Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 101, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 610 & 611, March 1993

Gerald Pearce was born in England and raised in the Middle East. At the age of ten, he discovered mystery fiction, including EQMM, which was then available on the newsstands in Baghdad, and started to write his own stories. After attending college in the United States, he wound up in Hollywood where he wrote teleplays for The Wonderful World of Disney and many distinguished science fiction and fantasy stories. His first novel-length mystery was published by Walker Books in 1990. He joins us now with an engrossing tale involving a question of identity...

1

Old Mac was dead, and only Tom Bell grieved enough to wear old jeans and a yellow turtleneck to the funeral.

The one other break in the solemnity was provided by Mac’s granddaughter Katherine, who was sleekly elegant in a beige dress, no jewelry, a white lace mantilla over her pale thick hair. Tom Bell imagined sharp no-color eyes watching her out of gray faces. So right for a girl not yet nineteen. Black would have been... ostentatious. He also imagined those eyes on the heavy-framed black sunglasses Katherine had worn even in the church. Been crying her eyes out. Poor kid. Actually she’d worn them at her father’s insistence to hide not grief but indifference.

The cluster of people who had sat through the service in the church Mac had never attended now gathered at his graveside. Middle-aged or older, gray-faced, soberly dressed, faces congealed into masks of corporate gravity, they were there, Tom thought, to say goodbye to a pioneer of times past and to fix him firmly in a niche to match their needs, from which he could no longer bother them.

Mac had deserved better.

Even after it was over, it wasn’t over.

People clustered at the cars. Strangers murmured condolences and goodbyes. Someone vaguely familiar pumped Tom’s hand, asked if he were out of law school yet, and reminded him sternly what a good friend he’d lost. Everyone muttered banalities, until finally, miraculously, the last of the gray people trickled away, leaving the four of them alone by the Chrysler Imperial in the gentle early November afternoon: Tom, Katherine, her father Charles McCauley, and his friend and the family lawyer, Alan Scherer.

Katherine snatched off the dark glasses. Her eyes were sky-blue, angry.

“Thank God that farce is over.”

She wrenched open the passenger’s front door and climbed in. Charles got in the driver’s side. He was an unathletic man in his late forties, with thinning hair and blunt features and wide flat lips that gave the lower half of his face an anvil look that was harder to read than a clock without hands.

Alan Scherer and Tom climbed into the back. Charles started the car and swung it into the sweeping curve that led out of the cemetery and into the afternoon traffic. He had refused to ride in a chauffeured limo and had given his own driver the afternoon off to avoid more dutiful gloom.

Tom said, “Who were all those people?”

“Members of the board and their wives,” Charles said. “A few members of other boards, paying their respects to the McCauley name.”

“He had friends, you know.”

“The old-timers are either gone or too far away.”

“Present-day friends,” Tom insisted.

“We didn’t need a crowd of beach riffraff.”

“Katherine’s right. It was a farce.”

“Not for your reasons,” Katherine snapped.

“We should have had a wake. With rock music and Mozart and young people. We should have celebrated his life. Instead we ignored it.”

“He didn’t think his life was worth celebrating. He killed himself.”

“You read the note.”

Charles said sharply, “That’ll do.”

He talked the way he moved, without haste or wasted energy. It gave him the inexorable quality of a glacier. He could put iron into a casual remark.

“About the note,” he went on. “What note? There wasn’t one, and we don’t want anyone suggesting that there was. As to the rest, we can’t run our lives on feelings. None of us can. End of discussion.”

Tom found himself saying, “Yes, sir,” automatically, lapping over Katherine’s resigned, “Yes, father.”

“Tom, I want to talk to you when we get home.”

Tom almost said, “Yes, sir,” again but caught himself.

“Okay.”

2

Number 1622 Lindero Lane had a flat half-oval driveway enclosing a manicured lawn with a couple of jacaranda trees growing out of it. The house was of dark red brick with a pine-green composition roof and looked comfortable but forbidding, protecting an almost fanatic privacy. A Gothic arch led onto a little porch. The front door looked capable of withstanding siege.

Things had been simpler, Tom thought, when he was just the gardener’s son who came two times a week to help out, trimming borders and weeding flowerbeds and raking lawns and hauling sacks of garden litter. Now, more than twelve years later, a lean slatty young man with shaggy dark hair and watchful eyes, Tom Bell followed the others onto the porch, wondering about the future without Mac. He owed the McCauleys a lot; the Stanford law degree was only part of it.

The front door opened before they reached it. Felipe, the houseboy, stood back and bowed gravely.

“Oh, cheer up, Felipe,” Katherine said nastily.

“Tais-toi,” Charles snapped as they went inside. He began giving Felipe orders. Katherine stopped in front of the hall mirror to remove her lace mantilla.

“I’m going riding,” she said to no one in particular.

Charles and Alan Scherer crossed the hall to the library. Tom took the carpeted stairs to the second floor, where he had had a room since he was fourteen.

It was the first room of his own he’d ever had, small, with a bed, a window, a closet, some cheap bookcases he’d added over the years. It had never felt like home — Charles and Katherine had seen to that — but it had been his sanctuary. Gratitude to Mac continued as gratitude to the room.

He changed his yellow turtleneck for a clean gray one, pulled on a light sweater against the approaching cool of the autumn evening. Better go see what Charles wanted to talk to him about.

He met Katherine as she reached the top of the stairs. She gave him a withering look.

“What made you bring up that note?”

“Why’d you bring up the suicide?”

“I despise quitters.”

“Hell, you just didn’t like your grandfather.”

“That’s right.” She pushed past him. In the hall the front door chime sounded. “Better get that. Felipe’s in the kitchen fixing Alan something to eat and Father’s given everyone else the day off.”

Katherine’s room was across the hall. She disappeared inside it.

In a swamp of irritation, Tom thudded down the stairs. His shoes made a more satisfactory impact when he hit the hardwood floor of the hall. He saw Felipe emerging from the direction of the kitchen with a tray and waved for him to ignore the front door. Felipe thanked him, knocked, and went into the library.

Tom grabbed impatiently at the front door handle, thumbed the latch, pulled the door open, and stared, suddenly disoriented.

Looking up at him nervously, with the Gothic arch behind her framing the two jacarandas, was a young woman holding a torn-open business-size envelope. She was speaking but he didn’t hear a word. Involuntarily, he looked back toward the stairs, then back at the girl at the door.

Same eyes, same mouth, same coloring. The blond hair was longer, more casual, her face more carelessly tanned, with a sprinkling of impish light freckles across the nose. The only real difference was money. This girl was strictly counterculture in a cotton blouse, a denim maxiskirt, worn thong sandals. Katherine had just disappeared into her upstairs bedroom and hadn’t had time to change her clothes and makeup.

So there had to be two of them.

The one outside was Katherine’s double.

He floundered.

“Uh? Beg pardon?”

“Does Mr. Charles McCauley live here?”

“Yeah. Yes. He does.”

She stuck two fingers into the torn end of the envelope and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. She unfolded it and offered it to him. Her hands were not pampered.

He took the paper. It was a typed letter addressed to Ms. Shannon Fargo at an address in Topanga. The return address was 1622 Lindero Lane.

He looked closely at the signature. It looked real, and as though written with a real fountain pen, one of Mac’s foibles.

The girl asked, “Are you Michael J. McCauley?”

He stared.

“Well,” she said with a small grin, “I could tell you weren’t Katherine.”

“No, hey, I’m sorry. I’m Tom Bell.” He gave her back the letter. “You mean you don’t know Michael J. McCauley?”

“No.”

Tom said without expression, “He died a few days ago.”

She became very still, then dropped her eyes, made a gesture of embarrassment.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know. Look, I could come back some other time... or maybe forget the whole thing.”

“No, no, come in and meet Charles and Katherine.”

He stepped back from the door.

“You sure it’s okay?”

He met her eyes. So like Katherine’s, but showing something Katherine’s had never shown: puzzlement, an almost quizzical caution.

“It’ll never be that,” he said. “But now’s as good a time as any.”

3

She came inside. He closed the door feeling oddly dangerous, like a blade with more than two sharp edges.

He led her across the hall to the library, knocked discreetly, opened the door without waiting for an answer. He ushered her inside, closing the door behind him.

The room was long, low-ceilinged, the gleam of polished wood and fine leather giving the impression of wealth taken too much for granted ever to seem ostentatious. The furniture was rich but utilitarian, a sofa and chairs made to be sat on, tables to be worked at, two walls lined with books to be thumbed through or read at leisure.

Alan Scherer, his coat off, sat in a low-slung leather chair with a glass of beer on a table by his elbow. He was a big man but soft, as though he’d never done anything more athletic than sign his name. He was only a year or two younger than Charles, but his face was unlined and friendly. He wore tinted aviator glasses and was taking a bite out of a sandwich. Beyond him, behind a considerable desk, Charles turned the page of a document. He had another beer on the desk blotter.

Glancing up briefly, Charles said, “What are you doing in that silly outfit?”

Alan smiled amiably until something snapped in his eyes. The smooth face became as hard as granite. He looked at Charles, back at the girl, swallowed. Charles looked up from his reading, beginning to frown.

“We have a visitor, gentlemen,” Tom said. “May I present Miss Shannon Fargo. Mr. Charles McCauley, Mr. Alan Scherer, his lawyer.”

Charles said blankly, “How d’you do?” and got to his feet behind the desk. Alan Scherer rose a few inches above his seat cushion, then fell back. Charles waved at the sofa while his expression went from surprise to closed mistrust. “Won’t you sit down?”

Shannon Fargo took the letter from its envelope and gave it to Charles, then went back and sat on the edge of the sofa, tightly folded hands in her lap.

Tom hitched a leg over the corner of a library table, watched Charles sit back down and read the letter. He read it again, handed it silently to Alan Scherer, and fixed his daughter’s look-alike with an empty stare.

