Final Jeopardy

CHAPTER 4

Mike was in front of the building exactly on time, with a cup of black coffee for each of us. Neither he nor I functions well in the early morning, so we were quiet on the short ride to La Guardia. He parked his car at the Port Authority Police Building and the cops dropped us off at the old deco Marine Air Terminal that services the Delta Shuttle.

My bodyguard happened to be terrified of flying so he was also a bit subdued for that reason. It always amazed me that a guy who was so fearless in the face of homicidal maniacs and bloodthirsty drug lords was frightened of airplane travel, but we had been to Chicago and Miami together for extradition hearings so I knew that Mike would be saying novenas until we were up and down safely on each leg of the trip. The odds of an NYPD detective being killed by crossfire on a street in Washington Heights were far greater than his dying in a plane crash, but we each have our own demons and I wasn’t about to mess with his.

The jet lifted quickly off runway three-three on the cloudless morning, and as the copilot suggested that the passengers on the right-hand side of the plane enjoy the sweeping view of the Manhattan skyline on a clear day, Mike’s gaze was fixed out the window on the sight of something below us to the left.

“There’s only one thing that takes the edge off a flight out of La Guardia for me,” he remarked.

“If we go down around here, there’s a good shot that we wind up plastered all over Riker’s Island, and I get to take a few of those scumbags with me to their final resting place.”

“A generous thought.” Riker’s Island, four hundred acres of sanitary landfill sitting in the East River just opposite the extended airport runways, houses the main inmate population for the City of New York. It’s not quite Alcatraz, but the strong currents curtailed efforts at water escapes, and unlike the Tombs, it also holds sentenced prisoners.

As we headed out over Long Island Sound, I tried to distract Mike by telling him more about Martha’s Vineyard.

“It’s not just the beauty of its beaches and the fact that it’s such a popular summer resort, but it’s a truly unusual place with a fascinating history.”

I had been going to the island for so many years that I had to think back about things that it had surprised me to learn on those first trips.

“The Vineyard’s a bit longer than twenty-two miles and about ten miles wide at the deepest point – the largest island in New England but the topography is incredibly varied, quite unlike Long Island or Nantucket. There are six separate towns, and each one is entirely different in character and appearance.”

“People live there all year?”

“Yeah, probably not more than fifteen thousand permanent residents. Then the population swells to close to eighty thousand when the ” summer people“ and vacationers swarm on.”

I explained to Mike that it was settled by the English in 1642 and governed by the Duke of York, hence the fact that it is located in Dukes County. It was actually a part of the state of New York for its first half-century like Kings, Queens, and Dutchess counties then annexed to Massachusetts, which is only seven miles across the Vineyard Sound.

“How can each of the towns be so different, all on the same island?”

“Two ways, actually,” I answered.

“One is simply the variety of the land. There are great harbors that launched the whaling industry in America centuries ago, thousands of acres of protected forest in the middle of the island, rolling hills that supported sheep farming and an agricultural base further west, and miles of the most glorious beaches you’d ever want to see that stretch from one tip of the island to the other.

“And the other is the way each of the towns has grown up around one way of life or another, as a result of the varied geography. Start with Edgartown at the eastern end of the Vineyard. It’s a classic New England village with rows of elegant white houses and churches and shops, quite formal in the Federal style, trimmed with fences and fabulous gardens which spill onto the brick sidewalks in summer.

The large old homes are the legacy of the whaling captains who built them in the early nineteenth century, when the island was the center of that industry.“

I went on to describe each of the others. Oak Bluffs has an entirely different architecture and feel. Huge Victorian houses line the seaside area, adjacent to the Camp Meeting Grounds property which grew up around the enormous wrought-iron Tabernacle built by an evangelical association of followers of John Wesley in the late 1800s. In winter, Oak Bluffs is home to a lot of the workmen who are permanent islanders, while in summer its main street comes alive with almost a honky-tonk resort feel. It’s also got a summer population of black professionals from all over the Northeast New York, Cambridge, Chicago, Washington women and men who have vacationed on the Vineyard for generations.

Then there’s Vineyard Haven, the commercial center of the island and site of the main ferry terminal, which combine to make it the center of day-to-day island activities year round, and home to almost one third of the island residents. Once you move away from those three towns, you get to the spectacular scenery of the middle and western parts of the Vineyard, where the open spaces are guarded zealously against development. West Tisbury has always been the agricultural capital, with a geographic range that includes working farms, acres of state forest, a wildlife sanctuary, and stunning homesites on rocky perches that look over Vineyard Sound to the Elizabeth Islands. There’s not much more in the way of commerce than a general store and some farm stands, a far cry from the three bustling ‘down-island’ towns.

“Then we come to paradise,” I went on.

“Chilmark.” The place on earth where I was most at peace, the place that I thought had more physical beauty than any place in the world I had ever visited. Its rolling hills and countryside are very evocative of the English countryside. The landscape is dotted with gray-shingled farmhouses, simple and functional in their beauty; and rambling throughout the houses and fields of sheep and horses are miles of ancient stone walls, built by the early settlers and farmers to mark the boundaries of their property. I like those walls best in winter and early spring when you can see the amazing combinations of rocks that have been fitted together to form their spines, before the wild roses and bittersweet of summer climb out and over to dress them in green and pink and scarlet.

And most of all what I love about Chilmark is that wherever you are in the midst of this glorious countryside, you are never very far from the sight and the sound of the water.

Miles of perfectly white sand beaches on the south shore, rocky beaches both south and north, enormous ponds with clams and oysters you can dig out and take home for dinner, and ever-changing vistas of ocean currents from hilltops at every turn, of waves that could carry you anywhere you wanted to go in a real or imaginary world.

Last town beyond that is Gay Head, the westernmost tip of the island. Much smaller in territory than Chilmark, it is also flatter and rimmed with dunes around its shorelines.

But it builds to a spectacular sight at its furthest point: dramatic cliffs of multicolored clay which plunge to the sea at the junction of the Vineyard Sound and the Atlantic Ocean.

By the time we began our descent into the Boston area, Mike was up-to-speed on the island history and description, most intrigued by the fact that only two of the towns Edgartown and Oak Bluffs were wet, and that you couldn’t buy liquor in any of the stores or restaurants up-island.

“Sounds fuckin‘ weird to me can’t even have a beer with lunch.”

“Don’t worry, there’s a full supply at the house. You’ll make it.”

From the shuttle terminal we walked across the drop-off area to a small counter at the end of a row of commuter airline desks, none of which looked as if it had been in business for more than a week and each of which served two or three places you’d never heard of in New Hampshire and Maine.

“Good morning,” I said to the girl she looked about eighteen who was standing below the Cape Air logo.

“We’ve got reservations on the nine forty-five to the Vineyard. Names are Cooper and Chapman.” I handed her my credit card and she pulled up the computer list for the flight.

“Okay. Got ‘em Alexandra and Michael, right? What are your weights, please?”

“Excuse me?” Michael asked.

“I’m one twenty-two and he’s… what are you these days? And please tell the truth, Mike, my life may depend on it.”

“What do you need my weight for?”

“Like it’s a Cessna 402. We’ve got a weight limit, so we have to know like what the passengers weigh, and the baggage, so we can like distribute it and stuff.”

“What are we flying in, Coop, a rowboat? I can’t do this.”

“You’ll be fine. It’s only half an hour you’ll be up and down before you have time to think about it.”

“Two-ten,” he murmured, clearly miserable as he looked out the window and noticed the tiny nine-seater parked near the exit door.

Picking up on his discomfort, the counter girl chimed in, “Like you can sit up front next to me, in the copilot’s seat. I brought her in from Nantucket an hour ago and it’s a perfect day for flying. There’s no fog and like very little wind it’s really awesome.”

The kid was playing with Mike and he didn’t get it yet.

I watched the exchange, and could see she was attracted to him, which got me to thinking about him in a way I hadn’t done for years: as a guy, and not just a working partner.

Today, even at moments like this when his wonderful smile wasn’t working for him, he was handsome and lean, and a standout in most crowds. Dressed in his navy blazer, striped shirt with white collar and cuffs, jeans and loafers, he looked like any other yuppie headed for a fall weekend at a country inn.

“Thanks, but the pilot might get jealous,” Mike responded to her.

“I know you’re a very good investigator, Chapman,” I said as I nudged him with my elbow, ‘but she is the pilot.“

“What? You gotta be kidding me. She’s an infant, she’s gotta be in junior high school, she’s…”

“Trust me. She’s ”like“ the pilot, Mike.”

As soon as the three other reservations arrived, the counter girl announced the flight, helped an older man in overalls carry the luggage of the other passengers out to the tarmac, and then gave her clipboard to him and climbed up onto the wing of the plane and into the window-door of the pilot’s seat.

We started to board the Cessna, with Mike doing a soliloquy under his breath.

“Women are terrific… they can do anything… I believe in feminism… equal work for equal pay. But this is bullshit… this is a little girl flying an airplane… They ought to call this thing Cape Fear, not Cape Air.”

“Calm down, buddy. Women fly combat missions now.

Think of them, think of Meryl Streep you know, Karen Blixen in Out of Africa, think of Sally Ride, the astronaut, think…“

The only one I can think of is Amelia Earhart, and the last I heard, blondie, she still hasn’t landed.“

I bent down to walk the short aisle of the plane and sit in the empty copilot’s seat, knowing how great the view would be as we soared over the island on a clear morning.

Mike was coming in next as the pilot reminded him that she needed his weight near the front, and he seated himself directly behind me.

We taxied out and took off, the light craft shaking mildly as she was steered to a smoother flying altitude of four thousand feet, above the low-lying winds. I could feel Mike’s hands clutched on my seat back, but there was too much noise from the busy propellers to say much along the way. About fifteen minutes out of Logan, the Massachusetts shoreline came into view, and the distinctive outline of Cape Cod spread out below. If you were familiar with the landscape, it was easy to pick out everything along the way, from New Bedford and Woods Hole, to Hyannis and Provincetown.

And then Martha’s Vineyard rose across the sound, still green in late fall, as we crossed over the whitecaps and watched the ferries plying their regular routes to and from the mainland. I tried to turn my head and point out some of the landmarks to Mike I always became so animated when we got close enough for me to recognize the places that were such an indelible part of my emotional life. The pilot banked and began her approach from the east, instead of from ‘my’ end of the island, but she came in low over the shore with its exquisite stretch of white beaches and a seemingly endless array of ponds, which looked like fingers reaching out to the ocean to hold it in place and keep it lapping onto the sand.

Mike didn’t relax his grip until the plane had come to a complete stop next to the small wooden terminal and the propellers were shut down.

The pilot unlatched her window and started to climb back out onto the wing.

“Thanks for flying with us… not that you have many choices,” she chuckled.

“Going back with us tonight?”

“Yes, thanks. See you later.”

“You, too, Mr. Chapman. Wasn’t it like awesome?”

“Yeah, awesome,” Mike responded.

“Looks like we’ve got a greeting committee the Homicide Welcome Wagon,” I noted as I looked out my window, waiting for the other passengers to deplane down the narrow steps. “That’s Wally Flanders and one of his guys on the right, looks like a state trooper in the uniform next to them but I don’t know him and-‘ ”Who’s the one in the three-piece suit and the shades, thinks he’s going formal?“

“Don’t know him either, but I assume he’s FBI, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh no, federal sissies? I forgot we’d have to deal with them, too. Only for you, blondie, a Cessna and a feeble in the same day. No wonder I feel so nauseous.”

“Hey, Alexandra, awful nice of you to come on up here,” Wally greeted me as Mike and I rounded the side of the terminal building.

“This here’s Eb Mayhew I think you know him works with me in the office.”

“Hi, Eb. I’m Alex Cooper, this is Mike Chapman. I’ve known your sister for years, Eb used to baby-sit for my brothers’ kids when they vacationed here every summer.

Detective Chapman’s with the Homicide Squad in New York the D.A. has him with me on the case.“

“Finest kind,” said Wally, with a cheeriness in his voice at this reunion which made it hard to focus on the fact that we were all together because of a murder.

“And this fella is Trooper Lumbert, he’s with the state police. Been real helpful up at your place. Keeps all them tourists away from Daggett’s Pond, all looking for souvenirs of Miss Lascar.

Finest kind. Then we got Special Agent Luther Waldron, sent up here by the Federal Bureau. Real lucky to get him, never had a special agent on one of my cases before.“

I was too far away to kick Mike in the shins, but he was humming the theme song from that old TV show and being fairly obnoxious: “Secret a-gent man, secret a-gent man, they’ve given you a number and taken ‘way your name.”

Typical meeting between fed and NYPD cop, which was likely to take a bit of the joy out of Wally’s day.

We all shook hands and exchanged greetings while I asked Wally what he had planned for the day.

“Actually, ma’am,” interrupted Agent Waldron, “I’m in charge at this point, so we’ll be talking about my plans for the day, if you don’t mind. I thought we’d all go up to your place. Show you the crime scene, then have you take us through the house, tell us how you left it and whether there are any changes, anything you might notice about the deceased’s habits or belongings. Will that be all right with you?”

Mike had been trying to hold back but wasn’t good for much longer.

“When are you going to bring us up to date on what you’ve got so far? Leads, clues, evidence, theories?”

“Well, Mr. Chapman, my understanding is that you’re here in an unofficial capacity, sort of a shall-we-say hand holding function, for Ms. Cooper. I don’t think there’s much I can tell you in the way of evidentiary information.”

“Hey, Luther, let me tell you something. I’m here as a-‘ ”Forget it, Mike. Give it a rest. I’ll call Battaglia and we’ll straighten this out. I’m sure Agent Waldron has his orders, just like we do.“

Waldron turned to the three local investigators and suggested they go back into the terminal office with him to call their respective bases and inform the higher-ups of their next destination. I tried to smooth Mike over, but he and the fed were clearly off on the wrong foot.

“Isn’t Wally perfect?” I asked.

“You’d expect to see him working with Angela Lansbury in Cabot Cove, wouldn’t you?”

“How come he says ”finest kind“ after everything?”

“I don’t know it’s some kind of old New England expression Wally uses it all the time.”

“What do you guess Eb is short for?”

“Old Mayhew name, Mike. It’s Ebenezer.”

“Jeez, I feel like I’m in a time warp expect to see the Mayflower pull up any minute.”

“The Mayhews were the original island settlers. My house is part of one of the old Mayhew farms, built almost two hundred years ago. They’ve got classic names, wonderful old names: Zachariah, Zephaniah, Experience, Caleb, Patience, Ransford…”

“What’s the matter? Didn’t they ever hear of John and Mary…?”

“And Michael and Kathleen and Joseph? They got a little farther than your people on the names, Mikey. Much more interesting.”

Over Mike’s shoulder I could see Special Agent Waldron emerging to rejoin us. I was determined to make the day as pleasant as it could be under the circumstances, and so I smiled and asked how long he had been on the island.

“Just twenty-four hours this trip, ma’am. But I was here a few years ago doing advance for the President on one of his vacations. Beautiful spot. First time for you, Chapman?”

I wasn’t at all surprised to hear Mike respond the way he often did when he felt insulted and wanted to get back into the game.

“No, Luther, actually not. It’s been a while, but I used to sail up here a lot Edgartown regatta spent some weekends with a girl whose old man kept a boat here.

Think he used to be in the Bureau. Found out the whole squad had been doing her decided to call it quits.“ He could bullshit with the best.

Luther ignored Mike and went right on talking to me.

"I understand sex crimes is your specialty, Alex. At least that’s what Wally tells me. Why would a girl like you want to spend all her time thinking about things like that?"

"Beats me."

It looked like I might have to admit Mike was right. The guy was on his way to proving what a schmuck he was.

“Did you hear the one about the woman who was raped by a man with a very little penis?” Luther went on, clearly thinking he was on a roll and would win me over with this one.

Before I could decide whether to say ‘no’ or a more strongly worded “I’m not interested,” Luther announced that the woman said to her assailant, ‘“Did anyone ever tell you what a small organ you have?” And the rapist looked back at her and answered, “Lady, I never knew I’d have to play it in such a large cathedral.”

I was silent. I had heard lousy, tasteless attempts at humor about rape before, but this was at a time and place to hit a new low.

“Mike, want to go over with me to the Hertz office?”

“We’ve checked that out already,” Luther broke in.

“It’s not the one Isabella used. She picked up the Mustang at the rental office in town, near the ferry terminal.”

“Thanks. But it’s not that. We’re clearly going to need our own car today, okay?”

“We’ll take you anywhere you need to go, Ms. Cooper. I’ve got a government car… you can ride with me.“

“Not possible, Luther,” Mike said as he steered my elbow across the grass to the rental car area.“She’s allergic to polyester. Five minutes in the car with you and she’s likely to lose it all over your best suit. Trust me, she’s hell on synthetics.”

We were fortunate to get one of the rental cars, since the annual Bluefish Derby, which attracted devotees from all over the Northeast, was in its last days and fishermen were everywhere. I pulled out of the parking lot and yelled to Wally that we would meet them all up on Daggett’s Pond Way. The airport is in the middle of the island, so we turned west and began the ride to my house, twenty minutes up-island, taking the South Road so I could point out my favorite sights along the way.

“We’ve got to get some information about Isabella and the investigation. You think Wally will give it to you?” Mike queried.

“That’s our best shot. We should be able to pick up a bit when they walk the crime scene with us. But at some point, back at the house, let’s make sure that one of us has a few moments alone with Wally. I don’t have to invite the trooper and Luther in for tea once they’re through with me as a witness. But we’ll ask Wally to stay, and you can suggest to Eb that he take you around the property and catch you up on some Mayhew history. Wally’s a softie I’m sure he’ll give us some direction, once we get Luther out of the picture.”

“Luther is he sent from central casting, or what? He’s probably dynamite on a forged check case but your mother could solve a murder faster than he could.”

“I can’t wait to tell Sarah Brenner about him. She’s working on a ”Top Ten“ list for sex crimes prosecutors, you know, like Letterman does every night? The Top Ten assumptions people make about district attorneys who handle sex crimes… Number 3 People assume that you want to hear every joke that has the words penis or vagina in it, or has remotely to do with any kind of sexual act between humans, animals, or extraterrestrials. Number 2 People assume that you are interested in any social or sexual problem that they or anyone they have ever talked to has mentioned to them… and Number 1 People always assume that you must be incapable of a “normal” social life whatever that is after listening to daily tales of deviancy and dysfunction. She’d just love Luther and his little organ.“

We were well into Chilmark now, beginning the gradual climb up the road at Abel’s Hill. Off to the right was the quiet local cemetery, scene of many stoned pilgrimages to Belushi’s grave, and then further down around the curve was Clarissa Alien’s farm, with its stunning view of the Atlantic beyond the grazing herd of black and white sheep.

At the intersection of Beetlebung Corner and the Menemsha Crossroad, I turned left.

“This is the center of Chilmark, Mike, with its town hall, library, post office, schoolhouse, and the general store run by my friends Primo and Mary.

“We’re almost there.”

I envisioned Isabella getting her coffee and supplies from Primo every day, as I had suggested, or maybe going next door to The Feast for dinner. Had Wally checked those places, to see who was with her or whether she had signaled a sense of danger to anyone? If he hadn’t, Mike and I could do it this afternoon.

“If she didn’t hang out here, she might have gone up to Gay Head. We can check that out, too.”

“What’s there?”

“Indians.”

“Dot-and-a-knot?” asked Mike.

I bit my lip, trying not to give him the satisfaction of a smile. One of the truly refreshing things about the Homicide Squad was that political correctness had never had an impact there it simply didn’t make a difference.

“Dot-and-a-knot‘ was squad jargon for East Indians the twisted headgear and the red forehead dot of the Hindu religion.

“No, stupid. Feathers. This island was inhabited by Indians Wampanoags until the English came. The history was like everyplace else in America and the Indians were pushed off their land, up to the very tip of the island. Now the tribal lands are protected and the tribe has won official recognition from the government.”

I slowed down as the road dipped at the Gosnold bridge and nodded off to the right, telling Mike to look. Beyond the town boat landing and, across the wide expanse of Menemsha Pond was my cherished hilltop. As soon as I hit this point in the drive my pulse always quickened and my spirits elevated: I was home. I hit the accelerator and raced up the winding hill toward the granite markers and row of six mailboxes which stood at the mouth of Daggett Pond Way. But as I made the last turn onto the unpaved path and saw the access interrupted by the neon yellow color of the crime-scene tape, I braked to a halt and pulled the rented car into a clearing beside a faded bush of lacy blue hydrangeas, as I wondered what Isabella Lascar’s last moments had been like.

We sat quietly in our car for five or six minutes until Wally’s cruiser and Luther’s black sedan pulled in behind us. When they motioned to us to get out, Mike and I opened our doors and joined them on the strip of tall grass next to the roadway. It was only thirty yards back to State Road, but that was entirely out of view because of the sharp bend in the old path. And although my house and the homes of my neighbors were straight ahead, they were shielded from sight by the dense growth of pines and cedars that crowded both sides of the hilltop that crested before us.

“Not a bad place for a murder,” I remarked to Mike. “This one piece of the drive is completely secluded. It never seemed sinister to me until this moment, but it obviously presented a great opportunity for a killer to go unnoticed.”

“Now, Alex,” Luther said as he approached us, ‘there’s not much left here to point out to you, but I just want you to get an idea of what we think happened.“

The neon tape stretched from one of the evergreens on the east side of the path across to the old stone wall that bordered the property on the west. It ran north on the top of the wall for about five car lengths, then squared off by wrapping around a sturdy scrub oak that stood like a sentinel at the crown of the ridge.

“We figure Miss Lascar was driving back in toward the house sometime in the late afternoon. Still have no idea where she was coming from or exactly what time it was. The rental car was a white Mustang convertible, top down when she was hit. She couldn’t have been going more than ten or fifteen miles an hour on this part of the roadway.“

He was right about that. The dirt path was so deeply rutted and uneven that most cars bottomed out on it and you had to slow down to a crawl to maneuver the craters.

“We had a field team down from Boston yesterday,” Agent Waldron droned on, ‘but they didn’t come up with very much out here.“

“Outdoor crime scenes are the worst,” Mike commiserated. “Very hard to define.”

We had worked a few together in Central Park and in Morningside Park so I knew exactly what he meant.

Without an eyewitness and with no clear boundaries like the four walls of a room in an apartment or the limited confines of a rooftop it was a tough job for cops to know how far to extend the search for clues. Close it off five feet too soon and you’re likely to overlook an essential piece of evidence, but fail to limit it reasonably at some point and you’re pulling in all kinds of extraneous crap that leads your investigators off course. “Our best guess at this point is that the killer was concealed on the far side of the stone wall. It provides a natural cover, better than a duck blind, as well as a perfect brace to steady the gun. The target drove in, moving, but nice and slow. Whoever did this was a good shot. Probably wasn’t much more than ten or twelve feet from Miss Lascar. She took two, maybe three shots to the head and neck. Not much left to help us there.“

“What kind of gun are we talking about?” Mike asked.

Waldron hesitated. I knew he wanted to be a hard-ass and not tell us anything, but his instincts seemed to be fighting that. It looked as if he actually knew he might get more feedback from a genuine Homicide detective like Mike than from Wally.

“We don’t have a coroner’s report yet. My guess is a high-powered rifle. Lots of internal destruction is what I heard from the guys at the scene. Skull was shattered.”

I winced at that description, although I had seen its image flashing in my mind’s eye thousands of times in the past thirty-six hours.

Waldron continued.

“She must have been killed instantly. When her body was jolted by the shots we figure the car lurched and went smack into that big tree. That’s just where it was when she was found.“

Wally took over the narrative now, eager to give his men the credit for discovering Isabella’s body.

