Читать книгу: «Point Of Departure»

LAURIE BRETON
POINT OF DEPARTURE

This one’s for Jay and Jen

who’ve grown up to be amazing people.

I love you both more than words can say;

you are the joy in my life.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Prologue

Thank God for October.

Right through the end of September, Boston had been so ungodly hot that she’d come close to melting into a puddle on the sidewalk. But October, Kaye Winslow decided as she cruised Comm Ave in search of a parking space, was as close to perfection as it was possible to be. The days still warm, the nights comfortably cool, the sky a vivid blue, unmarred by summer’s haze, patches of it visible through an overhead canopy of green smudged here and there by daubs of brilliant red and gold.

Luck was with her. She spied a parking space on the opposite side of the street. At Dartmouth, she took an illegal left at the red light, cutting off a delivery van, whose driver blared his horn in token protest. She circled the pedestrian mall and reversed direction, swooping with practiced ease into the empty parking space in blatant disregard of the sign not ten feet away designating it for Back Bay residents only.

Kaye cut the engine, checked her reflection in the rearview mirror and rubbed a splotch of lipstick from her front tooth. Flinging her meticulously streaked blond hair over her shoulder, she gathered up her Gucci briefcase and slid smoothly from the BMW’s soft leather upholstery.

The house stood half a block away, a grand old pile of bricks and mortar situated on Boston’s most elegant thoroughfare. Commonwealth Avenue was the city’s finest jewel, a broad, tree-lined, old-world-style boulevard, bisected by a strip of lush green that rendered it unique in this city of narrow, congested streets. It was one of the most prestigious addresses in Boston. As her associates were fond of saying, location, location, location.

The Worthington house—and calling it a house was a great understatement—had been built by Gerald Worthington in 1886 and handed down through several generations of the Worthington family. When the reigning matriarch had died six months ago and rumors had flown that the heirs were interested in dumping the place and splitting the cash, the Boston real estate world had perked up and taken notice. There wasn’t a broker out there who wouldn’t have gladly sacrificed an appendage to get his or her hands on the property. By some miracle, it had been Kaye Winslow the Worthington heirs had called when they were ready to put the place on the market.

Selling this house, with its six-point-five-million-dollar price tag, would show the world that Winslow & DeLucca was capable of standing its ground against the big agencies: ERA, Coldwell Banker, Century 21. This sale, with a motivated seller and the right buyer, would cement her reputation as a major league player, and then she’d finally be able to put her farce of a marriage to Sam Winslow behind her.

Thinking about her soon-to-be-ex-husband always caused tiny frown lines to bracket her mouth, and Kaye made a conscious effort to relax her facial muscles. At thirty-three, she was too young to be getting wrinkles. But Sam knew just which buttons to push, and he pushed them with clocklike regularity. Two years they’d been married. Two years during which she’d catered to his every whim; two years when she’d been there on his arm, the consummate hostess, the perfect little faculty wife; two years of playing the loving stepmother.

Enough was enough. Sam’s usefulness had come to an end. Kaye had gotten what she wanted from him: respectability. As his wife, she’d gained the kind of acceptance she’d spent her entire life seeking. But now that she’d built a name for herself as a respected member of the real estate community, she didn’t need him anymore. It was time to slough him off like an old skin. Time for a new beginning, a new life. One that didn’t include Professor Sam Winslow or his crazy, anorexic daughter.

Kaye walked up the granite steps and unlocked the massive double front doors, letting herself into a sweeping two-story foyer. With its brass wall sconces and its majestic, winding staircase, both fanciful and uncommon in a Back Bay home of this vintage, the foyer never failed to take her breath away. Right now, it was bathed in light as bright afternoon sunshine poured through the antique leaded panes of the fanlight above the door.

As the clicking of her heels on the hardwood floor echoed through all that empty space, she walked from room to room, raising window shades to let in the light. The house possessed the stuffy feel that all houses seemed to acquire when they’d been closed up for any time, as though the lack of bodies moving about left the air too still and stagnating. She set down her briefcase on the kitchen island, flipped it open and took out the secret weapon she always carried. A quick spray here, another quick spray there, and she transformed stuffy into deliciously subtle vanilla. She knew all the tricks for making a house appealing, had learned most of them from her mentor, Marty Scalia, the man who’d taken her under his wing and taught her everything he knew about real estate. A few of them, including the vanilla spray, she’d figured out on her own.

She tucked the spray back into her briefcase and returned to the foyer, to take a last look at herself in the mirror there. Power suit. Check. Hair. Check. Makeup. Check. Everything was in order. The doorbell rang, and Kaye glanced at her Rolex. Two-thirty, just as scheduled. Promptness always garnered extra points with her. Pasting on a professional smile, she opened the door to greet her client.

Her smile wobbled and faltered at sight of the man who stood on the top step, his hands shoved into the pockets of his lightweight jacket. Shit, she thought frantically, her stomach instantly balling into a hard knot. Oh, shit. She’d thought she was rid of him, thought she’d given him what he’d wanted and that he would go away. Thought she’d made it abundantly clear that they had nothing more to say to each other, that she’d made a mistake, and now she was trying to rectify it.

Apparently, she’d failed to make him understand. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

“You know what they say, Kaye.” He smiled, but there was little humor in it. “Sooner or later, the chickens always come home to roost.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that you and I need to talk.”

“I have nothing to say to you. Get out of here. I have a client due any minute.”

“This won’t take long. Are you letting me in, or do I have to strong-arm my way into the house?”

“If you don’t leave, I’ll call the police.”

“I don’t really think you’ll do that. Too many awkward questions to answer. All I want is five minutes of your time. If you don’t let me in, I could make things pretty nasty for you. I could screw up that rosy future you have planned. I could screw up a whole lot of things.”

Glancing past his shoulder at the empty sidewalk, Kaye tried to figure out a way to stall him until reinforcements arrived. But her client was nowhere to be seen. They were alone, the two of them, and if she refused to talk to him, he could destroy her life. He’d have no qualms about it. He was the only person she’d ever known who had fewer scruples than she did.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

“Five minutes,” she snapped. If he scented fear in her, like a wild animal he would chew her up and spit her out. “And if my client shows before then, you leave. Understood?”

Arrogance propelled his smile, and she wanted to slap it from his face. “I thought you’d see it my way,” he said.