He said, “Hardly a chummy letter, is it?”

“No,” the girl said.

“What was your relationship to Michael J. McCauley?”

“I didn’t even know him.”

“But you came in answer to the letter anyway. Taking a bit of a risk, weren’t you?”

“I wasn’t going to come, at first. But some friends looked you up at this address, hardly Skid Row, and said, hey, you never know, y’know. So I came.”

“Who are these friends?” Scherer asked, leaning forward to put the letter on the desk.

Shannon looked at Tom for help. He kept his face alertly neutral, looked away at the two men, then expectantly back at Shannon.

“Just... some friends.” Her voice wobbled.

“Have you some objection to telling us their names?”

“Yes, if you’re going to hassle them.” She stood up. Her voice had firmed. “Look, they were wrong, I was wrong. I came in answer to a letter from a dead man and apparently something’s—”

“How did you know he was dead?” Alan asked.

“I told her,” Tom said.

Charles said abruptly, “Get Katherine in here.”

“Yes, sir.”

Tom left. When he came back a minute later, saying she’d be right down, he found Shannon Fargo standing in front of the desk, refolding the letter.

“If you’ll let us keep that,” Alan Scherer said, “we can have it authenticated.”

She dropped the letter onto the desk. She was almost in tears.

“Blow your nose on it for all I care. It’s a sick joke played by someone with a sick mind.”

Tom said gently, “Michael McCauley didn’t have a sick mind.”

“We don’t know that he wrote that letter,” Charles objected.

“I don’t care who wrote it,” Shannon said, and turned to the door into the hall — just as it opened. Katherine came in wearing jodhpurs and a heavy sweater.

She closed the door, suddenly froze.

Shannon gasped.

Time went by.

Finally Katherine, her face like ice, approached for a closer look, raised a hand to push a lock of hair away from Shannon’s face. Then she took Shannon’s hands in both of hers and studied them, turning them over. They were blunt-nailed, already work-roughened. Katherine’s were slender, white, cared-for.

She released Shannon’s hands. Her voice was thin, precise, like an engraving on glass.

“You’re a fraud, of course.”

“How would you know?”

Shannon walked to the door and let herself out and closed the door quietly behind her.

Katherine’s lip curled. “Where did that come from, and what did it want?”

“I don’t know,” Charles growled. “Find out, Tom.”

Tom said, “Yes, sir,” with acid emphasis, and followed Shannon out.

Charles stared at the door he had left by.

“Sometimes,” he said after a moment, “I forget how much that boy owes this family — and so does he.”

“Not a boy any longer,” Alan said mildly. “He’s twenty-six. But he lost a dear friend in old Mac as well as a benefactor, and he’s burned up over the funeral.”

“He’d better get over it.” Charles tapped a finger on the document he’d been studying earlier. “Now maybe this makes more sense.”

Katherine said, “What does?”

“This.” Charles showed it to her. “Came in today’s mail.”

4

He called her name and was surprised when she stopped and waited for him.

“Yes?” she said guardedly.

“I want to apologize for throwing you into that piranha tank,” Tom said. “And to offer you a ride home.”

“Why?”

“To ease my conscience. To explain what that was all about. And, of course, to find out all I can about you. You don’t have to cooperate.”

“It’s quite a ways.”

“The 405 to the 101, west to Topanga Canyon Boulevard and up into the hills. How’d you get here?”

“Hitched a ride and took a bus and hitched another ride.”

“My way’s easier.”

“...Okay.”

He brought her back up the driveway. The garage was to the right of the house, way in back.

“Who was that?” Shannon asked. “My look-alike?”

“Katherine Anne McCauley. Charles is her father. Michael J. McCauley was his father. We just came back from his funeral.”

“I guess that’s why everyone’s so... stressed out.”

“Not really. They’re a pretty stressed-out family.”

“Aren’t you one of them?”

“I’m just the gardener’s kid. Or I was. I used to help my dad out. Michael J. had just retired from the family business, against his will, and was finding it heavy going. He was a marvelous old coot, ‘Mac’ to everyone, the original nonconformist. Back in the thirties he was one of the last of the barnstormers, flying one of those old jennies held together with string and sealing wax. Flew by the seat of his pants and built a business the same way, small-time air freight, then packaging for cargoes, a few other things. Eventually the business outgrew him. Charles eased him out and McCauley, Inc., became big business.

“Mac figured being retired didn’t mean just waiting to die. He was going to spend some of his money his way and have fun. Which is where I got lucky. I was a marginal delinquent and potential dropout, but he thought I was educable. He offered to take me in and give me all the education I could handle. My dad threatened to beat me stupid if I didn’t try it. So I did. Katherine was six, just graduating from nannies to governesses.”

“Where’s your dad now?”

“Died two years later. He’d been drinking himself to death for years. My mother died in a fall down stairs at a house where she was babysitting, when I was nine.”

“What about Michael J. — Mac?”

“Inoperable cancer.”

They had come to the garage. It had only three cars in it: Katherine’s Corvette, Mac’s old blue Camaro, and Tom’s Accord, a college graduation present from Mac. The Chrysler Imperial was still at the front door waiting for someone to tuck it in for the night.

She climbed into the Accord. He studied her face through the open window for a long time.

He said abruptly, “He was getting dependant on painkillers. He decided that was no way to live, so he wrote Charles a note and checked himself out. I found him when I went to his room to see if he was coming down to breakfast. Charles suppressed the note, and Mac’s doctor certified death by natural causes instead of an overdose of sleeping pills and good brandy. Everyone knew he’d left most of his money to Katherine, so when you show up three days later, suspicions break out in a rash: you’re part of a plot to raid Mac’s estate.”

He left her window and walked around the car and got in beside her.

Shannon said, “Because I look like her.”

“Enough like her to be her twin.”

She let out a dispirited breath. Tom started the car, eased it forward on the driveway and toward the front gate.

Shannon said, “They couldn’t maybe think it’s just a coincidence, huh?”

5

It was after dark when he got back. He found Charles, Katherine, and Alan Scherer still in the library, Katherine still in her riding togs and fingering a glass of white wine. Alan had a fresh beer at his elbow.

“Learn anything?” Charles asked.

“She works at Needham’s Flower Shop and Nursery in Malibu,” Tom said. “She ran away from home at sixteen, keeps in touch with her mother but doesn’t let her know where she is. And she sticks to her story: she never knew Michael J. McCauley, just got the letter and came here and got dumped on. She thinks her resemblance to Katherine is a coincidence, someone noticed it and sent the letter as a practical joke.”

“Do you think Mac wrote it?”

“No idea. Ask the experts.”

“Let’s keep this in the family for now,” Charles said.

“One interesting item: Shannon’s birth date. December thirteenth, nineteen seventy-three — the day after Katherine’s.”

A protesting sound came from Katherine’s throat. The stem of her wineglass snapped loudly. Her hands flew apart and wine spilled. The pieces of the glass thudded to the carpet.

She stood up slowly, looking down at the drenched jodhpurs, face dismissive, fastidious. The Ice Princess was in control again but her voice was brittle.

“Ring for Felipe, please, Daddy. I’ll want another glass.”

“Go change those clothes,” her father said.

“Just when everything’s getting so interesting?” She sat down again. “Tell Tom about the new will.”

Tom’s eyebrows lifted.

Charles sighed heavily, pushed the bell at the side of the desk, then picked up the document in front of him and dropped it back onto the blotter.

“Almost identical with the old one,” he said. “Same lump sum bequests to Tom and a few others. Only difference is that the first one left the major part of his estate to Katherine — not a fortune but still a fair amount of change — and this one divides it equally among ‘any surviving issue of my son, Charles Gordon McCauley.’ Which suggests I fathered more than one child. Which I certainly did not.”

“You didn’t draw this one up?” Tom asked Alan.

“No,” Alan said. “He went to a law firm in Beverly Hills. I guess he knew what he was going to do and didn’t want to clutter up his last days with unpleasantness. The new will’s dated two days before he died, the day before the letter to Shannon Fargo. He had the law firm mail me a copy.”

“I guess he got Shannon here to make sure somebody took the new will seriously,” Tom said.

“What d’you mean, ‘seriously’?” Katherine said angrily. “You think my father’s lying? That old fool loathed his own family and wanted to stir up trouble.”

A discreet knock on the door. Felipe came in. Katherine pointed to the broken glass and ordered another wine. Felipe picked up the pieces and left without a word.

“I suspect,” Tom said reasonably, “that Mac saw Shannon and learned who she was and wanted the possibility of a second granddaughter looked into.”

“How would you go about it?” Charles asked.

“I’d rather not. I’d have to pry my way into people’s lives and privacies.”

“For Christ’s sake, Tom, you’ve got a law degree,” Charles snapped. “In a few weeks the bar results will come out and you’ll be a lawyer. A bit late to get so thin-skinned. Don’t you owe this family something?”

“What I owe is to Mac. It’s a debt beyond repaying.”

There, he’d said it — put years of throttled resentment into words. Charles’s face closed like a fist. But Alan Scherer smiled easily.

“Lighten up, you guys.” He made a friendly gesture. “I think Tom’s right — if Mac did write that letter. Let’s assume he did. Yes, he’d have wanted Shannon’s background checked. If she turns out not to be a McCauley, Mac’s wish will have been fulfilled. The change in the will will have no practical value.”

Alan looked pleased with himself. Tom sighed.

“In other words,” he said slowly, “I should do the background check as a small payment on my debt to Mac.”

Alan grinned.

Tom said, “We all know you’re a world-class negotiator.”

“Besides,” Alan continued, “I think you’d be concerned for Shannon’s feelings, and wouldn’t be hell-bent to prove something against her.”

“Remember she hasn’t claimed to be a McCauley.”

“Yet,” Charles said heavily.

