Careless in Red

Chapter Twenty-six

WHEN KERRA AND HER FATHER WALKED INTO TOES ON THE Nose, the café was virtually empty. In part, this was due to the time of day, which was in between one meal and the next. In part, this was due to the conditions on the water. When the swells were good, no surfer in his right mind would be hanging about a café.

She’d invited Ben out for a cuppa. They could have more easily had one in the hotel, but she’d wanted to be away from Adventures Unlimited for their conversation. The hotel was redolent of Santo’s death and the recent row she’d had with her mother. For this chat with her father, she wanted to be in neutral territory, in a place that was fresh.

Not that Toes on the Nose was fresh in the true sense. It was instead an inadequate refashioning of what had once been the Green Table Café, a perfect example of if-you-can’t-beat-them-join-them, long ago taken over by surfers because of its proximity to St. Mevan Beach. The café had recent new owners who’d seen commercial possibilities in putting up posters of old surfing films and playing music by the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean. Their menu, however, remained what it had been when they’d bought the place: cheesy chips, lasagna with chips and garlic bread, jacket potatoes with a variety of fillings, chip butties…One’s arteries could clog just reading the menu.

Kerra ordered a Coke at the counter. Her father ordered coffee. Then they took a table as far from the music speakers as possible, beneath a poster for Endless Summer.

Ben looked at the Riding Giants poster across the room. His gaze went from it to Gidget, and he seemed to compare them. He smiled, perhaps nostalgically. Kerra saw this and said, “Why’d you give it up?”

He returned his gaze to her. She thought for a moment that he wouldn’t reply to so direct a question but he surprised her. “I left Pengelly Cove,” he said frankly. “There’s not much surf in Truro.”

“You could have gone back. How far is Truro from the sea, after all?”

“Not far,” he admitted. “I could have gone back once I had a car. That’s true enough.”

“But you didn’t. Why?”

He looked momentarily pensive and presently he said, “I was finished with it. I’d faced the fact that it had done me no good.”

“Ah.” She thought she knew the reason, which at the end of the day was the reason for everything Ben Kerne did. “Mum,” she said. “That’s how you met her.” And yet her reply was based solely on assumption, she realized, for they’d never once discussed how Ben and Dellen Kerne had actually met. It was the sort of question children asked their parents all the time once they became aware that their parents were people separate from themselves: How did you and Mummy meet? But she had never asked and she doubted whether Santo had either.

Ben was accepting his cup of coffee with thanks to the café’s owner. He didn’t reply until Kerra had her Coke. Then he said, “Not because of your mum, Kerra. There were other reasons. Surfing led me to a place I’d have been better off not going to.”

“Truro, you mean?”

He smiled. “I’m speaking metaphorically. A boy died in Pengelly Cove, and everything changed. That was down to surfing, more or less.”

“That’s what you meant: No good came of it.”

“That’s why I didn’t much like Santo surfing. I didn’t want him to fall into a situation that might cause him the sort of trouble I’d seen. So I did what I could to discourage him. It wasn’t right of me, but there you have it.” He blew across the top of his coffee and sipped. He said wryly, “Damn, though. It was daft to try. Santo didn’t need me interceding in his life, at least not about that. He took care of himself, didn’t he?”

“Not at the end of the day,” Kerra noted quietly.

“No. Not at the end of the day.” Ben turned his coffee cup in its saucer, his gaze on his hands. They were silent as the Beach Boys crooned “Surfer Girl.” After a verse, Ben said, “Is that why you’ve brought me here? To talk about Santo? We haven’t mentioned him yet, have we? I’m sorry for that. I haven’t wanted to talk about him and you’ve paid the price.”

“We all have things we’re sorry about when it comes to Santo,” Kerra said. “But that’s not why I wanted to talk to you.” She felt suddenly shy about her subject. Any discussion of Santo made her look upon herself and her motives and deem them selfish. On the other hand, what she had to say was likely going to lift her father’s spirits, and the look of him told her his spirits needed lifting.

“What is it, then?” he asked. “Not bad news, I hope. You’re not leaving us, are you?”

“No. I mean, yes. After a fashion. Alan and I are marrying.”

He took this in, a slow smile beginning to brighten his face. “Are you, now? That’s excellent news. He’s a fine man. When?”

They hadn’t set a date, she told him. Sometime this year. There was no ring yet, but that was to come. “Alan insists,” she said. “He wants to have what he calls ‘a proper engagement.’ You know Alan. And-” She put her hands round her glass. “He wants to ask your permission, Dad.”

