She was asking the man at her side whether he thought Maureen and the two girls had been raped. I suspected she was deliberately leading the conversation into sexual channels, but the man missed his cue and responded with a long discourse on the sex offender in America, lacing it with statistics on how many homicides and aggravated assaults had been committed in conjunction with the crime of rape. Benny Freid, the criminal lawyer I’d tried to convince Michael to retain, once told me, “Matt, there are no mysteries. There are only crimes with motives for them.” The one thing Michael Purchase did not seem to have was a motive. I tried to remember now what he had told me this afternoon. While the buzz of homicidal cocktail chatter swelled around me, while Frank told me about a visit from an Internal Revenue agent questioning the valuation of a decedent’s estate, while Susan tried to explain the extent of the injuries that had caused Sebastian’s death, I tried to reconstruct sentence by sentence the conversation I’d had with Michael. I could recall the gist and many of the details, but for the most part I could remember verbatim only snatches of what he’d said — and I had the certain feeling it was important to remember exactly what he’d said if I was to know exactly what had happened.
He’d told me that Maureen was the woman who’d called him, said she wanted to see him, asked him to come to the house. She’d referred to his sisters as the little girls, yes, I was sure that’s what he’d said, the little girls were there, the three of them were there, Maureen and the little girls. But why had she given him this information? Was it to reassure him that she was alone except for the children? Had she further told him Emily and Eve were already asleep? Was she advising him the coast was clear?
She was scared.
Why?
Of... she didn’t know what to do.
About what?
I don’t know.
Michael Purchase had a way of not knowing, of not remembering. He could describe in detail the rosette on the low neck of a nightgown, but he could not recall why he had reached for a kitchen knife and chased his stepmother into the bedroom. Kissed her on the mouth. I took her in my arms. I kissed her on the mouth. Was he trying to tell me he’d raped her? Was this what he was conveniently forgetting — that he’d been forced to kill her because first he’d raped her? But he’d earlier told me he hadn’t raped her, and he seemed genuinely shaken when he confessed to kissing her. She was my father’s wife, I’d kissed her. He’d told Ehrenberg he’d only hugged her, though, so maybe he was leading up to the whole truth in gradual steps, I hugged her, I kissed her, I raped her, yes!
You kissed her after she was dead?
Yes.
In which case, and assuming kissing was a euphemism for something more sordid, Michael Purchase hadn’t gone immediately to the police only because he knew what their reaction would be to necrophilia. Maybe he was what his father had called him this morning — a monster.
Did you kiss Emily, too?
No, just my mother.
Your mother?
Maureen.
There were darknesses here I no longer cared to explore. I closed my mind to what Michael had told me, closed it as well to the talk of murder everywhere around me. Our host was standing with the Italian artist, placating him, telling him the turnout at the gallery tonight had been truly remarkable.
Our hostess was calling us to dinner.
We got home at twenty to twelve. I checked on Joanna, who was sound asleep, and then went into the study to switch on the telephone-answering machine. The first message was from a client for whom I’d recently drawn a will. He said his son had been arrested driving a motorcycle at ninety miles an hour in a forty-mile zone. I made a note to call him in the morning, and then switched on the machine again. The next message was from Karin Purchase, leaving a phone number, and asking that I return her call. Jamie’s daughter, according to what he’d told Ehrenberg, had been living in New York City for the past three years, but the number she’d left began with a 366 — a Calusa prefix. I dialed it at once.
“Calusa Bay Hotel, good evening,” a voice said, “May I help you?”
“Miss Karin Purchase, please,” I said.
“Thank you, sir.”
I waited. I could hear the phone ringing on the other end. I began counting the rings. I was about to hang up when a woman’s voice said, “Hello?”
“Miss Purchase?”
“Yes?”
“Matthew Hope.”
“Oh, hello, Mr. Hope, I was hoping you’d call, what time is it? I’m sorry, I was in the shower, where did I put my watch? A quarter to twelve, is that too late? I’d like to see you, do you think you can come here now, it’s very important that we talk.”
“Well...”
“It’s room 401,” she said, “can you get here in ten minutes or so, I’ll be expecting you,” she said, and hung up.
12
Tall, lissome, wearing a striped caftan slit at the neck, slit at the sides, blue eyes shadowed with a deeper blue, wet blonde hair captured in a scarf that matched the caftan, Karin Purchase opened the door and said at once, “Come in, you got here fast,” slurring the sentences so that they became a single hurried invitation-observation. She turned and walked into the room. I followed her in, closing the door behind me.
She resembled her father strikingly, the same light blue eyes and arching blonde eyebrows, the same flaring nose and thin-lipped mouth. But there was in her angular length something entirely female as well. Slender arms showed in the kited sleeves of the caftan, collar bones veered wildly in the V-neck, narrow ankles and youthful legs flashed where the long skirt was slit to the knee on either side.
“Would you like a drink?” she asked. “Some cognac? Crème de menthe?”
“Cognac, please,” I said, and to my surprise she picked up the telephone receiver at once and asked for room service. It occurred to me belatedly that a young woman traveling alone, or for that matter a dowager traveling with an entourage, would not have packed her suitcase with a selection of after-dinner drinks. I felt like a clodhopper. Karin Purchase’s cool assurance was unsettling; she was far too young to be so smooth. How old had Jamie said? Twenty-two?
“This is Miss Purchase in 401,” she said into the phone. “Would you please send up a cognac and a Grand Marnier?” She looked across at me. “Courvoisier all right?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Courvoisier’s fine, thank you,” she said, and hung up, and immediately said, “I read about it in the Post, that’s New York’s afternoon paper, are you familiar with it? Said my brother had confessed to killing Maureen and the two girls.” She shook her head, took a cigarette from a package on the dresser. Lighting it, she said, “There’s a five-forty-five plane out of Newark.” She blew out the match, exhaling a stream of smoke that looked like a visible sigh. “I got to the airport here at a little past ten, and called you the minute I was in the room.”
“Why me?”
“The paper said you were representing Michael. Aren’t you?”
“More or less.”