It was over.
The house was no longer considered a crime scene. AH the evidence had been collected, photos confiscated, the building sealed. In six months, maybe a year, if no living relative could be found, a cleanup team would come. They would strip it of everything. Personal belongings would be bagged and taken to the dump. Later men would come and board up the windows and nail keep out signs to the doors.
The roses in Mason's private greenhouse had been promised to the U of M horticultural department. When students arrived to pick them up, they found that high wind had peeled back the plastic from the roof and freezing temperatures had killed the delicate plants, turning their leaves a withered black.
Better that way, Gillian had thought when Detective Wakefield told her.
Mary stopped the car in front of her mother's house. Darkness had fallen. The snow had stopped. She could see lights and hear laughter coming from inside. The feeling took her back to her childhood, reminding her of short winter days when she would come home to find the house full of light and people and energy.
She and Gillian could barely squeeze in the front door. The living room was packed with people Mary vaguely recognized-most of them her mother's friends. Music was playing, and Blythe was floating around with a bottle of champagne, refilling glasses as they emptied.
"Hello, sweetheart," Blythe said. "You remember Freddie, don't you?"
Mary looked at the short man with the red silk shirt and black glasses and struggled to recall him. Before she could answer, Blythe stuck a heavy plate in her hand and sailed off with Gillian in tow. Freddie smiled, handed her a fork and napkin, and trotted after Blythe's trail of exotic perfume.
After Fiona died, Mary began feeling resentful toward her mother. Not toward Blythe herself, but what she was doing with her life. She'd felt that any kind of art was a ridiculous waste of time. What good was music, and parties, and laughter? Innocent children were being killed. The time to laugh was over. Done with. You could laugh as long as you didn't know how bad the world was, but how could people keep laughing once they knew? Kids were out there dying. What good did a piece of baked clay do?
It kept the soul alive.
I've wasted so many years.
Not wasted, she told herself. How can it be a waste? I've stopped murderers in their tracks. I've rescued kidnapped children.
But through all that, had she really lived? She'd been shut off. Numb. Harboring a deep hatred, a deep darkness of spirit.
She directed her gaze to the plate in her hand-it contained a slice of white cake with white frosting. She looked up and saw Anthony staring at her from across the room, a champagne glass in his hand.
He smiled at her. It was the kind of smile that passed between people who knew each other's deepest secrets.
She smiled back.
Anthony watched as she crossed the room. On the way, she put down the plate and grabbed a glass of champagne. "I thought you were going back to Virginia this morning," she said, taking a sip and looking at him over the edge of the glass.
"I was, but you know how persuasive your mother can be. I'm leaving first thing tomorrow instead. How about you?"
"Late tomorrow evening. I have a few things I need to finish up here."
He let out a slow breath, realizing that after what had happened with Gillian, he'd half expected her to say she wasn't coming back at all.
"I need to talk to you in private." She put down her glass, took his hand, and pulled him through the kitchen into her mother's pottery studio, shutting the door behind them.
A nightlight covered in blue glass bathed them in a velvet hue. From beyond the closed door came the sound of laughter and muffled voices. Sounds of life. It was one of those poetic, crystalline moments he recognized as two-thirds magic, one-third reality.
"I talked to Gavin Hitchcock."
Business. Spell broken.
Anthony took a swallow of champagne and waited. It was always business with Mary.
"I think Gillian might be right. I think it's possible Gavin Hitchcock didn't murder Fiona."
"Really?" He had trouble being as interested as he should have been.
"I'm going to suggest that Elliot get permission to reopen the case. Oh, look-your cup. It's been glazed."
She picked up a shrunken, misshapen cup in the most godawful yellow he'd ever seen. He didn't recognize it. "Are you sure that's mine?"
"Of course it's yours." She turned it around.
He didn't think he could have made something so ugly, but wasn't in the mood to argue. Instead he said, "I had a nice time that night."
"Me too." She smiled. "Remember when you kissed me?"
"Vaguely."
"I was drunk."
"I suspected as much."
"But I'm not drunk now."
"What are you getting at?"
She put the cup back on the shelf, then took his champagne glass from his hand, and set it beside the cup. "Ever since then I've been wondering if it was the alcohol that made it seem so nice."
Mary was someone who required a good three feet of personal space. Now she was standing absurdly close. An invitation if he'd ever seen one. Mary, Mary, quite contrary. "Are you suggesting a test?"
"It might answer some questions."
"And you're always looking for answers, aren't you?" He put his hands lightly and impersonally on her arms, then thought, What the hell, and pulled her snugly against him.
He could feel her chest rising and falling against his. And he thought it would be a cruel world to bring them together like this only to have her tell him she felt nothing, that it had been the alcohol after all. He'd better make the kiss an artistic masterpiece. What was he thinking? He glanced at the yellow cup, then back to Mary. He was no artist.
So he just kissed her. Lips to lips, breath to breath.
When she finally opened her eyes, he asked, "Fireworks?"
"Sparklers."
He would have been disappointed, except that her breathing was funny, and he could feel her heart thundering against his. As always, she would give him only so much. It was a game they played. She was tormenting him, and he liked it. Their time would come. However long it took, he would wait for her.
Chapter 36
Abigail Portman picked her way through the darkening woods. The weather had taken a warm turn the way it often did in early November, and much of yesterday's snow had melted. She'd read in the paper that the Can-trell girl had been found alive. That wasn't the news she wanted to hear. She'd wished she'd died, because it made her feel better to know other people were suffering, that other people's lives were as miserable as hers.
When she reached the memorial, she removed the dead roses and replaced them with a fresh bouquet. Then she straightened and stood in silence, staring at the white cross…
She and Fiona had fought the morning of her death.
That's what people always talked about after a loved one died. The trivial argument they'd had beforehand. Maybe an argument over a messy room, or milk that had been left out of the refrigerator.
In their case it had been about sex.
Abigail recalled the folded note she'd found that had fallen from Fiona's coat pocket. She'd pretended it was a list, or maybe something she herself had dropped. But she'd known it was Fiona's, and she'd been curious. Not in a sneaky way, but in an oh-what-fun way. A we-share-everything way.
Fiona won't mind. We're best friends.
She opened the note, fully expecting to find some light chatter from Mary Cantrell or someone else Fiona hung around with. Instead, it was a note from a boy-or a male anyway. The fact that it was written on lined paper and had been folded into a small square made her think it must have been someone from school, but that didn't really have to be the case.
It had been a shock to find that her daughter was a slut.
The note outlined every disgusting thing the person had done to her daughter, and outlined every disgusting thing Fiona had done back, wondering when they could meet again. The word fuck appeared again and again. Fuck. In a house that had never as much as allowed the word damn.