“Does he indeed?”

“He said he wants to do things right, from beginning to end. I know it’s silly. No one asks for permission to marry any longer. But it’s what he wants to do. Anyway, I hope you’ll give it. Your permission, I mean.”

“Whyever would I not?”

“Well…” Kerra looked away. How to put it? “You may have gone a bit off on the whole idea of marriage. You know what I mean.”

“Because of your mother.”

“It can’t have been a pleasant journey for you. I could see how you mightn’t want me to take it.”

Ben took his turn at avoiding Kerra’s gaze. He said, “Marriage is difficult no matter the situation the couple finds themselves in. Think otherwise, and you’ll be in for a surprise.”

“But there’s difficult and there’s difficult,” Kerra said. “Truly difficult. Impossible to accept.”

“Ah. Yes. I know you’ve thought that: the why of it all. I’ve been reading that question on your face since you were twelve years old.”

He looked so regretful as he spoke that Kerra felt pained. She said, “Did you never think…Did you never want to…”

He covered her hand with his. “Your mum has had her trying times. There’s no question about that. But her trying times have made her own path rockier than they’ve made mine, and that’s the truth of it. Beyond that, she gave me you. And I have to thank her for that, whatever her faults may be.”

At this, Kerra saw that the moment had arrived when she’d least expected it. She looked down at her Coke, but something of what she needed to say to her father must have shown in her features because he said, “What is it, Kerra?”

“How do you know?” she asked him.

“Whether to take the leap with another person? You don’t know. There’s never any certainty about the kind of life you’ll have with someone else, is there, but at some point-”

“No, no. That’s not what I mean.” She felt the colour come into her face. It burned her cheeks and she could imagine it spreading out like a fan towards her ears. She said, “How do you know about us? About me? For sure. Because…”

He frowned for a moment, but then his eyes widened a little as he took in her meaning.

She added miserably, “Because of what she’s like. I’ve wondered, you see, from time to time.”

He stood abruptly, and she thought he might stride out of the café altogether since he looked towards the door. But instead he said to her, “Come with me, girl. No no. Leave your things where they are,” and he took her to a coat rack, where a small mirror hung within a seashell frame. He stood her in front of that mirror, himself behind her, his hands on her shoulders. “Look at your face,” he said, “and look at mine. Good God, Kerra, who would you be if not my daughter?”

Her eyes burned. She blinked the smarting away. “What about Santo?” she asked.

His hands tightened on her shoulders reassuringly. “You favour me,” he replied, “and Santo always favoured your mum.”

BY THE TIME LYNLEY walked into the incident room in Casvelyn, he’d been gone most of the day, traversing Cornwall from Exeter to Boscastle. He found DI Hannaford and Barbara Havers acting the part of audience for Constable McNulty, who was expatiating on a topic that seemed dear to his heart. This consisted of a set of photos that he’d laid out on a table. Havers looked interested. Hannaford listened, wearing an unmistakable expression of sufferance.

“He’s catching the wave here, and it’s a good shot of him. You can see his face and the colours of his board, right? He’s got good position and he’s got experience. He mostly surfs Hawaii and the water’s cold as the dickens in Half Moon Bay, so he’s not used to it, but what he is used to is the size of the wave. He’s scared, but who wouldn’t be? If you’re not scared, then you’re mad. Tonnes and tonnes of water and unless you’ve caught the last wave in the set, it’s not exactly as if another wave isn’t going to come along, right after the one you might very well wipe out on. And that’s going to hold you down and suck you into the trench. So you better be scared and you better show some respect.” He moved to the next picture. “Look at the angle. He’s losing it here. He knows he’s going to wipe out and he’s wondering how bad it’s going to be, which is what you see here, in this next shot.” He pointed at it. “A full body slap right into the face of the wave. He’s moving God only knows how fast and so’s the water, so what happens when he hits? Break a few ribs? Get the breath knocked out of him? It doesn’t matter which because now he’s going the last place anyone would ever want to go at Maverick’s and that’s over the falls. Here. You can just make him out.”

Lynley joined them at the table. He saw that the constable was talking about a single surfer on a wave the size of a moving hillside the colour of jade. In the photo he was referring to, the breaking wave had entirely swallowed up the surfer whose ghostly figure could be made out behind the crashing white water, a rag doll in a washing machine.