“Yeah, I went home to dinner ‘bout six. Call came in from your neighbor, Mr. Patterson. He said his dog you know that collie he’s got, Alex? well, he said his dog came home, feet all covered with blood. Wasn’t cut nowhere, much as he whimpered, but he was bloodier than hell. Mr. Patterson said there must have been a big animal killed up there, makin’ so much blood. He was mad can’t stand it when hunters start up your way before the season and asked my boys to go on up to look.”

The secondhand description of the car, and of what remained of Isabella, was gruesome.

“Damn dog was too nosy. Got his front paw prints all over the side of the passenger door where the blood was drippin‘ down, that’s how he got so full of it. The poor young lady’s head or whatever you can call it was resting on the top of that door. She was blown clear out of her seat lucky there wasn’t no roof on that car or she would’ve split that in half. The blood was everywhere.”

Waldron interrupted to tell us that Wally’s crew had done a good job.

“They didn’t touch anything. Just cordoned it off and called for the state police. The troopers brought us in on it because they had assumed you were the victim, Alex. Thought if you were in Massachusetts for business on any part of your trip, it might be federal jurisdiction. Someone in Wally’s office knew you’d been cross-designated a few months back to work on some interstate child pornography case. Anyway, Wally says you’ve always got work with you when you’re up here can’t leave what you do behind you at the end of the week.”

I nodded my understanding.

“Are there photographs of the body in the car?” Mike asked.

“Of course. The scene was thoroughly processed by the team of agents.”

“Anybody hear shots?”

We were still in Wally’s territory.

“Not so’s we know, Mike. This is a pretty lonely hilltop, and nobody’s let us know they heard anything at all. You got some summer people like Alex whose houses are sittin‘ empty this time of year, and some old-timers like Patterson who’s so deaf I could blast my siren in the middle of his living room and he wouldn’t look up from his jigsaw puzzle. Finest kind.”

Mike had already walked over to the wall and was examining the large rocks carefully for traces of the gun or its residue. It was obvious that he would have loved to come up with a significant piece of evidence that the feds had overlooked, and equally obvious that Luther Waldron, who eyed him closely, wouldn’t give him that chance.

“Let’s go on up to your house, Alex. That’s where we hope you can be helpful. You’ll know what belongs to Miss Lascar and whether anything is seriously out of place or missing.”

“Sure.” My eyes swept the area once more as we headed for our cars. No body, no blood, no Mustang, no gun, no killer just yellow tape strung out in an enormous square to bring home the reality that a murder had been committed on that isolated piece of road, less than five hundred yards from my house.

I led the way as I steered our rental car around the taped area through the tall weeds, behind the tree into which Isabella’s car had crashed, and back onto the uneven dirt path that climbed to its peak and then rolled over and started downhill toward the clearing beyond the thick cluster of evergreens. In less than a quarter of a mile we emerged from the shadows of the trees and Mike was able to see, for the first time, the incredible vista at the end of Daggett’s Pond Way.

“Spectacular!” he gasped, as I paused at the divide in the roadway where my drive split off from the others and the granite gate post to my house defined the beginning of my paradise.

“There are lots of great views on this island, Mike, but not one of them is any better than this.”

The old farmhouse is a very simple building, gray shingled and unpretentious, sitting on a green rise that flows down to the water, at the point where Daggett and Nashaquitsa ponds meet. Over the years I had added border gardens along the stone walls, filled with day lilies and nicotiana, astilbe and asters, and had replaced an acre of untamed weed with a wildflower field that threw up a colorful sea of poppies, loosestrife, and cosmos. Indestructible lilacs rooted beside my front door as they had for more than a century, and impatiens a flower perfectly suited to my temperament lined the sides of the original foundation and bloomed till the first fall frost.

But it was the view beyond that took my breath away every time I came back to it, so I watched with delight as Mike tried to take it all in.

“What direction are we facing? What body of water is that?“

”You’re looking north over the pond. There’s a tiny fishing village there called Menemsha, then beyond that is Vineyard Sound. Another strip of land the Elizabeth Islands and off in the distance is America. Cape Cod.“ The combination of dozens of subtle shadings of blue and green was endless today, as the sun danced on the water and the sweeping scope of almost three hundred degrees gave us the illusion of being, literally, on top of the world. Wally and Luther pulled in behind us and drew me back to the real purpose of our visit. It was a strange and uncomfortable feeling to see Luther walk to the front door of the house and hold it open for me. I had never met him until one hour ago and yet he had already been inside and knew his way around my home, without ever having had an invitation.

“Why don’t you walk us through, Alex, from room to room. Perhaps your eye will catch some detail we’ve overlooked. And if you recognize any objects that belong to Miss Lascar, or that don’t belong to you, point them out for us, will you?”

“Of course.” I hadn’t been to the house since Labor Day, not quite a month earlier, but no one else had been there since, except my caretaker, and then Isabella.

“Does it matter if we touch things now, Luther?”

“Well, I’m afraid you’re going to see that my team has, uh, dusted quite a few items for prints already. Obvious things. Drinking glasses in the kitchen and bathroom, mirrors and metal surfaces…"

My stomach churned. Another thing I hadn’t focused on, despite all my professional experience. The police and agents would have been looking for clues inside the house, especially if they thought Isabella had been killed or set up by her traveling companion. Hundreds of victims in cases I’d worked on had described to me the painful intrusion caused by their well-intentioned investigators, rifling through drawers and brushing black powder on possessions to see whether the oils from someone’s fingers had left latent prints prints not visible to the naked eye that could link an assailant to a crime scene.

Waldron continued, “We got some lifts, Alex, so we’ll have to do a set of eliminations before you leave. I directed the coroner to get Miss Lascar’s prints, too. Sorry about the mess that black powder is terrible. You’ll need someone to clean it up after we’re out of here.”

It was routine for the cops to take prints of anyone who had legitimate access to the location, to eliminate them from the latent prints found. It would be expected to encounter my fingerprints as well as Isabella’s on some of the surfaces.

And once we were eliminated, the inquiry would tighten to find the source of the unidentified whorls and ridges that might be hiding on glassware, porcelain fixtures, and cabinet doors throughout the rooms.

I stepped through the front door into the tiny hallway central to most colonial farmhouses, with its staircase leading up to the guest bedrooms. I led the solemn troupe past that to the left, into the living room, its crisp Pierre Deux upholstery and clean lace curtains looking just as I had left them.

“She must have used the fireplace,” I observed aloud, assuming that was the kind of detail Luther might want to know.

“Those cinders weren’t there after my trip. It wasn’t cold enough to want a fire.” And I had been alone Labor Day weekend, conscious of how romantic the setting becomes with a fire lighting that cozy room.

“That candle is Isabella’s, too,” I added. “I’m sure there’s one in the bedroom just like it.”

“You’re right about that,” Luther said.

“She always travels with them. Rigaud. Takes her own scent wherever she goes to create the feeling of being at home.” I had seen those tiny green votives – cypres was the one she favored in every hotel suite or guest room Isabella had ever planned to stay in for more than an hour.

Mike rolled his eyes in mock disbelief. The habits of the rich whether movie stars, yupsters, or cocaine addicts they were all grist for his mental mill, to be worked into the routines he schemed up to delight the guys back at the Homicide Squad as they waited out the night watch for news of another corpse.

I doubled back, seeing nothing else out of the ordinary in that room and passed my three escorts as I crossed the hallway and peered into the dining room. The table was empty, eight chairs drawn close around it, and as I leaned to look at its surface I could see the thin film of dust that usually collected within a week’s time of non-use.

“It doesn’t look like she ate in here,” I said, which did not surprise me, since the kitchen was twice the size of the dining room and had a sturdy oak table where I usually ate, except when I was entertaining, with the help of a local catering service.

We walked single file into the kitchen, and my jaw dropped at the sight of the black fingerprint powder coating the cupboard handles, refrigerator door, coffee mugs in the sink, the wineglasses still in the Rubbermaid drain, and the receiver of the telephone.

“Sorry, Alex, but we-‘ I interrupted Luther briskly.

“I understand what you had to do. It’s just unpleasant to see it in my own home.”

“Would you check the food supply, please? Anything different or unusual?”

Luther held his handkerchief around the handle of the refrigerator as he pulled open the door.

“There was nothing in it when I left except diet Coke and beer, so all of this is Isabella’s,” I told him.

There was milk and juice, English muffins and butter, yogurt and half a packet of hot dogs.

“Was she a vegetarian?” Wally asked.

“Yes, Wally. But I guess her boyfriend went both ways.”

I looked in the pantry and cupboards, which were pretty bare. Just as I left them.

“Must have cleaned out your shelves so the mice don’t get nothing over the winter, Alex,” noted Wally.

“Wally, she’s got the skinniest roaches in all of New York City. If they wait around for Alex to serve ‘em food, they’ll die of starvation,” joked Mike, knowing that my dislike of cooking meant that the cabinets were usually empty.

Luther moved to the old Welsh cupboard which held my collection of antique pitchers and opened the doors below, where the liquor was stored.

“Anything missing?”

“I don’t measure the bottles, Luther. I wouldn’t have a clue what was here last month or whether something’s an inch lower than it was before. I told Isabella to help herself to whatever she wanted, of course.” I thought of my Aunt Gert, who used to swear that her housekeeper sipped gin every Wednesday morning when she came in to clean her apartment. Gert took to using the tape measure from her sewing kit to check the level in the bottle, but could never remember where she hid the slip of paper with the number on it from week to week. The housekeeper long outlasted Aunt Gert, but the old girl would have been right up Luther’s alley.

He was about to close the door when Mike asked if the cops had dusted the bottles.

“Obviously not. There’s no powder on them, is there?”

“Well, take those three in. The front ones. I’d be willing to bet you’ll find prints maybe Isabella’s, maybe someone else’s but they’ve been moved since Labor Day.”

Even I looked puzzled.

Mike went on.

“See how the Stoli and Jack Daniel’s are in front? If Alex was the last to use them, the Dewar’s would be the closest to the door. But the Scotch is a step back and the other two are in front.”

Luther was frowning as he looked from Mike’s triumphant expression to my grin. I guessed that he was more upset by the suggested intimacy of our friendship than the thought he had missed a point he had no reason to know about, but I had missed it, too.

“He’s right, Luther. And Isabella usually drank vodka, so…”

“I thought she was a vegetarian,” mused Wally, puzzled by the significance of any of this.

“Do they drink?”

“She was a man-eating vegetarian, Wally,” Mike said, deadpan, ‘and a heavy-drinking one at that. Alex used to tell us she liked vodka, wine, and lighter fluid best, didn’t you? That’s what kept her so arrogant and frisky.“

Luther had his notepad out and was starting his list of additional things to do. There was nothing else of significance in the kitchen and we paraded out the far door ahead of him, through the room I had converted into a small office which seemed untouched and into the master bedroom.

While I stopped to take in the tableau of Isabella’s interrupted retreat, Mike walked across the large room to stare out the glass doors, which made up the entire wall, at the stunning view down the grassy slope to the blue tints of the pond and sound. This room was my favorite, sunny and cheerful all day, and so private that not a curtain or shade covered an inch of the opening. My only encroachers were the deer who ventured out at night and the osprey I had built a nest for at the edge of the property. Over my bed was a whimsical trompe painting of my wildflower field done by a local artist who liked to come to my hilltop to paint, and who gifted me with it years ago.

Now there was the clutter of Isabella’s belongings. I recognized the monogrammed luggage from T. Anthony: two duffels and a train case. A few of the silk lounging outfits she collected had been hung in the closet much too formal for the Vineyard but most of the sweaters and leggings were still sitting in the open cases, and underwear all La Perla was draped on my chaise and lying twisted on top of the coverlet on the unmade bed.

Luther caught up with us and the three men watched as I circled the room to distinguish between my possessions and those that would be neatly repacked and sent out to Isabella’s cousin, her only living relative. Next to my clock radio was the other Rigaud candle and a script of a screenplay for a movie entitled A Dangerous Duchess the Story of Lucrezia Borgia. Isabella had longed to do a period piece about a complicated character, but despite the eagerness she had expressed, it appeared from the place mark still near the front of the manuscript that her plans to slip away to read were put on hold by the pleasurable companionship of a playmate.

My eyes moved to the table on the other side of the queen-sized bed. The books and tea caddy that sat there had been in the same positions all summer and seemed unmoved. I tossed through her bags and folded up some of the items I knew were Isabella’s, and explained to Luther that nothing I could see gave me any leads. The bathroom was full of her lotions and potions, all from Kiehl’s, and more makeup than most women would use in a lifetime.

“We, uh, recovered some used condoms from the bathroom wastebasket and sent them down to the lab,” Luther said.

“No, Luther, they weren’t here from my last trip,” I offered, since he seemed uncomfortable about suggesting that. “I’m afraid there’s not much more I can show you here. Are you thinking that the guy who was here with her killed her, or that the shooter came in after the killing and took anything?”

“I wish we could answer that one, Alex. Right now we just don’t know. Miss Lascar’s purse was right there in the car with her, with plenty of cash and traveler’s checks in it. So if you’re not missing anything from the house, it doesn’t seem like anything of hers is gone either.“

“Luther, was her Filofax in the pocketbook?”

“Her what?”

“Her datebook. It’s a red leather booklet, about this size,” I said, outlining its dimensions with my hands. “That’s her bible, she never let go of it. It has every name and phone number she’s ever known in it, every appointment, every assignation, every lover. Did you find anything like that?”

Wally answered first.

“Was my boys that found the stuff, Alex, and there wasn’t any finder facts that I know of. Not in the house either. We went through everything pretty good.“

“There’s two things that Isabella wouldn’t part with very easily. One was her ring.” She and I shared a passion for Schlumberger jewelry – I coveted it, she bought it. She had a fabulous sapphire mounted in a setting called Two Bees – the most exquisitely delicate gossamer wings supporting the deep blue stone.

“And her book. That book was the key to her entire life, professional and social. Find the book you’ll find the phone number and other vitals for Mr. Safe Sex and most of the other people you’ll want to interview.”

“Well, I can account for the ring all right. They had to saw it in half down at the morgue to get it off her hand Wednesday night.”

Mike saw me grimace.

“That’s okay, blondie. Keep this up and I’ll have enough overtime next year to get you one of your own.” He only said it to rattle Luther a bit more, but it didn’t help me either, underscoring the additional brutality of an autopsy to the already ugly fact of Isabella’s murder.

“No book, though,” Wally added.

Luther’s pad was out again as he wrote my description of Isabella’s book.

“It was always in her pocketbook or tote. If that’s gone, I’d suggest that your killer had enough fortitude to reach into the bloody car and remove it. That’s my guess.”

When he finished writing, Luther asked me to join him in the kitchen to answer a few questions about Isabella.

“Wally, why don’t you take Mike out and show him around while we’re talking here,” I suggested.

“Finest kind, Alex. Love to do it. Let’s go, Kojak,” Wally chuckled, as he led Mike out the side door and Luther and I sat down at the kitchen tab leto dissect what I knew of Isabella’s life.

Special Agent Luther Waldron was out to show me just how thorough a federal investigation could be, even though it was pretty clear to the rest of us that he didn’t actually have jurisdiction over the murder of Isabella Lascar. He wanted to know the entire history of our relationship and all of the details of our recent conversations, despite the fact that I had gone over that with Mike Chapman the day before.

Had I been anything less than cooperative, Waldron’s boss would have been on the phone to the District Attorney and I would be forced to waste the rest of my weekend doing this again.

“I don’t mean to suggest anything negative by my question, Alex, but why do you supervise the stalking cases that come into the office? They’re not really sex offenses.”

“No, Luther, they’re not. Back when Battaglia asked me to take over the Sex Crimes Unit, he used to joke that my professional territory was everything between the knees and the neck. That covered most of what I did. But with the increase in stalking cases and harassment that all of us in law enforcement began to see in the late eighties by phone, by mail, by computer, and by physical menacing we didn’t know what to do with them. Once the psychiatric experts started to work with us it was obvious that a lot of the cases involved domestic relationships that had broken up and lovers who had been jilted, so the D. A. thought our unit was a natural home for many of them. They’re usually crimes with complex motivations and victims who need especially sensitive treatment. In that sense, they’re very much like sex offenses.”

Stalking cases are really an odd variety of criminal behavior, which Waldron knew every bit as well as I did. Most states, like New York, don’t even have a law that proscribes the conduct there is no penal code provision that specifically outlaws what most of us think of as stalking, no crime on the books with that name.

We struggle to prosecute under a broad range of petty violations when the bad guy makes harassing phone calls or mails threatening letters. But the risks are enormous between that sort of action when not punished and the enraged lover who tires of his calls and entreaties being ignored by his subject, and waits outside her office building with a gun in his hand. Not a week goes by when I don’t have several of these pending, with women desperately fearful as they tell me about their estranged husbands standing outside their offices or apartments every day, watching their movements. They plead with me, each of them wanting to know the same thing: if that conduct is a violation of their orders of protection. Can’t he be rearrested?

No, I respond, it rarely is legal cause for rearrest, no matter how sympathetic the prosecutor or cop. Lurking and watching and following seem to have no sanction in the courts, and yet the stalker’s next move often escalates to a deadly one. You can keep the harasser a certain number of feet away from the victim’s front door, order him not to enter her workplace, and demand that his calls and letters cease, but once she’s an open target walking in a public space or street or subway, the thin sheet of paper handed to her by a judge as an order of the court is as worthless as Confederate currency. The criminal justice system is far more capable of dealing with murder than with harassment, though the line that divides them is often deceptively slim.

“Tell me what you know about Miss Lascar’s latest threats.”

“Well, that’s just it, Luther,” I said sheepishly. “I’m afraid I didn’t ask her much about them I thought they were mostly an excuse to ask me to use the house and to come up here for some privacy.”

He frowned and I knew he was telling himself how unprofessional of me that had been. He was right.

“She told me that she had gotten some messages at the hotel and even some callers who got through the operator, but then hung up on her. She didn’t save any of the slips of paper. Isabella attracted attention wherever she went, Luther, and she was used to dealing with it. She did tell me she was annoyed about a shrink her words and some letters she had gotten. I don’t know if it was her psychiatrist or just someone she met who happened to be a shrink.”

“Yeah, we had that information yesterday. Her agent’s getting the information on all her doctors for us. She’s been through six or seven therapists in the last few years. And we’ve got the agent and the cousin taking the LAPD through her house on Sunday – the funeral’s tomorrow…“

“Yes, I know.”

“They’ll be looking for that correspondence plus notes, love letters, business deals. Perhaps we’ll fax you copies of any papers that might be connected to things she talked to you about – you can tell us if they relate to the problems she discussed with you.”

“Of course, anything I can do.”

“Have you ever met her ex-husband, Richard Burrell?”

“No, no I never met him. She had told me a lot about him, and Nina Baum our mutual friend knew him quite well.” I waited to see where Luther was going with this before I offered the information that Isabella and Nina had gossiped about so freely when we first met.

“They’d been divorced for some time, I understand.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, we’re giving him a close look, Alex. The reason she went to Boston was to meet with him last Saturday.”

“What?” That information really came as a surprise to me. Richard Burrell had produced a few of Isabella’s first movie projects and she had eloped with him one weekend when she was still an unknown. He had been a big deal in the business once, but just as she started to emerge, his cocaine problem engulfed him and cost him most of his money as well as his short-lived marriage. She dropped him instantly, accepting the advice that she would be poison in Hollywood if anyone suspected that she was as deeply into the white powder as Burrell was.

“I’d keep it under your hat, Alex, but it’s a fact. They were both at the Ritz-Carlton last weekend. Separate rooms, arrived and departed at different times but it was a planned meeting. Her agent thinks he’s been trying to reconcile – wanted to meet with her to show her he’s off the coke, clean. He’s been living on one of those small islands off the coast of Maine for the past year, trying to write.”

“You ought to talk to my friend Nina about Richard Burrell. I’ll give you her number. I think Isabella always had a soft spot for him, but reconciliation was out of the question.”

“Did she ever tell you he was violent to her, or abusive? You know, confide in you because of what you do, what your job is?“

”With a couple of drinks she’d have confided in anyone, Luther. Isabella was quite open about her personal life. Much too open. No, she had a lot of complaints about Richard, and how much it cost her to keep him out of trouble, but he never hurt or threatened her. He was wild when he was coked up – vulgar and coarse and unfaithful but he didn’t direct it at her.“

“How about guns? Did she ever mention he had guns?”

“No, not specifically. But when I listened to Isabella and Nina, I used to think that everybody in L.A. had guns. It always seemed so different than New York. Everyone in the Hollywood Hills, in the Valley, in town they all seem to have guns. Not necessarily to carry, but at home or to keep in their cars. Weird. The more upscale they are, the more guns, the more automatics. You know, Luther, when the revolution comes… they’ll be ready.“ I don’t think Luther followed me, but he was probably a gun freak, too.

“Do you have a gun? I mean, a handgun, for protection?”

“Luther, with my temper that would be a real mistake. No, I hate guns.“

“Oh. Well, that’s about all I can think of for now. We’ll be able to pick up some speed on this investigation next week. A lot of the West Coast friends and business associates will be more available to us once the funeral is over.“

We got up from the table and I glanced at the clock on the wall to see that it was almost two in the afternoon.

Mike and Wally were sitting in the sunshine on the deck off the kitchen, feet up on the railing, keeping themselves out of our way. Wally probably hadn’t had a fresh, captive audience like Mike in years and was undoubtedly telling him all the local news and island crime stories.

Luther and Wally thanked us for our help and we made arrangements to be in contact during the week. I saw them to the front door and waved good-bye as each car headed out the gate.

“Don’t tell me you’re leaving me for Luther,” Mike said as I headed back out onto the deck. "That is one huge blast of hot air.“

“How come you didn’t ask me if I did him? You left me alone in there with him for almost two hours.”

“Nah. I figure Wally’s more your type. You got a real thing for those sweet old guys. I can see you living up here, married to Wally, running the local jailhouse, or maybe a saloon like Miss Kitty while he rids the island of all the vermin who sail in from the mainland.”

“You guessed it, Chapman. C’mon, I’ve got to call the office and check my messages. I’m sure you do, too.”

“Then you have to buy me some lunch – I’m starving. I’m dying to hear what you got from J. Edgar Waldron – Wally was easy as pie.“

Laura answered my phone on the first ring. She expressed her usual concern for me and told me that it had been a relatively quiet Friday.

All calls from police officers and witnesses had been transferred to Sarah Brenner. My mother had phoned to get Laura’s opinion about how I was holding up (just fine) and whether I was really in any danger (of course not). Nina wanted me to call her when I got back to the city. Dinner invitations from Joan Stafford and another friend, Ann Moore (Tell them thanks but I’ll be exhausted. Rain checks). And Jed called from Paris see you tomorrow.

Mike checked in with his office and then turned back to me.

“Okay, Coop, I’m ready. Who’s got the best fried clams on the island? I’ve got a craving.”

“That’s simple – the Bite. Grab a couple of cold beers and let’s go.”

A seven-minute car ride from my door was the best joint for fried clams in the world. It’s a tiny wooden shack on the side of the road in Menemsha – a stone’s throw from the commercial fishing dock with only two picnic tables next to it. But Karen and Jackie Quinn turned out thousands of the most lightly fried clams from late morning through late night in season, which was only from the Memorial Day weekend through Columbus Day.

I turned the ignition key on in our rented car as Mike asked, “Who’s Luther wound up about?”