The discreet knock again. Felipe came in with a glass of white wine on a tray. He put the glass down on the table beside Katherine and went away.

Charles went on, “When’s the other shoe going to drop?” Katherine sipped her wine, watching her father. “When it does, I want to be ready, so I’m not buying into the benevolent explanations I’ve been hearing. Let’s satisfy my cautious nature and learn Fargo’s true parentage, which is all we need. Can you buy into that, Tom?”

Tom shrugged. “I guess so.”

Katherine said suddenly, “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe that my own father, who is perfectly capable of giving orders, should have to justify and wheedle to get someone to do something he should be eager to do. Mac’s dead, Tom. What d’you think you are, a family member?”

She sat unmoving at the end of the sofa, still but not stiff, a picture of composure. She brought her wineglass to her lips and took a small sip.

Her father said gruffly, “I think you’ve had enough of that, Katherine.”

“Oh, really?” Her mouth curved into a soft smile. “Then I really mustn’t drink any more, must I?”

Still smiling, she tilted the wineglass and slowly, almost meditatively, poured its contents into her own lap.

She set the glass down carefully on the table and stood up. She spoke clearly, the last word a sharp bright dagger.

“I’m very, very angry.”

She walked without hurry to the door and went out. Tom realized that his mouth was open and closed it. Alan Scherer had been startled out of his habitual courtroom calm and seemed embarrassed. He looked at Charles as though expecting him to make some comment. Charles didn’t. No one ever did. Which made a weird incident even weirder.

“Right,” Tom said, taking a deep breath. “Mac’s dead, so I’ll be moving out. I’ll need a day or two to find a place.”

Charles’s eyes were the color of stones in a river, his face as unyielding as a bridge abutment.

“Keep your goddam shirt on, you’ve got a job to do.” The tension between them was as tangible as an iron bar. Then Charles said, “Ah, hell.” He sighed. “It’s been a long, lousy day. Meeting adjourned.”

6

Tom Bell had taken the California bar exam in July; the results wouldn’t be out until after Thanksgiving. Meantime he worked as a law clerk for Morgan and Scherer, Alan’s firm. He spent the following morning, and part of the afternoon, shepardizing cases the firm was using in a brief, a job involving concentration, precision, and almost paralyzing drudgery. Then Alan told him to go and gumshoe the Fargo matter.

He drove back to the McCauley house, went into the library, and closed the door behind him. At the phone he made sure his most relaxed manner, and most engaging attitude, were both in place before he punched in the number of Needham’s Flower Shop and Nursery.

A man answered, yelled for Shannon. A woman’s voice yelled back from a distance. Tom waited. At last she said, “Hello,” in his ear, sounding rushed but sunny.

“Hello, Shannon. It’s Tom Bell. From yesterday, at the McCauley house.”

“...Oh. Yes.” Sudden reluctance. “Hi.”

“Can I see you for a few minutes this afternoon?”

“Still checking up on me?”

“Charles is still suspicious. I want to prove him wrong.”

“Because you’re only the gardener’s kid?”

“Because he’s a horse’s ass. I promise I won’t take long.”

“This afternoon’s real bad. We’re short-staffed and getting some new stock in, so I won’t have time. Could you come by my place? I should be home by six.”

He said he would be there and hung up. It was just after four. Time to kill.

It died hard. He wanted to get on with the job, and he wanted to see Shannon again — and at the same time wanted nothing to do with the job. It might mean ripping Shannon from her family moorings. He might have to coldly deceive and manipulate people. He’d never thought of himself as that kind of creep and didn’t want to become one.

In his room, he spent time reading up on wills and related law in Clark, Lusky, and Murphy’s Gratuitous Transfers, finally gave up, and went down to the kitchen to tell the cook he wouldn’t be there for dinner. While he was there Katherine came in to pirate a glass of apple juice. She was just home from UCLA, where she was enrolled as a business administration major.

She demanded, “Where are you off to?”

“Private-eye work for your dad.”

“A date with my look-alike, I’ll bet. I’ll come too, to keep you honest.”

“No way.”

Her eyes grew flinty. “Just try giving me orders, chum.”

“I work better without an audience.”

“Get used to audiences. Or how are you going to argue cases in court?”

“Maybe you don’t want me to find any answers.”

He pushed out of the kitchen and took the back stairs to his room, where he tried Gratuitous Transfers again but couldn’t concentrate. Anyway, he had no way of knowing what might be relevant to the McCauley situation. He gave up and put on a light nylon jacket and hurried downstairs and out the front door. Leaving early was better than staying in the same house as Katherine.

When he reached the garage he found Katherine already at the wheel of her red Corvette. She wore lightly tinted glasses and had a bandanna over her hair. She ignored him as he got into the Accord, but pulled out directly behind him and followed him out into the street.

The community of Topanga was cuddled in shadowy twilight. A few streets poked away from the boulevard into the surrounding hills and hollows. The low frame and stucco buildings had always looked wonderfully rustic and 1930s and inexpensive, which Topanga wasn’t, but big pieces of earth-moving equipment stood around, suggesting that a major reshaping of the landscape had been going on up to quitting time. Maybe the urban 1990s were invading. Too bad.

Just beyond the heart of Topanga, Tom pulled off the roadway and parked in the dust. The Corvette passed him and did the same. Tom got out and walked to it. Katherine was rolling up her window. She stopped when she saw him, looked up without expression.

Tom said, “Please, Katherine, remember that I have to get that girl to trust me.”

“Why should she? I don’t. That’s why I’m checking up on you. — How long will you be?”

“As long as it takes. Please don’t interfere.”

Katherine sighed. “Well, since you ask so nicely.”

“Thank you.”

He turned away before she could change her mind.

There was a low white stuccoed wall around the house with an exuberant bougainvillea spilling over it. Tom went through the low wooden gate and latched it behind him, then took the pathway between two patches of lawn up to the front porch. Beyond the porch, curtains were drawn behind the front windows. The house looked worn, old, and comfortable. It was owned by Mrs. Sarah Needham, whose son David ran the place where Shannon worked.

At the porch, the path divided left and right. He went left, then right, past the corner of the house. A few more curtained windows. Two concrete steps led to a door with a street number painted on a little wooden arm projecting from the frame.

He went up the steps and knocked on the door. Shannon opened it almost at once.

“Oh, hi.”

“If I’m too early,” Tom said, “I can go away and come back later.”

“No, no, of course not.” She stepped back, opening the door wider. “We actually got through early.”

“I took the chance because Katherine was bugging me,” he said as he stepped inside. “She even followed me up here. I just hope she leaves us alone.”

Shannon closed the door behind him. She was wearing jeans and a blue denim work shirt that had been worn and washed till they were both almost white. She looked as much like Katherine as ever.

The room was small and bright, with rock concert and environmentalist posters taped to the walls. Furniture was minimal: a day bed, a worn armchair, a card table set up under the one window with two lightweight chairs, a few big cushions inviting people to sit on the floor. On the card table were a stiffened photo mailer, a dime-store frame with the back off, a bottle of glass cleaner, a rag.

“I got carded last time I tried to buy a bottle of wine,” Shannon said, “so I can’t offer you any.”

“Don’t let it worry you. I expected to be treated as a nuisance, not as a guest.”

“Would you like some herb tea?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

She smiled a little awkwardly and disappeared behind a curtain. He heard water running into a kettle. Moments later she came back.

“Kitchen’s to the left,” she said, pointing back at the curtain, “bathroom’s to the right. Both the size of phone booths. Sit down, for goodness sake, and tell me how I can convince Mr. McCauley I’m not a threat.”

He sat down at the card table. She took the other chair as he fished a sheet of paper out of a pocket.

“You told me you were born December thirteenth, nineteen seventy-three, right?”

She nodded.

“You never told me where.”

“The Palmer Clinic, in Yucaipa. That’s down near San Bernardino.”

A sudden chill burst under his breastbone.

“And your parents were?”

She almost told him — but stopped herself.

“Sorry, Shannon. I wasn’t trying to trick you. Fargo’s not your real name, is it?”

Almost accusingly, she shook her head.

“That’s okay. It doesn’t matter. Now I want to show you” — he unfolded the sheet of paper — “a copy of someone else’s birth certificate.”

She took it, read the name. Her nose wrinkled. “Pretty Katie Icicles.” Then her mouth sagged open. Her eyes were shocked.

“Yes.” His mouth was dry. He tried clearing his throat. “I got the original from Charles this morning and copied it on his fax machine. Katherine was born just before midnight, December twelfth, nineteen seventy-three, at the Palmer Clinic in Yucaipa — where you were born some time after midnight.”

She stood up. Her lips were bloodless, her face stark with shock. She saw she was still holding the photocopy and threw it down on the table as though afraid of contagion.

Beyond the curtain, the tea kettle had begun to whistle. She ignored it, or didn’t hear it.

“A strong resemblance could be a coincidence,” Tom said slowly. “But you’re as alike as two matched pearls, and the coincidences are kind of piling up.”

Her face showed the beginnings of fear.

She said defensively, “So?”

“So I don’t know what it all means any more than you do. This is going to jolt hell out of the McCauleys.”

“What exactly are you doing for them?”

“Finding out who you are — so they’ll know you aren’t another McCauley. Nothing sinister.”

After a while Shannon nodded vaguely, muttered something about that shrieking kettle, and went back behind the curtain. The shrill whistle died. A minute later she reappeared carrying two steaming china mugs. She set them down on the card table. The steam was fresh and minty. She went away again and came back with a saucer.

“For your tea bag, when it’s steeped enough.”

She sat down at the table again, withdrawn, maybe thoughtful, her eyes unfocused. The copy of Katherine’s birth certificate had landed on top of the photo mailer. She took it by one corner, slid it toward Tom. He refolded it and tucked it into the zippered chest pocket of his nylon jacket. Absently, she folded back the flap of the mailer and took out a five-by-seven color print. She gave it a glance and turned it toward him.