Kaye opened the door wider and her visitor stepped across the threshold. Hands flat against the door as she closed it, she took a deep, calming breath. This would all work out. If she was careful, if she used the right words, she could talk her way out of anything. After all, she was Kaye Winslow. She possessed the gift of gab, the power of persuasion. It was what had allowed her to rise so quickly from a nothing little secretary to a respected real estate broker, somebody in whom people like the Worthington heirs were willing to place their trust. As long as she remembered that, as long as she kept a cool head and made no missteps, her carefully constructed little world wouldn’t come crashing down on her head.

Raising her chin in a gesture of defiance, she turned and crossed her arms. Back pressed firmly against the closed door, she said, “I’m listening. Start talking.”

One

Doug Policzki was late for the party.

Here on Comm Ave, where town houses routinely carried seven-figure price tags, the presence of a half-dozen emergency vehicles had brought out the neighbors. They stood in small, hushed clusters, chatting quietly and casting nervous glances toward the house. One of the local TV stations had already caught wind of the situation. If this had been Dorchester, where kids were shot dead on the street daily—black kids, of course—the media wouldn’t have bothered to show up. Murder in Dorchester wasn’t news. But to nobody’s surprise, murder in this staunch bastion of WASP prosperity was deemed newsworthy. Policzki recognized the on-air reporter, a striking redhead who stood with shell-pink compact in hand, checking her makeup before the camera started rolling. She glanced up, met his gaze and studied him for a little longer than was necessary before she decided he was nobody of any importance, and returned to checking her makeup.

The house was impressive, one of those brick and stone monstrosities that the wealthy had built before the turn of the last century as a stronghold against the plebeian masses. He paused to gaze up at it for a moment before he showed his ID to the uniform whose job it was to keep away anybody who didn’t know the secret password. “Policzki,” he said. “Homicide.”

The uniform waved him on. Policzki climbed over the yellow tape that had been used to secure the scene, and sprinted up the granite steps.

At the broad double door, another uniform glanced without interest at his ID and gave him a curt nod. Policzki opened the door and stepped inside the house. Above his head, a massive chandelier threw a million crystalline particles of light over a foyer bigger than Rhode Island. Brass wall sconces highlighted the most spectacular staircase he’d ever seen. Most Boston homes of this vintage had narrow stairways steep enough to test the hardiest Puritan constitution. Whoever had built this house had deviated from the norm, building a wide, graceful spiral that seemed to hang in midair of its own free will.

The rooms were empty. Following the echo of voices to the back of the house, Policzki took in the scene in a single, sweeping glance: the corpse that lay in a crumpled heap on the kitchen floor, one arm outflung, palm up as if pleading for mercy; the forensic tech who whistled tunelessly as he dusted the briefcase on the broad granite island for prints; the paunchy, middle-aged man in a Ralph Lauren suit who sat, seemingly forgotten, on a folding canvas stool, mopping his bald pate with a snow-white linen handkerchief.

Two women knelt beside the corpse, studying it with clinical detachment. As Policzki approached, Lorna Abrams said without looking up, “About time you got here.”

Policzki crouched beside the body and studied with interest the hole drilled into the dead man’s temple. Beneath the man’s head, a pool of blood had started to congeal on the slate floor. “No need to be testy,” he told his partner. “Our friend here’s already dead.”

Neena Bhatti, the doe-eyed assistant M.E., glanced at him, eyes alight with humor, and made a valiant, if unsuccessful, attempt to suppress a grin. “Hey, Doug,” she said.

He was always surprised to hear that nasal Queens accent coming from the lovely and exotic Bhatti. It was like expecting Princess Grace and getting Fran Drescher instead. “Neena,” he acknowledged. “What do we have here?”

“What we have here,” Lorna said briskly, “is a John Doe.”

Policzki raised an eyebrow. “No ID?”

“No wallet, no wedding band, not so much as a sticky label on his shirt that says, Hi. My name is Bruce.”

“As you can see for yourself,” Neena said, “it appears that he died from a single gunshot wound to the head. Small caliber. Nice, neat entry hole. Exit wound’s a little messier. The bullet tore off a chunk of his skull on its way out.”

“Nice visual,” Policzki said. “Any idea who he is?”

“Not a one,” Lorna said. “But the house is for sale. The guy over there in the corner? His name’s Philip Armentrout. He had a two-thirty appointment with Kaye Winslow, of Winslow & DeLucca Realty, to look the place over. He was running a little late, got here at approximately two forty-eight. The house was unlocked, so he walked in and found Mr. Doe here. What he didn’t find was Ms. Winslow.”

Policzki rocked back on his heels. “Any indication of where she might be?”

“Nope,” Lorna said cheerfully. “But the briefcase O’Connell’s dusting for prints belongs to her.”

Policzki glanced briefly in the direction she indicated and said, “So she was here at some point.”

“It sure looks that way.”

Which they both knew thrust Kaye Winslow into the unenviable position of prime suspect, a position she shared with Philip Armentrout, at least until the evidence cleared one or the other of them. Policzki had learned early in his career to take nothing at face value, to question everything, no matter how it looked on the surface. Just because Armentrout said he’d stumbled across the corpse didn’t mean he was telling the truth.

Doug gave the body another long, searching glance and said to Neena, “Do we have an estimated time of death?”

“Need I remind you that fieldwork is an inexact science? I can give you a more accurate assessment once we get Mr. Doe into the lab.”

“Ballpark?” Lorna asked.

“Couple of hours, tops. I’d say he died no more than a half hour before Mr. Armentrout found him.” Neena stood and pulled off her rubber gloves with a snap. “I’m done here.”

“Thanks,” Lorna said. To Policzki she added, “And I actually thought I might get home on time tonight.”

“With your vast experience, you of all people should know better than that.”

She rolled her eyes. “Right. Thanks for setting me straight. I have to get somebody out there to talk to the neighbors. Find out if anybody saw or heard anything. Then we’ll try to locate Ms. Winslow. If we don’t find her lickety-split, we’ll have to issue an APB. She could be the perpetrator. Or…” Lorna paused, met Policzki’s eyes and shrugged.

The message that passed between them was unspoken, but clear. If Winslow wasn’t the perpetrator, chances were good that she was either dead or in serious trouble. “Want me to talk to Armentrout?” he said.

“Have at it. After that, you can check Winslow’s ID for next of kin.”

While Lorna headed outside to rally the troops, Policzki considered how best to address Philip Armentrout. The gentleman in question sat hunched over, his elbows braced on his knees, his head hung low between his shoulders. Obviously not a happy camper. Straightforward and sincere seemed the most appropriate route. “Mr. Armentrout?” Policzki said.

