'd found in the garbage, addressed to Dwayne. Since then she'd paid no mind to the weird sheet of paper she'd found, the sheet with one word written on it. . . .

Wenden.

Was it a name? She could look in the phone book but . . . Why? There was no reason for her to care, so why did it seem to bother her now? The word looked as though it had been written in some kind of thin-lined chalk, similar to this good-luck sign on the tree.

"What'choo doing?" Ernie asked with a smile. "Hopin' some a' that Squatter good luck'll rub off on ya?"

"Maybe," she said, and broke away.

But Ernie was right. The design was . . . creepy.

A narrow creek broke the path, its crystal water burbling. Ernie stepped over it in one easy stride; then Patricia hopped across herself. She sighed as her mind cleared-a rarefied luxury for a city attorney-and concentrated only on the cicada throbs, the babbling creeks around them, and the steady crunch of Ernie's boots as he strode onward. This odd sequence of sounds and sensations seemed to tranquilize her as effectively as a low dose of Valium.

Ernie stopped and turned around. "Well, here's a problem."

"What?"

Another creek crossed the trail, several yards in girth and full of jagged, algae-covered stones.

Then it occurred to Patricia that she was barefoot.

"You don't wanna cut'cher feet all up on them rocks," Ernie said.

Patricia laughed. "Ernie, I don't think I'm quite the city priss you take me for. It won't kill me to walk barefoot through a creek." She grinned, about to take her first careful step onto the stones. "Of course, you could always carry me."

She'd said it as a joke, and was completely taken by surprise when he grabbed her and picked her up. "I was only kidding!" she exclaimed.

"Ain't no trouble." He chuckled, hefting her. "Us country boys're strong. Feels to me like you don't weigh much more than a bag a' peanut sh.e.l.ls anyway."

"You say the sweetest things, Ernie," she joked back. "Now, if you'd said I weigh more than a grand piano, I'd know it was time to join Weight Watchers."

He carried her easily with one arm bracing her back, the other under her thighs. Her feet jounced in the air with each step, while her own arm clung fast to him around his shoulders.

"I hope there's another creek," she kept joking. "Then we can try piggyback."

"Don't'cha be teasin' me now."

But the rocking motion that came with each step lulled her more. She let her head rest against his shoulder. He seemed to grip her tighter under her rump, which increased the friction between her legs-a pleasurable but aggravating sensation-and the position caused her right breast to rub against his chest.

Did the cicada sounds begin to drone louder? She felt deceptively relaxed in his grasp, rocking, rocking, as he stepped over more rocks; she could've fallen asleep. Some strands of his long hair brushed her face. The vee of her blouse looped up; then she drowsily realized that one nipple was showing.

She pretended not to notice.

Oh, G.o.d. The thought moaned through her mind.

She felt so strange, burning up with pent-up desires but lazy, slothlike. The cicada drone continued to fill her head, and the rocking motion continued to stimulate her s.e.x, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. But he remained the perfect gentleman; he couldn't have not noticed her nipple. It tingled, felt like it was swelling. . . .

"Here we are. Ten cents for the ride . . ."

On the other side of the creek he set her back down on her feet, and she wasn't even aware of what she was doing when she pressed right up against him, reached around and squeezed his b.u.t.tocks, and kissed him, and it was no friendship kiss. It was a famished one, a kiss incited, even crazed by desires she couldn't identify, just some s.e.xual arcana that had swept her sense of reason away and left nothing but cringing nerves and raw, animal impulse.

Ernie seized up in the sudden shock and leaned back against a tree, his opened hands out-the roots of some moral reaction, perhaps: that though this was a woman he'd been in love with so long ago, she was married now, off-limits. But Patricia only pressed closer, slipping her tongue into his mouth and squeezing his b.u.t.tocks with even more deliberation. Finally, threads of his resistence began to slacken. She moaned into his mouth, put her arm around his waist, and squeezed her groin to his.

Patricia's mind raced in a desperate delirium. The suction of her kiss drew his tongue into her mouth. She was never even aware when she unb.u.t.toned her blouse and bared her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. It was almost violent then, when she grabbed some of his long hair and urged his head lower.

His lips attached to an already swollen nipple and sucked. "Harder," was the only word she uttered. She was cringing, like someone in a p.r.i.c.kly heat desperate for relief . . . but the p.r.i.c.kly heat here wasn't rash; it was an agonized desire, the crudest horniness that blocked out all thoughts from her mind and simply demanded to be tended. Her groan was barely even feminine when her earlier whimsy came true: after sucking each nipple to a beating soreness, he licked up and down her throat, sucked lines in between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, tonguing off the oyster juice she'd dribbled.

She moaned more, deeper in her throat. Then she grabbed his strong hand and coaxed it down the front of her shorts, beneath the panties, pushed some more and made him feel her there. Without hesitation, her own hand roved his crotch, her fingers testing the already throbbing rigidity. . . .

Then she prepared to haul his pants down and drag him to the ground, make him take her right there in the blazing sun.

She didn't know what she was doing.

She was out of her mind. . . .

If this sudden departure from her traditional monogamous values could be thought of as a thing, that thing fell apart a second later, just as she was getting his pants open.

Her hand froze; then her eyes vaulted wide and her mouth shot open in a silent scream of self-outrage.

Oh, my G.o.d, oh, my G.o.d! What am I doing?

She quickly backed away from him, almost tripping over a tree root.

Ernie glared at her. "What the h.e.l.l?"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" she blurted. "I-I-I . . . can't!"

He stood there appalled, his pants open. "You're s.h.i.ttin' me! What the h.e.l.l's wrong with you, pullin' such s.h.i.t!"