“Me and some friends down at the beach. Back when things were simple.”

Half a dozen grinning, laughing young people, Shannon among them, were crowded around an elderly man who sat at the tiller of a small sailboat. He had a weatherbeaten face and an open grin, wore a frayed shirt and a yachtsman’s cap.

“Who’s the old geezer?”

“That’s the Skipper.” A hint of animation crept back into her face and voice. “I don’t know his real name, I only met him a couple of times. That’s his boat. My friends say he’s retired, likes to do some sailing when the weather’s nice, sometimes springs for a six-pack or a bottle of wine.”

Shannon picked up the frame, examined the glass for dust and traces of cleaner, and slid the photo behind it. She pushed the cardboard backing into the frame behind the photo, laid the picture face-down on the table, and just sat there a while.

Finally she gave a ragged sigh.

“Okay. My dad was Curtis John Farr. He died when I was six. My mom is Eileen Scott Farr, who lives in San Pedro and works as a beautician. They were married when she was twenty and he was thirty. I was born ten years later.”

“Why’d you change your name?”

“I ran away when I was sixteen. Well, sort of. I mean I write my mom pretty regularly, no return address. I don’t want her to be able to trace me. I mean... we fight all the time. Can’t agree on anything. Well, I looked up and saw this big billboard for Wells Fargo Bank and thought, well, Farr, Fargo, why not?”

“And the Shannon part?”

“That’s real. Shannon Elayne.” Then fretfully, “Oh God. Am I going to regret this...?”

Someone knocked on the door.

“I mean trusting you with all this?”

He said grimly, “Not if I can help it,” stood up, and crossed quickly to the door and opened it.

Katherine said from the concrete step, “I got tired of waiting.”

“No one asked you to wait. You promised me—”

“Changed my mind. Going to let me in, or just stand there looking silly and self-righteous?” A light rippling laugh. “Come on, Tom. Loosen up.”

“It’s okay, let her in,” Shannon said behind him.

Tom moved aside. Katherine came in. She had shed the bandanna and the dark glasses. She took in the room in a half-amused, half-contemptuous glance.

Shannon said cautiously, “Hello again.”

“I thought we’d best get acquainted,” Katherine said. “Tom, don’t let us keep you, I’m sure you have things to do.” She smiled serenely. “It’s quite safe, leaving us alone together.”

Tom said to Shannon, “Talk to you outside a minute?”

She nodded and preceded him through the door into near night. The air had developed an edge. There was no wind. Trees made no sound.

They walked to the corner of the house. Someone had turned the porch light on.

“I don’t know what she’s up to,” Tom said. “If you like I’ll stay, or get rid of her for you,”

“How? No, it’s all right, I’ll be okay.”

“Okay. I don’t want you taken by surprise if she sees that picture you showed me. The guy you called the Skipper? That’s Michael J. McCauley. That’s Mac.”

Half in shadow, half illuminated by the porch light, her face was still and grave. Her mouth formed an almost inaudible, “Oh.” Then she said, almost as quietly, “He did ask me where I was from, who my folks were. I said I was a runaway and couldn’t tell him much...” A short stressful sigh. “You’re going to talk to my mom, aren’t you?”

“If I may.”

“Well... give her my love.”

“Okay.” He thought a moment, then took her face in his hands and kissed her, undemandingly, on the mouth.

She didn’t object. “Which one of us was that for?”

He was too surprised to answer. She went on, “Ever make it with her?”

“Her? Katherine?... No. Never.”

“Why not?”

“Because it never occurred to me. Because she would’ve killed me for even trying, and then her father would’ve killed me.”

“Okay. Good night.”

Tom left. Shannon went back inside, found Katherine still standing in the middle of the room.

“Sorry to interrupt your tea party,” she said abruptly, “but I was quite beastly to you yesterday. I’m sorry. In my own inadequate defense, I can only say that I was, well, shaken. Someone was trespassing on my property — my face. But it’s not just mine, is it? Let me make amends and take you to dinner.”

“That would be lovely,” Shannon said, surprised. “Are you always Katherine, all three syllables?”

“All three syllables.”

“Never Kathy, or Katie, or Kate, anything like that?”

“No.” A tiny hesitation, almost a breach in Katherine’s armor of certainty. “But you can call me one of those if you want.”

7

Tom called from a pay phone at the gas station on Ventura. His mood had brightened. He looked forward to making Charles uncomfortable.

“Any luck?” Charles asked.

“Some information, anyway,” Tom said. “According to her birth certificate, Katherine was born at the Palmer Clinic in Yucaipa just before midnight on December twelfth, nineteen seventy-three. Shannon Fargo says she was born at the Palmer Clinic in Yucaipa on December thirteenth.”

“Jesus.”

“I’m going to see her mother to try to get a look at Shannon’s birth certificate. And Mac definitely knew Shannon. I saw a photograph of him on his boat with a crowd of young people, including Shannon. She says she only knew him as the Skipper, and only met him a couple of times. That can be easily checked out.

“Now. You guys got me investigating this girl by saying I’d be doing Mac a favor. Are you sure you want me to finish the job?”

Pause. Charles shifted in his chair before answering.

“If I tell you to quit,” he growled, “you might later have to testify that the investigation of Shannon Fargo, which I had ordered, was canceled when it looked as though awkward information might be developed, and that therefore no proper search of her background was made. So obviously you can’t quit, can you?”

“I guess not.”

“There’s no awkward information to develop.”

You hope. “Okay.”

Tom hung up.

The area code for San Bernardino was 909. Surely nearby Yucaipa was the same. Tom dialed 909 Directory Assistance and was asked what city. He said Yucaipa, the Palmer Clinic. It wasn’t listed. And in San Bernardino? Nothing there either.

But Eileen Scott Farr was listed in San Pedro. Armed with her address and phone number, he got back onto the freeway.

8

Etienne’s was a quietly busy restaurant in Toluca Lake, not quite formal enough to question Shannon’s attire. A hostess in a white gown, who obviously knew Katherine, showed them to a table where glass and silverware winked with quiet exclusivity and the linen was crisp and snowy. She murmured with a small, nonintrusive smile, “One would almost think you two were related!”

Shannon stiffened. Katherine smiled brilliantly.

“Wouldn’t you, though? But actually we’re not.” For a moment the hostess looked blank. Then her smile became rueful. She said, “Oops! — sorry!” and then cranked the smile back up, a co-conspirator, and said their waitress would be with them in a moment.

When she had gone, Katherine said quietly, picking up her menu, “But we almost have to be, don’t we?”

“I don’t see how we can be.”

“We might start by asking my mother, but I’ve no idea where she is, or even if she’s still alive. My parents were divorced when I was a baby and my father got full custody. Of course I don’t remember my mother, there are no pictures of her, and Daddy never talks about her.”

The cocktail waitress arrived. Shannon, who didn’t want to get carded in a place like Etienne’s, said, “Nothing for me, thanks.” Katherine thought a moment, then said she’d just have a glass of the house red wine. The waitress went away.

Shannon said, “You do that like you were thirty years old.”

“When I’m ordering a drink I am thirty years old, casual and thinking about something else entirely. Never been carded. Maturity is a matter of attitude.”

Their regular waitress arrived and took their orders. Katherine turned the conversation around to Shannon, learned where she worked, that making things grow in pots and planters and flowerbeds had been a big preoccupation since she was ten. She was learning to play the mandolin, and to throw and fire pottery. Where all this would lead was a question that didn’t bother her. And what about Katherine’s future? A law degree?

“Not a chance,” Katherine said firmly, “though I may be prejudiced against the law because it’s Tom’s field.”

“Don’t you like him?”

“Not really. He’s too determined to prove he hasn’t sold out to McCauley money. In a way he’s too like my grandfather, who founded the family business. The bigger it got, the more he had to prove he was the same scrappy undisciplined character he was when he was twenty years old and flat broke. He enjoyed the amenities of money but no longer the company of those still engaged in earning it. Antagonized a lot of people. He said my dad was just a bean counter, but the business grew quite a bit after my father took over. Old Mac resented that.”

Her wine arrived.

“Weren’t you jealous,” Shannon asked, “of the attention your granddad gave Tom?”

Wrong question. She sensed Katherine’s chilled withdrawal. Maybe she had assumed that her growing ease in Katherine’s presence meant a growing friendliness on Katherine’s part. Dumb assumption.

But Katherine’s eyes slid sideways thoughtfully.

“I suppose I must have been. Mac brought Tom into the house when he was fourteen and I was six. I was already a pretty good rider, but my grandfather was soon taking Tom to the club for skeet shooting. D’you suppose that’s why last year I made it into the state finals in the junior women’s division?”

“Skeet shooting?”

“Tom wasn’t really interested and soon quit. I was determined to show him up. But riding’s what I like best.”

“You could open a riding academy.”

“It’s just a recreation, I’m afraid. My father says the family business is a responsibility we’re born to. I’m sure he would rather I’d been a boy.”

“Just so he doesn’t want you to go out for football.”

Katherine laughed. “And what will you be doing ten years from now? Playing mandolin in coffeehouses around college campuses?”

“Raising kids and roses in a tract house in Burbank? I dunno. I’m still finding out who I am.”

“When you do,” Katherine said delicately, “be sure to let me know, will you?”

Shannon almost snapped, “I should’ve said ‘what I am.’ I already know who. And at least I know for sure I’m not a girl who wants to be a boy.”

Katherine murmured, “Temper, temper,” and drank some wine.

9

Two freeway transitions later, Tom was on the Harbor Freeway southbound for San Pedro. There he took an off-ramp at random, asked directions at a gas station, and five minutes later parked in front of Eileen Farr’s address, 1834 N. Sylvan. It was half of a slightly rundown stucco duplex with a Spanish tile roof and a malnourished little front yard. Lights were on behind curtained front windows. He got out and locked his car and climbed onto the porch, took a deep breath and readied a relaxed smile as he rang the doorbell and stepped back, to be clearly visible and nonthreatening.

