When she found the correct house number she drove past, scanning it hastily. It seemed to be much like the others. It was three stories high, a Tudor with a steep roof and chimneys on either end. There were thick-trunked old hardwood trees on the lawns and somewhere in the back, serving as witnesses and guarantors of the antiquity of the building. There was a stone fence that separated the house from the next on each side, with exactly the right number and kinds of climbing plants on it-some rambling roses, a few climbers with white or yellow flowers.
She tried to get a look at the cars, in the hope of spotting Daniel Martel's Porsche or his Mercedes, but the driveway was like the one at the McKinnon house in Amherst, New York, where she lived with her husband, Carey. It ran straight back until it was past the house and then turned and went out of sight. She thought she could pick out the corner of an old carriage house converted to a garage like hers and Carey's, but it could have been something else.
Meridien continued through some small, elegant enclaves and out into suburbs where the big houses tended to sprawl at ground level on lots that could have accommodated cornfields, and probably once had.
Jane needed to find a way to keep watch on the Martel house without being caught at it. The problem was that wealthy neighborhoods were generally watched by many unseen eyes, some of them natural and others electronic. Strangers were not especially welcome unless they had specific, useful business there. It was possible to be arrested going for a walk in some cities if you couldn't prove you were there to offer some service to a specific resident.
She drove to her hotel and turned on her computer. She got an aerial view of Martel's parents' neighborhood, and then a ground-level view from the streets on all sides, and studied them to find a good way to get close. Under her business name, she ran another credit check on Daniel Martel using his Las Vegas address and the Social Security number she'd found on his tax return.
There was nothing in the credit record yet to indicate he had arrived in Indianapolis. She guessed this meant that he was traveling the way she did and was using cash and credit cards in a false name. It was possible that since he'd arrived in Indianapolis his parents had been paying for everything, so there was no record that he'd spent any money.
She arrived in the back yard of the house on Meridien at four in the morning, while the world was still dark. She climbed a neighbor's wall and walked along a dry ditch that had apparently been constructed to channel rain runoff from the yards to the next street. She had seen it on the aerial imagery on her computer. She used it to get to the rear of the Martel yard. She wanted to be comfortably settled and able to watch before the first person in the household awoke.
The first one was a woman servant, who turned on the light in a third-floor window at five, and then turned it off a few minutes later and appeared in the kitchen as cook. She was wearing a dress that wasn't quite a uniform, but was designed for work. It was light blue with a white collar and cuffs and buttoned up the front. Jane watched her in the kitchen making coffee, laying out food on serving platters, and doing other chores that Jane couldn't see well. She went into the dining room and set the table.
At six thirty the father came down the stairs and into the dining room. He wore khaki pants, a belt of military webbing with a gold buckle, brown leather shoes, and a blue shirt. The wife was down a minute or two later, wearing a dress that appeared to be light silk with a pattern of blue and white like Delft china. These were people of the last generation, but they had the air of an earlier generation.
She felt a small tug of sympathy for them. She wondered if there was a hidden feeling of doom because they had raised a murderer and were trying to keep from knowing it. Either way, they betrayed no evidence that they weren't delighted with their lives.
The mother had apparently been a beauty when she was young. She was still straight and slim, and her summer dress had a flow and a dignity that showed she was used to being looked at. Her letters to her son that Jane had read were what old-fashioned mothers wrote-little newsy paragraphs about how "Dad" was doing, and what had been said when they'd had the Stevenses or the Putnams for dinner and bridge. It was like reading a message from the 1940s.
Jane waited for the son to come down. At nine thirty, she was losing patience. There were probably eight or ten bedrooms in this house. In her experience, what fugitives were doing when they went home was resetting the calendar. They were trying unconsciously to go back to a time before their lives had become chaotic and dangerous. It was a time when they had been safe. She supposed that when he was growing up, this big, imposing house must have provided a sense of security for Daniel Martel.
She waited until noon, but there was no sign of him. At twelve thirty, the cook came out and supervised a younger woman wearing the same light blue dress in setting a large round table on the patio with utensils and china for something that looked a bit like afternoon tea. At one fifteen, two couples came outside on the patio. The women both wore broad-brimmed hats and thin summer dresses. One of the men wore a seersucker sport coat; the other wore a loose white shirt with no collar. After a few minutes the host and hostess reappeared.
There was a pleasant, unhurried lunch followed by a period of sitting at the table in the shade under the old trees drinking lemonade and sparkling water freshened by the younger maid every fifteen minutes. At a little after three the sun, which had hung high overhead so the big trees provided shade, sank lower, to an angle that threw bright, harsh rays into the diners' faces. Jane watched the two visiting couples go through the ceremonial steps. The wife would throw a glance at her husband, who had received very little of her attention until then. He would look at his wristwatch in surprise, as though the device had suddenly jumped up from the ground and wrapped itself around his arm. Jane was too far away to hear words, but she could see all the mimed expressions of surprise at how quickly the time had passed, and then a brief recitation of responsibilities that had to be met-Billy's baseball practice, Madison's piano lesson. The women all hugged each other and then hugged each of the men. The men shook hands, with one quick, tight grip and release. Then the host and hostess walked their guests through the house to the front door.
Jane waited while the maid and the cook cleared the table and disappeared into the kitchen. The afternoon had been dreamlike, a turn-of-the-century painting of life among the bourgeoisie. But her attention had never flagged. She'd watched to see whether each phase would be the one that signaled the arrival of Daniel Martel. Would he come to see these visitors Wait for them to leave
She was patient. She had succeeded in preventing him from murdering Jim Shelby, and for now, Shelby was safe. Martel would stay in Indianapolis for a time, probably until he realized how vulnerable it made him to hide in his hometown, or until he began to see the futility of trying to return to a world that had a place for him as a child, but didn't have a place for somebody like the man he had become. It could take months, and it was almost sure to take weeks. She could wait.
In the old days, during the wars of the forests, there were always warriors out in groups of three or two, or even alone, simply staying in the countries of enemies, living unseen in the woods, and observing. Sometimes they would stay there for a few weeks, sometimes for as long as a year.
Jane left the yard during the late afternoon, and returned to her hotel. She showered, ate, and changed into clothes for night, then drove to a Sears store and bought a green-and-brown plaid stadium blanket. When she was back in the car, she put a gun and a knife in her jacket. She returned to the house at dark, parked her car on the street around the corner with its front wheels aimed in the direction of the Martel garage, and walked back into the yard. She stationed herself in a row of ornamental shrubs, wrapped herself in the blanket, and became one of them.