Joseph and I followed at a distance. "Maybe Mother left me more than I realized," Joseph said. "I'll bring her things here, though I'm going to have to wear a disguise. I wouldn't want anyone to think they're mine."
We moved slowly in the direction of the auction house, then turned at the head of the next row. I stopped to look at a batch of sports memorabilia, which included a hockey stick.
"You're really into the sport," Joseph remarked.
"No, Patrick is," I replied, "and he needs someone to be into whatever he's into. Joseph, do you remember the guy who came to Olivia's to buy a bracelet last week?"
"The eloquent one who left his fingerprints all over the glass counter?"
"That's right. He plays hockey for the high school. His name is Sam Koscinski."
I watched for a reaction. Joseph's beard and mustache hid most of his mouth, and the skin around his eyes stayed as smooth as before.
"Do you know the family?" I asked.
"I knew of a man who might have been his father, Mike Koscinski."
"A private investigator," I prompted.
Joseph nodded slowly.
I lost patience. "Why didn't you tell me my mother was a murder suspect?"
Joseph pulled a pen from his pocket and stuck it in his mouth. "Because I was afraid you'd ask the next question."
"I'm asking it. Why did Adrian suspect her?"
Joseph chewed on the pen, then drew it out of his mouth like a cigarette and started walking.
"Adrian suspected a lot of people, Katie. He was desperate for someone to blame. People get that way when there has been a terrible accident." We stopped at the edge of the auction lot, next to a large placard pointing to the building entrance. "He suspected me, even Mrs. Hopewell. Anyone who wasn't family was looked at askance."
"Perhaps, but it was my mother whom Mr. Koscinski was hired to investigate-Sam told me. It was my mother who was being chased by him the night we left."
Joseph clicked the pen in his hand.
"Tell me what you know," I insisted. "I'm talking to Adrian this afternoon and I'm going to ask him about it. I will get to the bottom of this, you can count on it."
He rubbed his perpetually damp brow. "Katie, let me explain something to you and perhaps you'll understand why I didn't want you to ask too many questions. There was-uh-a connection between your father and Corinne, Trent's wife."
I steeled myself. "What kind of connection?"
"You know what I mean-you're almost an adult. They were lovers. It happened before your father met your mother, when Corinne first came to Mason's Choice as Trent's bride and your father came as a very young, very handsome artist. I wasn't around then, of course, but people don't change. Trent is quite intelligent, and probably the most boring, uptight person on the face of the earth. Your father was dashing, dramatic-" I wasn't interested in excuses. "When Dad came back with my mother and me, did he keep it up?"
"Yes. And he discovered he had fathered two little girls, Katie and Ashley."
"Ashley." It was like looking into a convex mirror-I recognized all the objects shown, but everything looked different, their spatial relationships changed.
I wanted to deny what Joseph said, to deny any pain my mother might have felt because of my father's unfaithfulness, which would then require me to feel sorry for her. But I remembered how my father loved to see Ashley and me playing together, how he would do little sketches of us with our arms around each other, how he wept when he was told of the accident. And I remembered the times when Ashley and I came upon my father and her mother together. We were too innocent to figure it out-at least, I was.
"Did my mother know?"
"She found out two weeks before Ashley died."
I leaned against the sign.
"I didn't want to have to tell you that," Joseph went on. "Of course, it was just a coincidence, but you can see how Adrian, needing to blame someone, would turn on your mother."
"And feel remorseful about it now-perhaps that is why he is so nice to me. Perhaps he spun that story about my father's artistic tantrum because he thought the reality would be too painful for me."
"Or for him," Joseph said bluntly. Even with the beard, I could see one side of his mouth draw up. "Adrian hates to be wrong."
"He was wrong, wasn't he?"
"Katie! How can you think otherwise?"
Easily. My parents had told me half-truths. So had Adrian and Joseph. Why should I believe any of them now? I jammed my hands into my coat pockets.
"Are you all right?" Joseph asked, after a long moment of silence.
"Just cold," I replied crisply. "Let's go in."
The building, covered with pale siding and a new tin roof, showed its age inside. As long as an athletic field, it had a concrete floor and a loft that ran along three sides. The loft area was crammed with furniture, and a sign on the stairway that led to it said, note to customers: YOU CARRY IT UP THE STEPS, YOU CARRY IT DOWN. I guessed it was used for items that were waiting to be picked up by the buyer.
Joseph and I walked along one side of the building, scanning the merchandise. We passed a door with a sign prohibiting entrance and warning that dogs were inside-the ones Trent had spoken of, I assumed.
An auction was going on at either end of the building, two motorized vehicles moving along the floor trailed by crowds of interested buyers. Joseph decided to follow the furniture auctioneer at the far end, while I wandered the rows of tables spread with smaller items-glassware, china, mirrors, statues, and paintings, looking for a portrait my father might have done, the retriever carrying a goose. But I barely saw what was in front of me, for memories were running inside my head like old films, cinema that I was watching with older, more knowing eyes.
Was my mother capable of killing out of revenge and hurt? Could she have done something less deliberate than murder, such as ignore the safety of a child she could no longer endure?
I found the painting that was thought to be my father's and knew immediately it wasn't. I realized that, with regard to my father, the only thing I could be certain about was whether he had done a particular painting. Since he had been the one constant in my life, this new uncertainty made everything I thought I knew seem questionable.
I turned away from the painting, aware of someone's eyes on me. Trent, with file folders tucked under his arm, gazed at me through a half-glass wall that sealed off the auction's business office.
I looked back. Did he know who Ashley's real father was? Since that fact had generated Adrian's investigation, he must have.
"Ah," said Joseph, who had materialized at my elbow, "you have found the painting."
"It's not my father's," I told him. "That goose not only looks dead, it doesn't look as if it were ever alive."
Joseph laughed.
"Trent is watching us from the office," I added.
Joseph glanced up and the two men nodded at each other.
"I don't understand, Joseph, why wouldn't Trent have been a suspect? He had the same motivation-he'd been cheated on. And why wasn't Robyn considered a possibility? She was jealous of Ashley-even as a five-year-old I was aware of that. I can see how she deals with Patrick now, with anyone whom she thinks is competition for her father's attention and money. Trent, Robyn, Brook-all of them were home that day. All of them knew Ashley loved to go to the pond. Why didn't Mr. Koscinski investigate them?"
"Because he was hired by Adrian." Joseph replied, he and Trent turning their backs to each other at the same time. "The Westbrooks will claw one another's eyes out in private, but in public they are loyal and strive to keep up their fine family image. Those kinds of suspicions are something Adrian couldn't even consider."