Armentrout looked up, focused on his face, recognized that this was yet another stranger, and scowled. “When can I leave?” he said.

“I’m Detective Policzki. Mind if I ask you a few questions?”

“I already answered questions. Twice. Don’t you people ever talk to each other? This is ridiculous. I already told you everything. I’m a busy man. I have work to get back to.”

Policzki hunched down in front of him, balancing on the balls of his feet. “I understand how busy you are,” he said. “And I realize this has inconvenienced you. But it won’t take long, and when we’re done, you can get back to your busy life. Unfortunately…” he paused, and in the silence he heard the rasp of a zipper as one of the EMTs maneuvered the DOA into a body bag “…the victim over there won’t be able to do that.”

Armentrout winced and closed his eyes. Sighing, he said, “Fine. What do you want to know?”

“Why don’t you tell me everything that happened, starting with the time you arrived?”

“We had a two-thirty appointment. I was twenty minutes late because my one o’clock meeting ran over. I got here about ten of three, knocked on the door. Nobody answered. It was unlocked, so I let myself in. I figured the Winslow woman was somewhere in the house and hadn’t heard me knock. I called her name a couple of times, came down the hallway and around the corner and saw this guy’s feet sticking out from behind the kitchen island. Hell of a shock.”

“I imagine it was. What did you do then?”

Armentrout rubbed the back of his neck with a beefy hand. His eyes were a little bloodshot. “I walked around to check. I thought somebody’d passed out or something, and maybe needed medical attention. I didn’t realized the guy was dead until I saw the blood.”

“How’d you know he was dead?”

Armentrout gave Policzki a long, level look. “I wasn’t born yesterday. It was pretty obvious.”

Fair enough. “What did you do when you realized he was dead?”

“I got the hell out. If there was a killer on the premises, I wasn’t about to hang around and wait to become his next victim. I hightailed it out of there and called 911 from the park across the street. I waited there until the cops arrived.”

“All right. Did you, at any time, touch anything?”

“Just the doorknob.”

“Were you acquainted with the victim? Was he anybody you’d met before?”

Armentrout shook his head. “I figured he was one of Kaye Winslow’s associates. I don’t know who the hell he is. Maybe she can tell you.”

She probably could, Policzki thought, if they could just locate her. “All right, Mr. Armentrout,” he said, “I think we’re done. I’ll need verification of your whereabouts earlier this afternoon, and a number where I can reach you in case I have more questions.”

“Verification of my—what the hell, am I a suspect?”

“It’s routine, sir. You’re the person who found the body. In the absence of a smoking gun or a signed confession, we have to consider you a suspect until we can rule you out. Hopefully that’ll happen sooner rather than later.”

“I don’t believe this.” Armentrout fished in his pocket for his wallet. He pulled out a business card and shoved it into Policzki’s hand. “I go out to look at a house and end up in the middle of a mess like this. My whole goddamn afternoon’s been screwed up. You’d better believe I’ll be crossing this mausoleum off my list of possibilities.” Glowering, he slid the wallet back into his pocket. “Matter of fact, I wouldn’t buy a house in Boston if somebody paid me to take it off their hands. Not after this insanity. Maybe I’ll find something in Newton or Andover. I hear Lexington’s nice.”

He left in a huff, this short, self-important businessman whose schedule had been hopelessly derailed by his discovery of a dead body. Hell of an inconvenience, Policzki thought as he watched him go. A real shame that murder had disrupted the guy’s busy day.

The door slammed shut behind Armentrout. Across the room, O’Connell, the forensics tech, closed up his fingerprint kit. “That went well,” he said.

“Right,” Policzki said. “He didn’t pull a weapon on me, or threaten to have me fired, so I guess in the greater scheme of things, it could have been worse.”

“Oh, yeah. It could’ve been a lot worse.” O’Connell nodded in the direction of the black plastic bag the two EMTs were wheeling toward the front door. “You could’ve been that guy.”

The setting sun poured like honey through the closed windows of the lecture hall, infusing it with the ambience of a sauna. The dog days of summer were a thing of the past, but so was the air-conditioning that had rendered them tolerable. Cheap construction, minimal insulation and a simpleminded administration that insisted the heating system be turned on according to the calendar instead of the thermometer all conspired to ensure that learning take place in the most hostile environment imaginable. In the midst of this tropical paradise, Assistant Professor Sam Winslow sat reading the latest Dan Brown paperback while his art history students waded through the first exam of the semester. Fifty-eight heads leaned over fifty-eight blue books as fifty-eight pens scratched diligently against paper.

Sam had come to this job six years ago with the zealous idealism of a new convert. It had taken him awhile to accept the irrefutable truth that ninety-eight point eight percent of his students simply didn’t give a shit. Back Bay Community College wasn’t the kind of place that bred art majors. His classes were well attended because everybody who graduated from BBCC needed nine hours of humanities credit. They’d heard that Professor Winslow was an easy grader, and how hard, after all, could art history be? With a few notable exceptions—primarily those few students who signed up each semester for his introductory painting class—his students were here for one reason only: the three credits that would magically appear on their transcripts if they paid attention in class, showed up on exam days and regurgitated his words back to him in some kind of meaningful form.

This was what his life had come to: he trafficked in regurgitation. Not a particularly pretty realization, especially at four forty-five on a sticky Indian summer afternoon when the only thing he’d eaten since breakfast was a couple of purple Peeps that had been left to petrify on the table in the faculty lounge. Judging by their cardboard consistency, they’d been there for a while.

At a soft rap on the door, Sam glanced up from his book and saw the face of Lydia Forbes, Dean of Arts and Sciences and his immediate supervisor, framed in the tiny window. Setting down his book, he got up from his chair, crossed the room and, with a slow sweep of his gaze over the classroom—his students were supposed to be adults, but it didn’t hurt to give them the impression that he had eyes in the back of his head—he opened the door and stepped out into the corridor.

“Lydia,” he said, leaving the door open just a crack behind him.

“Sorry to interrupt, but you didn’t look busy.” Six feet tall in her conservative two-inch heels, Lydia met him nearly eye to eye. Thin almost to the point of emaciation, she wore a brown tweed suit, her gray hair pulled back in its customary severe chignon. Eyebrows that were a dark slash in her pale face gave her a look of perpetual surprise. The first time he’d met her, he’d thought she looked just like Miss Grundy, the schoolteacher from the Archie comics. It hadn’t taken him long to see that the outer package was merely professional camouflage for a woman with an infectious laugh, a bawdy sense of humor and a relentless addiction to unfiltered cigarettes. “Take a walk with me,” she said.

