“The name is what I’m trying to find. The girl was never identified. I thought I told you that.”
Again, a series of clicks. “But the name is the very thing we could never give. I hope you understand.”
“I don’t understand. This girl is dead, she has no privacy or confidentiality left to protect. But I have a client who is very keen to identify her.”
“Really? Who’s your client?”
“Confidential,” Tess said. She almost wished a video camera were trained on her, so it could see the gleam of her teeth as she smiled.
The voice was not amused. “One of our security guards is coming to the front gate. It’s your choice to leave now, or make his acquaintance. Although you are on the other side of the fence, you’re still trespassing. In fact, the final quarter mile of this road belongs to us. There’s a sign advising you that you’re entering private property-a large sign, with bright red letters on a white background, visible even at night. You were trespassing once you drove past it.”
Tess saw a pair of headlamps approaching through the trees. She hesitated for a moment, then backed the Toyota onto the road and turned around. She went as slowly as she could, as if to say: I’m going because I want to, not because you’re making me.
They were on the public portion of the road when Whitney finally spoke. It was only then that Tess realized how uncharacteristically quiet she had been.
“A private road. So that’s why we couldn’t find it on a map.”
“One mystery solved at least.”
They rode in silence until they found the highway back to Oxford. Then Whitney said: “Turn the radio on and see if we can find a forecast for tomorrow. We’ll need to check the weather.”
“Why, for God’s sake?”
“Because a good sailor always checks the weather.”
“I hardly think I want to spend a December afternoon sailing on the bay, all things considered. Let’s just go back to Baltimore, or spend the day in Chestertown, like you said. I’ll figure another way to make a run at Persephone’s Place. I can always claim I’m an investigator for the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.”
“I wasn’t thinking of taking the sailboat out. We’ll use the motor boat, the old Boston Whaler my father keeps. One if by land and two if by sea, old buddy, and it’s two lanterns aloft in the belfry arch tonight.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“D-Day at P’s Place. You’re going to storm the beach tomorrow, and there’s not a damn thing they can do about it.”
chapter 13
THE SUN WAS BARELY UP WHEN TESS AND WHITNEY left the Talbots’ dock the next morning. They were in the Boston Whaler, a motorboat that Whitney’s father had inexplicably christened the Hornswoggle II. Or maybe there was an explanation, but Tess had decided a long time ago it wasn’t worth pursuing. The Talbots specialized in detailed and obscure stories.
“I’m reasonably sure how to get there,” Whitney said, frowning at the nautical chart in her lap, as they moved slowly away from the dock.
“Only reasonably sure?” Tess repeated, waving in what she hoped was a reassuring way to Crow and Esskay as they disappeared from view. “I’m not happy about staying behind,” he had told her this morning, burrowed beneath the quilt on Mr. and Mrs. Talbot’s bed. “Someone has to watch Esskay,” Tess had countered. “Besides, you have your own part to play here, if everything goes as planned.”
This now seemed like a very large “if.”
Whitney was frowning at the great expanse of water before them. Above, seen from the twin spans of the Bay Bridge, the Chesapeake wasn’t quite so formidable. “I’ve figured out where we were last night and if I’m right, it backs to this inlet.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
“Then we abort. Besides, we won’t do anything until we’re close enough to see the place. You know the cover story.”
“About that cover story-” Tess looked down at the gray water churning beneath them. She and Whitney had been out in this boat many times before, making fun of the mansions that the nouveau riche built along the bay’s shores. But that had been on sultry July and August days. She could almost smell those days-the sun, the water, the breeze, the suntan lotion-on the life jacket she had donned.
There was no sun today, and the wind felt like tiny knives pricking at her face and neck.
“The life jacket. It’s really just for show, right?”
“More or less. I’m going to try to get you close enough to wade in, but you never know. You’re a strong swimmer, right?”
“Pretty strong. But they have to have a doctor on the premises, right? And he’ll be bound by medical ethics to check me out for hypothermia.”
“I hope so,” Whitney said. “Then again, it would give us some leverage, wouldn’t it? A licensed treatment center without a doctor on call. I’m sure that’s not legal.”
Tess didn’t say anything, but she thought leverage was pretty inconsequential, once you were dead. She glanced at the sky. Overcast, yet Whitney swore there was no chance of rain. She wondered what would happen if she proposed switching places. But she could never find her way back to the Talbots’, and she wasn’t confident she could handle the boat alone, even under the best conditions.
Almost forty-five minutes had passed before Whitney steered the boat into a narrow channel, cut the motor, and let it drift. “Does this look like the place we saw last night?”
“We didn’t see anything but chain link and razor wire last night,” Tess said, squinting at the large white house sitting back from the shoreline. “But, yes, it could be the place.”
It was a rambling white Victorian, with pink trim. Someone’s old summerhouse, enlarged over the years in a random fashion. It clearly was no longer a vacation home. Persephone’s Place, if this was it, had an antiseptic look, a marked indifference to its surroundings that bordered on hostility. There was no dock, for example, and the glassed-in porch at the rear of the house was small, curtains drawn against the winter light, as if no one there ever dared to watch a sunset. The grounds were bare and open, with the bald, raw look more common to a spanking-new development. Yet the tall, spindly pine trees at the property’s edge had to be decades old. Even as it shut the rest of the world out, Tess realized, Persephone’s Place denied privacy to its residents. There was no place to hide here, no spot where one would be out of view.
“It does look like a wedding cake,” Whitney said. “Even the trim, all gingerbread and curlicues and rosettes. You feel you should be able to break off a piece and eat it. Just looking at it makes me vaguely nauseous, as if I’d been on a little binge.”
“Hansel and Gretel,” Tess said, remembering a scrap of Sukey’s conversation with Jane Doe. “The Sugar House.”
They were very close now, the boat passing under a tree whose branches bent so close to the water that they had to bow their heads. At the last minute, Whitney reached up and grabbed the branch, keeping the boat from drifting any closer to the fringe of sand and gravel that passed for a beach.
“Here,” she said. “This is as close as I go. Remember I have to putt-putt out very slowly, so make sure I’m out of the inlet before you draw attention to yourself.”
“Do I have to get all the way wet?” Tess asked. “Maybe if I just could climb out here, and walk along the shore-”
“All the way wet,” Whitney said firmly. “You have to give the impression that you could keel over at any moment. It’s the only thing that’s going to keep them from sending you straight to the sheriff’s office for trespassing. I hope.”
Tess sighed and kneeled on the starboard side of the boat. She tried to remember the jump she had learned as a lifeguard at Hunting Hills Swim Club years ago, with legs spread open, so the head didn’t submerge. At least, that had been the theory. She couldn’t recall if anyone had ever done it successfully.