16

Marissa Cameron had attempted to repair runny mascara and powder over tear tracks. Neither technique had worked. Her nose was red, her voice shaky. She and husband, Garnet, had been the screaming couple, no doubt about it.

I studied her with interest. The news photo had been a head shot; it hadn’t hinted at how truly young Marissa seemed. I mean, there’s twenty-three, and then there’s twenty-three. Roz is in her early twenties, but Roz looked like a hardened street player in comparison.

Alice-in-Wonderland hair, tied back with a thin blue ribbon, fell almost to the waist of Marissa’s yellow dress. In the photo her hair had been pinned and piled, giving her a commanding air. Devoid of curl, her hair hung like cornsilk, emphasizing her narrow shoulders, fragile build. She seemed frail, small, in need of protection.

I sneaked a glance at her feet. High heels accounted for the staccato footsteps, but it was hard to believe she possessed a voice like a diamond-edged cutting tool.

After a brief moment of indecision, a firming of her stance, she ignored Garnet completely. He and I evidently didn’t exist. This was between her and her mother-in-law.

“I came to say good-bye, Tessa, and thank you. You’ve been good to me,” she said softly. She sounded brave and stoic and hurt. And somehow wrong, as if she were auditioning for a role she didn’t quite understand.

“Darling, please stay.” Tessa took her hand, tried to embrace her. With Tessa’s cigarette dangling precariously, and only one active participant, the hug was awkward.

“No, Tessa. I can’t.”

“Is there something you’re not telling me? Perhaps you are pregnant, darling? That would explain so much—”

Garnet broke it up with, “There’s no reason for Ms. Carlyle to witness this charming domestic scene, ladies.”

“Who is she?” Marissa asked.

“Why would you care?” Garnet answered sharply.

A buzzer sounded with sufficient noise to make Marissa jump. Garnet grabbed a slim cell phone from his pocket.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m aware of the time. Phone ahead and tell them the traffic’s bad on the Pike or something. You know the drill.” He flipped the phone shut.

“Garnet, really,” his mother said, tapping ashes carefully into the crystal bowl, “you should go. People hate waiting. Your father never let the voters wait.”

“Lot of good it did him,” Garnet snapped.

Marissa wavered back and forth, carrying a handbag too large for comfort or style. I peeked around her, through the open door, and noted a pile of luggage in the corridor. A matched set in hunter green. More than she’d need for a campaign jaunt, unless she were planning to campaign out-of-state for, say, six months to a year.

During an awkward silence, I withdrew a standard contract form from my briefcase. Tessa grabbed it, possibly thinking I’d changed my mind and decided to return a scrap of her late daughter’s writing.

I said I’d do my best to determine the source of the forgeries.

“What forgeries?” Marissa said. “What are you talking about?”

Her voice had that ingenuous note again. Did she always sound like she was lying?

Tessa ignored her. “I want them to stop immediately!” she said. “And I want to know who is making them up! There is no question of bringing in the police,” she added with a quick glance at Garnet.

I wondered if Tessa suspected her older daughter, the “lost” Beryl, of copying her dead sister’s substance and style. If Garnet hadn’t butted his way into the office I might have found out.

“What’s this about, Tessa?” Marissa asked sweetly. “Is there some kind of trouble? Can I help?”

“No, dear,” Tessa said. Then, to me, “I’ll write you a check, a retainer, yes?”

“Fine,” I said.

She kept her checkbook and a gold Cross pen in the tiny escritoire. A place for everything and everything in its place.

Marissa licked her lips, said, “Well, it’s time for me to go. I didn’t want to leave without saying—”

“Please,” Tessa said, “stay a little longer.”

“Mother,” Garnet snapped.

Tessa colored, and bowed her head, seemingly reprimanded. She scribbled rapidly, handed me a check and the signed contract. Before I had a chance to say more than a simple good-bye, Garnet seized me by the elbow, not hard enough for me to cry out, just firmly enough to guide me down the halls and out the door without undue fuss. He was extremely efficient. His Who’s Who write-up hadn’t mentioned anything about a stint in the Military Police. He had the moves of a good nightclub bouncer.

Once we were outdoors, he announced, “You can ignore everything that was said in there. My mother will change her mind within forty-eight hours. That’s a guarantee. You’ll be required by law to return the check. You might as well tear up the contract now. She’s under duress. You have no right to take advantage of her.”

I shrugged. “She called me,” I said. “Not the other way around.”

“If you have any writings supposedly penned by my dear departed sister, you’d be wise to get rid of them.”

“Your mom wants them; you want to get rid of them. Interesting,” I said.

“Good-bye.”

A cab pulled up at the porte cochere, honked twice. Henry, the spying chauffeur, was loading Marissa Cameron’s luggage into the trunk. Garnet went to supervise—possibly concerned that she might be stealing the family silver—leaving me to walk the last few steps to the Toyota alone.

I usually lock my car doors. In Cambridge or Boston, I practically chain the car to a tree because car theft is so common. In the rarefied Dover air, with the chauffeur on patrol, I’d been careless.

I glanced in the backseat, unconscious cop-rule #27: Never get into your car unless you’ve checked for unwanted passengers. The humped shape underneath my raincoat moved, and I started to open the back door.

Drew Manley raised his head and looked at me with supplication in his blue eyes. He placed a finger to his lips, then lifted both hands to make driving motions.

I shoved the back door shut, opened the driver’s door, got inside, and carefully started the engine.

If I could see both his hands, I figured he probably didn’t have a weapon. Still, the driveway seemed especially long and winding.

When we reached the road, I said, “So, Doctor, you want me to turn left or right?”

“Take a left on Farm, bear right at Bridge, keep going straight and it’ll get you onto North Street. We can take that into Medfield.”

“You comfortable back there?”

“No.”

“You might as well sit up on the seat.”

“Not yet.”

“Is there a coffee shop, a rest area?”

“Drive,” he said. “When we get someplace safe, you can help me up.”

I tried to miss most of the potholes, but the occasional labored grunt told me I wasn’t always successful.

“Don’t go so fast,” he muttered as we passed a huge red barnlike house on the right.

I slowed and watched the stone fences vary in height and color. Beyond the fences huge lots were heavily wooded, like forests with well-tended lawns; there were mansions back there. I could see the occasional chimney, a slated roof or two. Cars whizzed by, expensive sedans all. I kept to the speed limit; the Dover cops might use any excuse to stop a dirty ten-year-old vehicle.

After four long minutes, we crossed some railroad tracks and I let out a sigh of relief. Intuition—and my surroundings—told me we’d made it to my side of the tracks, the side I felt most comfortable on.

The wrong side.