He glanced back at the classroom. Reading the uncertainty in his gaze, she said, “For Christ’s sake, Sam, pull that big stick out of your ass. They’re adults. Let them be responsible for their own actions.”

Sam latched the classroom door and fell into step with her, matching her leggy stride along the silent corridor and out into the crisp October afternoon. The sun’s rays, angling between brick buildings, bathed the entire scene in a muted pink glow. Lydia walked two steps from the entryway, fired up a Pall Mall and took a drag. Eyes closed in ecstasy, she exhaled a cloud of blue smoke and said without rancor, “Damn idiotic state laws.”

Behind her back, Sam discreetly waved away the smoke. She took another drag and said, “I forwarded your tenure application to the committee yesterday.”

Moving upwind of the toxic blue cloud, he took a breath of fresh air. Or as fresh as it got on a weekday in downtown Boston. “And?”

She turned and studied him with shrewd blue eyes. Took another puff and said, “I’m worried about Larsen.”

Professor Nyles Larsen was Sam Winslow’s nemesis. He was also the chair of the tenure committee. In theory, if a professor didn’t achieve tenure, there was nothing forcing him to move on. In reality, being denied was a slap in the face, best responded to by making a rapid retreat with tail tucked firmly between legs. There was just one problem with that: Sam didn’t want to retreat. He might have come to teaching by a circuitous route, but now that he was here, he had no intention of going anywhere.

Sam furrowed his brow. “You think he’ll give us trouble?”

“I think Nyles Larsen would take great glee in denying your tenure application. He’s had it in for you since the day you first walked through the door of this place.”

It was true. Larsen had been a member of the search committee that had hired Sam, and when the man had taken an immediate dislike to him, he’d come close to losing out to another candidate. If not for the staunch ally he’d made in Vince Tedeschi, Professor of Mathematics, he’d have ended up standing on a street corner, selling pencils from a cup. Fortunately for Sam, majority vote had ruled the day, but Nyles Larsen continued to wage a one-man campaign against what he claimed were Sam’s mediocre standards and slapdash teaching methods.

“He’s jealous,” Lydia said. “Your students think you walk on water. Nyles puts his students to sleep.”

A pair of twenty-something young women carrying backpacks passed them, talking animatedly, and entered the building through the wide double doors. “So how do we counteract his influence?” Sam said.

“We’ve done as much as we can do,” Lydia said. “I’ve read your materials all the way through. Proofed them twice. Just to be sure. Your tenure packet’s thorough. You’ve provided good documentation. Your student evaluations are top-notch. Your publication record is a little thin, but it’s outweighed by other factors, like your outstanding committee work. Your peer recommendation was stellar.”

Of course it was. If not for him, it would have been his peers sitting on all those mind-numbingly tedious committees. They’d do whatever it took to keep him on board so they could continue nominating him to do the dirty work they were all so desperate to avoid. He figured it was worth the sacrifice. No matter what he was asked to do, he accepted the job with a smile. Damn little ever got accomplished in those committee meetings, but membership always looked good on paper.

“Christ, Lyd,” he said, hating the thread of desperation that ran through his voice, “I have to get tenure. If I can’t make it in this place…” The rest of the sentence went unspoken, but they both knew what he meant. When you started at the bottom, there was nowhere left to fall. “I can’t make a living from painting. And I’m not trained for anything else. If they boot me out of Back Bay, I’ll end up waxing floors at the bus station.”

Lydia took another puff of her cigarette, held in the smoke and exhaled it. Flicking an ash, she said, “You’ve done everything we asked you to do. There’s no reason on God’s green earth why you should be turned down. Not unless Larsen starts flapping his gums, and even then, the rest of the committee should ignore him. The man is irrational, and everybody knows it. They also know he’s determined to hang you out to dry. If anything goes wrong at this point, I’m holding Nyles Larsen personally responsible. If that happens, the little weasel won’t want to cross my path.”

The lowering sun slowly leached the afternoon of its warmth. Just beneath the surface of that golden glow lay October’s surprisingly sharp little teeth, nipping unexpectedly when a sudden arctic gust caught and lifted a strand of Sam’s hair.

“I appreciate the support,” he said. “I owe you.”

“You don’t owe me a thing. I just wanted to give you a heads-up.” She dropped the butt of her cigarette onto the ground and crushed it out with her foot. “And to let you know that I’m watching your back.”

Detective Lorna Abrams had a headache.

She fumbled in her black leather purse for the emergency bottle of Tylenol she always carried, opened the bottle and popped two capsules into her palm. Snapping the cap back on the bottle, she glanced around the interior of the car for something liquid, then said, “To hell with it!” and swallowed them dry.

Policzki, his hands at ten and two on the wheel and his eyes focused on traffic to prevent them from becoming yet another highway statistic, said, “I don’t know how you do that.”

“Easy. I just work up a mouthful of spit and—”

“Thanks,” he said, “but you really don’t have to go into detail.”

“Stop being so spleeny. You’re a cop, for Christ’s sake. Act like one.”

Policzki didn’t respond. It was just as well. When she was in this kind of mood, heads were likely to roll, and Doug Policzki’s head, being the nearest one, was in danger of becoming her first victim.

None of the three telephone numbers listed on Kaye Winslow’s business card had yielded results. The first, her cell phone number, was useless because in the abruptness of her departure, Winslow had left her BlackBerry behind. The second, her private line at Winslow & DeLucca, rang twice and then went directly to voice mail. Lorna had left an urgent message, but the chances of getting a response were probably zip and zilch. That left door number three. But by the time they’d finished up at the scene, it was well past closing time, and the realty office answering machine had directed her to call back after eight o’clock in the morning.

“Three strikes and you’re out,” she muttered.

Policzki glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “Having a bad day, are we?”

“They postponed the court date on the Moldonado case. Again.”