“He’s so rigid, he didn’t give a lot away. He’s got Richard Burrell, the ex-husband, in his sights.”

“Sound right to you?”

“Not really, especially if he’s off the coke. But there’s no question she was with him in Boston last weekend, so who knows if he followed her here. And Wally?”

“Wally says they’re trying to find an old boyfriend who was sort of a loose cannon. An actor or stunt guy named Johnny Garelli. Ever hear of him?”

“Shit, I should have thought of him, too. Isabella used to call him Johnny Gorilla. Remember when she did one of those Tom Clancy movies, about gun runners and dope dealers in some Central American country? Johnny was a great-looking, brain-dead ex-Marine who had a bit part in the movie, and they had an affair during the filming. Hit all the tabloids and supermarket magazines.”

“I must have missed it.”

“It worked fine for three weeks in the jungles of Guatemala, but once she got him back to Bel Air, he had trouble holding up his end of the conversation.

“Anyway, she came to New York for a shopping trip without the gorilla and we met for brunch at Mortimer’s on Sunday morning. The place was packed, everyone there knew who she was, and in the door comes this wild-eyed, oversized madman who’d gone straight from the red-eye to her hotel, where the concierge who had put Isabella in a cab directed him to the restaurant.”

“What did he want?” Mike asked.

“He just raged at her for leaving him behind. The usual stuff of a B-movie – she thought she was too good for him, she thought she could buy him off, comments about her sexual interests. I was halfway under the table and he wasn’t talking about me but she just took it in great style, put down her bloody mary, rose to her full height, told me she’d be right back, and walked him out to the sidewalk. The people in the front half of the restaurant – the ones who count – watched as she hailed a yellow cab and put him inside, then left the taxi door open as she came back in to whisper an apology to me. As she started for the door again, she turned and smiled at ten or twelve of us within hearing range and announced, ”Let this be a lesson to you, girls – always fuck your own rank.“ I sat there dumbfounded until my friends Joan and Louise, who were at the next table, stopped laughing long enough to invite me to finish my salad with them.”

“And the gorilla?” Mike asked.

“He hung on for a while. Could still be an occasional one-nighter for all I know. I don’t think she’d brag it about to me after the episode I witnessed. She’s made a lot of mistakes like that with her personal life. While they’re looking for Johnny they’ll find ten more just like him. Isabella desperately wanted respectability – a man who was solid, not show biz, not drug-involved – there just weren’t a lot of them in her orbit. She never stopped searching for one, though.”

I nosed the car onto the dirt shoulder of the road just before we reached the Bite. Karen saw me first and practically squealed with excitement.

“Alex, what are you doing here? You told us you wouldn’t be back till the weekend we close.” She realized as soon as the words were out that she knew the connection.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Isabella Lascar was staying at your place. I’m so sorry.“

“Thanks, Karen. We’re up here trying to help Wally. This is my friend – Mike Chapman.”

“She was here, Alex. She was here on Wednesday.”

“Isabella?” I should have known I could get a pretty good scouting report from the Quinn sisters. They were enthusiastic, hardworking young women who loved celebrities, and if they trusted you with the information, they could tell you when Vernon Jordan or Billy Joel or Mike Wallace or Princess Di had his or her last order of clams and oysters.

“Yeah, did you send her to us?”

“Well, of course, you’re on the top of my list, Karen, and I would have sent her here, but I actually never got to speak with her on Wednesday.”

Mike casually began to ask for more details.

“Do you remember what time she was here?” was how he started, and when he found out it was between two and three in the afternoon, he moved on to whether or not she was alone.

Jackie had joined in the conversation, too, and both were quick to respond that Isabella had been with a man. No, he didn’t seem at all familiar to them, and yes, they had both checked him out, simply because they assumed he might also be a movie star.

“He was a looker,” Jackie offered. Taller than Mike, also with dark hair, and probably in his forties.

“They had a medium order of clams with some fries, and both of them had bottled water.”

“Did you happen to hear anything about where they were coming from or what they were up to?” I knew from lots of experience here that the deep-fryers were against the windows, right over the picnic table. My father once came close to bringing the girls to tears, unintentionally, by sitting below that window and grousing that there were too many potatoes and too few clams in the chowder. So I tried to make it easier for them to admit an overheard by urging, “It’s really important, girls. It could really help us a lot.”

Karen was eager to be useful.

“It sounded to me like they were on their way to the ferry. He had to be somewhere else and she was going to stay on the island. I’m telling you, she was all over him. I’m pretty sure she was driving him to the ferry, or maybe it was the airport. But they were in a hurry and they ate pretty fast.”

“Thanks, Karen. I’m going to ask Wally to come up and take some more details from you, okay?”

“Sure.”

“Meanwhile,” Mike smiled at the sisters, ‘let’s have a large order of clams, some Bite fries, and two cups of chowder.“

While the order was cooking I walked Mike around the bend to show him the fishing dock and the remains of the ever-shrinking fleet of commercial boats that worked off the coastline. The Quitsa Strider and the Unicorn were both moored in the picturesque harbor, but no sign of their two island captains, brothers who are descendants of original Vineyard settlers, who still caught their swordfish by harpooning them rather than dragging a gill net at sea for days.

We came back, picked up our food, and sat at one of the tables, barely talking as we devoured our late lunch. Mike inhaled the soup and ate two-thirds of the clams before he came up for air.

“You’re right, Coop, this is great stuff.”

“We may have stumbled on an important bit of evidence. Was Isabella killed before her lover left the island… or just after? Thank goodness you wanted fried clams.“

“As Mae West would say, ”Goodness had nothing to do with it,“ Mike responded.

I reached for another clam belly as I asked Mike what he meant.

“I was all set to eat your friend Prime’s pizza for lunch. Then Wally told me about the autopsy report. Looks like Isabella got knocked off within an hour or so of her last meal…“

I gagged on the delicious morsel as Mike finished his sentence.

“Fried clams undigested, sitting in her stomach big, juicy ones, with a little batter on them. I knew I could count on you to tell me who served the best ones on the island.”

He grinned as he raised his soda can to click mine: “Here’s looking at you, Coop. Hope you’re not still hungry that fried food is lousy for your diet.”

I had promised Wally that I would pack and ship Isabella’s belongings to Los Angeles to save his deputies the trouble of going back to the house another day, so Mike and I returned there after lunch to finish that chore. He turned on the CD player, slipped one of my Smokey Robinson discs in place, and sat in the rocking chair next to the bed as I began to fold the clothes that were so casually strewn about.

“I’m tossing these half-used candles,” I said as I walked behind Mike to reach for the one next to the bed.

He picked up the movie script and thumbed through it as I worked.

“Why don’t you keep one of those silk pajama things for yourself, kid? Nobody would begrudge you that.”

“Thanks for the thought. Isabella sent me an identical set for my birthday this spring. The tags are still on it somehow it just doesn’t have ”me“ written all over it.” I stroked the silky fabric of the champagne-colored lingerie as I fitted it into the already crammed duffel bag, guessing from Isabella’s descriptions of her pudgy cousin that these gorgeous indulgences of La Lascar would find their next life in some charity’s thrift shop in Sherman Oaks.

When the three bags were zipped and locked, I called my caretaker’s answering machine, leaving a message for him to get a house cleaner in to get rid of the dust left by the investigators.

“C’mon, Mike. Let’s lock up and get on the road.”

“This would have been a pretty good movie,” he said, still carrying the screenplay, which he had obviously decided to take with him as his keepsake of the deceased.

“Lucrezia Borgia was an interesting broad for the fifteenth century. Politics, war, intrigue, religion, sex, poison – some things never change. Izzy was hot for this one – she’s got stars and exclamation points in red ink drawn all around her entrance and opening salvo. She’s even written in her own poetry in the margin or maybe one of her friends wrote it. You know a Dr. C? It’s got a few lines of poetry, then it says “Dr. C.”

I turned off the CD and the lights and set the alarm system.

In his most dramatic drag imitation, Mike swept out the door reading Isabella’s poem to me:

“What beckoning ghost, along the moonlight shade Invites my steps… tell, Is it, in Heaven, a crime to love too well?”

“Whoa, Chapman, maybe they didn’t teach you this stuff at Fordham and certainly not at the Police Academy, but any self-respecting English literature major from a woman’s college could tell you that Isabella didn’t write that. It’s a very famous poem by Alexander Pope,” and I shuddered to think how sadly appropriate the title was as I said it to Mike, “”Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady.“

“Well, she must have liked it a lot to write it in here herself. Maybe Dr. C. is the shrink she was complaining to you about you know, maybe C is one of his initials.”

“Sounds more like Dr. C. is from the Psychic Friends Network. A ”crime“ to love too well? Is some guy one of her exes so jealous that he killed her because she was with another man? Or did she love someone too much? Was this psychiatric advice or just the coincidence of someone’s taste for classic English poetry? If poor Isabella had only known the rest of this verse, she might not have liked it quite so much.”

“Why?”

“Cause it’s about the untimely death of a beautiful young woman, who once had wealth and fame, and now all that remains is ”a heap of dust.“ That’s why. You better read through the rest of the script and see if anything else has been added to the margins.”

“And we’d better get a handle on Dr. C. Let me tell you British poetry, Motown lyrics, movie trivia with all the stuff you’re good at, I don’t know why Battaglia thinks you’re so useless. Let’s get going.”

I took a last look around at the house and then started the car out the driveway. As we headed down-island, I continued to point out all the sights to Mike – friends’ houses, working farms, and beach roads.

“How did you find this place, Alex? I mean, why did you start to come to the island?”

“Can you stand a love story? A short one. Sad ending.”

I think Mike was sorry the moment he asked. Most of my office friends had some idea of what had happened to me in law school, but I had never talked much about it. I doubt he had connected it to the Vineyard or he would not have raised it at that moment.

“I’m taking one last detour on the way to the airport,” I said, turning off State Road onto a dirt path that led through two miles of thick brush before reaching an area of wetlands and saltwater ponds. Beyond the dunes, guarded only by gulls and shorebirds, stretched miles of sandy white beach covering practically the entire south coast of the island.

I knew when we reached it there would not be a soul anywhere in sight on Black Point Beach, just the great surf of the Atlantic Ocean, constantly throwing up waves to meet the shore.

I started to talk as we drove down the winding road.

“You know that I went to law school in Charlottesville, at the University of Virginia, right? I loved it there and I loved everything about the law school experience, which is quite unusual, as you’ve heard. It’s a great school and it’s also one of the most beautiful places in the country. From my first semester I knew that I wanted to go into public service, and I knew that I wanted to be a prosecutor they were a natural overlap and Paul Battaglia had the reputation for running the best District Attorney’s office anywhere.

“So I was off on the right foot academically, from the start. School was interesting, the friends I made there were fantastic it was a long time since I’d been in classes with and I was playing as hard as I was working.

“One Saturday afternoon my friends Jordan and Susan‘ whom Mike knew well’ invited me out to the house they rented to go horseback riding… a big mistake for a Jewish girl from Westchester whose only experience on a horse had been at the Bronx Zoo. We were only doing a trail ride, but my horse got spooked by a snake and threw me. I went straight to the University Hospital Emergency Room with my left hand kind of dangling three fingers badly fractured.”

We had reached the end of the dirt path and I parked the car so Mike and I could get out and walk over the dunes.

He followed my lead as I kicked off my shoes and left them in the car.

“Enter Adam Nyman the resident on duty in the Emergency Room. He splinted my fingers, convinced me that law students male variety were pedantic and boring, and took me to dinner. I fell madly in love and we spent every free moment together from that weekend on. Fill in the details I’m sure you can.”

“Was he a Vineyarder?” Mike asked.

“No, but he’d been coming here with his family all his life.” We stood at the top of the sandy walkway up to our knees in the tall, reedy grass and stopped to look at the incredible sweep of ocean and sky, with not a human in sight.

“This is what Adam lived for to sail on that water from the first light of day till the sun set beyond the Gay-head Cliffs. Every vacation, every long weekend, every space in our lives we scrambled to get here.

“We became engaged and set a date to get married, right after the bar exam the summer I graduated from law school. We bought the house together and started to fix it up. Adam had known the old lady who lived in it widow of a fisherman from an old island family and had promised her he’d never tear it down or modernize it the way so many people have done to the original farmhouses.”

We were walking westward, as sand crabs scurried to get out of our way and birds hovered behind us to see if we had scraps of food to drop for their dinner.

“Most of my family and friends had come up to the island the week before the wedding. There were beach picnics and cocktail parties and Sunfish races and clambakes and I never thought there could be an end to my happiness.

“Adam was the one with the inflexible schedule so he was the only person we were waiting for those last days.

His final shift was over at midnight on Thursday he was working in New York City by then and he got in his car to make the drive up to the ferry so he could be here at daybreak on Friday.“

I was doing fine. I was telling the story so flatly that I knew I could get through it okay there wasn’t enough emotion left in me this week to squeeze out much for these memories, mixed as they were with such swings of joy and agony.

“I never saw Adam again, never heard his gentle voice or felt the warmth of those wonderful hands on my body.

Everyone who loved him as I did stayed on the island for his funeral. There was no wedding, and I never got to be his bride.”

My voice was still strong and I wasn’t even conscious of the tears streaking down my cheeks, till Mike grabbed me by the shoulders.

“C’mon, Alex, sit down for a minute.

I didn’t mean to get into this. Sit down and catch your breath…“

“Whew. I haven’t said it out loud in so long I just can’t be here without thinking of Adam,” I said, crossing my knees to sit in the sand. Mike joined me and watched as I picked up a stick and mindlessly drew a heart and arrow with Adam’s initials in it, as I used to do so many years ago.

He was too polite to ask me what happened and I was too self-absorbed in the story not to go on.

“It was an accident, Mike, a terrible one Someone on the highway sideswiped Adam’s car. They were crossing one of those bridges in Connecticut, the ones that go over the rivers, and Adam’s car crashed through the guardrail and went over the side of the bridge. It was demolished completely crushed by the impact.”

“Did they get the guy who did it?” asked Mike, as only someone in our business would, I think, since it mattered so little to everyone else once Adam was gone.

“No. It was the middle of the night. No one was around to see what happened. The police didn’t find the car till hours later. But you’re like Adam’s mother. She was sure it had been done on purpose, convinced that he had been working on some secret medical research for the government. She couldn’t let go and accept that it was accidental.”

“But you could?”

“The police gave it a hard look it didn’t make sense that anyone needed to kill Adam for anything, for any reason at all. You know me. I just assumed that the gods don’t like to see me too happy. Adam had given me the future he was smart and funny and warm and loving, and the happiest person I ever met. As my mother would say, ”It just wasn’t meant to be.“

“So instead of dancing in a white tent on our hilltop, we all came to this beach Adam’s favorite. His father and sister went out on his sailboat, brought it around from Menemsha to this point, and scattered his ashes where they thought he’d want them to be. And this is where I come to talk to him, Mike, like some madwoman in a bad novel, you’re probably thinking. But I’ll never let go of him. It’s where I always come to find him and love him, and know that he loved me better than anything on earth.

That’s the thing that killed him driving all night to get here to marry me.“

Mike let me sit there alone for five or ten minutes while he walked further down the beach, before returning with an outstretched arm to pull me up from the sand.

“Give me the keys, kid, and let’s get to the plane. It would be my luck to get marooned here overnight at a time when you’re this maudlin, and stuck on another guy.”

We walked back to the car and Mike drove the short distance to the airport, where we turned in the rental car and waited in the terminal for the perky pilot to come back for the six o’clock Cape Air flight to Logan. There was no wind to speak of so even Mike stayed calm on the short hop into Boston.

I was leading him from the exit gate of the commuter plane to the corridor for the connecting shuttle flight, when I heard Mike call out for me to stop. He was standing still, staring at the television screen that was facing out at him from the airport bar, and gesturing excitedly for me to walk back to him.

“Hey, Coop, can you believe it?

“Jeopardy” must be on earlier up here than in New York. C’mon, they’re about to do the Final Jeopardy question.“

I reminded myself of a mother talking to a five-year-old kid as I shook my head in annoyance and called out to him, “No, Mike. Move it let’s not miss the seven o’clock shuttle.”

“Wait a minute. What’s your hurry? There’s another plane in half an hour. The category’s the Oscars. What do you say, blondie? I’ll bet you twenty-five dollars.”

Mike and I were both addicted to “Jeopardy‘ although I rarely got home in time from the office to see the seven o’clock show. There were some subjects I wouldn’t bet him on like the Bible because he beat me every time. And I had a few topics that he wouldn’t touch.

But we usually passed our ten dollars back and forth from week to week, challenging each other on our known weaknesses, when the ante could rise considerably. Mercer Wallace swears the worst time to get killed in Manhattan is between six fifty-five and seven-thirty in the evening.

He has known Chapman to stand in an airless tenement in the middle of July with three bodies strewn around a homicide scene, listening to Alex Trebek recite the answers to the Jeopardy and Double Jeopardy rounds while calling out the questions in response, as the medical examiner silently probes the corpses for clues.

I turned around and reached for my wallet, since we both knew the movies pretty well.

“It’ll cost you fifty if you make me stay.” I could see he wasn’t leaving in the next three minutes, in time to make the flight, so I put my money on the bar and told Chapman to do the same.

He pulled out a twenty-dollar bill, ordered us each a drink, and turned to me with a sheepish grin on his face.

“I’ve only got twenty bucks. I have to pick up my paycheck at the office when we get in. Trust me?”

I nodded as Trebek announced that the Final Jeopardy answer was: the only two actors who have ever won Oscars back-to-back, in consecutive years.

Mike and I both slammed our hands on the edge of the wooden bar counter at the same time, as though pressing the buzzer as the contestants on the program do.

“Tom Hanks and Gary Cooper.”

“Wrong. You better cash your check tonight, Chapman.”

“Whaddaya mean wrong? Who do you say?”

“Tom Hanks and Spencer Tracy. Philadelphia and Forrest Gump, Captains Courageous and Boys Town.”

“What about Gary Cooper? High Noon and Pride of the Yankees?”

“You’re really slipping. Those movies came out about ten years apart. Besides he never got the Oscar for Pride of the Yankees.”

“Are you kidding me? I don’t believe it. He was amazing in that flick. He was incred-‘

”Enjoy your cocktail, Mikey, ’cause you’re buying.“

Alex Trebek gave him the bad news, we finished our drinks, and made it onto the seven-thirty shuttle for the last leg home.

By the time we landed, picked up the car, and drove to my apartment it was after nine o’clock Friday night, and I offered Mike the chance for another fast-food dinner at home. He declined, explaining that he had a date that evening, although I wasn’t able to pry any more details about her out of him.

As I glared at the blue-and-white patrol car at the edge of the circular drive in front of my building, I turned back to Mike.

“Will you help me with one more thing?”

“Sure, what?”

“When I see Battaglia on Monday, I intend to ask him to call off the baby-sitters for me. I wasn’t the target for this, Mike, don’t you agree? Whoever did this was there to kill Isabella Lascar, isn’t that pretty clear at this point?”

“Yeah, I’m sure you’re right. It was the middle of the week and like you said, anyone could have checked that you were at work. The shooting was too methodical and accurate to have been accidental. And there are at least a few characters we’re aware of with reasons to hate her.

We’ve probably only scratched the surface on that front yet. Cute as you are, blondie, I don’t think anyone who got a good look at that head before he fired could have confused it with yours. Somebody wanted Isabella dead.“

”Well, will you tell your boss to tell my boss to call off the dogs? Battaglia will want to speak with you, too, on Monday. You know he’ll want an independent opinion not just what I think.“

‘I’ll be there. Now go get some rest, you got a big day tomorrow. Get plenty of beauty sleep.“

I reached over and kissed Mike on his forehead.

“Thanks.”

As he drove out I waved good night to my bodyguards, greeted the doormen who handed me my dry cleaning and mail, and rode up on the elevator with my keys in my hand. I put down my things, made sure I had a Lean Cuisine Lasagna in the freezer, and went into my bedroom to undress and shower.

Six messages. Two girlfriends Nina and Joan; two hang-ups; the reporter Ellen Goldman to confirm Monday’s interview; and Rod Squires, my supervisor, just to reassure me that it had been a quiet day.

Nina Baum was right about me. It was a good thing I had no children and no pets to take care of. Most days it was a struggle for me to keep green plants alive, and tonight I didn’t even have the strength to water them. Zap that lasagna, chat with the girls, early to bed, and, if I could force the day’s events out of my brain, maybe even sweet dreams about tomorrow.

I fell into a sound sleep, and was startled bolt upright by the abrupt ring of the telephone. It was after midnight, as I could tell by the iridescent dial on the alarm. My heart pounded as I grabbed the receiver, praying I would hear Jed’s voice on the line, excusing himself for calling at that hour and blaming his timing on the six hours’ difference between New York and Paris.

“Hello? Hello?”

No voice, no heavy breathing, no background noise.

“Who are you, dammit?” I tried not to sound frantic, and assumed I would remember on Monday to order the caller ID service the telephone company had been advertising lately.

I slammed the phone back into place and stepped out of bed, walking in the darkened room to the window and looking out at the clear night. Usually, when I sat at my office desk or the courtroom counsel table, I had the false but comforting sensation that I could control or at least pay back the evil spirits that crept around this city after dusk. But now, as I stared down at the empty sidewalks and quiet streets, I had no idea where I could turn for safe haven.

By morning long after I finally put myself back into bed and thought of more pleasant things than my hang-up calls – I convinced myself that for the first time all week, I had a bad night’s sleep for a good reason. Jed would be home with me by the end of the day and I was excited about the thought of being with, him.

I tossed and turned until nine o’clock, distracting myself with visions of how Jed would caress me and baby me when he arrived from the airport later in the day. When I had played out several varieties of that theme, I went to the door and brought in the Times to work on the puzzle while I had my first two cups of coffee at the dining-room table. The Saturday crossword was the only one I bothered with all week it was the toughest, and for years I used to race against my father to see who could complete it the fastest. When I got stuck in the bottom corner on 57 Across, descendant of Old Norse, I was too restless to struggle over the missing letters so I gave up and headed back to the bedroom to get dressed.

There are almost no forms of exercise that interest me, except that I have had a lifelong passion for ballet. I had started to take lessons when I was four years old, and didn’t abandon my dreams to be Natalia Makarova’s successor until about the time I entered college. But throughout my days in law school and whenever my erratic trial schedule permitted, I still took ballet classes to stay in shape and to relieve some of the enormous tension of the job.

The patrol car with two officers from the day shift at the Nineteenth Precinct was in the driveway of the building as I walked out the door with my ballet slippers in hand and a raincoat covering the black leotard and tights. Both cops two rookie women sat up in their seats as they saw me coming toward them.

“Hi, I’m Alexandra Cooper,” I said, although it was obvious they knew that when they spotted me.

“Sorry you’re stuck with this duty, but I think it’ll be over in a couple of days. In the meantime, do you mind running me over to West Sixty-fourth Street for an hour?”

“No problem.”

I got in and we drove to the studio on the West Side. It was near Lincoln Center, where one of the retired dancers from American Ballet Theatre gave lessons which I tried to attend on Saturday mornings and occasional weekday evenings, whenever my unpredictable schedule allowed it.

William and his six other students were surprised to see me when I arrived a few minutes into the barre exercises for the ten-thirty class, but the necessary silence of the participants during the workout was one of the extra benefits of ballet. I never needed to explain my personal circumstances or my trial results or the day’s dealings with the cases they had read about in the daily tabloids.

For close to an hour, as I stretched and plied and glissaded across the smooth wooden floor to the familiar music of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, the demands of concentration needed to perform the required steps pushed all other business from my mind. I sweated and ached like the other women who surrounded me in the class and was unhappy only when the recording stopped and William bowed to the group with his customary “Thank you, ladies.”

