“Don't you bet on it,” replied Becker. As I started my car and drove away, he remained standing at the door, the golf club still raised, like a frustrated amateur with a huge handicap stuck in the biggest, deepest bunker in the world.
On the drive back to Scarborough I ran through what I had learned, which wasn't much. I knew that Carter Paragon was being kept under wraps by Ms. Torrance and that Lutz seemed to have more than a professional interest in keeping him that way. I knew that something about Voisine's discovery of Grace's body made me uneasy, and Lutz's involvement in that discovery made me uneasier still. And I knew that Hal and Francine Becker were scared. There were a lot of reasons why people might not want a private detective questioning their child. Maybe Marcy Becker was a porn star, or sold drugs to high school kids. Or maybe their daughter had told them to keep quiet about her whereabouts until whatever she was worried about had blown over. I still had Ali Wynn, Grace's Boston friend, to talk to, but already Marcy Becker was looking like a woman worth pursuing.
It seemed that Curtis Peltier and Jack Mercier were right to suspect the official version of Grace's death, but I also felt that everybody I had met over the past couple of days was either lying to me or holding something back. It was time to rectify that situation, and I had an idea where I wanted to start. Despite my tiredness, I took the Congress Street exit, then headed onto Danforth and pulled up in front of Curtis Peltier's house.
The old man answered the door wearing a nightgown and bedroom slippers. Inside, I could hear the sound of the television in the kitchen, so I knew I hadn't woken him.
“You find out something?” he asked as he motioned me into the hallway and closed the door behind me.
“No,” I replied, “but I hope to pretty soon.”
I followed him into the kitchen and took the same seat I had occupied the day before, while Peltier hit the mute button on the remote. He was watching Night of the Hunter, Robert Mitchum oozing evil as the psychotic preacher with the tattooed knuckles.
“Mr. Peltier,” I began, “why did you and Jack Mercier cease to be business partners?”
He didn't look away, but his eyes blinked closed for slightly longer than usual. When they opened again, he seemed tired. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, was it for business or personal reasons?”
“When you're in partnership with your friend, then all business is personal,” he replied. This time, he did look away when he said it.
“That's not answering the question.”
I waited for a further reply. The silence of the kitchen was broken-only by the sound of his breathing. On the screen to my left, two children drifted down the river on a small boat, lost in darkness.
“Have you ever been betrayed by a friend, Mr. Parker?” he asked at last.
Now it was my turn to flinch. “Once or twice,” I answered quietly.
“Which was it-once, or twice?”
“Twice.”
“What happened to them?”
“The first one died.”
“And the second?”
I heard my heart beating in the few seconds it took me to reply. It sounded impossibly loud.
“I killed him.”
“Either he betrayed you badly, or you're a harsh judge of men.”
“I was pretty tense, once upon a time.”
“And now?”
“I take deep breaths and count to ten.”
He smiled. “Does it work?”
“I don't know. I've never made it as far as ten.”
“I guess it don't, then.”
“I guess not. Do you want to tell me what happened between you and Jack Mercier?”
He shook his head. “No, I don't want to tell you, but I get the feeling you have your own ideas about what might have happened.”
I did, but I was as reluctant to say them out loud as Peltier was to tell me. Even thinking them in the company of this man who had lost his only child so recently seemed like an unforgivable discourtesy.
“It was personal, wasn't it?” I asked him softly.
“Yes, it was very personal.”
I watched him carefully in the lamplight, took in his eyes, the shape of his face, his hair, even his ears and his Grecian nose. There was nothing of him in Grace, nothing that I could recall. But there was something of Jack Mercier in her. I was almost certain of it. It had struck me most forcefully after I stood in his library and looked at the photographs on the wall, the images of the young Jack triumphant. Yes, I could see Grace in him, and I could recall Jack in her. Yet I wasn't certain, and even if it was true, to say it aloud would hurt the old man. He seemed to sense what I was thinking, and my response to it, because what he said next answered everything.
“She was my daughter, Mr. Parker,” he said, and his eyes were two deep wells of hurt and pride and remembered betrayal. “My daughter in every way that mattered. I raised her, bathed her, held her when she cried, collected her from school, watched her grow, supported her in all that she did, and kissed her good night every time she stayed with me. He had almost nothing to do with her, not in life. But now, I need him to do something for her and for me, maybe even for himself.”
“Did she know?”
“You mean, did I tell her? No, I didn't. But you suspected, and so did she.”
“Did she have contact with Jack Mercier?”
“He paid for her graduate research because I couldn't afford to. It was done through an educational trust he established, but I think it confirmed what Grace had always believed. Since the funding began, Grace had met him on a few occasions, usually at events organized by the trust. He also let her look at some books he had out at the house, something to do with her thesis. But the issue of her parentage was never discussed. We'd agreed on that: Jack, my late wife, and I.”
“You stayed together?”
“I loved her,” he said simply. “Even after what she'd done, I still loved her. Things were never the same because of it, but yes, we stayed together and I wept for her when she died.”
“Was Mercier married at the time of…” I allowed the sentence to peter out.
“The time of the affair?” he finished. “No, he met his wife a few years later, and they were married a year or so after that again.”
“Do you think she knew about Grace?”
He sighed. “I don't know, but I guess he must have told her. He's that kind of man. Hell, it was him who confessed to me, not my wife. Jack just had to relieve himself of the burden. He has all the weaknesses that come with a conscience, but none of the strengths.” It was the first hint of bitterness he had revealed.
“I have another question, Mr. Peltier. Why did Grace choose to research the Aroostook Baptists?”
“Because she was related to two of them,” he replied. He said it matter-of-factly, as if it had never occurred to him that it might be relevant.
“You didn't mention it before,” I said, keeping my voice even.
“I guess it didn't seem important.” His voice faltered and he sighed. “Or maybe I thought that if I told you that, I'd have to tell you about Jack Mercier and…” He waved a hand dispiritedly. “The Aroostook Baptists were what brought Jack Mercier and me together,” he began. “We weren't friends then. We met at a lecture on the history of Eagle Lake, first and last we ever attended. We went out of curiosity more than concern. My cousin was a woman called Elizabeth Jessop. Jack Mercier's second cousin was Lyall Kellog. Do any of those names mean anything to you, Mr. Parker?”
I thought back to the newspaper report the previous day and the picture of the assembled families taken before they departed for northern Aroostook.