“Diane tracked her down, yes. At a wedding chapel in Vegas, not surprisingly. Had she talked with her? I’m not sure about that.”
The triplets were quiet. Grace was singing them a Raffi song-“Down by the Bay.” From which parent she’d inherited the ability to carry a tune wasn’t at all clear. It was a recessive gene, though. Guaranteed.
“What do you want from me?” Mary asked. The question wasn’t particularly provocative; Mary seemed sincerely curious.
“I’d like to know what Bill Miller was up to. His daughter told Hannah that he was up to something. I’m worried that Diane has gotten herself in the middle of whatever that was.”
“The police?”
“In Las Vegas? No help.”
“Up to?” she said. Her breathing had changed. “What do you mean, what Bill was ‘up to’?”
“I’m not sure. Bill seems to have access to money he shouldn’t have. He’s spending a fortune to support Rachel in Las Vegas. I’d like to know where it comes from.”
She reacted physically to my words: She stepped back. “Alan, I-”
“Do they have family money?”
“No. They don’t. I shouldn’t be talking to you about this.”
She was right; she shouldn’t be talking with me.
It was her problem, one I didn’t want to give her time to contemplate. “What do you know about a guy named Canada?”
“Oh God,” she said. “You know about Canada? How do you know about Canada?”
“Raoul is in Vegas looking for Diane. He found Canada.”
I wasn’t about to tell Mary that I was treating Bill Miller. But I found it interesting that Mary knew about Canada, too. Was that good or bad? I couldn’t decide.
Was Canada good or bad? I didn’t know that either.
“What do you know about him?” I asked.
“Bill asked for some advice about him once. About trusting him. His motives. That’s all I know.”
“When?”
“Years ago. Not too long after Rachel moved.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him that, given what he knew about the man’s background, it would be hard to predict how reliable a… Canada would be. Whether he could be trusted with Rachel’s welfare. I told him I could argue it either way, psychologically speaking.”
“Background? What do you mean?”
“Canada grew up with a schizophrenic mother. She left him when he was young, like eleven. Took off with a guy she met in a bar. He’s haunted by it.”
“Makes sense.” But in my business, hindsight almost always makes sense. Foresight is the more valuable, but much rarer, commodity. “Which way did you end up arguing it with Bill?”
“Alan, please.”
“Help me find Diane, Mary.”
“I argued against it. I suggested that Bill use social services to help him with Rachel if he couldn’t afford a home health care agency.”
I changed tactics. “Do you know why Hannah was in your office the morning she died? Not in her own office?”
“No.”
She’d answered quickly, maybe too quickly. It’s not that I didn’t believe her reply; it was that I wasn’t sure if I believed her reply.
“But you’ve wondered?”
“Of course I’ve wondered.”
“Is there any reason Hannah would have been in your office?”
“I didn’t think she’d ever been in there without me. Ever.”
“But she had a key?”
“Yes, we each had a key to the other’s office.”
Diane and I had keys to each other’s office, too. “Why would she have left her purse in the middle of her office floor?”
Mary opened her eyes wide and shook her head at that question. “She left her purse on the floor?”
“Yes. Right in the middle of her office. That’s where it was when Diane and I got there.”
“That’s too strange. The police didn’t tell me that. It’s so not Hannah. She kept it in the back of a drawer in her file cabinet.”
“Are your records in your office? I didn’t see them the day that I found Hannah.”
“What records?”
“Practice files. Specifically, your case file for Rachel Miller.”
“I have cabinets built into the back wall. They look like wainscoting.”
I’d been distracted by other things that day. The image of Hannah splayed over the leather cube, hitchhiking her way into death, continued to intrude on my thoughts with some regularity.
“Rachel’s chart is there?”
“I assume it is. Why would Hannah’s death have anything to do with the Millers, Alan? I still don’t see the connection.”
I could have told her that I didn’t see the connection either. Instead, I tried the truth. “Hannah met with Mallory a couple of weeks before Christmas. Before too long, one of them was dead, the other one was missing.”
She pondered for a moment before she said dispassionately, “Correlation doesn’t imply causality, Alan.”
Ah yes, science.
“I think we both know it doesn’t rule it out either, Mary.”
49
We agreed to take two cars into town. The nanny would watch the triplets for an hour or two. Grace would stay with me. I ended up parking in the spot behind the small building where Hannah’s pristine Passat had been parked the night that Diane and I had found Hannah’s body.
Mary’s car, a Honda minivan with temporary plates-her new triplet-mobile, I assumed-was already in the other parking slot.
The back door of the old house was unlocked. Gracie and I found Mary standing in the hallway, her hands hanging limp by her upper thighs. The narrow passage was dimly lit and she was silhouetted by the distant front windows. I thought she seemed disoriented. As Grace and I approached she said, “I don’t like being here anymore. It’s so strange. I never thought I’d feel that way. I used to love being in this space,” she said. “Hannah and I were perfect together here. Perfect.”
“I can only imagine what it’s like for you,” I said. “Mary, I need to get Grace settled with a book or something. I’ll be right back.”
I showed Grace where I’d be talking with Mary, and then led her to the waiting room where I made space on the coffee table for her books and for some paper and crayons. She chose to sit on the same location on the green velvet sofa that the Cheetos lady had chosen on the day that Hannah died. Grace settled right in, picking the crayons and paper over the books. Her cooperation didn’t surprise me; I was already confident that one of my daughter’s enduring skills in life would be her capacity to ride whatever wave rolled her way.
Mary had unlocked her office door and was standing a couple of feet inside. I squeezed in behind her. The leather cube was gone from the room, as was the stained dhurrie. The pine floors looked naked and ancient. The room appeared as cold as it felt.
I spotted the recessed handles for the lateral files that had been built into the rear wall. The three long file cabinets did indeed appear to be part of the beadboard wainscoting.
“I’ve only been back once, with the police and my attorney. The detectives wanted to know if anything was missing. I looked around and told them I didn’t think so. Nothing appeared disturbed to me at the time, but I didn’t do an inventory.”
I recalled how hard it was to return to my own office years before after Diane had been attacked by a patient’s husband. I touched Mary on the arm. She put her hand on my fingers.
“You know where… her body was, don’t you? I mean, exactly?” she asked.
“Yes, I do. Do you want me to…”
“No. Not yet. I’ll tell you if I do.” She stepped away.
“Okay,” I said. “She was wearing a blouse that day, Mary. Button-front, collar, silk, I think. A basic thing.”