Ellen Cade ran her hands across her head, smoothing her already smooth hair. “The police think Devon was being targeted for a kidnapping. Her family’s rich, and quite prominent. She made an attractive target, living off campus, with so few people around her.”
“Then why fire at her from the apartment? The gunshots are on the 911 tape and they know from looking at my gun that it wasn’t fired today. Why kill Hilde?”
Ellen Cade’s shrug was as throwaway elegant as the rest of her. These were not flesh-and-blood people to her, just names in a theoretical case one might study in law school. “If you want to go argue with the police, feel free. But in my opinion, our strategy should be all or nothing. You can’t tell them just what you feel like telling them. You want to say what you know is privileged, I’ll back you up on that. If you want to talk to them, I’ll stay with you, make sure you don’t incriminate yourself in any way.”
“What I really need is to speak to Devon.”
“When you’re a Whittaker, and the potential victim in a crime, the Philadelphia police don’t keep you all night. She was on her way out when I came in-her parents on one side, the family lawyer on the other.”
“Do you know how I can find them?”
Ellen Cade’s eyes were a dark, rich brown, the color of good milk chocolate, yet devoid of warmth. “I’m not here to broker your dealings with the Whittakers. I’m the go-between for you and the Philadelphia Police Department. The way I see it, you could be out of here in an hour, or you could stay considerably longer. Which do you choose?”
“Where do the Whittakers live? The Main Line, right?”
“Short or long?”
Tess sighed. “Short. I have nothing to say to them. Everything I know is privileged.”
“Good girl. I hope you understand I am billing you for my services. Tyner and I ended on friendly terms-but not such friendly terms that I give it away. The way I see it, I gave quite enough while we were dating.”
Great, another factoid about Tyner’s sex life. This day kept getting better and better.
Ellen Cade overrated her abilities. Two hours passed before the Philadelphia cops sent Tess off into what was now night. Tess would have liked to crawl into the back of her Toyota and sleep, but that wasn’t an option. Instead, she dialed Whitney’s house. Not the guest cottage, but the main house.
“Tesser!” Mrs. Talbot’s voice was mellow with tiny cracks in it, like good whisky being poured over ice. “We’re just sitting down to dinner. But Whitney’s at a holiday party held by one of her classmates from Roland Park Country Day.”
“That’s okay, Mrs. Talbot. I really wanted to talk to you.”
“To me?” She sounded at once surprised and flattered.
Tess paused, trying to think of a polite way to ask Mrs. Talbot if she knew the Whittakers of Philadelphia. It would sound as if she assumed all rich, blueblood types knew one another. Which was exactly what she assumed.
“Mrs. Talbot, is your family in the Social Register?”
“Tess, you know I’ve never cared about such things.”
That would be a yes. “Does the Social Register include addresses?”
“Yes, winter and summer. And the yachts, sometimes, if the family uses one.” If there was any irony in Mrs. Talbot’s voice, Tess missed it. “Why do you ask? Certainly, you know where we live.”
“I’m trying to find a home address for the Whittakers of Philadelphia. They’re not in the phone book.”
“Which Philadelphia Whittakers? There are several.”
“The parents of Devon Whittaker.”
“I may have the Philadelphia book around. It’s an excellent resource for fund-raising, and you know how many committees I serve on.”
Mrs. Talbot put the phone down. Not a minute later, she picked up an extension in another room. “I do have it,” she said, a little breathlessly. “Is this part of your work? Am I helping you out? It’s rather fun, isn’t it?”
Tess had a vision of both Talbot women following her around, in fetching mother-and-daughter outfits. Starsky and Hutch and the Duchess of Windsor on stakeouts together.
“Rather,” she said, trying not to mimic Mrs. Talbot’s accent. “If you have the stomach for it.” She thought again of Hilde, how her lifeless body had been dragged and bumped across the room, as if she were nothing more than an unwieldy bag of garbage. She remembered the jumbo bag of barbecued Fritos the cops had plucked from the dining room table, hoping to find fingerprints on the plastic. Devon Whittaker would not have a bag of Fritos in her pantry, Tess knew, and Hilde probably wouldn’t bring such a loaded food into the house. Which meant the killer had sat a few feet from Hilde’s body, having a picnic while waiting for Devon to arrive.
She took down the phone number and address Mrs. Talbot provided, then stopped at a 7-Eleven to buy a map.
It was dark in the suburbs and house numbers were difficult to see. Tess had to get out of her car several times to check the mailboxes at the street’s edge. Finally, she found the Whittakers, and headed up the long driveway. She wasn’t sure why she felt so cowed-the Whittakers, after all, were just the Philadelphia version of the Talbots, or any number of moneyed, familied Baltimoreans she had known. But this wasn’t her territory, she didn’t know the connections and history here. If the Whittakers called the cops when she showed up on their doorstep, she could end up back downtown, waiting for Ellen Cade to bail her out a second time.
A man opened a door. Not a butler, judging by his clothes-a tweed jacket over an Oxford cloth shirt, khaki pants-but far from the patrician man of the manor Tess had expected.
“Yes?” Behind tortoiseshell glasses, his eyes were at once vague and nervous. His other features were soft and mushy, more like lumps in gravy than an actual face.
“I’m Tess Monaghan.”
“The girl who saved Devon’s life?”
“Yes.” Left unasked was the question of whether Tess had put Devon’s life in jeopardy to begin with.
“Please come in.”
She was led into a book-lined study that could have been drawn from the plans for her own dream home-antique Persian rugs, a fireplace, a sofa covered in moss green velvet, the walls lined with books, old books, with worn spines that had known many hands and many readings.
But Devon, sitting in an armchair close to the fire and wrapped in a chenille throw, registered no delight in her surroundings. Despite the throw, and the fire, her body was shaking convulsively. Her face, reflected in the firelight, had a decidedly bluish cast.
“I just feel so bad,” she said when she saw Tess.
“About Hilde?”
She nodded. “And Gwen.”
Her father stood in the doorway, as if waiting for Devon’s permission to enter. Tess wondered if this young woman had always held so much power in her family, or if she had earned her father’s deference when she began destroying her body. Maybe that was the reason she had stopped eating in the first place, to gain power.
“You can listen, Daddy. That way I won’t have to tell it twice.”
The father took a seat at a rolltop desk, out of Devon’s sight line. Tess sat on the sofa, facing her. That is, she would have been facing her, if Devon hadn’t continued to stare into the flames.
“The first time I came to see you-why didn’t you tell me you had heard from Gwen, that she had called you?”
“Are you good at keeping secrets?” Devon asked.
“I like to think I am.”
“I’m great at it. Most girls with eating disorders are. I was. So was Gwen. The disease turns you into a sneak, you see. You have to be crafty, to keep people from making you eat, in my case, or making you stop throwing up, in Gwen’s case. Even when you told me Gwen was dead, I felt I had to keep her secrets.”