Slow Burn by Heather Graham

Danny’s death, but they still might be able to learn something.
    She finished showering and got dressed, and she was humming with pleasure when she went downstairs. She was halfway through making morning coffee when she stopped suddenly, her tone stopping just as if the power had gone dry. She always made morning coffee.
    But, she realized, she had made a full pot. Without even thinking about it. And she hadn’t done that since…
    In well over a year.
    She plugged the pot in.
    â€œAnd it’s damned decent coffee at that!” she said aloud, then turned away.
    The doorbell was already ringing.

5
    S ly Montgomery read about the vandalism in the cemetery that morning.
    He was in the courtyard by the pool, at a old tile table beneath the palms, sipping his coffee—decaf, these days—and looking at the front page.
    Cult leader Trey Delia hadn’t been among the grave robbers, but one of the men who’d been caught—an illegal alien from Port au Prince—became hysterical under interogation and implicated Delia in just about everything from robbery to murder to vampirism. The story about the man’s capture was an unusual one. A private investigator had happened to be in the cemetery, along with an unknown female assistant.
    Unknown, my royal rump! Sly thought, shaking his head.
    He set the paper down and stared at the pool. He still loved to see the sun hovering over water. He liked it at the pool at his house, and he liked it by the bay, watching the deeper colors there, the cobalts, the greens, the deep, deep azures. Maybe that was partially what had kept him here all these years, when some said the city was going to trash. It was evolving, that was all. When you got to be over ninety, you knew a lot. You’d seen a lot. Too much, most of the time. He’d seen this place go from being just about nothing but swamp to a city capable of eclipsing many others the world over.
    He looked at his hands. They were shaking. Well, they had a right to shake. They were ninety-something years old. Ninety-four this year, wasn’t it? It seemed incredible the way he went on, and bless God, stayed healthy, his mind intact. But ninety-four years was a long time to live. He’d lost Lucy long ago. But before that they’d built their dreams together. Just like he’d helped build some of the great old houses here, right out of the swamp and coral and muck. He’d always wanted kids. He would have had ten if he could have, but there had just been Joe. Well, that was God’s will. Then Joe had married his little posh prom queen out of Newport, and one baby had been more than Mary Louise Tierney Montgomery could handle.
    But Spencer was worth a million grandkids. From the start, she had belonged more to him than she’d ever belonged to either Mary Louise or Joe. She loved the old, cherished it. She liked to work with her hands, to build. She liked history—young as it might be here—and when she was just five, she could rattle off the names of most of the major architects and builders who had put South Florida together. She was blessed with intelligence and a nature that was both sweet and aggressive. Usually, when she wanted something, she went for it with a smile on her face and both hands open. Danny Huntington had been a fine husband for her, too, though Sly hadn’t imagined the two of them together when they’d been kids.
    Sly had been watching them all for years now; other than his work, the kids had been his life. He’d watched them struggle to learn their values, struggle to grow. He’d seen them mature from stumbling adolescents into assured adults.
    He’d seen Danny die, and it had been one hell of a tragedy, but that was the past.
    Spencer was the present. And the future. She was all that really mattered in life to him, after all these years of learning just what counted and what didn’t.
    â€œAnd I wish you were still little enough to