After a wait, the barred Judas window in the door suddenly opened.

“Yes?” A woman’s voice, tentative and querulous.

He stepped closer to the door again.

“Ms. Eileen Farr?”

“Yes?”

“Hello. My name is Tom Bell, and I’ve just come from seeing your daughter.”

“Yes?”

“Shannon sends her love. She wants you to know she’s well, and working, and contented.”

“Where? Doing what?”

“I’m sorry — that’s what I promised not to tell you.”

“Who are you? I don’t know you.”

“My name’s Tom Bell, and I work for a lawyer named Scherer—”

“What’s she done? She’s in trouble, isn’t she?”

“No, ma’am, nothing like that—”

“Then what’s this lawyer got to do with anything?”

Didn’t like lawyers. But lots of people didn’t.

“Well, nothing, really.” He wished he knew how firm to be, how accommodating. Instinct said forget firmness. “What happened is this. Someone noticed that Shannon is an almost perfect double for a young woman named McCauley. This young woman stands to inherit a truckload of money. The McCauleys are trying to determine if this is just a coincidence, or if the two young women could be related in some way, or what?”

“How much money?”

Eileen Farr came closer to the window. He saw lively short fair hair framing a face of considerable faded prettiness despite lines and weariness.

“I don’t know, Ms. Farr, but I understand it’s quite a bit.”

“So?”

“So Shannon says she’s no relation, she’s the daughter of Curtis and Eileen Scott Farr, and she was born at the Parker Clinic in Yucaipa on December thirteenth, nineteen seventy-three.”

“Isn’t that enough for you?”

“Actually, yes, it’s enough for me, but my boss says it would be better if we could get official confirmation — if you could show me her birth certificate.”

Tom heard a sharp intake of breath.

“Did that... what’s her name? — did Estelle Marchand put you up to this?”

“Who?”

“You know perfectly well who!”

“Sorry, Ms. Farr, I never heard of her. What’s she got to do with anything?”

“...Nothing,” Eileen Farr said. “Enough questions. Good night.”

The Judas window started to close.

To keep it open a moment longer, he asked the first question that came into his head.

“Did you know that a medical examination can prove conclusively whether a woman has ever had a baby?”

Silence. For seconds he didn’t even hear traffic noises. Then, from behind the little barred window, came a sigh like lost hope.

“I know that,” Eileen said after a moment. “What has that got to do with anything? What do you want?”

“Only to see Shannon’s birth certificate, Ms. Farr.”

“And then you’ll go away and stop bothering me?”

“I promise.”

She left the window. Five minutes later she came back and stuck another copy through the bars. He took it and thanked her and examined it under the porch light and compared it with Katherine’s from his jacket pocket. Except for the parents’ names, the babies’ names, and the times of birth, they were identical, signed by attending physician Dr. Henry E. Palmer and by a registrar or assistant registrar named Clayton Hackett.

Sadness felt like the weight of half the world.

But you never had a baby, did you, Ms. Farr? He had tricked her. Guilt crawled in his gut like maggots.

He handed the copy back through the bars, smiling.

“Thank you, Ms. Farr. That’s just what I needed, and I promise I won’t bother you again.”

“See you don’t.”

He had a glimpse of the faded pretty face clamped in a look of rejection, but in the second before she closed the Judas window he saw the blue eyes jitter, the mouth begin to tremble.

He pocketed Katherine’s photocopy and left the porch and went to his car. He felt lousy. He was doing what Mac had wanted but Mac wouldn’t have been proud of him.

10

Katherine let herself into the house, dropped her keys into her purse, and stuffed her bandanna in on top of them. She left her purse on the hall table, under the mirror, and checked her appearance. Casual, in control. A slick magazine photo of the affluent young college woman moving confidently into a rosy future.

A warm resiny smell drew her to the living room. A fire burned in the grate, and a single floor lamp threw light onto the book her father was reading in the easy chair beyond the fireplace.

He raised a hand to acknowledge her but went on reading. She crossed to the fireplace and extended her hands to its warmth, finally turned her head to look at him.

He closed the book on a finger.

“What have you been up to?”

“I spent the evening with Shannon Fargo,” Katherine said.

“What on earth for?”

“Curiosity, I guess.”

He reopened his book. “Any interesting observations?”

“She’s a vagrant child in some ways, but she’s quite combative when her buttons are pushed. She’d hide that, if she were a fraud.”

“So Shannon’s innocent. Feminine intuition?”

“Intuition’s neither more nor less valid when it comes in frilly underwear than when it’s accompanied by a blast of manly cigar smoke.”

“Either way it’s pretty unreliable.”

“I promise to remind you of that next time you have a gut reaction to something.”

“Shannon could be innocent as a lamb unborn and still be the tool of someone who isn’t. Did you see the picture of your grandfather and Shannon and some others that Tom saw when he was at Shannon’s place?”

Her mouth fell open. Only for a count of three. Being surprised was only bad if you let it show. She was sure there’d been no such pictures visible on Shannon’s walls. Had she hidden it? That didn’t sound so innocent.

“No, I’m afraid not.” Being disappointed was dumb. “I guess I have egg on my shirt.”

“Nobody’s perfect,” Charles said.

Katherine said carefully, “I have to admit I find it hard to believe we’re not related.”

“But you’re not. Period. Stay away from that girl, will you? We don’t need defectors under our roof.”

“...All right.” She left the fire, careful to maintain the erect posture, the graceful carriage. “Guess I’ll call it a day. Good night.” In her own room a minute later, her composed exterior crumbled suddenly to reveal a terrible anguish. Which frightened her. When she got herself under control again, it also baffled her. She wasn’t a silly adolescent who wore her emotions outside her clothes like cheap jewelry. She would have sworn she didn’t have them, except for an occasional flare of anger. Maybe she was more tired than she realized.

She started the bathtub filling and took off her clothes. She didn’t wear frilly underwear.

11

It was almost eleven-thirty when Tom got home. He followed the piney scent into the living room and found Charles pouring brandy at the liquor cabinet in the far corner.

Tom asked abruptly, “Who’s Estelle Marchand?”

“No idea. Why?”

“When I asked to see Shannon’s birth certificate, Shannon’s mother asked if Estelle Marchand had put me up to it.”

“Couldn’t find out from Mama, eh?”

“No. But I’ll bet Shannon’s mother isn’t her biological mother.”

Charles came back to his armchair. His slatey eyes had a gun-barrel directness. The flat anvil lips looked hard as rock.

“I take it you didn’t see the birth certificate.”

“Sure I did. Mama was reluctant but responded to threats. The certificate confirmed everything Shannon had told me — names, dates, and places.”

Charles stared at him bleakly for a long moment, then sat down thoughtfully.

“You said Shannon’s mother wasn’t Shannon’s mother.”

“She didn’t want to show me the certificate,” Tom said. “Why not? What could it show? Evidence of forgery, some kind of fraud? Anyhow, because this whole business is about identity and parentage, I got this wild idea and asked her if she knew that a medical examination could determine conclusively whether a woman had ever given birth. Which scared her.”

“How would you force her to submit to such an examination?”

“I probably couldn’t. But she was too rattled to think through any of that. I took advantage of her lack of sophistication to intimidate her, for which I feel fairly lousy. But I still haven’t proved that Shannon isn’t a McCauley.”

“Doesn’t the birth certificate do that?”

“Not if it’s fraudulent.”

“And you’re planning to challenge it — as part of what you owe Mac? Any other secret agendas?”

“You told me to prove she wasn’t a McCauley. Mac wanted to find out if she was. That’s the agenda and that’s all of it. Oh — one more thing. In all these years I don’t think I’ve ever heard of the circumstances surrounding your divorce from the former Mrs. McCauley.”

“The subject is distasteful. And irrelevant.”

“Possibly. But why would Mrs. Charles Gordon McCauley, moneyed lady of West L.A., give birth in a small private clinic in Yucaipa? If you hide behind your right to privacy, you’ll never shake the suspicion that she might have had twins.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, opened them, looked sideways into the fire. He sighed as though contemplating an unpleasant chore. Then he nodded, took a swallow of brandy.

“Married the wrong woman,” he said without much interest. “I was old enough to know better but apparently didn’t. Met Mary Jane Crayle at a party in Santa Monica. She was pretty, warmhearted, verbally skillful, and funny, so I thought she was smart. Married her three days later. Well, repent at leisure. Soon she was thoroughly unhappy and I was going out of my mind. Hormones are a lousy guide. She was only a couple of years younger than I, but a sentimental hippie at heart. Wanted to adopt every stray dog or street bum that crossed her path. Flowers in her hair and feathers in her brain. No idea what it meant to be a businessman’s wife. One day about six months into this disaster we had a big fight and she walked out in the clothes she had on.

“Seven or eight months later she called to say she needed money, would it be all right if she got a thousand-dollar cash advance on a bank card? She said she’d pay it back in cash. All the time she’d been away she hadn’t charged so much as a gallon of gas. I said, are you coming back? She said she didn’t know yet.

“I said okay about the advance, but you’ve got one week from today to make your mind up about coming back. When I didn’t hear from her in that time, I closed all her charge accounts. Anything she wanted she could come and ask for.

“In a few more weeks I’d had enough. If I got wiped out on the freeway, she could show up and make heavy demands on my estate. So Alan hired a gumshoe outfit to track her down. We knew she was somewhere southeast of here, but she’d been pretty careful not to let us know where: the little cash payments on the loan got mailed from anywhere between Anaheim and San Diego. Anyhow, she turned up slinging hash in a chain restaurant in San Bernardino and had a six-week-old kid. I had her kept under surveillance for a few weeks to document the difficulties of being a single mother with a fairly menial job and no resources, and then I sued for divorce — and for custody of Katherine, on the grounds that her mother was irresponsible and incapable of properly providing for her. I got the divorce and the kid, and Mary Jane went back into the woodwork. Never saw or heard from her again.”