“Some of these blokes live to get their pictures taken riding monster waves,” McNulty said in conclusion to his remarks. “And some of them die for just the same reason. That’s what happened to him.”

“Who is he?” Lynley asked.

“Mark Foo,” McNulty said.

“Thank you, Constable,” Bea Hannaford said. “Very dramatic, very grim, always illuminating. Now get back to work. Mr. Priestley’s fingers await your ministrations.” And to Lynley, “I’m going to want a word with you. With you as well, Sergeant Havers.” She jerked her head in the direction of the door.

She took them to a badly appointed interview room, which seemed to have been used mostly as storage for more paper products until the present investigation. She didn’t sit. Nor did they. She said, “Tell me about Falmouth, Thomas.”

Taken up by the events of the day, Lynley was genuinely confused. “I was in Exeter,” he told her. “Not Falmouth.”

“Don’t be coy. I’m not talking about today. What do you know about Daidre Trahair and Falmouth that you haven’t been revealing to me? And don’t either of you lie to me again. One of you went there, and if it’s you, Sergeant Havers, as Dr. Trahair apparently suspects, then I reckon there’s only one reason you took yourself on that little side trip and it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with taking orders from me. Am I correct?”

Lynley intervened. “I asked Barbara to look into-”

“As amazing as it sounds,” Bea cut in, “I’d already worked that out. But the problem is that you’re not directing this investigation. I am.”

“That’s not what it was,” Havers said. “He didn’t ask me to go there. He didn’t even know I was on my way here when he asked me to look into her background.”

“Oh, is that the case, is it?”

“It is. Yeah. He got me on my mobile. In my car. I expect he knew that bit of it, that I was in my car, but he didn’t know where I was or where I was going and he had no idea I was going to be able to go to Falmouth at all. He just asked if I would look into a few details concerning her background. As it was, I could go to Falmouth. And as it wasn’t far out of the way from where I was heading-which was here, of course-I thought I could go there before-”

“Are you mad? It’s miles and miles out of the God damn way. What is it with you two?” Bea demanded. “Do you always go your own way in an investigation or am I the first of your colleagues to be so honoured?”

“With due respect, ma’am,” Lynley began.

“Do not call me ma’am.”

“With due respect, Inspector,” Lynley said, “I’m not part of the investigation. Not officially. I’m not even an”-he sought a term-“an official official.”

“Are you trying to be amusing, Superintendent Lynley?”

“Not at all. I’m merely trying to point out that once you informed me I’d be assisting you despite my own wishes in the matter-”

“You’re a bloody material witness. No one cares about your wishes. What did you expect? To go merrily on your way?”

“Which makes it even more irregular,” he said.

“He’s right,” Havers added, “if you don’t mind me saying.”

“Of course I mind. I bloody well mind. We’re not playing fast and loose with the chain of command. Despite your rank,” she said to Lynley, “I’m running this investigation, not you. You are not in the position to assign activities to anyone, including Sergeant Havers, and if you think you are-”

“He didn’t know,” Havers said. “I could have told him I was on my way here when he rang me, but I didn’t. I could have told him I was under orders-”

“What orders?” Lynley asked.

“-but I didn’t. You knew I’d be here eventually-”

“Whose orders?” Lynley asked.

“-so when he rang, it didn’t seem that irregular-”

“Whose orders?” Lynley asked.

“You know whose orders,” Havers told him.

“Has Hillier sent you down here?”

“What do you think? You could just walk out? No one would care? No one would worry? No one would want to intervene? Do you actually think you could disappear, that you mean so little to-”

“All right, all right!” Bea said. “Retire to your corners. My God. Enough.” She took a steadying breath. “This stops here. And now. All right? You”-to Havers-“are on loan to me. Not to him. I can see there were ulterior motives involved in the offer to send you to assist, but whatever those motives were you’re going to have to deal with them on your own time, not on mine. And you”-to Lynley-“will from this moment be straightforward with what you’re doing and what you know. Am I being clear?”

“You are,” Lynley said. Havers nodded, but Lynley could see that she was hot under the collar and wanting to say more. Not to Hannaford, but to him.

“Fine. Excellent. Now let’s take Daidre Trahair from the start and this time let’s not hold anything back. Am I also being clear on that?”

“You are.”

“Lovely. Regale me with details.”