I exchanged greetings with the other exhausted dancers and cooled down before going out to the radio car for my escorts to get me back home. They let me out in front of Grace’s Marketplace, a fabulous emporium of gourmet foods, so that I could buy dinner for Jed and me. There is a section of elegantly prepared dishes which I relied on regularly complete meals that need only to be reheated and served and I knew that he would be too exhausted from the long day’s travel to want to go out again that evening. Veal francese roasted new potatoes, string beans, and a salad, and I was on the express checkout, back in the car, and dropped off at my front door minutes later. “That’s it for the day, ladies. I’m not going out again. My boyfriend will be here later that’s all the action you’re going to get today. Thanks.” I left the pair at their steady post in the driveway and went upstairs to put away my packages and get into the shower.

The only message on my machine was from Nina, phoning from her car on one of the freeways on her way to Isabella’s funeral.

“I’ll call back, after the show.

Don’t forget to watch C-SPAN is carrying the service.

Word in the biz is that there’ll be a lot of crocodile tears Sharon, Demi, Nicole all the girls who want to scoop up her scripts and incomplete projects will be front and center, in their deepest black, feigning grief. Later.“

It was almost one o’clock, so I settled into my sofa in the den to watch Isabella’s memorial service, broadcast from Forest Lawn. The commentator came on first, describing the arrival of the movie stars as if it were Oscar night at the Chandler Pavilion. Among the hundreds of celebrity mourners I was able to spot Nina and her husband, Jerry Baum – a literary critic and screenwriter, whom she had met and married when we were still at Wellesley.

The service consisted of a series of speakers who gave their favorite memories of Isabella. There was lots of talk about her great beauty and her screen talent, but very little was said that made one think she had ever done a kind thing or had a generous thought about another human being. I sat forward, scouring the crowd as I imagined Luther Waldron would have done at a Mafia don’s funeral looking for the furtive glance of a killer or the inappropriate smirk on the face of an ex-lover.

Some of the speakers had familiar names. Most had worked with Isabella on one project or another- producers, directors, her agent, a couple of co-stars. Then Richard Burrell introduced himself and began to talk about the private Lascar. I tried to make something of the fact that he wasn’t emotional enough about the death of a woman he loved, but it was clear that she hadn’t been easy to love, and emotion was visibly lacking from the entire ceremony.

The last salute was what the crowd had been waiting for. I couldn’t stop myself from breaking into a huge grin as Kirk Douglas moved up to the podium. I was tempted to pick up the phone and call Mike at home, but figured he must have been watching, too. As a serious movie buff, Douglas was one of his favorites. Mike could imitate him in almost any role, from The Vikings to Spartacus to last year’s remake of Blue Lotus, in which Douglas played Isabella’s father and won another Oscar nomination for supporting actor.

If there wasn’t any warmth to add to the portrait of the deceased, at least Kirk Douglas closed with the histrionic conviction that the fans wanted to hear. He conjured up every celluloid image of the young star in each of the roles she had played, and invested her professional life with the dignity of his unique voice. ‘… And the final irony, the fatal one, is that Isabella a name which means “beautiful little island” met her death in just such a place, a beautiful little island, where she went for solitude, for safe haven…“

Yeah, Kirk, that’s the bullshit she gave me, too.

A final prayer and the recessional, with six Johnny Gorilla lookalikes carrying out the coffin and probably having good cause to be sadder than anyone else in the chapel and I clicked off the television.

Joan Stafford called a minute later, still stunned by the spectacle.

“It’s hard to believe Isabella’s dead, isn’t it? She was so vibrant, so magnificent. It’s oh well, what do you think, Alexandra? Who did it? Could have been anyone in the first two rows, from the looks on their faces.”

I caught her up on yesterday’s trip to the Vineyard, told her about my plans for the evening with Jed, made a dinner date with her for later in the week and, hung up the phone.

Then I called Air France and learned that the flight from Paris had been delayed two hours at takeoff because of weather en route. Jed would arrive closer to six o’clock.

I tried to escape into the new le Carre novel that I had just bought a week ago but my thoughts raced back and forth between trying to solve the real murder that had presented itself in my life and fantasizing about making love to Jed.

I didn’t get very far on either course.

I picked up the receiver again and dialed the number for Special Victims at the Twentieth Precinct.

“Squad.”

“This is Alexandra Cooper. Who’s this?”

“Hey, Alex. It’s Frank Barber. Whaddya need?”

“I was just looking for Mercer, to see if there’s anything new on the pattern the Con Ed rapist.”

“Mercer swung out yesterday at four. Doesn’t come back until Monday afternoon. But I got the sheet in front of me.

All quiet on that case no developments, no new hits.“

“Anything I should know about, Frank?” Strange business, I acknowledged to myself. I’m looking for news of a good rape case to serve as a distraction from a murder investigation and my own love life.

“Two things, but nothing we were gonna bother you about at home. I got bad news and I got good news. Give you the bad first, okay?”

“Ready.”

“Got a 61 last night…” Frank started, referring to the police complaint report made in every case, which gets its name from the designated number of the police document, a Uniformed Force Number 61. “Twenty-third Precinct. Victim is sixty-eight years old. Lives in an old railroad flat with four bedrooms. She’s a widow, rents out rooms to boarders. Guy she’s been renting to for a couple of months comes home loaded last night. Mrs. Zalina goes down the hall to the bathroom and this scumbag drags her into his room and tells her to suck his dick. ”She says no, so he punches her in the mouth. She still says no, so he hits her again. He’s got her on her knees, trying to make her do it when another renter hears the commotion and tries to help old Mrs. Zalina. The perp has the good sense to run out and never come back.“

“How’s Mrs. Zalina, Frank?”

“Patrol responded. Took her to Mount Sinai. Say she’s fine. We logged it as an attempted sodomy and an assault.

Shook her up pretty good but she was tough as nails.

Doctors gave her a head-to-toe exam, and the rape crisis counselors spent time with her and took her home. She told them she didn’t need counseling about nothing if the late Anthony Zalina didn’t ever make her do “that disgusting thing” in forty-two years of marriage, she wasn’t about to do it for some drunken garage mechanic.“

“Good for her. I take it we know who the guy is, right?”

“Yeah. We found a lot of papers in his room with his name on it. Worked in a body shop in the Bronx, only he didn’t show up this morning. It’s just a matter of time, Alex we’ll drop him.”

“Okay. I’ll assign it to someone in the unit on Monday, so we’ll be ready when you pick him up.”

“You’ll like Mrs. Zalina. She wants to go all the way with this. Says she could recognize his penis anywhere – ”looks just like a teeny-weeny, crooked little sausage.“

Cops put that right in the original report with the rest of the description.

“Ought to be an interesting line-up, Frank. Maybe we should hold it in a butcher shop instead of the precinct.

If that’s it on the bad news, what’s the good news?“

“This could be a new one for you, Alex. I had a call today from a young lady who wants to remain anonymous for now. She was raped a week ago by her ex-boyfriend.

They both work at Merrill Lynch, went out for drinks, reminisced, and then she brought him home with her.

Wants to know how long she can wait before she reports it and still has a case. But her big question was about the evidence. Seems she kept a washcloth that he wiped himself off with, put it in a baggie, and then stuck it in her freezer so she’ll have his semen to prove he did it. Wants to know how long she can keep it and still have the police lab be able to use it.“

“Are you serious? What did you tell her?”

“I told her it depended on whether she had it stored with the frozen peas or with the ice cream…”

“Frank, that’s revolting.”

“And I told her that I absolutely refused to go to her house for dinner until she got that stuff to the lab. Anyway, what I really told her was to call your office next week and one of the lawyers could answer all her questions about prosecuting.”

“That’s it?” I asked.

“For the moment, that’s all we’ve got, Alex. You’ll be the first to know if we need you.”

I hung up and decided to busy myself in getting ready for Jed’s arrival: setting the table, straightening up the apartment, and removing the tags from Isabella’s slinky birthday present to dress up for the occasion. The Four Tops were singing to me as I tried to lighten my mood for the night ahead, urging me to reach out for them if my life was filled with confusion. I put the list of people with motives to kill Isabella, which I had started to scratch out during the funeral, in a drawer, closed the file which contained the motion and bill of particulars that I had to respond to by Thursday for the Vargas case, and finally settled down unable to concentrate on anything else with a two-month-old copy of Architectural Digest.

“Mr. Segal on the way up, ma’am,” the doorman announced on the house phone when Jed finally arrived from the airport.

I checked myself again in the bathroom mirror and got to the front door just as I heard the elevator opening. Jed stepped out, carrying his suitcase, and did a double-take when he saw me in the doorway of my apartment at the end of the hallway wearing my sexy silk outfit. It was a radical departure from my usual lounging uniform: an oversized man-tailored shirt and a pair of leggings.

“You’re in the right place, darling. Welcome home.”

“You may have found the perfect antidote for my jet lag, Alexandra,” he said with a smile as he pinned me against the wall and reached down to find my mouth.

We kissed for several minutes, hard and deep, our tongues exploring each other’s mouths. Jed ran his hand down the smooth surface of the pajama top and found my nipple waiting at attention for him.

“Are you okay?” he whispered to me as he started to work at the buttons of my shirt.

My eyes were closed now and I nodded my head in answer to his question.

“Tell me what happened, Alex. Tell me how you’ve been involved and what they’ve put you through all week.”

I pushed away from the wall, looked at Jed, and pressed my finger to his lips to silence him as I led him by the hand into the bedroom. ‘I’ll tell you everything you want to know later, but for now, I have other plans.“ ”But did they actually think the killer was after you and not Isabella? Do they think they know who did it?“

“Really, Jed, you’re the one who’s always telling me not to talk about my cases all the time, and when I finally want to leave it behind me, you become the Grand Inquisitor.”

“I’m sorry, darling. I’ve just felt so useless being in Paris while all this was going on, worried about your safety, and…”

“If you want me to prove to you that I’m absolutely fine, you’re going to have to take off all your clothes right now and save the conversation for dinner.”

“Sounds fair to me,” Jed responded, starting to undress.

“I’ve been traveling for hours you’ll be much happier with your suggestion if you give me a few minutes for a shower.”

I watched him undress and smiled at the familiar sight of his lean body. It had only been three months since we’d met in June, but the attraction had been immediate and intense, and I was relieved to know he would hold me and tether me to reality as the circumstances of Isabella’s death continued to unravel.

“I didn’t have any time for shopping, but I just want you to know that I thought of you wherever I was,” Jed said, smiling as he tossed bottles of Chanel 22 perfume and body lotion onto the bed and headed for the bathroom.

“Thank God for airport duty-free shops,” I laughed and unwrapped the cellophane from the sharp black-and-white packages. Nothing could distract Jed from his deal-making when the numbers were on the table and the stakes were climbing so I was delighted that he had thought of me at an odd moment during his trip. As he knew, shopping was a passion of mine, and there weren’t many things other than crime scenes that could dull my interest in a good sale.

I was pleased that he had remembered my brand and that he had tried to cheer me up with these luxurious tokens.

I heard the shower water running, so I slipped out of Isabella’s satiny garment, dropping the pajamas onto the floor, and opened the bathroom door. Steam had filled the tiny room and clouded the mirror completely. I held apart the white eyelet curtain and stepped in with Jed, whose head was arched back so that the hot water was spraying in his face and running down the length of his frame. I took the bar of soap from its niche in the tile wall and began to lather his shoulders and back. He sighed approval and shifted his body, so that his hands leaned against the front of the shower and his head dropped forward between his arms. My hands gently rubbed every inch of his torso, then down each leg and back up to the top of his thighs, like a slow wet massage on a very compliant subject.

I stood as Jed let go of the wall against which he had braced himself and turned to face me, his penis fully erect, but his eyes barely able to see through their water-soaked lids. I reached up to kiss him and again we embraced, tasting each other and letting the shower rinse me free of any thoughts except the man and the moment. He entered me and all my fantasies of a slow and languorous reunion on my comfortable bed yielded to the reality of our eager bodies finding each other and mating against the slick tile wall.

When we released each other a minute later, I turned off the water and we stepped out to wrap ourselves in heavy bath sheets. I left Jed to shave and change and went back to my bedroom to put on my more familiar costume of leggings and a shirt.

Jed followed me in after he had dressed. I hugged him to me and told him how much I had missed him during the week. We rolled back onto my bed together, and I let him kiss the dark circles under my eyes, which I teased him that he had caused by making me sleep alone. I rested in his arms, delighted at not having to talk or explain or resolve any of the problems which had plagued me since he had last been with me in this room so many days ago.

“Can I fix you a drink?” he asked, as I finally untangled myself and started for the kitchen, prepared to nuke our dinner in my microwave.

“Sure, if you’ll join me.”

“I think I’ll just have a glass of wine with dinner.

Between the jet lag and your magic-fingers-welcome-home treatment, I’m not going to last too long this evening. Is that very rude?“

“I’m so glad you’re here, Jed, of course not. I haven’t slept in three days, so we’ll just eat and go to bed early.”

“When I got off the plane I almost changed my mind and went directly to my own apartment. I never thought I’d have the strength to, well, to…”

“I’d have been so hurt if you hadn’t come here.”

“But, Alex, I want you to understand that I had to come here, too, for my own sake. Not just because you needed me. Because of everything that’s happened. Now it’s clear to me that I really love you and that I had to be with you and that once I held you in my arms there wasn’t any way I couldn’t make love to you.”

My mind scrambled for a diversion from the direction this conversation had started to take. Our romance had progressed with great speed, and for weeks it seemed that I had been more anxious to engage Jed’s sentiments than he had wanted. The physical attraction had been a perfect fit, and I knew he would be slow to involve and yield his reserve. He had left Santa Barbara earlier this year when his marriage split up, and he was plagued by thoughts about the effects of the divorce on his two kids. By late-summer, I knew I was falling in love with him, once he had opened himself up with a warmth and playfulness that I found irresistible.

Still, I reminded myself that at the height of my crisis he had been an ocean away and unwilling to cancel the deal he was negotiating to wing his way to my side. It excited me physically and calmed me mentally to have him with me tonight, but I wasn’t ready to confuse it with loving him.

“Darling, I wish I could have dropped my clients or called in one of my assistants, but you know-‘ ”Sssssh. Stop apologizing. Do you think I’m going to say I’m sorry for pouncing on you in the shower?“

”Nothing to apologize for. I didn’t seem to mind very much, did I? Kind of reminds me of that story you told me about your first rape trial I think you were just showing off.“

The first sex crimes“ case I had ever taken to trial was a ground ball so easy the jury should have reached a verdict without ever leaving the box. The victim was a twenty-one-year-old college graduate on her way to her first job interview in a towering office building on Lower Broadway in the middle of the afternoon. As she entered the elevator to go upstairs a man got on with her and as the elevator started to move pressed the button to stop it between floors. Before the startled young woman could react, the defendant grabbed her by the neck and slammed her head against the wall to daze her and render her semi-conscious. Then, as he held her pinned in place with one arm, he lifted her dress, ripped down her panty hose, unzipped his pants, and penetrated her while she stood up slumped in the corner of the elevator.

Impatient workers on the ground floor kept ringing for the stuck car, which finally returned to the first floor. When the doors opened, the girl screamed and the defendant bolted for the street. An off-duty cop the building coincidentally housed the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association offices chased the rapist for two blocks and dragged him back to the scene where other officers arrested him.

No wonder the bureau chief had given it to me as a first trial. The defendant’s attorney made a very weak argument for mistaken identification, and there didn’t seem to be any reason to worry about the outcome of the case. The jury got the charge at noon, and should have been back before lunch. By ten that night, we all knew some issue was giving them trouble. When the twelve very angry men and women returned with a guilty verdict close to midnight, several of them asked to talk with me.

The hang-up? An elderly man married and the father of four children simply didn’t believe the victim’s story, even though the defense had conceded that the rape had occurred exactly as she described it. Number eight told the others that she had to be lying: no one could have intercourse in a standing position it just wasn’t possible!

Eleven jurors had spent the rest of the day arguing with this old-fashioned gent, whose four offspring had been conceived in the missionary position. He was convinced that was the only manner in which sexual coupling could be accomplished… until jurors three (a thirty-six-year-old masseuse) and eleven (a forty-three-year-old mailman) volunteered to demonstrate to him, in the interest of justice, exactly what the victim had described.

From that experience I learned that a prosecutor could never assume any aspect of a case, especially when it comes to the complicated world of sexual assault. Jurors bring to the courtroom with them their own biases, prejudices, and personal knowledge, which was frequently quite limited.

And the biggest problem is their natural impulse to confuse consensual sexual events, familiar within their own lives, with the very different phenomenon of forced, assaultive acts. Never again have I presented an event to a jury without using my closing argument to explore the distinctions between what I could suppose were their own private habits and the criminal elements of the acts charged.

Jed poured me a drink while I opened a bottle of wine for him. I set out the meal, lit the candles, and tried to bring the conversation around to what he had seen and done in Paris and at which restaurants he had eaten.

But I had put off the obvious topic of conversation for as long as I could and he was determined to be brought up to speed.

“Alexandra, don’t you want to tell me what happened?

Do they know who killed Isabella?“

Like anything else, I had answered this question so many times since Wednesday evening that I could respond quite easily at this point. I summarized the details of her death and the investigation.

“No suspects right now. At least none that they’re telling me about. Ex-husband, psycho co-stars, pen-pal psychiatrist, obsessed fan maybe even a secret lover. What’s your guess? I think I’m too close to it to see it clearly.”

“I didn’t know she’d ever been married. And what lover?

Had she told you about him?“

“No. Talk about using me. You know the crap she gave me about being stalked and needing to get away? Well, she neglected to tell me that she was taking someone with her. A guy.”

“Maybe it was platonic, a friend-‘ ”Well he left some very un platonic condoms in my garbage. I suppose if I look at it scientifically instead of with my gut, at least when they get a suspect they can always test what’s in the condoms for DNA.“

“Don’t the police know who he is? Didn’t anybody see them together?”

“Not many people. That’s the beauty of the Vineyard.”

Jed had not been to the island with me yet because he had spent most of his free weekends commuting back to the West Coast to spend time with his kids.

“Anyway, they’re talking to everyone who Isabella ever crossed in her inimitable fashion, so I think this is going to be a long haul.”

“But are they sure the killer was after Isabella and not you? That’s what had me tortured when I couldn’t get here.”

“Now it seems quite obvious, but it was truly frightening before we could reconstruct the timetable. I was pretty distraught when I called you that first time.”

I knew Jed had been harassed by a stalker during his brief foray into politics last year, when he lived in California.

“I remember those stories you told me about that woman who had followed you all around during the primary.” He had been a candidate in the Senate race, and like most people in prominent positions had attracted a few nuts in his search for legitimate support.

“You know what sitting ducks men and women become when they achieve some kind of celebrity status. Most of the time it’s just a nuisance, but quite harmless. Then one of those psychos loses all connection to reality and the result is suddenly lethal.”

“I tell you, when you’re in the middle of it, there’s nothing worse. Every time I was giving a speech or standing on a reception line, I’d look up and she’d be there. Nothing threatening, mind you. Just the opposite. She attended a single campaign rally in Century City probably because there were supposed to be a lot of movie stars there shook my hand once, and was smitten.”

“Hey, she’s only human,” I teased.

“Yeah, well that’s half the problem. Nobody took it seriously because she told everyone we were lovers.”

“And?”

“Of course not. She was completely delusional. But nobody my staff, the police, private security nobody thought it was worth worrying about because she was a woman, and because I think most of them really believed we had been having some kind of affair. She was smart, reasonably attractive, knew my travel schedule better than my staffers did. She was everywhere I was supposed to be.

They all knew my marriage was hanging by a string and they just winked at each other whenever I tried to deny that something was going on.“

“What did you do about it?”

“Got an order of protection, finally. I sure as hell didn’t want to do that in the middle of a campaign prosecute someone for being at my events. Hell, some days she was the only one who showed up. And paid to do it.”

We both laughed.

“One of the reasons I was thrilled to move to New York for CommPlex was to put all that behind me. I assume she’s still in graduate school in L.A., and that she’s attached herself to some other unsuspecting soul. Anyway, I know how distracting and unsettling that kind of harassment is, even if I didn’t know it was so dangerous. Now I’ve got you to protect me I went right to the top.”

Jed got up from the table and came around to my side.

“Alex, I’ll never let you down again, I promise,” he said, as he leaned over behind me, brushed the damp strands of hair away from my neck, and kissed me softly below my ear until I turned and offered him my mouth. We left our uneaten dinner on the table, carried the wine bottle and glasses into my bedroom, and stripped down a second time to get under the covers.

“Forgive me, darling, but I don’t think I’ll be much good to you now,” he whispered as he let me cradle his head on my breast.

“I’m really exhausted.” He was asleep almost as soon as his eyes closed, and I looked at the clock, noting that it was barely ten as we settled in for the night.

I stared at the dark, silent figure lying beside me, and thought about how my life had changed in the three months since we had started to date. I met Jed through my closest friend from law school, Jordan Goodrich. Jordan had left Skadden, Arps to go into the investment banking business and worked a few deals with Jed on the other side. When Jed’s twelve-year marriage broke up and he moved to New York, Susan Goodrich began to invite him to some of her dinner parties. She obeyed my rule about no blind dates, but Susan had grown to like Jed and was convinced that I would, too, so she was intent on coming up with an easy introduction.

In mid-June, Susan rented a movie theater on East Sixty-fourth Street to surprise Jordan for his thirty-fifth birthday. The party was a screening of his favorite movie, Thunder Road, with a fifties theme and everyone in fifties dress, playing pinball and dancing to Coasters music for hours after the film. I saw Jed dancing with Susan, and he was better than anybody on the floor. With my ponytail swinging, my turquoise poodle skirt and matching twin-set ready to move, I asked him to rock ‘n’ roll when the record changed and we danced about ten cuts before we stopped to exchange introductions.

When the party was over, the four of us hopped in a cab despite our ridiculous clothes and went downtown to the Gotham, where we sat for hours telling stories and trying to catch up on each other’s lives. The Gotham then became ‘our place’ for dinners together or entertaining friends as the romance flourished despite our mutual reluctance my fear of losing someone forever if I dared to love him too much, and Jed’s fear of involvement so soon after a disastrous divorce.

I thought, as I studied him in sleep, that perhaps this crisis would be the path for each of us to become more open to the other. I needed him to come to the Vineyard with me I had struggled for too long to keep my lovers away from where I had been happiest with Adam, and with the passage of so many years that division had become too artificial and unnatural. I also wanted Jed to let me understand what had happened to end his marriage, and to let me meet the children who meant so much to him.

Now that Jed had expressed his love for me tonight something I hadn’t felt ready to do yet I was confident we were on our way to a more secure relationship, and I eased myself onto my side next to his body. I hugged him tightly against me and finally gave myself to pleasant dreams, unpeopled by the stalkers and rapists and murderers who loomed before me every day.

“Was it good for you?”

“Mike, there aren’t words to describe how good it was,” I responded when Chapman called the apartment in the middle of Sunday afternoon.

“If you stop playing with yourself and give some girl a chance, maybe you’ll find out.”

“Am I interrupting something warm and wonderful right now?”

“No, Mike, he’s gone. This is fine.”

“Gone? Already? Jeez, I figured you two would still be making up for lost time. The guy doesn’t have a problem, does he, blondie? Not a long-ball hitter?”

“No problem, Mikey. Now why don’t you pretend to be mature and tell me what’s on your mind.”