“What about her folks? The Crayle family?”

“Estranged. Never any contact.”

“She take you for a bundle in the settlement?”

“No.”

“California law says she must have had counsel.”

“Counsel said go for half the community property. She said no. Some people are dumb. They’ll give up enough to make them comfortable for life — just for a gesture. Mac talked her into taking a lump-sum settlement.”

“Why did you take Katherine?”

A muscle jumped in his jaw.

“Are you thinking vindictiveness? Well, goddamnit, it was because she was my daughter and I could give her a better life! Even her mother conceded that.”

The protest was too fast and too vehement. Clearly vindictiveness had played a part. A big part.

“Never any hint Katherine might have had a sister?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake! Go to bed.”

It sounded like an order. Tom summoned a wide grin to remind Charles that he didn’t have to obey it, but Charles already had his eyes on the pages of his book.

Tom shook his head, straining to keep the grin in place, then turned and went upstairs.

12

His second-floor room didn’t seem like much of a sanctuary tonight; now it was just a room with some indifferent furniture, a place he could walk away from without regret.

Tom hung up his nylon jacket, and someone tapped on his door.

“Yes?”

The tapping stopped. The door opened. Katherine stood in the doorway wearing a plump white terrycloth bathrobe. Her slippers were light fur-lined pixie boots. She didn’t have the glow of someone fresh from the tub, but a few tendrils of damp hair escaped the towel turbaned around her head.

Her face was calm, empty. The Ice Princess was in residence. The Ice Princess was in control. The Ice Princess didn’t give a damn.

She asked, “Did you learn anything tonight?”

He shrugged. “Not enough to prove anything.”

“Of course.” She made a dismissive gesture and came into the room and closed the door. He hesitated a moment before waving her to the room’s one comfortable leather-upholstered chair.

She sat down primly, folded her arms across her middle. He parked himself at the foot of the bed.

She said, “So Shannon knew my grandfather.”

Maybe Shannon had told her. Or Charles.

“She says she only knew him as the Skipper,” Tom said, “a friendly old guy who owned a boat.”

“You believe her?”

“No reason not to.”

“I hope you’re looking for one,” Katherine said. “I hope you have enough self-respect not to decide people are innocent just because you find them physically attractive.”

“How did she strike you?”

“As pleasant, but then she would make sure she gave that impression, wouldn’t she, to keep up the charade?”

“There’s one person who might clear all this up, you know. Your mother.”

She became very still. For long seconds she barely breathed.

“My... mother.” As though she had trouble remembering she’d ever had one.

“Someone gave birth to you. She ought to know if you had a twin.”

“I told her,” Katherine said, “I told Shannon, I mean, that I thought we had to be related...”

The words trailed off. Her lips began to tremble. She raised a hand to punch her lower lip, then sat with her forefinger pressed vertically across her mouth.

Tom asked carefully, “What can you tell me about your mother?”

First she shook her head. Then after a while she slid her finger off her lips. When she spoke, her diction was more aristocratic, more coldly precise. “Her name was Mary Jane Crayle. She was some kind of silly sixties cliché, one of those hemophiliac hippies with a bleeding heart for every stray dog and hopeless cause they’d like you to spend money on.” Secondhand attitudes, learned from Charles; but there was pain behind them. Her words came faster. “She walked out without even letting my father know she was pregnant. I don’t know where she is. I don’t even know if she’s alive. I hope she isn’t. I don’t want to talk about her.”

Suddenly, violently, she pushed herself up out of the chair. She folded her arms across her waist again, breathing hard, staring at the wall behind his head as though trying to read an invisible message scrawled on it. The right side of her upper lip had begun twitching.

The Ice Princess was losing it.

Anxiety closed like a fist in his gut.

“Then we won’t,” he said mildly, and stood up. “Let’s go downstairs, brew some tea or something.”

Her eyes closed. One hand came up to cover the twitching lip. She opened her eyes again. The hand on her mouth muffled her words.

“Is... is she really attractive? Shannon. Do you find Shannon attractive?”

He made a random gesture.

“Well, yes, she’s attractive, but...”

“More than I am?”

The hand came away from her mouth and settled at her waist. He tried to summon the politic grin.

“Well, you’re as alike as two peas in a pod...”

Her lip was doing erratic things again.

“M-m-m-more than I am?”

The hands at her waist pulled apart. So did the two ends of the sash holding the terrycloth bathrobe closed. She pulled the robe open. She hadn’t anything on under it. Nothing except Katherine with last summer’s light tan, except where her bikini had kept the sun off.

Tom gulped air. Mustn’t touch her. Touch her and she might shatter. Or go hysterical. He said numbly, “Katherine, this isn’t too good an idea.”

She raised a hand to still her lip again. Her face was expressionless but the clear blue eyes were shading toward... bereavement? Her face crumpled.

She said in a bewildered little-girl voice, “Nobody wants me.”

He almost said, “Huh?” He tried to say, “Nonsense,” but what came out was a shapeless mumble. He felt stupid and useless. His impulse was to reassure her as anyone might a little kid, with endearments and hugs, but the grownup under the little-girl bewilderment might read endearments as sarcasm, hugs as molestation, so for a while he just stared into the hopeless blue eyes until, without conscious volition, he found himself reaching out to tug the bathrobe closed, murmuring, “Aw, honey, you know that’s not true,” getting no resistance when he tied the sash at her waist.

He stepped back. No hug. A hug could lead to disaster. Hormones had their imperatives but self-preservation said ignore them. She had said no one wanted her and wasn’t far wrong. Her father had taken her from Mary Jane out of sheer spite and never forgiven her for not being a son, and had turned her into a bitchy, demanding kid who grew into a bitchy, demanding young woman. Her grandfather had given up on her and chosen a surrogate grandson to mold into a continuation of himself. From the very start, Tom had been an insult and a threat to Katherine. Something to feel bad about, yes, but it was for damn sure he didn’t want her. Too much blood under the bridge. Only blind fear could have driven her to turn to him for comfort.

He felt a rush of choking regret.

Katherine closed her eyes and fumbled in the pocket of her robe for a tissue and blew her nose. Then she stuffed the tissue back into her pocket and opened her eyes.

The little girl was gone.

The composed young woman gave him a faintly puzzled look that quickly modulated into razor-edged contempt.

“You’re so transparent.”

She was going to pretend that the last few minutes had never happened. Or perhaps had already blanked them from her mind.

He cleared his throat. “Meaning?”

“It’s obvious why you’re doing this. To make your new lady friend an heiress, so you can get your hands on some real McCauley money.”

“Yeah. Sure. Any other insights to share?”

Katherine smiled — smugly, secretly — to herself, then nodded, triumphantly agreeable. She said good night and left without closing the door.

Tom closed it himself. Perhaps he should find Charles and tell him to check up on Katherine, she’d been acting hysterically. It wouldn’t do any good. The Ice Princess was back. Charles would think he was crazy.

He got ready for bed. Maybe she hadn’t come to him for comfort. Maybe she’d just been setting him up — to embarrass him? To charge him with something serious?

He sacked out. His dreams were chaotic, erotic, angry.

13

His alarm clock woke him at seven. He showered and shaved and still felt less than human. He dressed and went downstairs, checked on breakfast, went into the library. He picked up the phone and dialed Alan’s home number.

“Scherer,” Alan said without interest.

“Tom Bell. Hope I didn’t wake you.”

“Oh, hi. No, I was just heading into breakfast. Did you learn anything yesterday?”

“Some. I met the lady who claims to be Shannon Fargo’s mother.” He summarized briefly. “The Parker Clinic is now closed. It might be interesting to know why. Two questions: Do you know where Charles’s ex-wife is? And does the name Estelle Marchand ring any bells?”

“No. I’ll check around. As to Charles’s ex-wife...” A pause. Alan sighed gustily. “Is there any way to leave Mary Jane out of this? Charles doesn’t want her contacted. He doesn’t even know where she is, even on which coast — she was originally from somewhere in Maine — or even if she’s still alive. Besides, he’s sure she wouldn’t know anything about Shannon, so why waste time?”

“What’s he hiding?”

“I think he just doesn’t want to open an emotional can of worms. Mary Jane was a very appealing lady, very open intellectually and emotionally. I think that’s what first attracted Charles, even if it did later drive him up the wall. He was a lot younger then, not quite the no-nonsense adding machine we all admire. Forget I said that — he’s a friend as well as a valued client. Keep digging, we don’t want to get blindsided. I’ll get back to you about this what’s-her-name, Estelle Marchand.”

Tom hung up and went in to breakfast.

Charles, in a business suit and tie and a gleaming white shirt, was taking his place at the table and Felipe was filling his cup with pungent dark coffee. Tom’s place setting featured a glass of orange juice.

Felipe asked brightly, “Coffee, Mista Tom?”

“Please. Morning, Charles.” He sat down. Felipe poured his coffee, then put the pot on the warmer on the sideboard.

“You look like hell,” Charles said.

Tom thanked him and drained half his orange juice. Felipe presented a large platter from which they served themselves bacon and eggs. The four-slice toaster on the sideboard popped up. Felipe put the toast in a silver rack and put it on the table as Katherine came in.

She had on a pink and blue dressing gown closed up to her throat. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail and her face was pale and cold, her lips bloodless.

Felipe said, “Coffee?” and filled her cup when she nodded. He offered her the eggs and bacon. She waved them away.

“Get me a couple of scrambled eggs on toast.”

“Yes, miss.” Felipe returned the platter to the sideboard, covered it, and left the room. Katherine picked up her coffee cup with both hands and inhaled the steam.

Charles said shortly, “Variant orders should be given in advance. And in this house we are polite to the servants.”