Lynley knew there was nothing more for it. “There appears to be no Dairdre Trahair prior to her enrollment at her secondary comprehensive at thirteen years of age,” he said. “And although she says she was born at home in Falmouth, there’s also no record of her birth. Additionally, parts of her story about her job in Bristol don’t match up with the facts.”

“Which parts?”

“There’s a Daidre Trahair who’s a vet on staff, but the person she identified to me as her friend Paul-he’s supposedly the primate keeper-doesn’t exist.”

“You didn’t tell me that part,” Havers said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Lynley sighed. “She just doesn’t seem…I can’t honestly see her as a murderer. I didn’t want to make things more difficult for her.”

“More difficult than what?” Hannaford asked.

“I don’t know. It seems…I admit there’s something going on with her. I just don’t think it has anything to do with the murder.”

“And are you supposing you’re in any condition to make that sort of judgement?” Hannaford said.

“I’m not blind,” he replied. “I haven’t lost my wits.”

“You’ve lost your wife,” Hannaford said. “How do you expect to think straight, see straight, or do anything else straight after what’s happened to you?”

Lynley backed away, one step only. He wanted an end to the conversation and this seemed as good a start to that conclusion as any he could come up with. He made no reply. Havers, he saw, was watching him. He knew he had to make an answer of some sort or she’d answer for him, which he would find unbearable.

He said, “I wasn’t hiding facts from you, Inspector. I wanted time.”

“For what?”

“For something like this, I suppose.” He’d been carrying a manila envelope and from it he brought out the photo he’d taken away from Lark Cottage in Boscastle. He handed it over.

Hannaford studied it. “Who are these people?”

“They’re a family called Parsons. Their son-the boy in the picture-died in a sea cave in Pengelly Cove some thirty years ago. This picture was taken round that time, perhaps a year or two earlier. Niamh the mum, Jonathan the dad. The boy is Jamie and the girls are his younger sisters. I’d like to do an age progression on the picture. Do we have someone who could do it for us quickly?”

“An age progression on who?” DI Hannaford asked.

“On everyone,” Lynley replied.

DAIDRE HAD PARKED ON Lansdown Road. She knew her proximity to the police station didn’t look good, but she had to see and, in equal measure, she needed a sign that would tell her what she was meant to do next. Truth meant trust and a leap of faith, but that leap could land her directly in the deadly mire of betrayal, and she’d had quite enough of betrayal at this point in her life.

In the rearview mirror, she saw them come out of the police station. Had Lynley been alone, she might have approached him for the conversation they needed to have, but as he was with both Sergeant Havers and Inspector Hannaford, Daidre used this as a sign that the time wasn’t right. She was parked some way up the street, and when the three police officers paused in the station’s car park for a few words together, she started her car and pulled away from the kerb. Intent upon their conversation, none of them looked in her direction. Daidre took that as a sign as well. There were those, she knew, who would call her a coward for running just then. There were others, however, who would congratulate her on having sound instincts towards self-preservation.

She drove out of Casvelyn. She headed inland, first towards Stratton and then across the countryside. She got out of her car at long last at the cider farm in the fast-fading daylight.

Circumstances, she decided, were asking her to forgive. But forgiveness ran in both directions, in every direction if it came down to it. She needed to ask as well as to give, and both of these activities were going to require practise.

Stamos the orchard pig was snuffling round his pen in the centre of the courtyard. Daidre went past him and round the corner of the jam kitchen, where inside and under bright lights two of the jam cooks were cleaning their huge copper pots for the day. She opened the gate beneath the arbour and entered the private part of the grounds. As before, she could hear guitar music. But this time more than one guitar was playing.

She assumed a record and knocked on the door. The music ceased. When Aldara answered, Daidre saw the other woman was not alone. A swarthy man in the vicinity of thirty-five was placing a guitar onto a stand. Aldara had hers tucked under her arm. She and the man had been playing, obviously. He was very good and, of course, so was she.

“Daidre,” Aldara said, neutrally. “What a surprise. Narno was giving me a lesson.” Narno Rojas, she added, from Launceston. She went on to complete the introduction as the Spaniard rose to his feet and bowed his head slightly in acknowledgement. Daidre said hello and asked should she come back? “If you’re in the middle of a lesson…,” she added. What she thought was, Leave it to Aldara to have found a male teacher of delectable appearance. He had the large dark eyes and thick eyelashes of a Disney cartoon hero.