Jed and I had awakened at daybreak. I was happy and excited, and we made love again, unmindful of what the rest of the world was worrying about. We had coffee together and read the Sunday paper, but he left early to catch up on the mail and messages that had accumulated in his office while he was out of town, before going to his apartment to unpack and settle in for the work week ahead.

“Did you catch the funeral service yesterday?”

“Of course. What did you think?”

“I’m throwing Kirk Douglas on the list of possible perps that was the worst acting job I’ve ever seen that man do. He’s practically my hero you know that but this was a lousy performance, pretending that broad was a saint.”

“He made Isabella furious, Mike,” I chuckled as I recalled her outrage. She had thrown herself at him during the filming of Blue Lotus, tried every one of her teddy-bear tricks to seduce him, but he reminded her that he was very much in love with his wife and wasn’t the least bit interested in a dalliance with her.

“She really thought she was irresistible. Thought a man had to be dead or insane if he didn’t react to her charms.”

“What are you doing today?”

I looked out the window as the rain streaked against it, the gray clouds mirroring my mood.

“Nothing, really. I’ve got some motions to answer for my next trial, so I’m just going to hang around and do my homework, return some of my phone calls.”

“Good. Lieutenant Dane just reached me. He had a notification from the Chief of Detectives. Thought you’d be pleased to know that they’re lifting your bodyguard tomorrow. Uniform team will drive you to work in the morning and then you’re on your own. Battaglia approved.

And I’m back on night watch as of midnight tomorrow.“

“Oh, Mike, that’s great news. Living with these watchdogs could really drive me nuts, I’m so used to just picking up and moving when and where I want to.”

“Here’s the case update. LAPD is going through Isabella’s house right now they’ll let us know if they find anything of interest. Wally Flanders is letting us work this with him, so we’ll get copies of any reports he gets. And best of all is that he wants us to do some of the interviews. Richard Burrell and Johnny Garelli for starters both’ll be coming into New York this week.”

“As suspects or witnesses?”

“Hey, everybody’s a ”possible“ in my book until they convince me otherwise. Now, for whatever it’s worth, Wally FedEx’d some of the photos that have been developed and turned in. Should be in the squad office tomorrow.

He thought Isabella was in a couple of frames but didn’t see anything else of interest. I left orders to get them to the lab immediately for enlargement, so by the time I get in at eleven-thirty to start a midnight tour, they should be available.“

“Great. Let’s not waste any time. I have to go to a black-tie dinner with Jed tomorrow evening, but I’ll be home by eleven. I’ll make a pot of coffee for you. Bring the pictures by when you swing out and we’ll look through them together, okay?”

“Long as nobody gets chopped up in little pieces or dumped in the East River before midnight, I’ll be there, Coop. Lighten up we’re going to break this thing open ASAP and get your life back to normal… if that’s what anybody calls normal. It’s really nasty outside just stay in and relax, you’re not missing a thing. See you tomorrow.”

I hung up the phone and went back to the dining-room table to work on the Vargas case. Not a complicated matter, a typical ‘push-in’ burglary that escalated into a rape, and my white legal pad filled up quickly with the draft of my answers to the demands for information made by the defendant’s attorney in the pretrial stage. I flipped through the complaint to find the exact time of occurrence, then backed up to get the precinct arrest number from the rap sheet. Like most stranger rapists, thirty-four-year-old Ervilio Vargas had a record that stretched back to his early teens. From fare beats and car boosts he moved to break-ins, then began to commit felonies with weapons, then threw in sexual assaults when he encountered women during his burglaries. He had done city time and state time, released to early parole on his last sentence, but never able to stay out of trouble very long. I planned to try him as a ‘persistent felony offender’ with more than five felony convictions to his credit. I was looking for a life sentence and no shot at parole. He had ruined far too many lives and been given more chances than any human being deserved. The victim was very cooperative and anxious to put Vargas out of business, too. If all the paperwork was done expeditiously, we’d be ready for trial before the Christmas recess. Happy New Year, Ervilio.

I had worked for more than an hour when the phone rang again, and I was delighted to hear my best friend’s voice on the line. Talking to Nina was the easiest thing in the world. We had been close since the first day at Wellesley and had guided each other through every significant event and every trivial detail of our lives. There were very few secrets we kept from each other, and she was unique in that her friendship had always been completely unconditional.

Nina didn’t pronounce judgments or exact demands or hold grudges she was simply a loyal and loving friend.

“I know your life is upside down at the moment, Alex, but you’ve got to stay in touch with me. No calls, no messages, no cards… what’s going on?”

“I’m fine, Nina, really, I promise.” She was referring to the fact that we had a regular routine of staying in touch with each other, and it was always pretty easy to guess when our lives were disturbed, because the flow of communication was interrupted as well. Despite the three-hour time difference between us, we called each other several times every week. We didn’t always speak directly because of our work schedules, but we left messages on our home machines, so that no matter what hour I got in after a long day, the sound of Nina’s familiar voice would frequently help me unwind and put my day in perspective.

Her joys, her heartaches, her professional triumphs all strung out on an endless strip of rewound tape, as mine were on her machine in L.A. And we both collected art postcards from museums all over the world, writing each other a note on one of them almost every evening to track our lives through almost fifteen years of graduate school, legal jobs, romances, motherhood, and now, mystery.

“Can you talk? Are you in the middle of anything?”

“Are you kidding? It’s been pouring all day. It’s the first chance I’ve had to stay in and relax I’m just catching up on everything. How about you? How’re Jerry and Gabe?”

Gabriel was their two-year-old son, my godchild.

“They’re great. They’re out in Malibu at the beach today.

So what did you think of the service?“

“Compared to what, Nina? It didn’t sound like they were eulogizing the woman we knew.”

“Let me tell you what nonsense was going on at this end.

Did you ever dress for a funeral I mean, worry about what designer you were going to wear? The girls in the front row were tripping over each other for the photo-ops, black Armani versus black Ungaro versus black Bob Mackie… for those who like sequins graveside. I doubt any of them even listened to what was being said. What do the cops think have they got a killer?“

“All the usual suspects. I understand the LAPD is at the house this afternoon, looking for clues, papers, diaries, whatever. I’ll know more tomorrow. Did you find anything else out about her shrink?”

“Just that she’s had about four different ones the past few years. I don’t know names, but the police will find them on the pill bottles in her bathroom. The rest of the world had problems, according to Iz. She was fine but used these guys for pills. Ups, downs, whatever the latest fad.

As soon as one of the psychiatrists got wise to her, she’d switch to a new one and start the prescriptions over.“

“Did I tell you that she wasn’t alone for the last couple of nights she stayed at my place on the Vineyard?”

“You’re kidding! Don’t hold out on me who’s the masochist?”

“We have no idea. I was hoping maybe she told you.”

“Nope. She talked about some guy she ran into on a plane about a month ago. She had taken the Concorde back from London said he referred to it as ”the rocket.“

“Yeah. That’s investment banker lingo.”

“Said the guy was fascinating because he wasn’t in show biz and was still powerful and important her words, darling. You know how it always impressed her that people who weren’t in People could still be worth talking to occasionally, and could even get a table at Le Cirque.”

“Well, did she date him or come on to him? I’m dying to know who he is so I can ask whether he enjoyed my hospitality.”

“I’ll check around. To me it just sounded like her perpetual search for Mr. Right.”

We chatted for another ten minutes before hanging up.

The talk of psychiatrists reminded me of my neighbor.

I dialed David Mitchell’s number as soon as I hung up with Nina. It was our Sunday evening tradition to watch ‘60 Minutes’ together at seven o’clock, and if neither of us had a date, to order dinner in while we watched.

“Are we on?” I asked when David picked up the phone.

“Sure. Zac and I will be over a few minutes before seven.

Any other company?“

“No, Jed had to leave this morning.”

“Why don’t I order in from Pig Heaven?”

“Ummm. Chinese – great idea. I’m just warning you, I’m switching channels if one of the segments is about some other guy on death row who admits killing twenty-seven people but didn’t do the one he’s been convicted of. I’m only watching if they profile a scientist who discovered that red meat, french fries, ice cream, and Doritos are good for your health, or some other upbeat story. See you later.”

David and Zac appeared just as the local news signed off.“

I liked David a great deal, but I never felt that I knew him well at all. He had that wonderful trait of a good counselor that encouraged you to tell him everything you thought and believed, but revealed nothing of his personal feelings in the process. Like my own, his professional life was all-consuming, and while I had seen him with a number of his dates from time to time, I had no idea who they were or what his social life revolved around.

Prozac, on the other hand, was the ideal neighbor. A sleek taupe dog, nicknamed Zac, she was always eager to greet me when I came home after a difficult day in the office. When our paths crossed, she would bound down the hallway and cover me with friendly licks, anxious to be petted and stroked. Occasionally, when David had out-of-town meetings to attend, I’d keep Zac with me for the weekend, taking her for long walks in the park and jogging with her at my side.

Davis did a gentle cross-examination to make sure I was really okay, while Zac assumed her usual position at my feet and rolled over on her back so I could scratch her belly till she almost purred like a feline. The food delivery arrived before the end of the hour, and we devoured our ribs, scallion pancakes, and hot, spicy chicken while I enlisted David’s help for later in the week, when I was promised more information about Isabella’s psychiatric history and correspondence.

When they left, I put on my Private Dancer disc and luxuriated in the bathtub for almost an hour. I worried about whether David was too interested in Isabella’s case or simply being a good friend. He denied having met her, but I was certain I had introduced them to each other when she picked me up in our lobby one evening, more than a year ago. I told myself to stop being so paranoid and went back to planning the week ahead, actually looking forward to getting back to my desk and the office routine tomorrow.

I was so glad to see the sunshine again Monday morning that I was out of bed early, dressed and ready to go before eight, with my evening clothes packed so that I could shower and change in the ladies’ room and be at the Plaza to meet Jed in time for the dinner honoring his boss, the CEO of CommPlex.

The same two policewomen were waiting in the radio car in my driveway. I greeted and thanked them, knowing they were as relieved as I was that this boring assignment would be over after the twenty-minute ride downtown.

They dropped me in front of the entrance to the District Attorney’s Office and I swiped my photo ID over the security scanner to let myself in and get up to my office to check Friday’s mail and memos.

I turned on the computer and entered my password and user code. Once I got into the e-mail system I got caught in the unwanted personal messages that the administrative assistant had been directing the legal staff to cut out apparently in vain. An assistant in Bureau 30 had four tickets to Phantom that her Aunt Lucy couldn’t use for Wednesday’s matinee; a colleague in Frauds had a Himalayan long-hair that was expecting kittens and she was looking for a good parent (“J-D- Degree preferred‘); and a paralegal in Special Projects was desperately seeking tickets for Knicks games, not located in the end zones and no higher than twenty rows off the court.

Once those were erased, I skimmed through the in-house equivalent of help-wanted ads. Has anyone ever used a ballistics expert who can tell the effect of weather conditions on the sound of gunshots? Has anyone seen the case jacket that was inadvertently left in the courthouse coffee shop (and which, by the way, contains all of the witness interview notes that the defense shouldn’t get to see till the middle of the trial)? Does anyone want to piggyback on a telephone dump that we’re preparing for a rackets investigation?

Has anyone ever qualified an Albanian interpreter (Gheg dialect, not Tosk) in the Grand Jury and can he or she get here on short notice? It’s faster to send an urgent message through to a co-worker by Pony Express than by an e-mail system over clogged with the individual requests of six hundred lawyers and thousands of support staff users.

I moved on to messages addressed only to me. Lots of notes from friends in various bureaus offering consolation, advice, support, and free drinks (that last being a typical law enforcement solution for most traumatic events) because of Isabella’s death and my connection to it. A notice that Rod was calling a bureau chiefs’ meeting for Tuesday afternoon at four, so I put that in my book. Updates from Sarah on the new matters that had come in over the past few days and suggestions about witnesses who needed to be interviewed. Reminders from Laura about appointments she had scheduled for me and penciled in my calendar for the week. A note from Battaglia’s assistant, Rose Malone, suggesting that I stick my head in later today to see the boss.

I got to work knocking out some correspondence on the word processor that Laura could clean up and print out for my signature when she got in. Two were disposition letters, informing victims of the pleas I had taken in both cases, resulting in lengthy prison terms and sparing the women the need to confront their rapists at trial. One was a letter confirming a request to present a lecture about date rape to the freshman class at Yale at the beginning of the next semester, and another accepted a meeting to bring Sarah with me to Mount Sinai Hospital to lecture to the staff on the protocol for the examination of sexual assault victims at Grand Rounds in early January. I did as much as I could before the doors opened to the general public around 9AM and all of my colleagues went into high gear.

Laura was the first one to check in with me when she arrived. We caught up on what I had missed the previous Friday and she went over the day’s appointments with me. I usually liked to leave some open time on Monday morning because weekends often generated a disproportionate number of cases that needed emergency triage at the beginning of the week.

“I had you set for a ten o’clock with a woman whose ex-boyfriend came back to the apartment to pick up some clothes, then smacked her around and raped her,” Laura began.

“But she left a message canceling on my voice mail.

Her name’s Shaniqua Simmons here’s the number. Call it yourself you’ll see why she’s not coming.“

“Anybody need that space?”

“Yeah. Jackie Manzi called from Special Victims. She’d like you to see a Hunter College student case came in yesterday morning and she doesn’t know whether to make an arrest. Wants you to decide and let her know.”

“Fine. Call and tell her to get her witness down as soon as possible she can have Shaniqua’s spot.”

“Rose Malone said to ignore her e-mail. Battaglia wants to take you, Rod, and Pat McKinney to lunch to brainstorm for some ideas on bringing down the arrest to arraignment time. She warned me that he also wants to see how you’re functioning under all this stress.”

“Thank her for the warning.”

“Then at two you have that interview with Ellen Goldman, the woman who’s doing the profile for USA Lawyer’s Digest.”

“I really don’t have the patience to sit for that kind of thing today. I have too much to make up here.”

“Well, I doubt you’ll be able to put her off much longer she’s very persistent. Plus the District Attorney thinks it’s good PR. for the office, so don’t fight it.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I smiled and bowed my head in deference to Laura’s sound advice.

“Anything else?”

“An avalanche of calls some media, some friends you can go through them yourself. And one guy kept calling all day Friday. Wouldn’t leave his name or a message says he must talk with you about Isabella and will try you again today. You want to take it?”

“Sure.”

“And Alan Glanton called already. He’s opening in the Bodega rape case this morning. Judge Callahan told him he’s much more likely to rule favorably on the prosecution’s objections during the trial if you give Alan the same ”equipment“ you Used so successfully in the Boynton trial. Can he stop by and pick them up before he goes to court?”

I laughed and walked over to the last filing cabinet along the wall, which held all of my personal belongings. Shoes with varying size heel heights, pantyhose in a wide variety of shades to guard against daily snags and runs, makeup and perfume for unanticipated evening invitations. And my way to Judge Callahan’s heart: packages of Stick-Ups, the air freshener, deodorizers in different scents, which adhere to wood surfaces. Philip Boynton, a serial rapist I tried last spring, refused to shower from the day he was arrested till the trial. His stench was so overwhelming that none of the court officers wanted to work Callahan’s part. I brought the Stick-Ups to court every day and we covered the underside of the defendant’s chair and counsel table with spearmint, peppermint, and evergreen to make life bearable for the personnel. Bodegaman was in the same category so I gave Laura my secret stash to pass along to Alan.

When Laura left I sat down to return calls, and started with the message from Shaniqua Simmons. It was common for domestic abuse victims to cancel appointments after making an initial police report, but it always concerned me in case they had been threatened or re victimized because of the meeting with a prosecutor. Her phone rang twice, then kicked into an answering machine which played a recording.

“Hi, this is Shaniqua,” in her sultriest voice.

“Me and Nelson can’t come to the phone right now, ‘cause we got some makin’ up to do.” The background music, quite appropriately, was written by the immortal Marvin Gaye, advising Shaniqua that this was the time for sex-u-al healing.

I tried to look at the bright side. It did give me an extra hour to get Manzi’s victim an interview without any delay.

There was plenty of work to busy myself with until the Hunterstudent arrived shortly after eleven o’clock. Laura buzzed me on the intercom: “Beverly Vaughan is here she’s the witness in Jackie Manzi’s case.”

“Fine. Please start me a screening sheet and I’ll be out to get her in a minute.”

Laura handed me a screening sheet, which“ was the printed form we used to record all the data about each case interview, including the pedigree information about the victim, which was how I usually began the conversation.

I introduced myself to Ms. Vaughan and explained the process we would be going through.

“I’ve got a lot of questions I need to ask you, but before I begin, is there anything you want to ask me?”

“Yes, Ms. Cooper. I want to know why Steven wasn’t arrested last night. The police know exactly who he is they even talked to him last night. I want to know why he isn’t in jail.”

“As I understand it, Beverly, there are some questions you weren’t able to answer for Detective Manzi, some things you didn’t remember about Saturday evening. You told them you ”thought“ you had been raped, but you weren’t sure…”

“Well, I don’t exactly remember everything that happened, but I know I was violated.”

“Steven tells a very different story than you do. And before we lock somebody up for first-degree rape you can be damn sure we’re going to explore every detail of the events and try to reconstruct them. If it’s clear he committed a crime, Steven will be arrested and charged.

“The best thing you can do is relax, try and answer all my questions as candidly as possible, and understand that I need to know every bit as much about you as Steven knows everything that he will tell his lawyer about your encounter on Saturday.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, Beverly, that your case is different than a case where a man climbs through a window or stalks a woman from a subway station and attacks someone he’s never seen before. It may be every bit as serious, but it’s different.

In those situations, they’re only together for as long as it takes to accomplish the rape -but the attacker doesn’t know anything about his victim, she hasn’t confided in him, she hasn’t trusted him like someone on a date with a friend does. Understand?“

“Sure. But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t raped.”

“No. But it means that Steven knows a lot more about you than I know, information he can try to use against you. I can’t just limit my questions to the point in the evening that you went to his room, I’ve got to start with what brought you together in the first place, what you told him about yourself, whether there was any foreplay during the evening, whether there was any conversation about sex.

And first of all I need to know why your memory of the events is so unclear is it because of the trauma, or is it the amount of alcohol?“

“Oh God. This isn’t going to be easy, is it?”

“No, Beverly, it’s not going to be easy. There’s too much at stake for both you and Steven, and now is the time to get the answers not six months from now, at a trial. I’ll just begin with the background information I need try and relax.”

I walked the young woman through the personal material the sheet called for: date of birth, permanent address, roommates, status at school, medical history, means of support. Like most of the witnesses who had preceded her in that seat, this overweight nineteen-year-old was nervous and uncomfortable, barely able to meet my eye when she responded to questions. She was a sophomore at Hunter College this fall and living in an apartment with two other students the first time she was away from her parents’ home. She explained that she didn’t want them to know what happened because she was sure they would make her move back to Queens or drop out of school. I assured her that our meeting was confidential.

“Why don’t you tell me how and when you first met Steven.”

“Who, me?”

“Yes, Beverly.”

She explained how she saw him at a school mixer a couple of weeks earlier, talking with a guy she knew from her sociology class, and she had gone out drinking with them after the mixer.

“What did you have to drink that first night?”

“Who, me?”

“Yeah.”

Beverly struggled to remember what combination of rum and sodas she had the first time she and Steven sat at a bar for four hours, drinking and talking about their classes, their interests, and their mutual friends. She had called him several times during the last few weeks but he had never returned the messages. He seemed to be interested in one of her roommates, and yes, Beverly admitted that she had a bit of a crush on Steven.

We finally got the events up to last Saturday night, when she ran into Steven at Zoo Bar on the Upper West Side.

“What were you drinking, Beverly?”

“Who, me?”

Three ‘who, me?s’ were my limit.

“We’re sitting in a small room with the door closed. We’re sitting face to face with each other, in two armchairs, barely a foot apart. I’m staring directly at you, and there’s nobody else around. Of course I mean you.” I was beginning to lose patience with Beverly, whose resort to ’who, me?“ was an effort to stall and think of whether or not to give a candid or complete answer to the particular question I was asking.

I got tough with her and she stopped wasting my time. Out poured the rest of the story in a far more direct manner. She told me that Zoo Bar is famous for serving drinks in fishbowls. One fishbowl containing an unidentifiable mixture of alcoholic beverages is served with eight straws, to be shared by a group of drinking friends. Beverly remembered splitting the first one with just her two roommates and ordering a second one, which she consumed most of by herself. She remembered flirting with Steven, while he was unsuccessfully flirting with her roommate. She remembered little else: when she left Zoo Bar, how she traveled to Steven’s apartment, who else was with them, how she wound up in his bed, and how her clothes came to be on the couch in his living room. But she could assure me that she would never have slept with him if indeed she had slept with him had she been sober. Somewhere in that story I was supposed to find the crime.

A buzz on the intercom interrupted the meeting.

“Sorry to break in, Alex, but Chapman’s on the phone.”

“I’m almost done, Laura. See where he is and tell him I’ll call him right back.”

I had been working with Beverly for more than an hour and she seemed ready for a break. Her mouth was drawn taut with anxiety and her fingers tensely folded and unfolded the edges of the newspaper she had held on her lap since she walked into the room.

“This is a good start, Beverly, but it’s only the first step. I’m going to have to interview everyone else who was with you at the bar, anyone who observed what you said and did, when you left, how you left. I’m going to have to talk to your roommates and to Steven’s. I’ll need to speak with the doctor you saw last night. I’m trying to find out why you said you ”think“ you were raped after all, if you’re not even sure, I don’t know how we can be.”

“Well, I didn’t plan to report this to the police, Ms. Cooper. I just went to the doctor at Student Health Services to make sure I didn’t have any risk of infections or pregnancy, in case Steven had penetrated me, and she said maybe I had been raped. She’s the one who called the detectives.“

Maybe? We’re going to start to prosecute people for felonies on the basis of drunken conjecture and the suggestion of roommates and doctors and significant others who weren’t anywhere near the scene of the ‘crime’? Neither Beverly nor her doctor knew whether or not a sexual act had been consummated.

“One step at a time, Beverly. We’ll look into every aspect of this very carefully. In the meantime, just keep in touch with me and if you have any questions, leave a message with Laura and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.” And I bit down on my lip to stop myself from giving politically incorrect advice about how foolish I thought she was to drink unknown quantities of unidentified substances in uncontrolled situations the way she did. Save that for another visit.

I ushered her out and picked up the slip of paper with Mike’s home number on it.

“Just thought you’d like to know that Wally Flanders called. He’s coming into town tomorrow ‘cause he wants our help. Nice enough to admit he has no experience with homicide. He’s got Burrell and Garelli agreeing to fly in here to be interviewed so we can do it together. Only downside is that it keeps the FBI in this, so Luther will be here, too we’re letting Wally declare it an interstate investigation, so the feds keep a piece of the pie. Anyway, we’ll do the work up at the squad. Also, LAPD got some shrinks’ names from Isabella’s house, so they’re trying to round them up, too. See if any of them look like whackos.”

“Hey, they’re shrinks, aren’t they? Any of them fit our poetic ”Dr. C.,“ the initial on the manuscript you found?”

“Nah. I asked the same thing. Usual bunch of Schwartzes, Greenbergs, Bernsteins… You know, Cooper, beanies like you.”

Beanies was Mike’s euphemism for yarmulkes, his slang for Jews. He was trying to get a rise out of me but it wouldn’t work today.

“Any chance you can slip me in on any of the interviews?”

“Not a prayer. Battaglia made it clear to the chief, just like he did to you, that you are not to play Dickless Tracy you are not an investigator on this case, you’re just a witness. Don’t worry, I’ll tell you everything you need to know.”

