Chapter 1
“She’s here.”
“She’s early.”
“Better early than late and risk getting scented out.”
“You want me around when you answer the door?”
“No, we need her relaxed. She can’t think this is anything but what we told her.”
“I hope it works.”
“It has to.”
* * * *
Though she hadn’t been nervous when she pulled into the quarter-mile long driveway, now that she stood on the doorstep of the imposing Napa Valley house with its immaculate garden and faced an ornate knocker the size of her head, Claire Pavaro wondered if she shouldn’t have made some polite excuse and refused the invitation. It wouldn’t have been amiss. Her grandfather’s funeral had been less than a week earlier, his deterioration long and painful. She was still in mourning, still an emotional wasteland from losing her las