Arturo Moldonado, a soft-spoken supermarket meat cutter who’d lived in the same East Boston apartment for two decades, was known for taking in strays—both the human and the animal variety—and handing out penny candy to the neighborhood kids. One day last October, he’d come home early and discovered his wife in bed with a twenty-two-year-old college dropout friend of their son. Upon seeing his inamorata engaged in steamy passion with another, much younger and more virile man, Moldonado had tiptoed to the kitchen and taken out a meat cleaver—which, in consideration of his occupation, he kept razor sharp—then returned to the bedroom and the still unsuspecting couple, and proceeded to hack them into a jillion pieces. Afterward, he’d called 911, then sat calmly on the couch with the bloody cleaver and waited for the authorities to come and take him away.

“You can’t control the court calendar,” Policzki said. “They’ll do what they’re going to do. All we can do is roll with it.”

His logic was flawless. And maddening. “That isn’t even the worst of it,” Lorna said, rubbing at her throbbing temple. “It’s those crazy people I call relatives that have me one step from the edge and peering down into the abyss.”

“Oh,” he said as the light dawned. “Wedding stuff.”

“Yes, wedding stuff! You know what I did today? I spent my lunch hour watching my nineteen-year-old daughter try on wedding dresses. Do you have any frigging idea how much those things cost?”

Policzki made a noncommittal grunt of sympathy. Of course he was noncommittal, she thought irritably. He didn’t have a clue how much wedding dresses cost. He lived at home with his mother and banked all his money. “Too damn much,” she said, answering her own question. “That’s how much. All for a kid who has her head in the clouds and doesn’t have a clue what life is really about.”

And that was the crux of the matter: Krissy was too young to get married. She was nineteen years old, barely out of high school. A baby. She was also headstrong and determined, so the wedding preparations rolled merrily along, gathering momentum and gaining in size, until they threatened to crush anybody who failed to jump out of the way.

“Silk and taffeta,” Lorna grumbled. “Tulle and organza. What the hell is organza, anyway?”

“I haven’t a clue.”

She glanced out the window, down a darkened side street. “Ed and I got married at city hall. I wore a navy-blue suit and carried a bouquet of carnations. We spent our wedding night at a hotel in Revere, then got up and went to work the next day. We did not—I repeat not—spend two weeks on Maui. Who the hell was the idiot that decided the bride’s parents are supposed to pay for the wedding?”

“The tradition dates back to ancient times,” Policzki said, “when the bride’s family was expected to provide a dowry to the family of the groom, presumably in payment for taking her off their hands.”

Lorna snorted. “If I’d known that was all it took, I’d have gladly paid Derek to take her off my hands. He’s welcome to all of her—the nose ring, the messy room, the Real World addiction. The posters of Heath Ledger and Orlando Bloom. He’s an easygoing kid. I could’ve paid him off for a tenth of what this wedding will cost me. They could’ve eloped. Think of the money I would have saved.”

“I think this is it.” Policzki pulled up to the curb behind an aging Volvo wagon. Soft light spilled through a bay window of the South End town house onto the shrubbery below, giving the place the cozy, inviting look of a Thomas Kinkade painting. A shadow moved behind a curtained window. Policzki turned off the engine, and by silent agreement, they simultaneously opened their doors and stepped out of the car.

The day’s warmth had given way to a crisp, clear evening. As they moved briskly toward the front door of the house, Lorna said, “So I’ll be good cop and you can be bad cop.”

“How come I never get to be good cop?”

“Are you kidding, Policzki? With that grim expression of yours, you’d scare people half to death. Tell me. Do you take the face off when you go to bed at night, or is this a 24–7 kind of thing?”

“Hey, that’s not fair. I love babies and flowers and puppies.”

“I know. You’re just incredibly earnest. Or incredibly dedicated. Or incredibly something.”

They climbed the steps and Lorna rang the bell. Muffled footsteps approached and the door opened.

Lorna’s first thought was that Sam Winslow—if, indeed, the man standing in the open doorway, outlined by soft lamplight, was Sam Winslow—was a sinfully handsome man, with coal-black hair worn to his shoulders, electric blue eyes and a lean, craggy face topped by cheekbones sharp enough to slice diamonds. Somewhere in the vicinity of forty, if the wisps of gray at his temples were any indication, he could be a model—or a stand-in for George Clooney—if he ever tired of teaching. She could imagine him in a magazine layout, standing in a room full of glamorous and playful people, wearing Armani and sipping from a glass of Chivas Regal.

Christ on a crutch. His female students must be tripping over their own feet just to get close to him. Probably a few of the male ones were, too.

He eyed them warily. “Yes?”

“Sam Winslow?” Policzki said.

“Yes.”

The young detective held up his badge. “Policzki and Abrams, Boston PD. Is your wife home, sir?”

“My wife? I—no, actually, she’s not. What’s this about?”

“May we come in?”

“It’s dinnertime. I really don’t think—”

“Professor Winslow,” Lorna said, “there was an incident this afternoon involving your wife. I think you’d better let us in.”

“An incident?” He hesitated, looked momentarily nonplussed. Then he nodded and moved away from the door.

Winslow closed the door behind them, cleared his throat and ran a hand through his perfectly coiffed hair. “What’s this about?” he repeated.

“Professor Winslow,” Lorna said, “when was the last time you spoke with your wife?”

“This morning,” he said. “We had breakfast together. Then she went her way and I went mine. You still haven’t told me what’s going on. What kind of incident?”

“It’s almost seven o’clock,” Policzki said. “Your wife isn’t home, and you haven’t spoken to her since this morning. Is this your typical daily routine?”

“Kaye works crazy hours. Look, I wish you people would tell me what the hell is going on. Is Kaye in some kind of trouble? Has something happened to her?”

“Your wife had an appointment this afternoon to show a house on Commonwealth Avenue,” Lorna said, watching his eyes carefully for even the merest flicker of recognition. Or guilt. But she saw neither. “When the client arrived, Mrs. Winslow wasn’t there.”

Winslow wrinkled his brow in puzzlement and ran a hand along his jaw. “I don’t understand. You mean she never showed up?”

“Oh, she showed up,” Policzki said. “Her briefcase was there. Her PDA and her wallet were there. But no Kaye. We did find somebody else there, though.”

Winslow crossed his arms. “Who?”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Lorna said. “Whoever he was, he’d been shot in the head. Does your wife own a gun, Professor?”

Two

Winslow’s color wasn’t good. He sat on a cream leather sofa, directly across from Lorna, who’d snagged herself a comfy armchair, while Policzki wandered the room, taking a casual inventory of its contents. The professor had loosened his tie and unbuttoned his collar, but to Policzki he still looked like something that should be hung out to dry on a wash day morning. His pallor might be due to the shock of learning that his wife was missing. On the other hand, it could be traced to a more sinister source. Guilt had a way of taking its toll on a man.