Rod was waiting at Laura’s desk when I got off the phone. He had waved Pat McKinney ahead to Battaglia’s office, and waited to escort me there on our way to lunch.

Good friend that he is, he filled me in on the District Attorney’s latest plan to cut down the pre arraignment time of prisoners so that I could perform adequately at the meeting. He explained the setup of the new video systems that had been installed in the precincts so that prosecutors could do the preliminary case interviews with cops by remote, saving the time of the long ride down to the Criminal Courts Building and Central Booking.

The four of us walked out of the office and around the back street to Forlini’s, where we had Battaglia’s regular booth. The place was packed with its regular assortment of assistant D.A.s, defense attorneys, judges, and neighborhood wise guys. If anyone was stupid enough to come in and hold the place up during any weekday lunch hour, we could organize all the personnel for a trial and jury and have a verdict without any of us leaving the dining room.

We completed our conversation about the video link by the time we had finished our meals, then Battaglia engaged me in some chatter about new cases, just checking to see if my head was on straight. We strolled out after drinking our coffee and Paul made a point of lagging behind to walk with me.

“Glad to see you’re okay, Alex. Is it for real?”

“I think I’m fine, Paul. Isabella’s murder doesn’t seem to involve me at all, the police are in charge as you know and I’m back doing what I love to do. Thanks for your help-‘ He cut me off he hated to be brown-nosed and sucked up to and went on with talk about his plan to create a new welfare fraud unit. We took his private elevator back up to the eighth floor where Rod, Pat, and I left Battaglia and returned across the corridor to the Trial Division Executive Offices.

There had been six calls while I was out to lunch. Jed rang twice, to confirm arrangements for the evening; two of my colleagues had asked for time to review new cases;

Joan Stafford had called to make a dinner date for me to meet her new beau; and Friday’s male caller had tried to get through twice. I should have told Chapman about the caller and about my hang-ups at home when I returned his call. Dammit. Oh well, I can tell him tonight. Ellen Goldman presented herself at Laura’s desk at precisely two-fifteen. I stepped out to greet her and we both started the less-than-subtle process of looking each other over to form our first impressions. I would read about hers in a very widely distributed legal journal, so I approached her with caution and some trepidation, knowing that her profile would be based on the interview, some observations in court during the week, and comments from colleagues and adversaries.

She would be hoping for my trust and openness, and perhaps some anecdote or item of personal information to scoop her competition, so I was aware that she would lay n the charm and flattery in our first encounter. I assumed she was salivating to have this chance to talk with me, set up prior to Isabella’s death, in the midst of the turmoil in which I was embroiled.

I guessed that Goldman was roughly my age, perhaps a year or two younger. She was much shorter than I, with dark, curly hair and an athletic build. Her khaki suit was serviceable for a business meeting but completely lacking in style. When she introduced herself there was the vague trace of an accent which I could not place but knew I would learn about in the hours we were to spend together. We shook hands and I brought her into my office, thanking her for the flowers she had left with my doorman the preceding week when I had canceled our first appointment because of the murder.

“Let me start by describing my project, Miss Coop… may I call you Alex?”

“Certainly.”

“Good. Well, I’m Ellen. I’m a freelance writer, doing this piece, as you know, for USA Lawyer’s Digest. I’m very familiar with your work read all the pieces about you and your unit in the Times and all the women’s magazines.

I’ve covered a variety of issues, but I concentrate mostly on law, lawyers, business that sort of thing. If it would help you to see the kind of stories I’ve done I can bring a few back tomorrow. I’m sure you’ve read some of them without knowing it’s my byline.“

“That’s not necessary. I’m sure I have seen some of them.”

It would have made more sense for me to have learned if she had an ax to grind or a point of view, but it was too late for that now and I supposed that the Public Relations Office had vetted her before granting the interview. I didn’t have time this week to read puff pieces about corporate rainmakers and their golden parachutes or women at midtown law firms making six times my salary but whining about breaking the glass ceiling.

“I won’t waste your time,” she went on.

“If the details on your curriculum vitae are accurate and the articles Laura faxed me have correct background, we won’t have to rehash that.”

I smiled in approval. She was obviously a pro, and an intelligent one at that. It was always aggravating to sit for a profile when the questioner spent the first hour asking what schools I had attended, how long I had worked in Battaglia’s office, and whether I liked my job.

“Is it all right with you if we start with some information about the Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit?”

“I’d like that,” I replied.

“Do you mind if I use a tape recorder? It’s so much easier than taking notes.”

“Not at all.” I launched into a narrative about how the unit was set up in the mid-seventies, as our archaic laws based on medieval English concepts began to change and modernize. Although I had not even been to law school at the time it was founded, my name was now the one most closely associated with the work because Battaglia had given me the scope and support to undertake aggressive investigations into these previously unprovable crimes. A few innovative probes which led to convictions in high-profile cases, a gradually emerging view in the victim-advocate community that law enforcement response to these issues was improving, and the unit had become the darling of the criminal justice system. We now had more than twenty senior prosecutors handling the bizarre range of matters that came over the transom daily, and Battaglia had even spun off related models to hand lethe connected specialties of family violence and child abuse.

“It’s not hard to get you talking about this work, is it, Alex? I assume that you’ve stayed in the office because you love what you do, not because you couldn’t get a job in the private sector. I know you’ve had lots of offers.”

“I know that most people think this is a very grim job, Ellen, but it really isn’t. My work is on the side of the angels, if you will, with the good guys. The uniformed cops who respond to all calls, the Emergency Room workers, they’re the ones that have a much harder job than we do. They see the victims in much greater distress, even closer to the time of the crime than an assistant district attorney. By the time we’re in the picture, even if it’s the next day, the process of recovering is underway. I spend my days with the victims I don’t have to deal with the rapists much at all, and that’s the way I like it. The emotional rewards of this work are enormous. Victims still don’t expect it to work for them, and when it does with more and more frequency they’re surprised and gratified. It can be very cathartic for them to confront their attackers in a courtroom, and to win. It’s a great part of the recovery process.”

Maybe Goldman was just humoring me it was too soon to tell but she seemed genuinely interested in our unit’s work. We had talked about legislative reform and the history of the movement that led to the police and prosecutorial strategies of the seventies. By four-thirty I told her that I needed to stop for the day. I was tired of talking and wanted to see a couple of the lawyers who were on trial to help them prepare for tomorrow.

She turned off her tape machine and we both stood to stretch.

“What are you changing into for tonight?” she asked, and I immediately bristled at the crossover of the questioning into my personal life. How did she know I was going out tonight? I must have glared as I turned to look back at her, but Ellen was quick to spot my reaction and put me at ease.

“I mean, I see you have a garment bag hanging on your coat rack, so I just figured you were going somewhere festive after work.”

Never snap at the interviewer, I reminded myself. I was too sensitive after the events of the last week, and it took me a second to realize that Ellen hadn’t been spying on me she’d simply made a logical assumption from a glance around the room.

“Sorry, Ellen. Yeah, I’m going to a formal dinner tonight.”

“I was just curious about what you’ve got in the bag for me, not for the article. I know you’ve been described as a clotheshorse in some of the other interviews.”

I laughed at the description.

“I do love beautiful clothes.” I had no problem discussing designer labels that anyone with a good eye could recognize by looking at me if it diverted Ellen from details of my social life that I really didn’t want to see in print.

“If I remember correctly, Glamour said you favored Calvin Klein, Dana Buchman, and Escada for your business wardrobe.”

She had done her homework.

“Not exactly the kind of things a girl can shop for on a public servant’s salary, but then I’ve also read about your family background, too.”

Time to turn the tables for a minute and see how she liked getting personal.

“Well, since you know so much about me, Ellen, when do you start to tell me a bit about yourself?”

“What is it you’d like to know? I’m a sabra, Alex.

Israeli-born, to an Israeli mother and an American father.

My father was West Point a missile expert. He met my mother when he was working on a United Nations project in the Middle East. I grew up like an Army brat, on bases around the world, but did my high school and college, as well as my military service, in Israel. But I’ve always been fascinated by the States, so I spend a lot of time here, even though my family is all abroad.“

“That’s an interesting background.”

“People’s lives always seem more interesting to those who didn’t live them. It wasn’t a very stable upbringing, Alex. The constant moves throughout my childhood, never staying in one place long enough to develop relationships that outlasted the posting. In and out of new schools, having to prove each time that you were capable of doing well.

And a father in the service. Let me tell you, no matter how brilliant I knew he was, it’s not a profession that enjoys great respect in this country. I suppose some of that is why I spend so much time examining the lives of successful people, to see what makes them achievers and to see whether that brings happiness.“

I had no glib response. I thought to myself that my only comment had been, “That’s interesting.” I didn’t intend to unleash Ellen Goldman’s inner torment, but now I knew more than I needed to know. Maybe it was just easier to go back to the benign inquiry she had made.

“Well, to answer your original question, Ellen, the dress in the bag is a very elegant navy blue Calvin Klein sheath.

It should do just fine at what I imagine will be a boring testimonial dinner to a boring gentleman I barely know.“

“Someone in your business?”

“No, actually, the boss of a friend of mine. Anyway, if we’re going to continue this interview tomorrow, why don’t you just meet me across the street in Part 53, Judge Hadleigh’s courtroom. I have a sentence there in the morning which you might want to see. Then we can come back here and go on with what you need, okay?”

“That’s fine. Alex, before I leave, I wouldn’t be a good journalist if I didn’t ask about Isabella Lascar and her murder. Are there any leads yet, anything you can tell me about?”

I caught myself again. Goldman had resisted asking the question for more than two hours better than I would have guessed and I almost had her out the door.

“Nothing at all, Ellen. Keep in mind, I’m not working on the case.” And you must really think I’m an idiot, I thought to myself, if you think I would tell some stranger I just met about suspects in a murder investigation. Well, these are the professionals who hold a camera in front of a hysterical woman’s face and ask how it felt to have watched a grizzly bear eat her three children while camping in Yosemite. It’s a job.

Ellen left and I dialed Jed’s number.

“Shall I have a car pick you up at the apartment?”

“No. I knew I couldn’t get out early. I’ve got all my things here, so I’ll shower and change and meet you at the Plaza.”

“Well, please try and get there in time for some of the cocktail hour. Andersen’s anxious to see you, and we’ll never get a chance to talk to him once we’re all seated and the banquet begins.”

Anderson Warmack was Jed‘ sboss and the dinner tonight was in his honor.

“This must be something new. He blew me off at the summer picnic didn’t seem too anxious to meet anyone except the bartender and the twenty-year-old bimbo who was with his son that afternoon at the club.”

“Sweetheart, he didn’t know who you were then. Now he’s heard all about you. He was a huge fan of Isabella’s, and once he found out you were her friend and that we had actually taken her to dinner one night, he’s got a million things to ask you.”

“You’re not serious, Jed. How could you?”

“What?”

“How could you trade on the gossip of that girl’s death?”

I was aggravated and angry. It seemed so unlike Jed to use Isabella to get to Warmack.

“Oh, c’mon, Alex. You must be aware that everyone is talking about it. Things like this don’t happen every day and people are interested in it, especially when it intersects with the lives of people they actually know.”

I was silent at the end of the telephone line. Thanks a lot for your concern for the deceased, Mr. Warmack, it’s heartwarming.

“I mean, there are fascinating things, like the DNA you were talking about. Do they have results on that yet?”

“Jed, I hope to God you haven’t been talking about evidence to anyone!” I was livid.

“I told you about things because they happened in my house, behind my back, and I thought you’d care about that. I never expected that you’d tell other people I don’t intend to lose my job because you use-‘ Jed interrupted me.

“Calm down, Alex, calm down. I haven’t told Anderson or anyone else what you’ve told me. I just meant that as an example of an interesting fact people don’t know much about.”

“Well, let’s keep it that way. DNA takes six weeks, eight weeks, sometimes longer to develop,” I said, trying to mollify Jed with technical data.

“If the case isn’t solved by then, I’ll really be out of my mind.”

“I didn’t mean to upset you, Alex. I’m trying to keep Anderson happy.” The rumors had been circulating for weeks that Warmack would step down by the end of the year, and that Jed had a great shot at being picked to succeed him.

“Sorry I was so casual about Isabella – I didn’t know the old guy was such a fan, and I guess I’m trying too hard to please him these days. I never should have mentioned I had met her with you.” “And I’ll never get out of here if we don’t get off the phone so I can finish up at my desk. Kisses.” Truce. I pursed my lips and smooched into the phone line. I buzzed Laura and asked her to tell the two assistants who wanted to see me to bring up their case files so we could go over their problems. She gave me all the messages she had been holding during the Goldman interview, and told ‘ me she’d be gone by the time I got underway with the next meeting.

“Mercer Wallace called, too. No need to call him back.

Just said to tell you they’re overdue for some noise from the Con Ed rapist there’s a full moon this week so maybe the squad’ll get lucky you’d know what he means.“

I knew exactly what he meant. As folk literature and old wives’ tales had reported for centuries, the full moon, seemed to bring out with it all forms of madness and lunacy. There’s not a cop in the city who didn’t believe that unusual happenings and strange phenomena accompanied the glorious sight of an iridescent full moon. Wallace was hoping the inexorable draw of the tide would bring out his serial rapist and lead to the demon’s capture.

Thinking of Isabella’s stalker, with any luck, I hoped for twofers.

It was almost six-thirty when I said good night to my two young colleagues and took my dress bag and makeup kit into the ladies’ room. The ugly taupe tile and institutional decor was even more depressing than the rest of the drab office space. I undressed, stepped into the shower stall and washed quickly, always amused by the irony that there were no locks on the bathroom doors and that the building cleaning crews who serviced the rooms at night were all ex-cons prosecuted by my colleagues, out on work release and employed by Wildcat the company which attempted to rehabilitate serious offenders. I toweled off, twisted my hair into a French braid, slipped into the slim sheath and traded my mid-heel work shoes for a spiky silk pump. There was room in my tiny Judith Leiber minaudiere for my blue and gold shield always a hit with corporate types my beeper, a lipstick case, and a linen handkerchief, but not for much else. My Schlumberger wing earrings were the only jewelry I put on. A few spritzes of Chanel and I was ready to walk back to my office and call for a car service. The long corridors on the eighth floor were quiet and empty at this hour, with most of the worker bees toiling through the evening on the flights below the executive wing. I was conscious of the clicking noise my high heels made as they echoed in the hallway while I strode toward my office, thinking about the position I planned to take at the sentence hearing before Hadleigh the next morning. I turned the corner and continued past Laura’s desk into my office, where I stopped short in the doorway at the sight of a stranger, a man I had never seen before, standing in front of the bookcase against the far wall.

My heartbeat was racing as we spoke over each other’s voices. I demanded to know who he was and how he had gotten in past the security desk while he blurted out his apology for appearing unannounced and explained that his name was Richard Burrell and he needed to talk to me about Isabella Lascar.

“I called all day Friday and several times today and was never able to get through to-‘

“Well, if you thought just breaking into the District Attorney’s Office was the answer,” I started to say as I backed out to Laura’s phone to call the lobby security guard, ‘you’ve made an enormous mistake.“

“No, please, Miss Cooper. I’m – I’m Isabella’s ex-husband.

I really need your help on this and I just didn’t know where else to find you or whether your calls were being taped.“

Burrell if he really was Richard Burrell looked harmless enough in this setting. My mind tried to quickly filter all the stories I had heard from Iz about him, and as I had told Luther last Friday, none of them suggested violence or danger. Yet here I was alone in my office after hours in a practically deserted building with a man who was certainly on the short list of murder suspects. Not very smart.

“How did you get in here?”

“To be honest with you, Miss Cooper, I lied to the guard. I told him we had a dinner appointment together and he let me right up. Sorry to do that.”

Did he realize how stupid I thought that was? Here he was coming to me for help about some aspect of this case, and the first thing he did was lie to get in to see me. At least I was on notice about his credibility.

“May we close the door and talk?”

“No. Absolutely not. The door stays open and you have five minutes to tell me what this is all about.”

“Look, Miss Cooper, I’m scared, terrified. I’ve come into Manhattan voluntarily because the police want to talk to me. They obviously think I had something to do with Isabella’s death, but I swear it isn’t true. They know that I saw her in Boston the weekend before she was killed, that I wanted to reconcile with her. They think I might have killed her because she rejected me again, but that’s absurd. Iz trusted you completely I need you to help convince the police I had nothing to do with the murder, please.”

“Mr. Burrell, this is very inappropriate. Just because I had‘ a relationship with Isabella doesn’t mean I can vouch for you or anyone else she knew. It’s quite the opposite. Either you tell your version to the detectives and rely on their ability to check out your story, or you get yourself the best damn defense attorney in town and get some professional advice. That’s already more help than a prosecutor should give you.”

“But there are things the police probably don’t know yet that won’t help me, and I’m sure they’ll find out.”

“Like your cocaine problem? They’re well aware of it.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. I don’t have a coke problem anymore. That’s why I left Los Angeles, Miss Cooper. That’s all behind me. I’ve just completed a new screenplay and I’m ready to try to re-establish myself in the business.

Being implicated in a homicide will kill every opportunity I have.“

Not to mention what it did to every opportunity Isabella had… but he neglected to mention that.

Now I was curious about what was a more current dilemma for Burrell.

“What sort of thing are you afraid the police will misinterpret?”

“Guns, for one thing. I’ve got guns.”

“What for? Like pistols, for protection?”

“No, like high-powered hunting rifles. I never had a gun when I was in Hollywood. I always had gophers to handle my drug transactions. I never carried. But I moved to Maine when I detoxed it was easier for me to stay dry in a new environment. Now I live on one of those primitive little islands off the coast no highways, no airports, no police department. Just beautiful vistas and lots of wild animals. The island is crawling with moose and deer and woodchucks and skunks. I started hunting with the guys who live around me not for sport, but when the animals got destructive or like the time a rabid woodchuck attacked my golden retriever. Anyone up there will tell you that I can draw a bead on a four-legged creature and hit it between the eyes like a trained sharpshooter.”

I shuddered at the tone of pride in his voice as he described the strike, since it jolted me abruptly back to the neon-taped crime scene that marked Isabella’s execution. Chapman, Flanders, and Waldron would certainly be interested in this piece of information.

Maybe Burrell would be stupid enough to give me more. Or was he playing me for the fool, so he could defuse this kind of fact by getting it on the table through me before his police interview later in the week.“Everyone involved with Isabella seems to know something about guns. That hardly makes you a prime suspect, Mr. Burrell.”

“Miss Cooper. I’m telling you this because I’m sure Iz mentioned to you when she got to your house that she had just seen me in Boston. I realize you must be aware of what went on between us, and I need to know what you’ve told the police about it, do you understand? I don’t plan to hide anything, I’d just like to walk into that interview with an idea of how much they know about me.”

He had made the mistaken assumption that Isabella had called me with confidences about her Boston rendezvous with Burrell when she arrived on the Vineyard. My lie of omission was simply to let him believe that, and my larger deceit was to bluff him about what I had learned in the I conversation we never had. From the cast he put on the revelation, it was easy to infer that their encounter had not gone well.

“I do know how much the weekend upset her. She was quite unhappy about it,” I baited him.

“Maybe angry is a better word.”

“You have to understand my frustration, Miss Cooper. I adored Isabella, I worshiped her from the first moment I met her. I helped create the Isabella Lascar the world fell in love with on the screen.”

Here we go, another Pygmalion story. Another man behind the woman, responsible for her success. You’re losing me now, Burrell.

“We were fabulous together, before anyone knew who Isabella was capable of becoming. Then I screwed it up, all my own fault. My addiction destroyed everything in my life, personally and professionally. But I’ve got it all together again, I can assure you. I’ve written a great property, something that would have been perfect for Isabella. She wanted to meet with me, to read it, to talk about it. For me, it was my foot in the door to ask her to take me back. The movie was secondary I wanted to be her husband again, I wanted her to let me love her.”

As far as I could tell about Lascar’s love life, it would be like standing on line at a bakery the night before Thanksgiving to buy a couple of pies. Take a number.

“Bottom line, Mr. Burrell? She told me it didn’t fly.”

“Bottom line, as you say, Miss Cooper. I realize I’m running over the five minutes you gave me, but you see the urgency of all this, I’m sure. Isabella wanted a script but had no use for me, other than as a friendly old shoulder to lean on.”

“So the two of you fought.”

“I don’t think either one of us meant to, really. But she got sloppy the combination of vodka followed by too much red wine and all the while I was sober. And as you know, she could have a pretty cruel tongue when she was liquored up, and I didn’t have the benefit of any alcoholic anesthesia to ease her blows.”

“Yes, I’ve heard her barbs, Mr. Burrell. They could be very painful, I’m sure. Is that why you put your hands on her? She’d always described you as such a gentle person.”

It worked.

“Iz was getting so loud, Miss Cooper. I had images of people in adjacent rooms calling the front desk and someone generating publicity about her drinking or her temper. I didn’t hit her, you know, she didn’t tell you that, did she?”

“No, no she didn’t.” “I just grabbed her by the shoulders and tried to shake her her a bit. Merely to quiet her down and bring her to her senses. That only made her angrier and raised her volume a pitch or two. Her glass fell to the floor and splintered. She screamed some more insults, called me some names, went into the bathroom, and locked herself in. I waited awhile. When she refused to come out, I eventually went back to my room.

“I was afraid you’d consider that some kind of domestic violence, you know? Especially if housekeeping reported the broken glass and guests complained about the screaming. Maybe I’m just being paranoid, Miss Cooper. Anyone who knows the two of us knows that all I ever wanted was to be together with Isabella again. I could never have hurt her.”

Haven’t I seen this scene in a thousand B-movies?

“Did you see her again, after that argument?”

“No, no. I wanted to, I really did. But I gave her the night to sober up, and when I called her room in the morning she had already checked out. I knew she was going to your place on the Vineyard. I didn’t know where your house was and, quite frankly, I didn’t even know your name. Iz talked about you a lot, but just by your first name I never paid close attention, then I saw your name in all the newspaper articles, of course. It never occurred to me that she was taking someone to the island with her. She let me think she was going to the Vineyard alone.”

Me too, pal.

“Did you hear from her after that?”

“No, that’s what I mean. I hung around for most of that day, then just drove myself back up the coast to home. It’s not a very helpful alibi, Miss Cooper. Eastport Harbor’s a pretty lonely place, and there aren’t any neighbors or deliverymen or camera crews to record my comings and goings.”

“Mr. Burrell, those things you’ve told me aren’t much to worry about. There’ll be hotel check-out records and garage receipts and a mini-paper trail to back you up, I’m sure.” He seemed much too frantic and concerned for the amount of information he had given me.

“Is that really all?”

“I swear to you, Miss Cooper, I swear on Isabella’s life…”

That oath had a rather empty ring to it.

“You’ve got to tell these things to the detectives, and you’ve got to do it yourself.” I didn’t want to be alone with this man a minute longer than I had to.“There’s no use pleading your case to me. I can’t help you with more than an introduction to the police, please believe me.”

He looked desperate, not evil, but my instincts had been wrong on more than one occasion and I was not in a good position to figure this one out tonight.

“Where are you staying in town?”

“The Peninsula.”

“Go back to your hotel. You’ll get a call from a detective named Chapman in the morning. Just tell him everything you’ve told me.” Only Mike will be able to play hardball with this guy and maybe we’ll be on our way to a confession.

