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Renee are home, I said, referring to my next-door neighbors, I can sleep on
their sofa, and they can drop me at the airport on their way to the Hamptons
in the morning. You two have better things to do, okay? Try solving this mess
before anyone else is killed.
My call awakened David, as we knew it would, but he was more than gracious.
Renee made up the sofa bed while Mike parked my Jeep in my garage and Mercer
escorted me up to my own apartment so I could grab my robe as well as a shirt
and pair of leggings to wear in the morning.
Want me to wait while you pack things to take with you to the country?
I ve got everything I need up there, I said, as I gave him a hug and opened
the door to David s apartment with his spare key, which I kept in my dresser
drawer. Thanks. Call me if anything happens before I see you on Monday.
I undressed, took a steaming hot shower, and wrapped the terry robe around me.
I was too jumpy to sleep, but I turned out the light and rested, with their
dog, Prozac, curled up by my side.
We left the apartment at seven, and David walked me in to the gate to make
sure I got on the flight. There were the usual number of no-shows, and ten
minutes before takeoff I boarded the thirty-seat Dash 8 and fell asleep for
the short flight to the Vineyard.
I had a monthly parking spot at the airport. It was a brilliantly clear day
and a good ten degrees cooler than it had been in the city all week. I put the
top down on my little red Miata and drove up-island to Chilmark, to the
house.
Once I passed the crest of the drive, where my friend Isabella Lascar had been
killed, the gray-shingled farmhouse came into sight and, beyond it, the
stunning view of Vineyard Sound, which never failed to take my breath away.
This is the one place on earth where every tension I have dissolves, and where
I have spent the happiest hours of my life.
My caretaker had unlocked and prepared the house for me, and I went inside to
open the windows, settle in, and see what messages were on the answering
machine.
The first was from Nina Baum, calling late last night from California. Chapman
had phoned to tell her about the incident in the garage, and she was checking
on me as well as urging me to get on a plane and come out to Malibu until the
investigation was over. Nina, by luck of the draw, had been my college
roommate freshman year at Wellesley. She remained my closest friend, and she
and her husband were often my refuge when I wanted to hang out away from the
problems that my job presented.
The message I d been waiting for was next, the voice of Jacob Tyler calling
from an airport phone booth. It s Jake here. Can t find you anywhere all I
get are machines. It s Friday morning and I m on my way to the Vineyard, if
that s still the plan. I ve gone from China to California, then an overnight
in Chicago. I m due into Boston before noon. And if there s no fog, should be
on a Cape Air hop that gets me there at one thirty. I ll try your office in a
bit. If you re not at the airport, I ll just take a cab up to the house. Miss
you.
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I took the portable out onto the deck and dialed Laura s number.
Alex? Are you okay? Mercer left a message on my voice mail telling me not to
expect you today. Is everything all right?
It s fine. I m just whipped. We worked late last night, so I m taking a long
weekend. If people are looking for me, you can reach me on the Vineyard.
Anything interesting yet?
Jacob Tyler called first thing. He didn t leave a message, cause I couldn t
tell him what your plans were. And Robert Scott, from University of Virginia
Law School. Wants to know if you can do a lecture about public service this
fall.
I ll take care of Tyler. Would you call Bob Scott back and tell him I d be
glad to, if he can suggest some dates? Maybe I would tell the students about
last night s encounter. What the D.A. s Office lacks in financial rewards, it
makes up for in drama and intrigue.
I changed into shorts and a T-shirt, set the dining room table for two, went
out to the barn to get birdseed to fill the feeders, and sat back down on the
deck to read the New York Times and the Vineyard Gazette. The osprey nest at
the foot of my hilltop, on the side of Nashaquitsa Pond, had a nestful of
babies, being hovered over by their mother. Goldfinches and cardinals fought
for the seed I had just put out, and my wild-flower field teemed with the
pink, lavender, and white heads of cosmos and the cobalt blue of Oriental
poppies.
This was the place that I considered my home. Professionally, I thrived and
flourished in the fast-paced life I led in New York City. Most of my friends
were there, and I had been born and raised in a suburban village in nearby
Westchester County, so my parents and brothers were frequently in and out of
town. But this island, especially the quiet rural end on which my house was
sited, was where I came to relax and to restore the tranquillity that eluded
me in the midst of an intense investigation.
Most of my life had been a charmed one. I was one of three children the only
daughter of loving parents whose marriage was still not only a sound one, but
a great romance as well. The trust fund endowed by my father s invention, the
Cooper-Hoffman valve, had been used to give me a first-class education, first
at Wellesley and then at the University of Virginia School of Law. It
permitted me to indulge my dream of working in the public sector without the
enormous burden of student loans that forced so many of my colleagues to leave
the prosecutor s office for more lucrative careers. And for frivolous
interests like travel and my collections of first-edition books and antique
jewelry, it was a route to some indulgences that I would never otherwise have
been able to afford at this stage in life.
While the Vineyard had offered me some of the most spectacular days of my
life, it also held for me my most difficult memories. Adam Nyman, the
physician I had fallen madly in love with while I was at law school, had
summered here all of his life. When we became engaged the year that I
graduated, we bought this house together. It had belonged to the widow of a
fisherman whose family was one of the original group of settlers in the
seventeenth century. I had delighted in having it redecorated in celebration
of our wedding. A local artist had stenciled the walls in pastel designs she
had copied from a set of antique hand-painted Limoges plates my mother had
given us as an engagement gift. The evocative landscapes by island artists
that Adam had collected over the years had been reframed and hung throughout
the cheerful rooms.
Our families and friends had been assembled in the homes of friends and
country inns around the island for the wedding weekend. The house and its
gardens had never looked more beautiful than during that lush summer after an
unusually rainy spring.
And then came the morning phone call that ripped my spirit and heart to
pieces. Adam had completed his last rounds in Charlottesville and had set off
late in the day to drive all night for the trip to the island. It was my
mother who took the call from the state police, and it was she and Nina who
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sat me down on my bed to tell me that Adam s car had been knocked off a bridge
in Connecticut by another driver and demolished on the rocks in the river
below.
Everything sealed up inside me for years, or so it seemed at the time. I had
been afraid to let myself get close to anyone else for fear that something I
loved would be seized from me when I was happiest. I went aimlessly from room
to room in the house on those rare weekends I could bring myself to come up
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