“The very suggestion is ludicrous,” Winslow said.

Lorna leaned back in her chair. “Why is it ludicrous?”

“A, we don’t own a gun. And B, even if we did, there’s not a chance in hell that Kaye would ever shoot it. She’d be too worried about breaking a nail or getting her hands dirty.”

His ears attuned to every nuance of their conversation, Policzki studied the collection of African tribal masks that hung on the wall above the fireplace mantel. They looked like the genuine article. Somebody—presumably the good professor—had done a good deal more traveling in his lifetime than had Douglas Policzki of Somerville, Massachusetts. Six semesters spent at an Arizona university was hardly in the same league as a trip to the Dark Continent.

The Winslows had eclectic tastes. An antique open-fronted china cabinet housed a large collection of Hummel figurines. At least the Winslows kept them all in one place. Policzki’s mother collected Hummels, and she had dozens of them scattered all over the house, an excess of cuteness so saccharine it made his teeth ache.

“My wife did not kill anybody,” Winslow said. “There has to be some other explanation. Have you talked to the owner of the building? Maybe this dead guy is one of the Worthingtons.”

Policzki picked up one of the offending objects, a dimpled boy in knee pants and tight curls who carried a shepherd’s crook. Odd, he thought, absently running his thumb over its cool, smooth surface, that Winslow should seem more interested in the dead man than in his missing wife.

“Technically, the house is owned collectively by the Worthington heirs,” Lorna said. “The executor of the estate, Bruce Worthington, is out of the country right now, traveling in Europe. We’re trying to reach him.”

Policzki set down Little Boy Blue, leaned against the china cabinet and crossed his arms.

“Maybe…” Winslow’s brows drew together in concentration. “Maybe she witnessed something that frightened her. Maybe she saw the killer.” His skin, taut across his cheekbones, seemed almost too small for his face. Too tight. “Maybe,” he said, “she’s hiding from someone.”

Policzki met Lorna’s gaze and held it for an instant. She leaned closer to the professor, elbows braced on her knees. “What makes you say that?”

Winslow loosened his tie a little further, but it did nothing to heighten his color. He still looked like somebody’s washed-out bed linens. “No particular reason. I’m just thinking out loud. Trying to come up with some logical explanation.”

“Have you noticed anything unusual about your wife’s behavior lately? Any personality changes? Has she seemed more irritable than usual? More nervous? More secretive?”

“None of the above,” Winslow said. “Kaye’s just been her usual self.”

“Which is?”

“I’m not sure I understand the question, Detective.”

“If you could describe your wife to me in one word, what would it be?”

“Ah. I see. I’d probably say driven.”

“Driven?”

Winslow shifted position, digging his backside deeper into the sofa’s plush cushions. “My wife’s enough of a workaholic to make the rest of us look like slackers. I know it sounds like a cliché, but Kaye eats, drinks and breathes real estate. She’s never off duty. Evenings, weekends, holidays. If she’s not out showing properties, she’s on the phone, drumming up business.”

“I’d think,” Policzki said, “that might cause friction in the household.”

Winslow blinked a couple of times, as though he’d forgotten there was a third person in the room. “Friction?”

“Well,” Policzki said, his gaze focused directly on the professor’s face, “if my wife worked 24–7, after a while I’d start to feel neglected.”

“I’m not neglected. There’s nothing wrong with my marriage, if that’s what you’re implying. Kaye and I are adults. I understand the importance of her job, and she understands the importance of mine. We do our best to accommodate each other’s needs.”

Across the room, Lorna crossed shapely legs and adjusted the hem of her skirt. “Then you don’t fight at all?” she said.

“Of course we fight. All couples fight.”

“Of course,” she agreed. “About what?”

Had Winslow gone even paler, or was it a trick of the light? “I don’t know,” he said. “What does any couple fight about? Maybe I left the toilet seat cover up again, or she left the cap off the toothpaste. Or I forgot to pick up milk on the way home.”

Policzki stepped away from the china cabinet and stood behind Lorna’s chair. “Tolstoy once said that all happy families are alike, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Winslow’s mouth thinned and his eyes lost some of their warmth. “We’re not unhappy, Detective.”

Soothingly, Lorna said, “Nobody said you were.”

“He implied it. I’m trying to be cooperative.”

“And we appreciate it,” Lorna said. “Let’s change direction for a minute. What was your wife wearing when she left the house this morning?”

“Ah…let me think.” Winslow ran the fingers of both hands through his hair while he thought about it. “A red suit,” he said finally. “Yeah, that’s it. A red suit and matching heels. White silk chemise top underneath.”

“Any jewelry?”

“Just her wedding ring. A wide gold band with a single marquise-cut diamond. One carat. Oh, and her Rolex. She never leaves the house without it.”

“Just like American Express. Karl Malden would be proud. And she was driving her car this morning? The red 2005 BMW?”

“That’s right.”

“Dr. Winslow,” Policzki said, “where were you this afternoon between, say, two and four?”

He wasn’t imagining the hostility he saw in Winslow’s eyes. It was real. But he had to give the guy points for control. “I was in my office,” Winslow said. “Working. I teach two classes every Tuesday. I spent the time between classes doing online research for a paper I’m presenting at a symposium in Kansas City next month.”

“Is there anybody who can vouch for your presence? Did anybody see you there? Did you talk to anybody, take any phone calls, while you were there?”

A muscle twitched in Winslow’s jaw. He looked at Lorna as if seeking support. When it didn’t come, he said, “No. I kept the door shut to discourage interruptions. If I leave it open, I don’t get any work done.”

“So you have no alibi for the time in question. That could pose a problem, Professor, if we don’t locate your wife.”

“Look…” Winslow’s eyes suddenly went damp. “You have to know how worried I am about Kaye. If something’s happened to her—” He closed his eyes and shook his head. A single tear escaped from the corner of his eye. Policzki watched in fascination as it trickled down his cheek. “No,” he said after a moment of silence, “I won’t even go there. Not yet. I refuse to believe that anything’s happened to her. There’s a reasonable explanation for all of this. I don’t know what it is yet, but we’ll find it.”

Gently, Lorna said, “Does your wife have any enemies, Professor? Anybody you can think of who might wish her harm?”

He looked at her, blinked a couple of times. “Enemies? What possible reason could anyone have for wishing my wife harm?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.”

