Last to Die

boring job, who stood around looking lost at her husband’s NASA gatherings. Olivia, who regularly traveled overseas to sell medical equipment.
What were you really selling, Olivia?
    Jane found the page she was searching for. “Here it is. Date of marriage, Olivia and Neil Yablonski. Fifteen years ago. She met her future husband in Rome, which would place her there during the same time Erskine Ward was working at the embassy.”
    “What about this guy?” Frost pointed at Teddy’s father, Nicholas Clock, who cut a striking and athletic figure, a man confident enough in his own skin to drink beer when everyone else was sipping wine, to sport Dockers and a golf shirt among a jacket-and-tie crowd. “Can we place Nicholas Clock in Rome around that same time? Were all three of them there?”
    Jane flipped through the file. “We don’t know enough about Clock. Most of what we’ve got is what the Saint Thomas police sent us.”
    “He was just a tourist in Saint Thomas. Down there, no one would know him.”
    “But they would know him in Providence, where he worked.” She paged through the file. “Here. Financial consultant at Jarvis and McCrane, Chapman Street.” She looked up. “Our next stop.”

I DIDN’T WANT to go to quebec anyway
.
    Claire sulked in the courtyard as she watched her excited classmates climb aboard the field trip bus. She had told Will she didn’t want to be stuck on any bus for hours, but this was a sleek new bus, not some ratty yellow clunker like most schools used. Bruno added insult to injury by shouting out the bus window, announcing all the onboard luxuries.
    “Hey, everyone, it’s got TVs! Headphones! WiFi!”
    Now Briana and the princesses came out of the building, wheeling their cute little carry-ons, which they rolled across the cobblestones in a royal procession. As they passed her, Claire heard one of them sneer, under her breath:
Night Crawler
.
    “Loser,” Claire shot back.
    Briana wheeled around. “I’m just going to say it right here, loud and clear, so everyone hears it. My room is
locked
. If I find anything missing when I get back—
anything
—we’ll all know who did it.”
    “Get on the bus, Briana,” Ms. Saul said with a sigh as she and Ms. Duplessis tried to shepherd their students aboard. “We have to get going now if we want to make it there by lunchtime.”
    Briana shot a poisonous glance at Claire and climbed aboard the bus.
    “Are you okay, Claire?” Ms. Saul asked gently.
    Of all the teachers at Evensong, Ms. Saul was her favorite, because she looked at you as if she really saw you, and cared. And what she saw now must be obvious: that as much as Claire denied wanting to go with them, she hated being left behind.
    “It’s only because you’re still so new to Evensong,” said Ms. Saul. “You’ll get to go on our next trip. And won’t it be nice this weekend, just the four of you, having the whole school to yourselves.”
    “I guess,” moped Claire.
    “Mr. Roman’s set up the hay bales for you, if you want to shoot a few arrows. You’ll be an expert archer by the time we get back.”
    Aren’t you afraid I’ll kill another chicken?
was what Claire thought, but she kept her mouth shut as Ms. Saul climbed aboard and the doors closed. With a puff of diesel smoke, the bus pulled away and drove under the stone archway. She heard barking behind her, saw a flash of black fur as Julian’s dog shot past, chasing after the bus.
    “Bear!” Claire yelled. “Come back here!”
    The dog ignored her and tore out of the courtyard. Claire followed him all the way to the edge of the lake where he suddenly halted, his nose lifted to the air. No longer did he seem interested in the bus, which continued driving down the road and disappeared around the bend. Instead Bear turned and took off in a different direction.
    “Now where are you going?” she called out. With a sigh, she followed him around the building, toward the trail that led up the ridge. Already he was picking his way through the scrub, moving faster now, so fast that she had to scramble to keep up. “Bear, come
back here
,” she commanded. Watched in frustration as he slipped away into the underbrush. So much for obedience; she couldn’t get even a dog to show her any respect.
    Halfway up the ridge, she gave up chasing him and plopped down on a boulder. From here, she could just look over the school’s rooftop. It was not as spectacular a view as up at the Jackals’ Den, but this was