Katherine said, “Really.”

“And we don’t display hangovers or bad temper at the breakfast table.”

Katherine slammed down her cup. Coffee slopped into the saucer and onto the tablecloth. She scraped back her chair and stood up and stalked out.

Charles’s face settled into its anvil scowl.

“That girl’s got to learn how to handle a little stress.”

“Not from you, I hope,” Tom said. “Stressed or not, you handle everything and everyone with the unerring instincts of a bully. No wonder she’s so screwed up.”

“I wish,” Charles said acidly, “that I’d had your experience as a parent.”

“That’s about all you have had. You always hired nannies and governesses to have the experience for you.”

Felipe came in to offer coffee refills and another chance at the eggs and bacon.

Charles said, ignoring him, “You snot-nosed little bastard. I’ve put up with you for twelve years out of respect for my father. I guess you can take the kid out of the gutter but not the gutter out of the kid. Mr. Tom is moving out, Felipe. He won’t be here for dinner.”

Felipe mumbled, “Yes, sir,” poker-faced.

Charles went on, “Forget the Fargo assignment. You can just owe Mac for the rest of your life.”

Tom pushed away from his half-eaten breakfast and stood up.

“I don’t work for you, I work for Alan. He wants me to keep digging — to make sure you don’t get blindsided. Excuse me.”

14

Throttling back anger, he took his coffee cup and saucer into the library. He set them down with exaggerated care, then almost knocked them over with his elbow when he sat down in the swivel chair.

For long minutes he sat there with his eyes closed, listening to the angry roar of his own bloodstream until it began to subside. When he opened his eyes he found he was looking at the bottom of the nearest floor-to-ceiling bookcase, where the L.A. phone books were shelved.

A long shot, but worth a few minutes of his time, surely...

He went methodically through all eight directories, found one of the names he was looking for, but not the other. He made a note of the number he found and reshelved the directories. A filament of dread tangled his thoughts, kept them immobilized, going nowhere.

The phone bell was gentle as a summer shower. He snatched up the handpiece.

“McCauley residence. Tom Bell.”

“I got you some info,” Alan’s voice said.

“I looked in some phone books,” Tom said. “There’s a Mary Jane Crayle living in Malibu. Don’t know if it’s our Mary Jane, though. I was just going to call and find out.”

“Aah.” Alan was suddenly guarded. “...Okay. Are you going to tell Charles?”

“Nothing to tell him, yet.”

“Well, keep me posted. Here’s what I’ve got for you, courtesy of a librarian friend, an ex-journalist, and a couple of lawyers with long memories. First, the Palmer Clinic. Run by one Henry E. Palmer, M.D., who got closed down because of irregularities involving adoptions. Not for profit, oddly enough. Apparently he was a benevolent old coot who believed in helping people out, regardless of laws and established procedures. Details are available if we need them.

“Second, Estelle Marchand.”

“The name I didn’t find in any L.A. phone book.”

“It wasn’t even her real name. She was Anne Merchant, oldest child of a well-heeled family of Providence, Rhode Island, a teenage dropout and runaway. Anne was twenty-two when Estelle died in a motorcycle accident. Riding the back of a Harley down by the beach in San Diego, skidded on some sand, crashed, broke her neck. She and the guy who owned the ’cycle had been drinking beer all morning. That was February, nineteen seventy-four. She had evaded a determined search and stayed hidden for seven years. Identified by fingerprints. She was a high-IQ underachiever who’d been in trouble all her life, so her prints were on file. Her San Diego friends had only known her three days. Hints she may have been in trouble under a fleet of aliases all the way from Providence to Haight-Ashbury. Any help?”

“Not yet. Did Mary Jane have health insurance? Not your department, I know, but I can’t ask Charles, he’s thrown me out and wants me off the inquiry. I said I was working for you.”

“Thanks. Yes, she had health insurance. She never said why she didn’t use it — pregnancy was covered — but my guess is because it would have led us to her.”

“She was that serious about staying hidden?”

“I guess so. Watch your step, young man.”

Tom was dialing the number he’d written down when Katherine opened the door from the hall. She was still in her dressing gown. He stopped dialing.

“Still checking up on me?”

She gave him a disdainful look, stepped back, closed the door.

He dialed again. After two rings a woman’s voice answered.

“Beachfront Motel.”

“Mary Jane Crayle, please.”

“This is Mary Jane.”

Her speech was leisurely and her voice disarming, with a warmth and color that made him think of bees buzzing in pine-scented air at the edge of a sunlit wood. He struggled to hide his anxiety.

“Was Crayle your maiden name, and were you once Mary Jane McCauley?”

Was there a momentary pause?

Her voice stayed friendly, but somewhere gears had shifted.

“Yes. I went back to my maiden name after the divorce. Who am I talking to, please?”

“My name is Tom Bell. I’m a law clerk at Morgan and Scherer, Charles McCauley’s attorneys—”

“I remember them. Especially Alan. What is this about, Mr. Bell?”

“Did you ever have twins, Ms. Crayle?”

“No.”

“How about Estelle Marchand?”

Silence.

A pulse began to hammer in the hand holding the phone. Seconds dribbled by. He made the hand relax.

“What is this about, Mr. Bell?”

“A question of identity. I’d rather explain it to you in person. You can call Alan Scherer and check me out, if you like.”

“I’ll do that,” she said in the same piney, bee-buzzing voice, and surprised him by hanging up.

She knew how to sound friendly and be decisive at the same time. Well, good for Mary Jane.

He cradled the phone, reached for his coffee cup. The coffee was just cold enough to taste awful. He needed a refill.

He carried the cup into the hall, found Katherine a foot beyond the door. Still in the dressing gown, face drawn, blue eyes dark and tragic and accusing.

“How did you find her?”

She must have been listening at the door.

“I looked in the phone book,” Tom said. She stared at him in mute anguish. Her vulnerability made him profoundly uncomfortable. He added lamely, “I just need to confirm some stuff, okay?” Stuff he didn’t want to explain — especially to Katherine.

Charles came down the stairs then, passing them with no recognition for Katherine’s obvious distress. He went out the front door. Beyond the Gothic arch, the chauffeur-driven Imperial was waiting to take him to the office.

The front door closed firmly.

Tom said, “You know he’s kicked me out? If I were you, I’d leave too.” He held up his cup. “Gotta find me a refill.”

He turned away. She said to his back, in a strained near-whisper, “How dare you? How dare you?”

He went through the dining room, past the pantry, and into the kitchen, where Felipe and the cook were washing the breakfast dishes. There was no coffee, hut Felipe promised to make him some in the little two-cup drip pot. The extension phone on the kitchen wall rang harshly.

Tom grabbed it. He didn’t want Katherine intercepting any calls for him.

“McCauley residence. Tom Bell.”

“It’s Alan,” the lawyer said in his ear. “Guess who I just talked to?”

“Mary Jane,” Tom said. “Checking my references.”

“Right. I gave her a brief outline and gave you a glowing review. She agreed to see you around ten-thirty this morning, at the motel.”

“No problem.”

“Good,” Alan said, and rang off.

Tom checked his watch and went upstairs to start packing, tendrils of dread still weaving their way through his skull and around his rib cage.

15

By ten-twenty, he was driving north on Pacific Coast Highway through a stretch of California contentment marked by tackle shops, seafood restaurants, small boutiques, and no sign of poverty. On his left, between slightly eccentric houses tightly strung along the highway, he got an occasional glimpse of blue ocean with polite surf tickling the edge of a sandy beach. On the right, beyond the roadside businesses, the land sometimes rose to clifflike heights where houses enjoyed stately separation and spectacular views. Both sides of highway were money country.

Malibu, California, 90265.

A folksy-looking hand-painted sign announced NEEDHAM’S FLOWER SHOP AND NURSERY. He looked for Shannon out of the corner of his eye but didn’t see her, then Needham’s was behind him and a sign was coming up fast that said BEACHFRONT MOTEL.

The motel wasn’t very big but looked well-cared-for and confident. Standing on the ocean side of the highway, it shared a corner lot with a small restaurant and cocktail lounge. Tom eased into the center lane, waited for a break in traffic, then turned into the lot, going past the office and parking in an unmarked slot behind the restaurant.

He got out into a fresh ocean-smelling breeze, locked the car, and headed reluctantly back toward the office. Up two steps, a small white porch, a screen door on a spring. Behind it a half-glass door with a brass thumb latch, then he was in a tiny empty reception area with a registration counter, a switchboard, and a half-open door behind the counter leading into what looked like someone’s living room.

He was reaching for the bell on the counter when the door opened all the way and a woman came through it.

She saw him and stopped, a hint of anxiety in her eyes. She had to be in her mid-forties but looked younger, tall and less than fanatically slender, hair brown and done simply and about shoulder length, tan blouse, brown skirt.

“Mr. Bell, I’ll bet.” No mistaking that sunlit piney voice. He said he was. “Customers usually park right by the door. Hi, I’m Mary Jane. Alan explained about this other girl showing up, but now you’re here, I’m not sure I should talk to you.”

“I can’t make you,” Tom said, “but I can’t talk to Estelle Marchand because she died in nineteen seventy-four.”

She became very still. For a moment he thought her eyes were looking at something way back in time, but they came back to fasten on him. Thoughtfully. Carefully.

“Oh.”

Tom said mildly, “I’ve met two people who apparently knew Estelle. You, because you never asked who I was talking about, and a lady named Eileen Scott Farr. She and her husband adopted the other twin, didn’t they?”

After a moment, Mary Jane sighed. “All right.” She raised a hinged section of the counter. “Come in, we may as well be comfortable.”

He went through the counter. She lowered the hinged part and led him through the door into a small, comfortable living room. She waved him to a chair, then sat on the edge of the sofa.

Tom asked, “Are you the manager here?”