Winslow had begun to perspire profusely. The underarms of his shirt were ringed with sweat. “No,” he said, his voice a little shakier than before. “I’m not aware of any enemies who might wish her harm.”

“She hasn’t mentioned anything about problems at work?” Lorna said. “A tiff with a co-worker, a disgruntled client? A deal that went south? A competitor who thinks Winslow & DeLucca is horning in on his territory and wants to even the odds?”

“She hasn’t said anything to me. You should probably talk to Mia. If anything like that was going on, Mia would know.”

“Who’s Mia?”

“Mia DeLucca. My sister. She and Kaye are business partners.”

Lorna and Policzki exchanged glances. “Call her,” Lorna said. “Get her over here.”

Mia DeLucca sat in a line of cars at the tollbooth, inching her way forward, one car length at a time, in mortal danger of being asphyxiated by exhaust fumes. Ahead of her, Boston rose like the Emerald City, a breathtaking vista of twinkling lights and soaring buildings. Behind her lay ninety miles of turnpike, ninety miles of brutal, bumper-to-bumper traffic, ninety miles of crazed Massachusetts drivers, at least half of them fueled by road rage.

The trip from Springfield had been a nightmare. After eight hours of tedious real estate seminars, all she wanted was to go home and soak in a hot bubble bath. But she’d been expected to eat dinner with the rest of the presenters before they went their separate ways, so she’d made the best of it and splurged on a meal of shrimp scampi and a single glass of white wine. Even taking into account the ninety minutes that dinner took from start to finish, she still would’ve made it home by seven-thirty if fate hadn’t intervened in the form of a semi truck that had jackknifed and overturned on the Mass Pike somewhere near Framingham. It had taken over an hour for emergency personnel to right it, while Mia and nine trillion other drivers sat at a standstill.

When she realized how late she would be, she’d called Kevin from her cell phone so he wouldn’t worry. She should have known better. Her son had expressed sympathy in typical unfocused teenage fashion, meaning he was wrapped up in some computer game and hadn’t been thinking about her at all. He’d undoubtedly forget her existence again the instant he hung up the phone. It was a good thing that she planned to amass a fortune in real estate before she retired. If Kevin was responsible for taking care of her in her old age, she’d probably end up living in a refrigerator box on some downtown street corner. Her son would be too busy playing Grand Theft Auto to remember the aged crone who’d given birth to him all those years ago.

The line of cars inched closer to the tolls, and as her engine shuddered in protest, Mia drummed her fingernails on the steering wheel. Somewhere between Springfield and Boston, her odometer had rolled past three hundred thousand miles. It was nearing time to send the ancient Blazer to the boneyard, but she was loath to spend the money on a new car. At least the old girl was paid for. Embarrassing to drive, but paid for. The previous owner, a twenty-year-old kid from Revere, had pimped it out with shiny black paint, chrome wheels and opaque, black-tinted windows. Kev, of course, loved the damn thing. He called it her Mafia staff car.

Kaye, on the other hand, was forever hounding her to buy a new car. Her sister-in-law was a strong proponent of the you-have-to-look-successful-to-be-successful philosophy. That might work fine for Kaye, who drove a flashy BMW and dressed like Ivana Trump. But Kaye wasn’t feeding and clothing a seventeen-year-old boy with a hollow leg and feet that wouldn’t stop growing. She wasn’t paying off student loans and a killer mortgage. And she certainly wasn’t going it alone. She had a husband to help pay the bills, a husband who was solid, respectable and gainfully employed.

Mia finally reached the tollbooth. The toll taker, a sallow-faced man in his sixties, wordlessly took the five-dollar bill she offered, and shoved the change into her hand with sullen impatience. Checking her rearview mirror, she pulled away from the tolls, changed lanes and shot across town through the Big Dig tunnel in a quarter of the time it had taken back in the days of the elevated expressway. She took a downtown exit and quickly found herself in the heart of the North End. Boston’s Little Italy, with its narrow, congested streets, its restaurants and its pastry and butcher shops, possessed an old-world charm and a warm, neighborhood feel Mia hadn’t known existed until she had married Nick and moved here. Now, she couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

She climbed the hill and turned onto her street, found a tiny opening at the curb only two houses down from her own, and squeezed into it. Shutting off the engine, she studied her house, assessing its curb appeal, admiring the brick and stone exterior, the bay windows, the freshly painted front door. She’d bought the house seven months ago, and still the sight of it sent a tiny thrill down her spine. She hadn’t been in the market for a house; she’d originally brought a client here, a thirtyish yuppie banker looking to invest in the recently fashionable North End. He’d wanted something he could buy cheaply, renovate and turn over in five or six years. The house had just come on the market, and the asking price, while a little steep, still didn’t reflect the skyrocketing prices she’d been seeing all over the Greater Boston Area.

The house hadn’t been what her client was looking for. Too expensive, too much work to be done. But Mia had walked through the front door and fallen instantly in love. The house might need work, but she was handy with a hammer and a paintbrush. She’d walked from room to room, picturing what she could do with the place even as she extolled its virtues to her client and prayed he wouldn’t love it the way she did.

It was the courtyard that sold her. It was exquisite, a sun-dappled oasis tucked away behind the house, accessible to the street only by a narrow alley that ended in a locked wrought-iron gate. Although it had been a blustery February day when she’d looked at the house, she had seen the tiny courtyard’s potential. She could picture it blooming in a riot of color, with tubs of pink and white impatiens and long wooden planters overflowing with red geraniums. A park bench over here, maybe some kind of water fountain over there, with cascading sprays of greenery everywhere.

She’d grown up without flowers, without any of the feminine touches a mother would have brought to her life. Johnny Winslow hadn’t exactly been Martha Stewart. Mia’s old man had been too busy drinking and committing the petty crimes that kept him on a first-name basis with various members of the local constabulary to place any stock in something as frivolous as flowers. Or any home decor more exotic than a tableful of empty Pabst Blue Ribbon bottles.

Mia had gone home that night and spent hours crunching numbers. Winslow & DeLucca was doing well, but she and Kaye had agreed at the start of their partnership not to bleed it dry. They lived on their personal commissions and filtered most of the agency’s share right back into the firm. The real estate business was notoriously unpredictable, and she had to be sure she had enough money tucked away to cover the next dry spell. In another year, Kevin would be off to college, and Mia didn’t even want to think about what that would cost.