Burrell tried to thank me as he slouched out of the office they and I noticed my hand was still trembling as I reached for the telephone to call for a cab. As the cab crawled up Center Street, which became Fourth Avenue, which became Park Avenue, I tried to think whether there had been anything memorable about the evening Jed and I had taken Isabella to dinner. It had been her just before the Labor Day weekend, which Jed was going to spend in California with his kids. We had planned to meet for dinner on Friday evening, and as I was dressing at my apartment, Iz called from her hotel room. She was cheerful and pleasant – the second stalker hadn’t started to call or write yet and she only wanted the name of my hair colorist for a touch-up while she was in town.

“Is this Elsa discreet, darling? The fans like to think I’m all natural,” she laughed into the telephone.

“She’s a dream, Isabella. I’m sure she’ll do it in your hotel room, if you’d like.”

“Marvelous, I’ll ask her. Is the D.A. a little house-mouse, tonight, Alex. No crime? No romance? None of those handsome detectives to drive you all over town?”

“Actually, I’m on my way out to dinner with a man I’ve been dating. You’re very welcome to join us.” “Ah, this must be the rich one that Nina’s told me about.

Would I be in the way? I don’t eat much.“

“We’d love it, Iz. Let’s surprise him, okay? I’ll pick you up at eight and we’ll meet him at the restaurant.” I knew Jed would get a kick out of meeting Isabella – what man wouldn’t? -so I called ‘21’ and changed Mr. Segal’s reservation from two people to three.

Jed was seated in the middle of the front room when the two of us arrived. The puzzled look on his face changed to delight when he ‘made’ Isabella vamping toward his table.

He was a regular at the club, but his stock soared that night as the captain and waiters watched the glamorous movie star sweep over and embrace him with a loud, “Jed, darling, it’s been far too long.”

It was an easy mix. The good Isabella was performing funny and charming and eager to be liked. She was the center of attention in the room, and she enjoyed that.

Jed had spent most of his life in California, so the two of them knew some of the same people and all of the same places. The law firm he had started out with in Los Angeles had done a lot of work in the entertainment field. He left it to move to Washington for a special securities commission, then returned to the West Coast to make his unsuccessful run for the Senate from California.

“A Democrat, no doubt? Alex would only get in bed with a Democrat, I’m sure. I’m strictly a Republican, Jed, although I must say if I had noticed your face staring down at me from a campaign billboard, I might have pulled your lever.”

Iz loved to flirt and reveled in making sophomoric comments about sex. I can’t say she was all talk and no action – if one believed her stories, then intercourse was to her what aerobics classes were to my working friends.

“What’s CommPlex, Jed?” she asked in her most sincere voice, but zoned out of the conversation and back into her Stoli as Jed proceeded to give a detailed explanation of the giant communications and computer operation that Anderson Warmack had built from his home office into a Fortune 500 corporation over the last fifteen years.

We had almost gotten through the meal without Isabella asking for a favor a rare stretch of time for me when something Jed said about money and business ventures seemed to spark her memory. She told us that she thought her business manager had been stealing from her investments, pilfering increasingly substantial sums of money from deals he set up, but she didn’t know how to hire someone to look over his shoulder to confirm her suspicions. Jed asked the captain for a piece of paper and gave Isabella the name and number of his accountant in Los Angeles, assuring her that his man would be able to refer her to the right person to check her records for a scam.

“He’s a good man, Isabella. And extremely trustworthy he runs all Anderson Warmack’s personal finances.”

“And how many millions might that involve?”

“Three hundred, maybe three-fifty. That’s if the market had an average day today, Isabella. Even more if it was strong.”

Isabella was grinning now, licking her chops for effect.

“And is he cute, this Anderson fellow?”

“Well, did you think Charles Laughton was cute?” I asked her.

“Like in the last three or four movies he made? We’re talking rich, old, fat, and usually intoxicated.”

“One out of four isn’t bad especially if it’s my favorite one.Now that you two are so happy together, Jed will just have to introduce me to Anderson Warmack. I insist on it.”

Isabella and I left the table to go the ladies’ room, like two girls at a high school prom, while Jed signed the tab – ‘21’ had the best steak tartare, the best Dungeness crabs, and the most wonderful ladies’ room attendant in New York. She was smart and lively, and instead of sitting sullenly in a corner with a stack of paper towels, Marie was always reading. Current fiction – mostly mysteries usually with a library dust jacket, and she was always eager to give me her opinion of the writer.

“Hey, dear, how are you? Haven’t seen you in weeks. Put anybody away lately?” she giggled.

I introduced her to Isabella, who rudely blew her off and wanted only to gossip about Jed.

“Darling, hang onto this one. Handsome, smart, rich I’m not kidding, I really want to meet his boss.”

“The old guy does have a wife, Isabella.”

“Really, Alex. I didn’t say I wanted to marry the old coot, did I? I might just want to play with him for a while, see where he likes to spend his millions.”

“Good night, Marie,” I said, tripling my usual tip out of guilt and annoyance over Isabella’s display of vulgarity.

Jed’s car was waiting in front of the restaurant so we dropped Iz at the Carlyle, then went on to my apartment together. We both agreed that once a year might be often enough for an evening like that, and put thoughts of Lascar behind us as we undressed and made love to each other with great enthusiasm after ten days of separation.

Now, as the cab squared Grand Army Plaza and dropped me at the front steps of the Plaza Hotel, I wondered whether Jed had told Warmack about Isabella’s short-lived expression of interest in him… and whether I should suggest to Mike Chapman that her business manager be added to the list of suspects.

I realized that I was arriving almost an hour later than I had promised Jed, because of Burrell’s unannounced visit and the crush of traffic on the streets uptown. Cocktail hour was long over and I was grateful for my thin build as I wiggled and squeezed my way through the Grand on Ballroom between two hundred round tables packed to “ the gills with CommPlex sycophants and rival business leaders, surrounded by surly waiters trying to serve platters of rubber chicken to the noisy crowd.

The program I had picked up at the entrance listed our names at Table 2. I could spot the top of Jed’s head as I plowed halfway through the room, waved to the mayor, who was working the tables near the podium, and stopped for a kiss from one of Jed’s partners as I neared my empty seat.

“Sorry, Jed, the usual complications and excuses,” I whispered to him as he rose to introduce me to the rest of the men and women at the table. Anderson Warmack grinned down at me from the dais on the stage, and it seemed that I owed Richard Burrell a small ‘thank you’ for the timing that had made it possible for me to avoid any discussion of the late Lascar with the fat tycoon.

Jed was in a good mood, despite my failure to show up for the reception.

“Warmack came into my office at the end of the day,” he explained, sotto voce.

“He’s not ready to make any public announcement tonight, but he’s going to issue a press release right after the Christmas holidays, and I’ll probably be named to the presidency of the company by February. I’m going to plan a wonderful trip for us over New Year’s, to celebrate – it may be my last vacation for a year.“

I was thrilled for Jed, knowing how much he had wanted all this to fall into place and how hard he had been working for Warmack’s approval. I squeezed his thigh under the table as he tried to run his hand under my tight sheath and pinch me, winking at me with an enormous grin on his face.

“You’re not going to make me wait till New Year’s to celebrate, are you?” I teased. “Can’t we start sooner?”

“Of course, darling. We can get a room here tonight and go right upstairs after the speeches and…”

“Whoops, maybe tomorrow. That’s a wonderful offer, but I’ve got to leave after the testimonials, Jed. Chapman’s meeting me with some evidence that just came in from Massachusetts so I can look at it tonight.”

“Evidence? What kind of evidence? I thought there was no other evidence.”

I laughed at Jed’s concern.

“I’m not making that mistake again. My lips are sealed. It’s just a long shot, some things I want to look at, in case they contain any leads.”

“Will you come back and meet me later for a nightcap? Larry, Stan, and I are taking Anderson over to the Tap Room at the University Club for a more intimate toast when this is over.“

“Are you crazy? I’ve got a sentence first thing tomorrow morning. You take care of what you’ve got to do you should be very happy with the news you got today. And don’t make any plans for the weekend the celebration will be my surprise, okay?”

The speeches went on interminably, and I was relieved that Warmack had finished his remarks before I checked my watch, rose, and said my good nights, and kissed Jed good-bye. It was a little after ten-thirty when I went out of the hotel through the revolving doors and let the doorman help me into a yellow cab for the short ride home.

Mike’s car was parked at the end of the circular driveway when my cab pulled in and dropped me at the apartment. He was standing in the lobby with the two doormen, critiquing whatever sports event had been on the tube that evening.

“Whoa, blondie, bet you ten on the Final Jeopardy question tonight you didn’t catch it, didya?”

“Hardly.”

“Category was African history. Wanna bet?”

Damn. Not one of my strengths.

“Did you get it right?”

“Yeah. You chicken?”

“All right, ten dollars.”

We were in the elevator on the way up to my floor.

“The Final Jeopardy answer is: Napoleon defeated them at the Battle of the Pyramids in 1798.”

I shook my head.

“Just deduct the ten from whatever you owe me.” I didn’t have the faintest idea.

Mike gloated: “Who are the Mamelukes? I knew you wouldn’t know that. I should have doubled my bet.” He proceeded to give me a thumbnail version of the battle, which was apparently fought nowhere near the great pyramids, and explain who the Mamelukes were and where they came from. He was a whiz at both world history and military battles, and delighted in showing it off.

“I hope I do better with Wally’s photos,” I said, as I turned my keys in the locks.

“Not much to see.”

“Do me a favor and put up the coffee. I’m just going to get out of this dress, okay?”

It only took me a minute to change from the silk dress into my long shirt and leggings. I hurried back to the kitchen to get out mugs for the coffee that Mike had already scooped into the coffeemaker, then we both went into the living room to look at the blowups he had picked up from the lab when he came on duty half an hour earlier.

“Who took the photos?” I asked as Mike untied the brown Homicide folder in which he carried his case file.

“Wally says tourists are calling in from all over. But most of these first shots are from islanders. You’ll see in a minute when you start to look at them almost all of the ones I have with me tonight were taken on the ferry on different trips throughout the week. The story and appeal for the film was on the radio as well as in Friday’s Vineyard Gazette, and locals started showing up at Wally’s office on Saturday morning with rolls of film, claiming they thought they saw Isabella on the boat ride.

He thinks some high school kid with a serious case of acne and a hard-on for Isabella actually made her on the ferry and was trying to get pictures of her along the way. Wally figures that’s why most of the time she’s got her back to the camera and she’s looking out at the water.“

Mike stacked the pile of photographs on the table, and I sat next to him on the sofa as we scrutinized them one by one.

There were a few false starts – photos of the vista with a blonde on the edge of the pack, but if you looked closely at the eleven-by-fourteen enlargements, you could tell that the bad legs or the wide beams were not those of Isabella Lascar.

When we got to the fifth picture, Mike looked down to remind himself, “I think this starts the roll taken by the high school kid. Doesn’t that look like Isabella in the corner?”

No doubt about it. It was like looking at a roundup of hundreds of horses going to the glue factory and spotting a thoroughbred in the mix. Her long lines and elegant bearing made her a standout in the crowd, even though the camera range was too distant to catch the distinctive features that took your breath away when she was illuminated on a giant movie screen.

“That’s Iz in the far left corner. Makes you guess that the photographer hadn’t spotted her yet she’s just part of the background at the moment.”

The next three photos were also panoramic views of the sail back to the island, like the kid’s soccer coach had told the whole team on their way home from the game in Hyannis that they each had to shoot a roll of film before the boat docked. Mike walked to the kitchen to bring us both a cup of hot coffee.

“Should be coming up on some one-on-ones.”

Sure enough, the next few photos looked like the high school inquiring photographer had figured out who the great-looking woman was, and perhaps had even approached her with the camera. Isabella seemed to be turning away from his lens, shielding her face already half-hidden behind oversized tortoise-shell sunglasses with one raised arm and grabbing the railing to her far on side with the other. The cameraman kept a respectable distance, but the as next frames were all focused on Isabella, even though she had turned her back to her earnest admirer. I could recognize the outfit she was wearing a turquoise-and white-striped Escada sweater with white walking shorts, and those unmistakable racehorse legs extending forever above platform espadrilles that tied at the ankles. ‘ “You get to the guy yet?” Mike stood across from me, sipping his brew while I let mine cool to a drinkable temperature.

“I figure I can do an APB‘ all-points bulletin – ’for a reward and information leading to the identification of the man attached to the five fingers you can see in the photo. Right?”

I laughed when I came to the shot he was referring to.

The movie star was still showing her back to the camera mind you, her good side in semi-profile to her pursuer, as though she was saying. “If you insist on doing this, you might as well have the angle I prefer.” But now, for the first time, a man’s arm was stretched out across Isabella’s back and appeared to be waving at the photographer to stop shooting.

“See what I mean?” Mike joked.“Do a sketch of a giant hand and hang it in post offices all over the country. You’ll have nuts calling in from Alaska to Mississippi before the ink is dry: Detective Chapman, I’d know that hand anywhere.“ “Chief Flanders, my dog once bit a hand that looked a lot like that hand.”

“Agent Waldron, I’ve shaken a hand that reminds me very much of that hand.” We’ll break this wide open in no time.“

Mike babbled on but I was fixated on the photo that stared up at me from the coffee table. My focus was not Isabella, nor was it the man’s hand that showed itself for the first time. My thoughts were tripping over each other as they competed for my full attention.

“Oh my God.”

Mike ignored me the first time, or perhaps my mutterings started under my breath and were inaudible to anyone except me. In my brain they were pounding louder than thunder.

“Oh my God. It’s not possible.”

“What?”

“Paul Stuart,” I managed to say out loud.

“Who’s that? Are you telling me you know-‘ ”It’s not a who,“ I interrupted him, ’it’s a what.” My stomach rolled with nausea as my thought processes reached my gut before I could even articulate what I was thinking.

“Paul Stuart is one of the best men’s stores in New York, Mike. Madison Avenue and Forty-fifth Street,” I rambled on. The pale blue-and-green plaid of the shirt that covered the man’s arm in the photograph Isabella’s protector screamed at me from the detail of the photograph which sat before me.

“I bought that fucking shirt at Paul Stuart the week before Labor Day. Sea Island cotton, a hundred and forty-seven fucking dollars. Call off your APB, Detective Chapman, that rotten, lowlife piece of human excrement standing next to the screen goddess on her way to my home is Jed Segal.” I picked up the photograph and winged it at full force across the room like a Frisbee, so that it ricocheted off my huge armoire and came to rest under the sideboard that held my favorite assortment of silver-framed snapshots of family and friends. Then I sank back into the deep pillows of my oversized sofa to wallow in the revelation that Jed and Isabella had betrayed me in the most profound way two humans could torment a third. “Jesus, Alex, calm down a minute.You can’t tell from one of these pictures who this guy is,” Mike said as he went to retrieve the telltale photograph and study it again.

“That store must have sold dozens of shirts like that one, and stores all over the country sold hundreds more. There’s no way you can say who that arm belongs to on the basis of an inch of plaid material in a blown-up photograph. Don’t start with the self-pitying martyr bullshit you can’t jump to any con-‘

”Maybe you’re too fucking stupid to make conclusions at this point, Mikey, but don’t bet the farm against me on pieces of fabric and clothing. That’s like you and the Mamelukes. I have been stabbed in the back no, in the heart by that miserable bastard. It’s not just the shirt, it’s everything else that’s falling into place.“

“Please don’t start crying on me again tonight, Cooper. Let’s look at this very care-‘ I interrupted him again, amazed he couldn’t see that there should have been smoke coming out of my ears by this point.

“Cry? Cry?” I was practically shrieking at him now.

“Do you actually think I’m going to waste any more of my very short supply of emotion on that man? You must really have a very low opinion of me after all this time. Don’t worry, no more tears.” I stood up and reached across the tab let’s grab the picture out of Mike’s hand.

The section of the photo containing the man’s hand and sleeved-arm represented about three inches of surface in the enlargement. I looked at it again, hoping that the distinctive fabric I had found so attractive the day I had gone shopping had changed to stripes or polka dots or pink elephants.

Instead, the second glance confirmed all my fears. I lowered myself back onto the sofa as I inspected Jed’s fingers on the film fingers that had caressed my breasts, stroked my thighs, and knew exactly how to make me respond excitedly to their pressure and touch.

“It’s not just the shirt, Mike.” I didn’t have to tell him out loud about Jed’s fingers. He would know what I meant just as well as I did.

“Take this away from me before I tear it in shreds,” I said, handing the painful image back to Mike.

“I could kick myself for missing all the little clues. You should have seen the way his mouth dropped open when he got off the elevator on Saturday and saw me standing here wearing those silk pajamas Iz had given me you know, like the pair we saw in my bedroom when we packed up her stuff. He must have thought he was seeing a ghost.” Of course, the one thing Isabella wanted that I had provided for her: a respectable man.

“I could kill him with my bare hands.”

I was out of control and Mike didn’t know how to bring me back.

“Calm down, Alex. You’ll wake the neighbors.” A light seemed to go off in his head when he said the word ‘neighbors.“

”Hey, you think maybe your shrink friend is still awake at this hour? Maybe he could come in and help-’

“Help what? There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m just angry and pissed off and mad and miserable and-‘ ”And maybe he should like tranquilize you or something. I don’t know. I don’t want you to hurt yourself over this. I can’t leave here with you in this condition.“

“Leave David out of this. There’s nothing wrong with me. No wonder I couldn’t reach Jed at the Ritz the first time I called there on Thursday. He probably hadn’t even gotten to Paris yet of course he couldn’t get back here till Saturday. That whole trip must have been just a sham to cover his rendezvous with Isabella.” I stood up and started pacing around the living room to calm myself down. Mike and most of my other colleagues had seen the Cooper temper in a flare-up, and most tried to avoid it. It finally occurred to me to move toward the bar and fix myself a drink.

“Not a prayer, blondie. No drinking. C’mon, let’s deal with this rationally. I should have known, too. Anybody who drank bottled water with fried clams had to be a yuppie and an asshole. What a fucking phony.”

“Oh, jeez, Mike. Worse thought. Do you think I should phone Battaglia and wake him up at this hour? He hates to be the last to know. Oh, I think I’m going to be sick – no kidding.” I sat in one of the armchairs and doubled over with my head pounding against my hands.

“That’s your call, Alex. You have to answer to him, I don’t. I suppose if you get to the office at the crack of dawn and tell him then nobody’s gonna find out before that. I mean, I think the chief has to know tonight, but-‘

I snapped my head up to protest that idea. “Why does the chief have to know anything about this? Suddenly my aborted love life is going to be fodder for the department? No way, Mike, no way. No way.“

Chapman squatted down directly in front of me, put his hand on my knee, and tried to force me to look him directly in the eye.

“You don’t get it yet, kid, do you? If that sleeve really does belong to Jed Segal and that’s the very first thing we have to find out for sure then this is not just about someone cheating on you with one of your friends. If you’re right about Jed, then we’ve got to look at him as a suspect in Isabella’s murder.“

My head started shaking back and forth slowly in disagreement with what Mike had just announced. I hadn’t thought of that at all, as busy as my mind was with its own unhappiness, but I could not accept or absorb that concept when it emerged from his lips.

“That’s ridiculous, Mike. That’s that’s not possible,” I stammered as I tried to reason why someone who was capable of such deceit and who lied so facilely and convincingly could not have carried out the cold-blooded murder of his consort.

“Better face it. Jed Segal goes to the head of the class. He has some very serious explaining to do before he gets cleared from the list of possibles. If he was the guy sharing the clams with Isabella an hour before she was killed, he’s got the access and the opportunity and-”

“But no motive, Mike, he’s got absolutely no motive to kill her. She’s the goose with the golden egg, for Chrissakes. The guy is making love to a gorgeous, world-famous movie idol it ain’t getting better than that for Jed Segal what the hell would he kill her for?“ I almost gagged on the expression ‘making love.” Clearly, those had been Jed’s condoms in my wastebasket. No wonder he was so concerned when I said we could do DNA testing to find out who Iz’s lover had been.

“No motive? Ha, that’s more bullshit. Suppose she threatened to tell you about their tryst? Suppose she told him he wasn’t as good in the sack as Johnny Garelli? Suppose she pissed him off like she did almost everyone else I’ve spoken with who was in her presence for more than ten minutes?”

I rocked back and forth in my chair, my arms crossed over my stomach as though they could quell the sickening as waves that rippled underneath their grip. “I can’t handle this Mike, I really can’t handle this. ”

”Sure you can, Coop. We’ll get you through it. What do you think you’re doing now?“ Mike asked as I brushed past him and headed for the door to my coat closet. I reached in for my trenchcoat and threw it on over my outfit, grabbing my keys, some cash, and moving toward the apartment door.

“Take those photos out of here with you when you finish your coffee and leave. I’m doing this one face to face. I know exactly where to find this lying piece of shit and I’m going to be the first one to accuse him of murder. It’ll be a pleasure.”

“Your old man is right about one thing, blondie this job really has trashed your vocabulary. Where’re we going? It’s after midnight.”

“Uh, uh, Mikey, I’m alone. I’ll grab a taxi. Point of honor. I can’t wait till tomorrow to look this guy in the eye and tell him all the things I want to say.“ Mike had a grip on my arm, holding me inside the apartment.

“I’ll handcuff you to this closet door and leave you here unless you tell me where Segal is and let me go with you. At worst, he’s a killer and he’s dangerous and at best, you’re a killer and I gotta protect him. C’mon, be reasonable. You need me there as a witness, if nothing else. Don’t do this, Alex, please don’t make a scene.“

My despair of ten minutes ago had turned to an almost manic punchiness at the prospect of confronting my infidel.

“Fine, Chapman, you want to be there with me, that’s fine. Wish I could get hold of Court TV this could be one of my better cross-examinations.“

We were out the door together and I turned to lock it as Mike warned me to remember my job and behave myself.

“Balls, Mikey! You better have balls tonight. I don’t care if I lose my job and I’m working at the Chilmark dump next week.”

“Where to?” he asked again as we began our descent in the elevator.

“The University Club. Tap Room. Lights and sirens, please, Detective Chapman.”

Mike pulled out of the driveway and headed west till we reached Fifth Avenue, where he turned left at my direction to go south to the “U‘ Club.

“You belong there? I mean, are you a member of this place?”

“No.”

“ No broads?“

“Yeah. They admitted women a few years ago, but it’s not for me. Jed’s a member, though. Likes to breakfast there or have lunch in the Grill, drink at the end of the day, use the pool and squash courts. The old guys the sixty- and seventy-year-olds most of them voted to let women in when the first lawsuits started. The thirty- and forty-year-olds you know, the ones who are a bit threatened by skirts they tried to keep women out. Male bonding, Mike. Doesn’t it move you?“

“What street?”

“Corner of Fifty-fourth and Fifth.”

As we crossed the intersection of Fifty-seventh Street – a caravan of Daily News trucks lumbering eastbound with their first load of morning papers for the all-night newsstands – I groaned as I leaned my head onto the seat back.

“Oh no. Don’t even let me think that this story’s going to be another tabloid headline.”

“You can go to the bank on that one, Coop. You better hope somebody goes through the front door of Carder’s tonight with an atomic blowtorch and walks out with the Hope diamond. Otherwise, if it’s a slow news day, you and Jed could be right on the front pages. I can see them in the newsroom now Post goes with single-word header in all caps: ”BETRAYED“ News uses ”SEX PROSECUTOR IN DEADLY LOVE TRIANGLE.“

“I’m not a ”sex prosecutor,“ dammit. That’s the same thing they tried to write when Iz was killed. I prosecute crimes of sexual assault, not sex.”

“That’s a healthy approach, blondie the semantics. Don’t worry about what the headlines say, it’s how they say it.”