“Manager and part-owner,” Mary Jane said. “It’s what I did with the cash settlement when Chuck and I were divorced.” It was the first time Tom had ever heard Charles called Chuck. Times had changed. Charles had changed. “How did you connect me with Estelle after all this time?”

“Eileen Farr mentioned her name. Did you know Estelle’s real name was Anne Merchant?”

“No. I’m not surprised. I don’t think she ever told me the truth about anything. Look, she was a very pregnant street kid who took advantage of my sympathetic nature, okay? She said she’d run away from abusive parents and needed a place to crash until the baby was born. So I let her move in with me. She said she’d already arranged with a family to adopt the baby.”

“When was this?”

“October, nineteen seventy-three. I had this tiny one-and-a-half-room apartment in San Bernardino.”

“Did she say how old she was?”

“Seventeen.”

“She was killed in an accident in San Diego in February, nineteen seventy-four. Her fingerprints identified her as Anne Merchant, who was twenty-two and had been in trouble most of her life.”

Mary Jane made a wry face. “I believe it! It turned out the planned adoption was illegal. The adopting family had been turned down for adoption because the man’s health wasn’t too good and they were financially marginal, but there was this doctor with this clinic in Yucaipa... Well, anyway, he agreed that the baby would be registered as having been born to the adopting parents. But there was a complication: a multiple pregnancy, twins. The second baby would need a mother’s name on the record. So the little bitch borrowed someone else’s. Mine. And my husband’s. The clinic never heard of Estelle Marchand, or Anne Whozit. She was always Mary Jane McCauley to them. I found out all this when she brought the second baby back to my place. She said she couldn’t’ve used her own name without leaving a record that might lead her parents to her. So I said, hey, okay, you can stay till you get on your feet again. My God, I’d even borrowed a thousand dollars to cover her medical expenses. A thousand went further in those days. So guess what she did?”

“Lit out and left you with the baby.”

“After stealing every cent I had in the apartment. She called from a pay phone somewhere to say she wouldn’t be back, no use trying to trace her, she’d pay back the money when she could. She said I’d make a better mommie than she ever could, and hung up.

“Okay. I could’ve turned the baby over to the cops or the welfare people or someone... but I just couldn’t. It would have meant an orphanage, or foster care, or giving her to Estelle’s parents. I thought I’d at least be better than any of them.

“So I did the best I could, and in a few weeks there was Chuck, suing for divorce and custody of the baby he thought was his. I was really tom, you know? I’d had time to get really attached to Katherine. I almost asked Chuck to take me back. But he was all headlong determination. I was reckless and improvident and he’d prove it in court, so full of neurotic malice toward him I’d not even used my medical insurance, risking the life of ‘our’ child just to hide my whereabouts. Of course I hadn’t used my insurance because I’d never had a claim.

“I had this feeling that if I fought like mad I might get to keep Katherine. Isn’t there a prejudice in favor of the mother in these cases? I’d probably get hefty child support, too. But I wasn’t really the baby’s mother, and I really loathed the idea of taking Chuck’s money. And it wouldn’t be much more honest than what Estelle had done to me. And Chuck really could give Katherine things I couldn’t...”

She closed her eyes. For a moment she looked defeated. She opened her eyes and got to her feet and began to pace restlessly.

Tom said, “So you didn’t fight for custody.”

“Token resistance, that’s all. I’ve been praying ever since that I did the right thing.”

Tom said inadequately, “Katherine’s enrolled at UCLA, she’s smart, and she’s gorgeous.”

Mary Jane stopped pacing.

“...I’m so glad.” She made a vague gesture, repeated it, shook her head. She sat down again. “Is there going to be a lot of... unpleasantness about all this? Chuck so hates to be fooled. Or used to.”

“Still does,” Tom said. “Especially if anyone else knows about it. To keep that from happening, I think he’ll bury all this and pave it over.” To his astonishment he heard himself say, “Does he even have to know about it?” and felt a pang of disappointment so profound it was almost completely disorienting.

Distantly, he thought he heard her ask how they could convince Chuck the other twin wasn’t a McCauley without revealing that Katherine wasn’t one either, wouldn’t that take an impossibly high order of damage control? And he thought, Of course: he was coming unglued because he’d allowed himself to talk of damage control when what he really wanted was damage. All the talk of Mac’s wishes had been an excuse for a chance to attack Charles as a fool and a begetter of bastards, to tip Katherine off her pedestal, to get revenge for every time he’d been made to feel inferior, less than a McCauley...

Mary Jane was saying, “Couldn’t Chuck call what I did some kind of fraud?”

He fumbled his way back to the here-and-now and said slowly, “According to her birth certificate, you are Katherine’s mother. A child born to a married woman is presumptively her husband’s, even if they are living apart. No one has any reason to doubt that you are Katherine’s mother.” Except Eileen Farr? Might she know that Estelle had been expecting twins? But she would never say anything, to sustain the fiction that she was Shannon’s mother. “Add the fact that you didn’t force Charles to take responsibility for Katherine, he sought and obtained the right to do so in a court of law. I don’t think you’re in any danger.”

She said, “Do you really think we could fool Chuck?”

“I think it’s worth a try.”

“Why are you on my side all of a sudden?”

“I was never against you. I was told to learn the other kid’s parentage to make sure she wasn’t a McCauley.” He had refused to let Charles fire him off the investigation and had wound up learning more than he wanted to, and was responsible for it. “I’ve found out that the girls are the illegitimate twins of a sociopathic runaway; I hate to think I might be the cause of their ever finding it out. So I’m on your side.”

Mary Jane nodded. They heard someone come into the little lobby. “Excuse me.”

She went into the reception area. Through the once-again half-open door, Tom glimpsed a big middle-aged guy in a white shirt on the far side of the counter, and heard him say he’d need a room for three nights. Then the door to the outside opened again.

A strained female voice said, “Are you Mary Jane Crayle?”

Mary Jane said, “Yes.” The guy in the white shirt said something unintelligible. There was a shockingly loud booming explosion and Mary Jane came hurtling backward through the door as another explosion lifted half the skull from her head. She went down in a welter of blood and brain and bone fragments.

Tom was on his feet but stupid with shock, unable to move or do anything but look at the ruin of Mary Jane lying on her back, one eye staring up at the ceiling...

Then noise got through to him, yelling and struggling beyond the reception desk. He began to respond, crossing the room on shaky legs, going through the door.

On the other side of the desk the big man was holding a double-barreled shotgun out at arm’s length. The other fist had a grip on the upper arm of one of the Marchand twins, in jeans and a sweatshirt, with a blue bandanna tied over her hair. She was doing her best to fight free, pummeling and scratching and kicking her booted feet. The big man was simply too big and too powerful, and not at all gentle, though his face was slack-jawed and almost as gray as his hair. As Tom ducked under the counter to make a grab for the girl’s other arm, the big man tapped her on the head with the barrel of the shotgun.

She stopped fighting. For an instant she looked terribly surprised, then her face puckered up and she began to cry. She went limp and sank to the floor, sitting awkwardly, crying as unselfconsciously as a two-year-old.

The big man put the shotgun on the counter, looked through the door to the living room. He began to retch, clapped a hand over his mouth, and barely made it out the door.

The girl raised her hand to explore where the gun barrel had hit her, a couple of inches above the hairline.

The hand was pale and pampered.

16

From the other end of Mary Jane’s apartment came the sound of someone rattling a doorknob and pounding on an obviously locked door. The big man’s white-shirted back almost blocked the view through the half-glass door to the driveway and the parking lot. Beyond him a growing number of pale, worried people were collecting and trying to see in, and he was doing his best to dissuade them. Katherine still sat on the floor holding a hand to her head and crying. Tom picked up the phone behind the desk.

First he called the sheriff’s sub-station and reported the shooting. Then he called the Morgan-Scherer office. This time he had trouble getting through to Alan, but finally managed to. Alan came on the line irritated and peremptory.

“This had better be good.”

“It isn’t,” Tom said. “Katherine just killed Mary Jane. Shotgun, both barrels. At the Beachfront Motel, Malibu.”

Silence. Then a shocked whisper. “Killed her own mother?”

“No, but Katherine doesn’t know that. Estelle Marchand was the mother of both girls. Get on down here, will you?”

“Of course, but... Why?”

Tom shrugged, hung up.

Why was a beast. Because the McCauleys weren’t exactly unknown, speculations about why would hit the media and there’d be no hope of any damage control. Everyone would learn all the facts and deceptions. Katherine, deceived from the start, would know. Shannon would know. Katherine had shotgunned to death the only member of her “family” — supposed or otherwise — who had ever, unreservedly but too briefly, placed her first. Even Mac had sought a surrogate grandchild in Tom, and tried to find an additional granddaughter to make a co-beneficiary. And Charles, who was without love but was a skillful bean-counter, had counted her a prize among his beans, had substituted arithmetic for intuition and lavishness for generosity of heart, and had been forever unreachable to the kid locked within the polished exterior that was the armor Katherine learned to present to the world.

He heard sirens approaching from a few blocks away. He came back from behind the counter and knelt beside Katherine, who was still crying. He put an arm around her shoulders and drew her head onto his chest. No reaction, no protest; she just went on crying with an implicit trust that he wouldn’t scold her for it.

If Mac had been right, and Shannon had proved to be a McCauley, Katherine would have had a formidable competitor for Charles’s unavailable love. Mary Jane would have known if Mac was right.

So, Why? Two reasons, really.

Silence Mary Jane, and no rival sister.

Kill Mary Jane, and avenge the original betrayal, the original rejection, that had propelled her from the comforting hug of her unskilled but affectionate foster-mother to the cool efficient accounting world of her newly acquired father. Mary Jane had given her up.

Both barrels.

Katherine had quieted. She heaved a deep, ragged sigh, didn’t move or look up as outside, sirens dying, two cop cars pulled into the driveway.