She’d weighed her options and her finances carefully. It had been close, but in the end, the little courtyard, with its old-world charm, had won out. In the morning, she’d gone into the office, called the listing Realtor and made an offer. It had been accepted immediately. Four weeks later, she’d signed papers and the previous owner had handed over the keys. Now she had a home that belonged to her (or would, after 356 more payments), a never-ending renovation project that filled every hour of her spare time, and a hefty mortgage that kept her awake at night thinking up creative ways to put more cash into her bank account. Fear of starvation, she’d discovered, was a powerful motivator.

She found Kevin at his desk, his lanky six-foot-three frame hunched over a gargantuan computer monitor. He handled the joy stick with rapid and accurate movements as the vroom-vroom of racing automobile engines, accompanied by squealing tires and a frenzy of gunshots, poured from the wall-mounted speakers. Pausing in the open doorway, Mia made a sweeping assessment of his room: the empty pizza box beside his desk; the clunky size-thirteen sneakers—bought a month ago and probably already outgrown—carelessly discarded in the middle of the floor; the dog-eared Star Wars poster; the dirty socks collecting dust bunnies beneath the unmade bed. Kev’s housekeeping skills might be lacking, but this was his space. As long as there were no drugs hidden in his underwear drawer, as long as the dirty socks eventually got washed and nothing was growing under the bed, she let him keep his room the way he wanted it.

Leaning against the door frame, she said, “Killed any bad guys lately?”

“Shit! I mean, shoot.” Kevin glanced warily over his shoulder. “Geez, Mom, you just got me killed. Now I have to start all over again.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Forgive me for the intrusion.”

“You could at least knock first. You scared the crap out of me.” Finally remembering the manners she’d drilled into his head since birth, he leaned back in his chair, swiveled in her direction and said, “So how was the seminar?”

“Have you ever watched paint dry? Multiply that times ten, and you’ll have an idea.”

His grin was quick and broad. “Sorta like sitting through Miss Crandall’s English class.”

“Sorta like that.”

“So,” he said, “I have something to ask you.”

Cautiously, she nodded. “Okay. Ask.”

“Michelle’s family is flying down to Tampa for the Columbus Day weekend. They’re leaving on Thursday night. They invited me to come along. Can I go?”

“They’re flying all the way to Tampa for three days?”

“Three days, four nights. They do it all the time. They have a condo down there, and it’s right on the beach. There’s plenty of room. I’d have my own room and everything. It would be really cool, Mom. The sun, the sand, the swaying palm trees.”

The sex, she thought, but didn’t say it. What kind of supervision would the Olsons provide? Would it be sufficient to keep Kevin from sneaking into Michelle’s bedroom while the rest of the family was asleep? She knew the kids were deeply involved, and she’d spoken to Kevin some time ago about safe sex. Mia wasn’t sure if their relationship had reached that level yet, but if it hadn’t, it was bound to in the near future. Anybody who looked at the two of them together could tell. One of Mia’s biggest fears was that Michelle would get pregnant and both their young lives would be ruined. Could she trust her son to exercise good judgment?

Mia took a deep breath. “Who’s paying for your plane ticket?”

It wasn’t the question she wanted to ask, and they both knew it. But because it was the opening she’d provided, he jumped into it eagerly. “Don’t worry, Mom, I already told them I’d pay for it myself. I knew you wouldn’t want me to let them take on the extra expense. This time of year, a ticket to Florida’s pretty cheap if you buy it online. I have enough money saved up. I already talked to Denny. He says I can have the time off from work. And all my teachers are giving me my assignments early so I won’t miss anything important.”

Her son was one clever boy. He’d covered all the bases. “Let me think about it,” she said. “How soon do you have to have an answer?”

“Tomorrow. Mr. Olson needs to know how many tickets to buy.”

“I’ll let you know in the morning. Right now, I’m taking a hot bath.”

She started to move away from the doorway, but his voice stopped her. “Mom?”

Mia turned back to her son, waited. “I know what you’re worried about,” he said, raising his gaze to hers. “Michelle and I are seventeen years old. We’re smart and we’re careful.” A flush spread across his cheeks, but he bravely continued. “We respect each other, and we don’t take chances. We know how much we have to lose. So please don’t worry about us. We know what we’re doing, and we’re acting like responsible adults.”

Well. It looked as if she had her answer. Something tightened inside Mia’s chest, and she felt a momentary urge to cry over the realization that her son was sexually active. He was so young. It seemed just yesterday he was taking his first steps, learning to ride a bike, becoming an Eagle Scout. Was he emotionally mature enough to handle a sexual relationship? Who would guide him through those shark-infested waters? For the first time in Kevin’s young life, she felt totally inadequate as a parent. She’d done well, raising him alone after Nick died, but there were times when a boy needed a father, and this was one of them.

Mia stepped back into her son’s room, leaned over his chair and gave him a hug. “I’m proud of you,” she said.

Most kids his age, male kids anyway, would have struggled to escape, but not Kevin. He hugged her back with the same enthusiasm with which he faced everything in life. “Thanks, Mom,” he said. “I’m pretty proud of you, too.”

Kevin DeLucca was his own person. He didn’t let peer pressure influence him, and he didn’t give a rat’s behind that it wasn’t cool to actually like your parents. Most adolescents were sullen and sulky, but Kevin was sunny and upbeat. His and Mia’s relationship was based on trust, mostly because he had never given her any reason not to trust him. Mia knew how lucky she was to have a son like that.

“I’ll talk to you in the morning,” she promised. “Don’t stay up too late.”

She’d just started to run her bath when the phone rang. It was past ten o’clock, late for a phone call, and for an instant, the old fear crept up through her, fanning out in a wall of flame across her chest and tightening around her throat. Back in the day, back when she was a kid, a call after 10:00 p.m. invariably meant that Dad was in trouble again. Back in jail on a D&D, occasionally something worse.

But those days were in the distant past. It had been fifteen years since she’d last seen Johnny Winslow, nearly as long since a late-night phone call meant trouble. It was probably just Bev, calling to remind her about an early morning appointment. Or one of Kev’s buddies who’d chosen to ignore her no-calls-after-nine-o’clock rule.

Kevin’s voice yanked her back to the present. “Mom,” he yelled, “it’s for you.”

Tying her soft flannel robe more tightly around her, she eyed the claw-foot bathtub with great longing before turning off the taps and padding barefoot into her bedroom. “I’ve got it,” she said into the telephone receiver, and heard the click as Kevin hung up. “Hello?”