“No, no. We’ve finished,” Aldara said. “We were at the point of merely entertaining ourselves. Did you hear? Don’t you think we’re very good together?”

“I thought it was a recording,” Daidre admitted.

“You see?” Aldara cried. “Narno, we should play together. I’m much better with you than I am alone.” And to Daidre, “He’s been lovely about giving me lessons. I made him an offer he could not refuse, and here we are. Isn’t that the case, Narno?”

“It is,” he said. “But you’ve much more the gift. For me, it is practise continual. For you…you merely need encouragement.”

“That’s flattery. But if you choose to believe it, I won’t argue. Anyway, that’s the part you play. You’re my encouragement, and I adore how you encourage me.”

He chuckled, raised her hand, and kissed her fingers. He wore a wide gold wedding band.

He packed his guitar into its case and bade them both farewell. Aldara saw him to the door and stepped outside with him. They murmured together. She returned to Daidre.

She looked, Daidre thought, like a cat who’d come upon an endless supply of cream. Daidre said, “I can guess what the offer was.”

Aldara returned her own guitar to its case. “What offer do you mean, my dear?”

“The one he couldn’t refuse.”

“Ah.” Aldara laughed. “Well. What will be will be. I have a few things to do, Daidre. We can chat while I do them. Come along, if you like.”

She led the way to a narrow set of stairs whose handrail was a thick velvet cord. She climbed and took Daidre up to the bedroom, where she set about changing the sheets on a large bed that took up most of the space.

“You think the worst of me, don’t you?” Aldara said.

“Does it matter what I think?”

“Of course, it does not. How wise you are. But sometimes what you think isn’t what is.” She flung the duvet to the floor and whipped the sheets off the mattress, folding them neatly rather than balling them up as another person might have done. She went to an airing cupboard in the tiny landing at the top of the stairs and brought out crisp linens, expensive by the look of them and fragrant as well. “Our arrangement isn’t a sexual one, Daidre,” Aldara said.

“I wasn’t thinking-”

“Of course you were. And who could blame you? You know me, after all. Here. Help me with this, won’t you?”

Daidre went to assist her. Aldara’s movements were deft. She smoothed the sheets with affection for them. “Aren’t they lovely?” she asked. “Italian. I’ve found a very good private laundress in Morwenstow. It’s a bit of a drive to take them to her, but she does wonders with them, and I wouldn’t trust my sheets to just anyone. They’re too important, if you know what I mean.”

She didn’t want to. To Daidre sheets were sheets, although she could tell these likely cost more than she made in a month. Aldara was a woman who didn’t deny herself life’s little luxuries.

“He has a restaurant in Launceston. I was there for dinner. When he wasn’t greeting guests, he was playing his guitar. I thought, How much I could learn from this man. So I spoke with him and we came to an agreement. Narno will not take money, but he has a need to place members of his family-and he has a very large family-in more employment than he can provide at his restaurant.”

“So they work for you here?”

“I have no need. But Stamos has a continual need for workers round the hotel in St. Ives, and I find a former husband’s guilt is a useful tool.”

“I didn’t know you still speak to Stamos.”

“Only when it is helpful to me. Otherwise, he could disappear off the face of the earth and, believe me, I wouldn’t bother to wave good-bye. Could you tuck that in properly, darling? I can’t abide rucked sheets.”

She moved to Daidre’s position and demonstrated deftly how she wanted the sheets seen to. She said, “Nice and fresh and ready,” when she was done. Then she looked at Daidre fondly. The light in the room was greatly subdued, and in it Aldara shed twenty years. She said, “This isn’t to say we won’t, eventually. Narno will, I think, make a most energetic lover, which is how I like them.”

“I see.”

“I know you do. The police were here, Daidre.”

“That’s why I’ve come.”

“So you were the one. I suspected as much.”

“I’m sorry, Aldara, but I had no choice. They assumed it was me. They thought Santo and I-”

“And you had to safeguard your reputation?”

“It isn’t that. It wasn’t that. They need to get to the bottom of what happened to him, and they aren’t going to get there if people don’t start telling the truth.”

“Yes. I do see what you mean. But how often the truth is…well, rather inconvenient. If one person’s truth is an unbearable blow to another person and simultaneously unnecessary for him to know, need one speak it?”

“That’s hardly the issue here.”

“But it does seem that no one is quite telling the police everything there is to tell, wouldn’t you say? Certainly, if they came to you at first instead of to me, it would be because little Madlyn did not tell them everything.”

