"1 called my answering machine before we left," Abby said.
"And?"
"Five hang-ups."
"Cliff?"
"I'm willing to make a bet," she said. "Not that he wants to talk to me. I suspect he's just trying to figure out if I'm home, has probably cruised past my parking lot a number of times, too, looking for my car."
"Why would he do that if he's not interested in talking to you?"
"Maybe he doesn't know that I've changed my locks."
"Then he must be stupid. One would think he would realize you would put two and two together when his series ran."
"He's not stupid," Abby said, staring out the side window.
I opened the sunroof.
"He knows I know. But he's not stupid," she said again. "Cliff's fooled everyone. They don't know he's crazy."
"Hard to believe he could have gotten as far as he has if he's crazy," I said.
"That's the beauty of Washington," she replied cynically. "The most successful, powerful people in the world are there and half of them are crazy, the other half neurotic. Most of them are immoral. Power does it. I don't know why Watergate surprised anyone."
"What has power done to you?"
I asked.
"I know how it tastes, but I wasn't there long enough to get addicted."
"Maybe you're lucky."
She was silent.
I thought of Pat Harvey. What was she doing these days? What was going through her mind? "Have you talked to Pat Harvey?"
I asked Abby.
"Yes."
"Since the articles ran in the Post?"
She nodded.
"How is she?"
"I once read something written by a missionary to what was then the Congo. He recalled encountering a tribesman in the jungle who looked perfectly normal until he smiled. His teeth were filed to points. He was a cannibal."
Her voice was flat with anger, her mood suddenly dark. I had no idea what she was talking about.
"That's Pat Harvey," she went on. "I dropped by to see her before heading out to Roanoke the other day. We talked briefly about the stories in the Post, and I thought she was taking it all in stride until she smiled. Her smile made my blood run cold."
I didn't know what to say.
"That's when I knew Cliff's stories had pushed her over the edge. Deborah's murder pushed Pat as far as I thought she could go. But the stories pushed her further. I remember when I talked to her I had this sense that something wasn't there anymore. After a while I figured out what's not there is Pat Harvey."
"Did she know her husband was having an affair?"
"She does now."
"If it's true," I added.
"Cliff wouldn't write something that he couldn't back up, attribute to a credible source."
I wondered what it would take to push me to the edge. Lucy, Mark? If I had an accident and could no longer use my hands or went blind? I did not know what it would take to make me snap. Maybe it was like dying. Once you were gone you didn't know the difference.
We were at Old Towne shortly after noon. The apartment complex where Jill and Elizabeth had lived was unremarkable, a honeycomb of buildings that all looked the same. They were brick with red awnings announcing block numbers over the main entrances; the landscaping was a patchwork of winter-brown grass and narrow margins of flowerbeds covered in woodchips. There were areas for cookouts with swing sets, picnic tables, and grills.
We stopped in the parking lot and stared up at what had been Jill's balcony. Through wide spaces in the railing two blue-and-whitewebbed chairs rocked gently in the breeze. A chain dangled from a hook in the ceiling, lonely for a potted plant. Elizabeth had lived on the other side of the parking lot. From their respective residences the two friends would have been able to check on each other.
They could watch lights turn on and off, know when the other got up and went to bed, when one was home or not.
For a moment, Abby and I shared a depressed silence.
Then she said, "They were more than friends, weren't they, Kay?"
"To answer that would be hearsay."
She smiled a little. "To tell you the truth, I wondered about it when I was working on the stories. It crossed my mind, at any rate. But no one ever suggested it or even hinted."
She paused, staring out. "I think I know what they felt like."
I looked at her.
"It must have been the way I felt with Cliff. Sneaking, hiding, spending half your energy worrying about what people think, fearing they somehow suspect."
"The irony is," I said, putting the car in gear, "that people don't really give a damn. They're too preoccupied with themselves."
"I wonder if Jill and Elizabeth would ever have figured that out."
"If their love was greater than their fear, they would have figured it out eventually."
"Where are we going, by the way?"
She looked out her window at the roadside streaming past.
"Just cruising," I said. "In the general direction of downtown. " I had never given her an itinerary. All I had said was that I wanted to "look around."
"You're looking for that damn car, aren't you?"
"It can't hurt to look."
"And just what are you going to do if you find it, Kay?., "Write the plate number down, see who it comes back to this time."
"Well" - she started to laugh - "if you find a 1990 charcoal Lincoln Mark Seven with a Colonial Williamsburg sticker on the rear bumper, I'll pay you a hundred dollars."
"Better get your checkbook out. If it's here, I'm going to find it."
And I did, not half an hour later, by following the age-old rule of how you find something lost. I retraced my steps. When I returned to Merchant's Square the car was sitting there big as life in the parking lot, not far from where we had spotted it the first time when its driver had stopped to ask directions.
"Jesus Christ," Abby whispered. "I don't believe it."
The car was unoccupied, sunshine glinting off the glass. It looked as if it had just been washed and waxed.
There was a parking sticker on the left side of the rear bumper, the plate number ITU-144. Abby wrote it down.
"This is too easy, Kay. It can't be right."
"We don't know that it's the same car."
I was being scientific now. "It looks the same, but we can't be sure."
I parked some twenty spaces away, tucking my Mercedes between a station wagon and a Pontiac, and sat behind the wheel scanning the storefronts. A gift shop, a picture-framing shop, a restaurant. Between a tobacco shop and a bakery was a bookstore, small, inconspicuous, books displayed in the window. A wooden sign hung over the door, with the name "The Dealer's Room" painted on it in Colonial-style calligraphy.
"Crossword puzzles," I said under my breath, and a chill ran up my spine.
"What?"
Abby was still watching the Lincoln.
"Jill and Elizabeth liked crossword puzzles. They often went out to breakfast on Sunday mornings and picked up the New York Times. " I was opening my door.
Abby put a hand on my arm, restraining me. "No, Kay. Wait a minute. We've got to think about this."
I settled back into the seat.
"You can't just walk in there," she said, and it sounded like an order.
"I want to buy a paper."
"What if he's in there? Then what are you going to do?"
"I want to see if it's him, the man who was driving. I think I'd recognize him."
"And he might recognize you."
"'Dealer' could refer to cards," I thought out loud as a young woman with short curly black hair walked up to the bookstore, opened the door, and disappeared inside.
"The person who deals cards, deals the jack of hearts," I added, my voice trailing off.
"You talked to him when he asked directions. Your picture's been in the news."