Patricia's shoulders slumped. Her face was beet red in shame. She fumbled to b.u.t.ton her blouse. "I'm sorry," she peeped.

"d.a.m.n it!" He refastened his jeans, clearly outraged. "Patricia, you cain't be comin' on to guys like that 'n' then changin' yer mind!"

"I know. I'm sorry," she said yet again.

His glare sharpened. "What, thought you'd git your kicks by gettin' the big dumb country boy all worked up 'n' then pullin' the plug?"

She shook her head desperately, fighting tears. "No, no, I'd never do something like that, not to you or anyone."

"What then? What the h.e.l.l's your problem?"

"I'm . . . I'm married-"

"Married? Yeah, I know you're married! And you were married a minute ago when you grabbed my hand 'n' put it down your pants! You were grabbin' me by the hair to shove my face in yer b.o.o.bs! Don't sound to me like you were all that worried 'bout cheatin' on your husband!"

More embarra.s.sment flushed over her. She struggled for something logical to say, but what could be logical about this? She was mystified at herself. I was about to have s.e.x with him right here in broad daylight. I had every intention of doing that. . . . "Ernie, I don't know what to say. Something just . . . came over me." She rubbed her eyes. "I've just been . . . weird lately, for some reason. Since the day I got back. I haven't been myself, and I can't understand it for the life of me. For those last couple of minutes, I wasn't even thinking. It's like I was out of my mind."

"Well, you are out of your mind for playin' around with a fella like that," he grumbled. But at least his frustration appeared to be abating. He sat down at the base of the tree and just shook his head.

Patricia stood in frustration of her own. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, nipples, and s.e.x seemed to throb in objection, as though her mind had betrayed her body. All that desire building up, building up, about to be relieved, and now this guillotine of last-second morality. "I'm really sorry, Emie," she kept apologizing.

His own frustration urged a laugh as the moment cooled down. "Well, at least we know now."

"Know what?"

"That it is true what they say about oysters and fried cicadas."

She shook her head, smiling. "Come on; let's go back. I promise not to accost you."

But Ernie had already stood back up; he didn't seem to hear her. "I wonder what that's all about. . . ." He was staring across the hill.

"Huh?"

"Look."

Her eyes followed his finger.

The town police car was parked at the Stanherd house, its red and blue lights flashing.

"Never seen nothin' like it," Sergeant Trey was telling them in the foyer of the old Stanherd house. It had been so long since Patricia had been inside the dilapidated plantation house that seeing it now refreshed no memories. Nothing had been replaced, just repaired, however expertly, such that she could've just walked through a time warp, back to the 1850s.

"And I guarantee there ain't never been nothin' like it, ever, in Squatterville before, and not in Agan's Point either," Trey finished. "Except for Dwayne last week, we ain't never had a murder in these parts. And like that?"

It was too much information too fast. She and Ernie had jogged up to the house upon seeing the cruiser's flashing lights, when Sergeant Trey had told them that two of the clan's elders, Wilfrud and Ethel Hild, had been murdered. Patricia thought she remembered the name, but simply couldn't place faces that far back.

"Craziest thing I ever heard," Ernie murmured.

The old house smelled of incense, potpourri, and handmade candles. It stood in dead silence, like something watching them in disapproval. Wide, bare-wood stairs led up into darkness at one end of the foyer, but Trey showed them through a sitting room full of throw rugs, faded, intricately patterned wallpaper, and sunlight filtering through dusty bay windows.

"Is the house empty?" Patricia asked.

"Only one here's Marthe," Trey said.

Everd's wife, Patricia remembered. "So the Hilds lived in the house too?"

"Yeah, along with some of the older couples. All the men are out on the crabbing boats. That's why Everd ain't here. And the women are all out gatherin' for the picnic comin' up. Ain't gonna be much of a picnic now. s.h.i.t."

He took them deeper into the house's first floor, and more sun-edged darkness. No pictures hung on the walls, which seemed strange, but instead all kinds of inexplicable handmade decorations: corn-husk flowers, oyster-sh.e.l.l mosaics, and crosses, of course, some that appeared to be made of small-animal bones. In frames, she also noticed more of those squiggly designs, their mystical good-luck sign.

In the room farthest in back, Chief Sutter was grimly taking pictures with a Polaroid, and making notes. From his face he looked like a man experiencing stomach pains.

"You tell 'em?" he asked Trey.

His deputy nodded.

"d.a.m.nedest thing. Murders. In Squatterville, of all places."

Patricia frowned her confusion. "Chief, I don't understand. The Hilds were murdered? Where are the bodies?"

"No, no, they weren't murdered here. Couple miles away, on the Point's where their bodies were found. Old Man Halm came across 'em doin' his morning walk. So me 'n' Trey checked it out." He put his notebook down next to the camera, then sat down on a big poster bed that must have been fifty years old. A purplish stone hung above the bed from a piece of red yarn, and on the nightstand sat a jar of what appeared to be pickled eggs.

"What's that in the jar?" she asked. "Eggs?"

"They call 'em creek eggs," Ernie said. "Just regular hen's eggs that they bury in a creek bed for a coupla months, turns 'em black. Supposed to ward off sickness, more clan superst.i.tion."

"Rotten eggs," Sutter muttered. "What a bunch of loonies."

"Stinks something fierce if ya open that jar."

Gross, Patricia thought.

The rest of the room stood as spa.r.s.e as the house: a cane chair and small walnut table for a desk. A closet full of clothes. A claw-foot dresser and some candles in metal holders. Above the bed hung a cross made of acorns glued together, and below it, yet another of the good-luck designs.