“Perhaps she was too humiliated, Aldara. Finding her boyfriend in bed with her employer…That might have been more than she wanted to say.”

“I suppose.” Aldara handed over a pillow and its accompanying case for Daidre to sort out while she herself did the same with another. “It’s of no account now, though. They know it all. I myself told them about Max. Well, I had to, hadn’t I? They were going to uncover his name eventually. My relationship with Max was not a secret. So I can hardly be cross with you, can I, when I also named someone to the police?”

“Did Max know…?” Daidre saw from Aldara’s expression that he did. “Madlyn?” she asked.

“Santo,” Aldara said. “Stupid boy. He was wonderful in bed. Such energy he had. Between his legs, heaven. But between his ears…” Aldara gave an elaborate shrug. “Some men-no matter their age-do not operate with the sense God gave them.” She placed the pillow on the bed, and straightened the edge of its case, which was lace. She took the other from Daidre and did the same, going on to turn down the rest of the linen in a welcoming fashion. On the bedside table, a votive candle was nestled in a crystal holder. She lit this and stood back to admire the effect. “Lovely,” she said. “Rather welcoming, wouldn’t you say?”

Daidre felt as if cotton were stuffed into her head. The situation was so much not what she believed it should be. She said, “You don’t actually regret his death, do you? D’you know how that makes you look?”

“Don’t be foolish. Of course, I regret it. I would not have had Santo Kerne die as he did. But as I wasn’t the one to kill him-”

“You’re very likely the reason he died, for God’s sake.”

“I very seriously doubt that. Certainly Max has too much pride to kill an adolescent rival and anyway Santo wasn’t his rival, a simple fact that I could not make Max see. Santo was just…Santo.”

“A boytoy.”

“A boy, yes. A toy, rather. But that makes it sound cold and calculating and believe me it was neither. We enjoyed each other and that’s what it was between us, only. Enjoyment. Excitement. On both parts, not just on mine. Oh, you know all this, Daidre. You cannot plead ignorance. And you quite understand. You would not have lent your cottage had you not.”

“You feel no guilt.”

Aldara waved her hand towards the door, to indicate they were to leave the room and go below once more. As they descended the stairs, she said, “Guilt implies I am somehow involved in this situation, which I am not. We were lovers, full stop. We were bodies meeting in a bed for a few hours. That’s what it was, and if you really think that the mere act of intercourse led to-”

A knock came on the door. Aldara glanced at her watch. Then she looked at Daidre. Her expression was resigned, which told Daidre later that she should have anticipated what would come next. But, rather stupidly, she had not.

Aldara opened the door. A man stepped into the room. His eyes only for Aldara, he didn’t see Daidre. He kissed Aldara with the familiarity of a lover: a greeting kiss that became a coaxing kiss, which Aldara did nothing to terminate prematurely. When it did end, she said against his mouth, “You smell all of the sea.”

“I’ve been for a surf.” Then he saw Daidre. His hands dropped from Aldara’s shoulders to his sides. “I’d no idea you had company.”

“Daidre’s just on her way,” Aldara said. “D’you know Dr. Trahair, my dear? Daidre, this is Lewis.”

He looked vaguely familiar to Daidre, but she couldn’t place him. She nodded hello. She’d left her bag on the edge of the sofa, and she went to fetch it. As she did so, Aldara added, “Angarrack. Lewis Angarrack.”

Which caused Daidre to pause. She saw the resemblance, then, for of course she’d seen Madlyn more than once in the times she herself had been to Cornish Gold cider farm. She looked at Aldara, whose face was placid but whose eyes shone and whose heart was no doubt beating strongly now as anticipation sent her blood hither and yon, to all the proper places.

Daidre nodded and stepped past Lewis Angarrack, outside onto the narrow porch. Aldara murmured something to the man and followed Daidre out. She said, “You see our little problem, I think.”

Daidre glanced at her. “Actually, I don’t.”

“Her boyfriend first and now her father? It’s critical, naturally, that she never know. So as not to upset her further. It’s as Lewis wants it. What a shame, don’t you think?”

“Hardly. It’s the way you want it as well, after all. Secret. Exciting. Pleasurable.”

Aldara smiled, that slow, knowing smile that Daidre knew was part of her appeal to men. “Well, if it must be that way, it must be that way.”

“You’ve no morals, have you?” Daidre asked her friend.

“My darling. Have you?”