“I don’t know who I feel worse about Battaglia, my mother, or me.”

“Good thing you got an alibi for the middle of the afternoon when Lascar was killed. You can bet that Pat McKinney will be in there telling Battaglia that you had the best motive to knock off your fair-weather friend for playing with your man behind your back.”

I was silent as I thought of the endless rounds of gossip this case would now generate in the office, where I had always worked to maintain a healthy distance between my personal and professional lives. Chills ran through me as I tried to make a mental list of my friends and my enemies, but I would have a chance to see them all by the end of the next day before I could ever attempt to parse up the groupings in my head.

Mike had gone around the block and come up directly in front of the club building at One West Fifty-fourth Street, defying the “NO PARKING‘ sign by sticking his laminated NYPD vehicle identification plate inside the windshield on the dashboard, announcing to the handful of nocturnal passersby that we had come to this bastion of gentility on official business. Sort of.

It was well after midnight as I led Chapman up the front steps and through the glass entrance doors of the University Club. It is one of the handsomest buildings in the City of New York a McKim, Mead, and White structure, built to house the private retreat established for educated gentlemen in 1865.

Up another few steps to the lobby where, on the left, a uniformed employee stood beside a large wooden board to record the comings and goings of members as they entered and left the building. Most of the time the initiated simply nodded their greetings upon arrival and he recognized them, sliding their small wooden nameplates into the appropriate place to mark their presence at the club.

I trooped past the startled guard, crossed through the formal lobby with its double-height ceiling, massive columns, and enormous marble fireplace, and went beyond the slow speed elevators to the back staircase which led directly up to the Tap Room, the bar on the second floor.

“Madam,” the unhappy lookout called out several times after me as I continued to ignore him, refusing to look back and hoping that Chapman was still at my heels. “Who are you, madam? I’m sorry but you’re not appropriately dressed for the Tap Room.” My trenchcoat was wide open, so he could see that the oversized man’s shirt, leggings, and Capezio ballet flats P S t marked a blatant departure from the dress code preferred her for the public rooms, which gave me added pleasure on my late-night odyssey.

“Madam, I must insist, madam. Whom are you meeting?”

I had practically reached the landing at the top of the stairs when I looked down at the source of the voice calling up to me. All I could see was the top of his uniform cap.

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry. Were you talking to me? I’m with an escort service Mr. Segal called for me half an hour ago said just to come ahead as I was, what he needed wouldn’t take us very long.”

I continued down the short hallway and waited at the entrance to the bar so that Mike could catch up with me before I pushed open the padded leather door and walked in.

There were about five clusters of drinkers scattered about the large room, relaxing around cocktail tables with armchairs and easy chairs, nursing their nightcaps before heading off to rest up for tomorrow’s deal-making.

“Alexandra!” Jed spotted me almost immediately and called out to me as I stood in the doorway, scanning the room to find him.

“Come with me, Mike,” I whispered as I moved forward.

Jed rose to his feet, followed in rapid succession by his two boot lickers Larry and Stan slightly younger versions of Jed, hoping to grow up just like him, I was sure. Anderson Warmack, the centerpiece of the group, never budged from his chair, but just leaned in and rested his elbows on the table as he winked at me in welcome.

“Jed, I think you remember Mike Chapman. He’s with Homicide. Mike and I need to ask you some questions, Jed. We’d like to-‘

”Alex, darling, why don’t you and Chapman join us for a round. We’re celebrating Mr.

Warmack’s big night and anything you want to tell me can certainly wait till we get home.“ Could he really be as cool and unconcerned as he appeared to be, seeing me burst in here looking like a shrew with a detective at my side? Was it possible that I had made a ridiculous mistake?

Larry and Stan or was it Curly and Moe were scrambling to pull up two extra chairs from nearby tables now.

“Don’t bother. We’re not sitting. Jed, this is not a joke. We need to go somewhere private and talk. Right now. We can go upstairs to the library on the fourth floor I’m sure it’s empty at this hour.”

Anderson Warmack chose that moment to begin to blow his hot air into our business.

“Alexandria, my dear…”

“It’s not Alexandria. It’s Alexandra.”

Now I had Jed’s attention. I could mess with him but I better not cross old moneybags.

“Alexandra young lady I’ve been keeping your sweetheart from you too long, is that the problem? Called the police in on me, have you? You look mighty perturbed.”

Well, you’re a master of understatement, you pompous old fart. I’m not perturbed I am fucking pissed off and heartbroken and confused and hurt and angry, but I am much too well brought up to say exactly that to a politefool like you who likes to have his dimpled old ass kissed as frequently as possible. ftic “Quite the contrary, Mr. Warmack. I only need to see Jed ‘ for fifteen or twenty minutes, and if you’ll be good enough to wait for him, I won’t ever need to take him out of your presence again, for as long as I live. ” Jed was mad now. He was furious that I was bringing his idol and his underlings into some spat they thought I was starting, and he was trying to placate Warmack before he dealt with me.

‘I’ll just finish up with you, Anderson. Alex and her friend can have a wait-’ Mike was ready to jump in, at last.

“Hey, Mr. Spiegal, we’re ready to-‘ ”It’s Segal.“

“Nobody wants to embarrass you. I do have a few questions that need to have answers tonight. Now be a gent and do what the lady would like you to do, understand?”

Larry thought it was time for a little levity.

“Go on, Jed, we’ll still be here. Don’t make the tough guy take out his gun and shoot you in the foot to make you dance. What is it, Officer Krupke, a parking ticket? Did he expose himself in public? Better go with the nice policeman, Jed, I can’t I afford to call a lawyer for you.” Stan thought that was a real knee-slapper. Warmack, on the other hand, saw Jed’s tightened jaw set in place and his two fingers locked onto his expensive Cohiba cigar, creasing its very costly skin.

Warmack glared back at Jed. I knew he was too white bread to enjoy a public display of anybody’s dirty laundry.

“Why don’t you go along and clear up this business, whatever it is. I’m in no rush to go anywhere, as long as they see fit to keep some brandy in my glass.”

Jed excused himself and led us out of the room, around the corner to the elevator, and up to the library, without any one of us uttering a word.

The library was a strikingly elegant room. Dark-paneled and comfortably furnished, it featured second-story galleries reached by spiral wooden ladders and housed an eclectic selection of books, both commercial and rare. I used to love the evenings I had to wait for Jed to finish a negotiation downstairs, while I sat and browsed through some first-edition poetry volume from the thirties, interrupted only by staring at a section of the vaulted ceiling, painted with maps and mythological figures that showed me a new aspect every time I settled in a different chair.

This time, there was no looking at the ceiling. I walked to one of the long, narrow reading tables and sat down, pointing to the men to join me.

“Do I have to interrogate you, Jed, or do you think you can be honest with me for a change?”

“I must say I’m rather surprised at this Gestapo-like approach, Alex. I assume you and I can talk out our problems without any interlopers present.” Jed refused even to glance at Mike Chapman, who was sitting on my side of the table, across from him. His dark eyebrows were drawn together and wrinkled over his nose, as he seemed to try to puzzle why my mood had snapped so radically in the brief time since I had kissed him good night at the Plaza.

“I thought so, too, but apparently I was wrong. I didn’t even know we had problems. Why don’t you tell me what was going on between you and Isabella?”

“What’s gotten into you, Alex? I don’t understand what’s happened to you in the last hour, darling.” This time he nodded in Chapman’s direction, suggesting we could on talk more intimately if we were alone.

“Why don’t you and I? ”This has gone beyond “you and I.” Just start explaining everything to Detective Chapman.“

”Take it easy. I can’t figure out what has you in such a rage.“ ”It’s one thing to take advantage of me, Jed, but don’t play me for stupid on top of that. Tell us about your relationship with Isabella Lascar.“

“Ah, this is about jealousy, is it? You’re the one who introduced me to her and encouraged me to help her.

What suddenly makes you think anything else was going on? It’s not like you to be so insecure.“

“Try me. When did you decide to go with Isabella to my house on the Vineyard?”

How could I lie in bed beside you Saturday night and believe the things you whispered to me as well as the responses you evoked from me, is what I really wanted to say out loud.

“Now hold on right there, Alex. That’s insane. I never went to your house-‘ My hand slammed down hard on the solid table, piercing the silence of the cavernous room. I was almost as mad at I myself as I was with Jed. I prided myself on my ability to cross-examine witnesses, and I wasn’t even doing an amateur job at it. There was no subtlety to my technique, no clever buildup of incontrovertible facts. I just wanted to crash my way through to the only thing that mattered.

Why had he double-crossed me with Isabella Lascar? Our relationship wasn’t so entrenched that he couldn’t have ended it and moved on to be with her or anyone else he chose. Why did he have to humiliate me so openly?

“Don’t play with me anymore. This is not about jealousy or my feelings or anything as trivial as that. This is about – ‘ Mike was ready to try a more competent approach.

“What do you drink, Mr. Segal?”

“Oh, are we ready to be civilized now? Shall I order us up something from the bar?” Jed actually turned to look for a house phone before Mike made him realize the question was not a social one.

“We’re not interested in drinking with you now. I asked you what you drink.”

I knew the answer to the question. I’d heard Jed order it dozens of times, usually having to explain to the bartender except in his regular joints exactly what it was.

“Booker’s, Mr. Chapman. I like Booker’s.” I mouthed the next phrase along with him, knowing he would feel the need to describe it to Mike.

“It’s a single malt Bourbon, from Kentucky. Quite pricey. I’ve always had a preference for Kentucky Bourbons over Tennessee. I’m sure there’s a reason you need to know this.”

“And when the barkeep runs dry on Booker’s, what’s your second choice?”

“It doesn’t much matter then. Something comparable from Kentucky, before I cross over the border into Tennessee.”

Nice start, Mikey, although I had been slow to catch up with you. Mike was thinking back to the arrangement of the bottles in my liquor cabinet on the Vineyard, when he had noticed that the Stoli and the Jack Daniel’s were in front of the Dewar’s. I never associated the Jack Daniel’s with Jed because he had never ordered any in all our time together.

But that Tennessee sour mash was the only Bourbon I had in my house, and he had obviously had to settle for it when he and Isabella were drinking together.

“Where’d you buy me that perfume, Jed?” I wanted to get back in the game.

“Paris, Alex. Are we at the point where I have to produce receipts for gifts I brought you?” In the typical fashion of a guilty defendant, Jed hadn’t even asked us what all these questions were about. Someone who was really in the dark would be more outraged and demanding explanations for our conduct.

Instead, he seemed to think that we were bluffing and as long as he was smarter than we were a woman and a blue-collar civil servant he could simply hold his course and continue to mislead us.

“What store, Jed? You so rarely go shopping I’m sure you remember which store in Paris you nipped into to buy the perfume.”

He took what he assumed was the safest way out of that one. This is a no-brainer, you dumb broad, he was probably thinking as he smiled smugly at me.

“Chanel. Chanel 22 direct from the salon on Avenue Montaigne.”

I had been hoping he might have even tried to say the duty-free shop, as I had joked at my apartment on Saturday ‘ evening. But no, he was determined for some reason to make me think I had been in his consciousness in Paris. The irony was that Chanel 22 is the only one of their perfumes that is made in America. It isn’t sold in a single place in France, not even in the company’s own stores.

“Make a note to check with American Express for his charges, Mike. See where and when he bought it.”

“Look, I agreed to come up here with you two because I wanted to resolve what I assumed were some petty issues that had arisen in your work. I didn’t know you were so damn paranoid, Alex, and this is a pretty ugly way to find it out. But if you think you can make these absurd allegations about me because I agreed to help your friend Isabella sort out her financial difficulties, you’re both out of your very unprofessional minds. I’ve never been to Martha’s Vineyard, I’ve never been involved with Isabella in any other way, and I’m not going to let you derail my plans by breaking up this evening for Warmack. Alex, if there’s an explanation for any of this, maybe we can talk about it by ourselves tomorrow.”

“You’ll have time for that after you finish at my office, tomorrow at four,” Mike said, drawing a business card out of his wallet and handing it to Jed. “We’ll need to do a set of fingerprints for elimination purposes, and we’ll have to get the medical examiner in to draw a vial of blood. I guess Alex has explained the potential for DNA evidence here. And bring your airline tickets and boarding passes for the flight to Paris, too. We’ll need a copy of them for the file.“

Jed exploded as Mike went from liquor and perfume discussions to submission to evidentiary tests for a murder investigation.

“This is a goddamn insult. You’re just trying to embarrass me for whatever it is you think I’ve done to hurt you. Have you gone mad? Does Battaglia know you’re playing these games with real people, not some bum you picked up in a homeless shelter? You want evidence from me you better call my lawyer or get a warrant.”

“You watch too much television, Jed. Why don’t you just give it up?”

“Hey, Alex,” Mike said, pushing himself away from the table and standing up, “I guess this is when I’m supposed to do my Columbo imitation, huh?” He slouched a bit, stuck his left hand in his pocket and faked a cigar in his on right, closed one eyelid and sounded more like Peter Falk than Peter Falk ever did.

“Ya know, I’m-just-a-stupid-cop! Mr. Segal, but I gotta ask ya, d’ya know anybody who Her drinks Bourbon and maybe put his hands all over a bottle of Jack Daniel’s when he couldn’t come by any Kentucky mash up in Chilmark last week, who wasn’t in Paris when he was supposed to be in Paris but went to Paris afterward anyway so he could come home from Paris, who’s got a really classy blue-and-green-plaid shirt that ain’t sold by the gross at Kmart or Wool worth’s like my shirts, and who left a wad of semen in some condoms in a house where a very famous lady he knew was murdered, even though he wasn’t a real prince for being there at the time because it woulda made some other nice lady who liked him a lot very unhappy? You know anybody like that?

“Cause, jeez, if you do, a dumb cop like me could sure use your help.”

I didn’t think anything could have made me laugh when we had walked into the club half an hour earlier, but Mike’s imitation of Columbo was perfect and refreshing, causing Jed to storm out of the library and down the staircase as we pressed for the elevator to take us back to the lobby.

“I dare you, blondie. The only thing you can do to beat the way you got us into the club tonight is if we both take all our clothes off in the elevator right now and just walk out of the building stark naked. Game?”

“Nah, Mikey. It would be my luck to run into Anderson Warmack on his way out of here, and it might just give him too much pleasure to see my bare ass. I’ll take a pass.”

We were down and out without incident, through the lobby, which was quiet as a mausoleum, and back in my driveway ten minutes later.

I opened the car door, said good night to Mike, and started to get out.

“Talk about role reversal, we’ve really come full circle,” he remarked to me. “Remember those lectures you used to give me during the Quentiss trial?Go directly home no gin mills, no drinking all night with the guys, no dropping in on flight attendants who are here on a turn-around. Go home and go to bed ‘cause you’re gonna get pounded on cross tomorrow.”

Remember the perky young prosecutor trying her first high-profile case, reading me the riot act whenever I had to be in court the next day? Well, same goes for you, Coop. Get upstairs, go directly to bed, don’t drink anything alcoholic, screen your calls in case that weasel tries to worm his way back into your affection, stay clearheaded for the morning. Understood?“

“Yeah, boss.”

“Alex, can I leave you alone, really? I mean, if you want company or you’re, well, you know…”

“Thanks, Mike. I’m really okay. This whole thing since the first phone call about Isabella’s murder last week has taken on a life of its own. I just feel like I’m being dragged along in a vicious riptide. I’ve sort of stopped fighting it now. I think I’ll just try to ride it out and see where I land.”

“Hang tough, blondie. The most important lesson for tonight is to think Aretha. No Tammy Wynette. No ”Stand by Your Man.“ I’m talking ”Respect“ all capital letters. You tell the doormen not to let Jed in if he shows up, and not to take his calls. We know he’s a liar and I know you don’t want to admit this to yourself but he may be more dangerous than that.“

The message light was flashing on my phone when I got into my bedroom and started to undress. One solicitation to change phone companies and reach out to friends all over the U.S.A. for pennies less than whichever system I was using, one hang-up getting to be a bit too commonplace lately and two terse messages from Jed that had come in during the last ten minutes. The first was short and angry in tone, berating me for creating that ridiculous scene with my ‘pet cop’; the second was short and conciliatory in tone, urging me to meet with him alone tomorrow, and to believe in him. The Easter bunny, the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, and Jed Segal – I had believed in each of them and they had proven to be among life’s great disappointments. Jed would never get the honor of rising to the level of those others.

I toyed with the idea of ringing David’s doorbell and asking his advice, but I was afraid to find out that he, too, would admit some previously unacknowledged connection to Isabella. Instead, I climbed into bed and picked up the phone to call Nina Baum. Not even eleven o’clock in Los Angeles yet, so I knew I wasn’t likely to find her at home.

“We can’t come to the phone now…” the message droned on, so I waited for the beep and left her an update. I vented on all my pain about Jed’s faithlessness, and concluded with Mike’s concern that Jed was actually a suspect in the murder. A best friend was better than a shrink any day, in my book. I knew Nina would call back first thing tomorrow, suggesting ways to put these events in perspective with the rest of my life and loves. I switched off the light, rolled over onto my stomach, and tried to fall asleep. Whatever pleasant thoughts I attempted to balance in my mind danced there for only brief seconds before being pushed off center stage by the reality of the last few hours. I lay in the dark reliving all of my days and evenings and nights with Jed, wondering whether particular moments together had been artificial or genuine, whether they had occurred before or after his first contact with Iz, whether there had been someone else before her.

Sleep was impossible. I sat up and turned on the light, got out of bed, and slipped into the least sexy, snuggest bathrobe I owned. I had instantly reverted into that end of-relationship funk in which I knew I would never need sexy robes or underwear for the rest of my life. Never would I expose myself again in my most fetching lingerie to any other untrustworthy man who crossed my path. I traipsed from room to room, illuminating all of them as I looked for some diversion to keep me occupied until, as I hoped, drowsiness would overcome me.

I went into the kitchen and made myself a cup of hot chocolate. The October evening was much too mild for that, but I remembered some vague childhood thing about my mother and warm milk as a soporific, so I figured I’d give it a try. On to the dining-room table to do the Monday Times crossword, but it was so ridiculously simple that I knocked it off in less than fifteen minutes. It was a bad reminder that the week still had four days to go.

Finally, I moved through the living room and perched in the den where my television and stereo were set up. I reclined in an armchair with my feet on the ottoman and turned on the tube to see what old black-and-white rerun might lull me into a little nap. It was the first stroke of luck I’d had in days, even though that meant I wouldn’t close my eyes for a minute. One of the cable channels was playing Notorious, which is my favorite movie ever made.

It had started at two-thirty so I had missed the first few scenes, but I could practically recite the lines from memory for all the times I had seen it.

There was the splendidly youthful Ingrid Bergman and the dashing Gary Grant. They were already in Rio and she had agreed to the perilous plan to seduce the evil Claude Rains, and ultimately to move into the palatial home he shared with his monstrous mother. Ingrid and Gary were daring to have her debriefings in the most public of places, the park in the middle of the city where they pretended to meet by chance on horseback.

I lost myself in the Hitchcockian brilliance of the double crossings and treacherous dealings, the principled spies and the demonic Nazis. I marveled at Ingrid’s willingness to accept Gary’s dare and actually marry the enemy, though she ached for Gary to love her. I tensed as I always did at the champagne reception and the riveting scene in the wine cellar with the missing key and the broken bottle.

And as the very large, bright moon outside my window threatened to disappear into daylight, I wanted to be saved just as the deceived Ingrid had been: by Gary, sweeping me into his arms and down the grand staircase and out of all danger. Just what I needed an escape from my troubles into a cinema life of intrigue and romance and lovers not knowing whether they could trust each other. Worked like a tonic.

Now I was wired. It was almost 5 A.M. and I clicked the dial past an endless array of gadgets like Veg-O-Matics and Ginzo knives and tummy-slimmers. Nothing engaged me on any channel and I was resigning myself to the fact that this was going to be an allnighter – I was much too edgy to sleep.

I leafed through the current New Yorker, hoping for a long piece on the most current Washington scandal, but finding instead a dull treatise on ozone levels in the Brazilian rain forest.

The buzz of the intercom in my kitchen, connected to the phone of the building’s doormen in the lobby, nearly lifted me out of my chair when it shattered my quiet daze a few minutes later. It would be Jed. Should I let him in when I was alone? The ringing kept up interminably, but I held my resolve not to pick up the phone and acknowledge his presence. I was annoyed that the doormen had ignored my instruction not to admit him if he showed up, and I assumed he had greased their ever-open palms with some large bills.

I had stopped counting rings at sixty-five, and was now toying with the idea of calling 911 to have the cops usher him away. That would be a terrible waste of police resources, as I knew better than anyone, so I let it ring on instead.

Then I heard the elevator doors open in the hallway. He was actually upstairs and was going to try to get in to me.

What if Mike Chapman was right that Jed’s greatest fault had not been his infidelity, but that he was, indeed, a murderer? Maybe he was coming to kill me, to silence me because I had implicated him in Isabella’s death? My mind didn’t seem to work. I simply didn’t know what to do next but I had clearly waited too long to call the police. There were voices in the hallway now. That meant he had come back with at least one other person and I was terrified that he had found some thug to do his dirty work for him. I stepped over to the bar next to the television set and picked up the wine-bottle opener which lay on top the ‘screw-pull’ version with the wickedly sharp-pointed tip that projects into the cork. I had no idea what I would do with it but its mean metal point felt good in the palm of my hand as I tiptoed closer to the front door.

“Coop, Coop? It’s Mike. Open up, I got a surprise for you.”

Lucky I didn’t have a gun because I probably would have blasted it through the door at Chapman at precisely that point, for freaking me out and heightening my growing sense of paranoia. I looked out the peephole for a confirmatory sighting, threw back the bolt, and turned the lock to open the door.

I was fuming, again.

“Do you have any idea-‘ That’s when I saw Mercer Wallace standing next to him, holding three pints of Haagen-Dazs ice cream the most direct way to my heart stacked up in a pile as his deep bass hummed the melody of ”What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?“ while Mike laughed.

“Great music, Mercer. But I can’t dance to it tonight.”

“This shit’s gonna melt all over your hall carpet if you don’t let us in, Alex. Move it.” Chapman pushed past me and the two of them headed straight for the kitchen to dish up the portions.

“What happened since I left you off, kid?” he asked, eyeing my tattered chenille robe.

“You look like Ma Kettle in that getup. Here you got the two most eligible guys in the city banging at your doorstep and you won’t open up. Look at her, Mercer, she’s prayin‘ for somebody to show up at this hour with some vintage Chateau Lafite. Who ya gonna kill with that bottle opener? Okay, we got Cookie Dough Dynamo, Chocolate Chocolate Chip, or Vanilla Fudge? What’ll it be, blondie let’s put a little meat on those bones.“

“Now that we’re having this cozy breakfast party, boys, who wants to explain to me what it’s all about? Chocolate for me, of course.”

“Not my fault. I was lookin‘ deep into the most beautiful pair of ebony eyes, in a gentrified townhouse – we used to call ’em tenements- on West Ninety-third near Amsterdam ” – Mercer was dropping a hint that was supposed to suggest the identity of the recipient of his enormous charm, undoubtedly one of my colleagues’ “when my beeper went off an hour ago. Seems Brother Chapman’s knowledge of Motown is a bit shallow. It started and ended with ”Respect.“ The man wanted help with some lyrics life-will-go-on-after-your-man-is-gone kind of stuff. When he told me it was you he was gonna serenade, I volunteered to do backup for him.”

“What’s the story, Mike?” I asked once more, leading the three of us, each with a bowl of ice cream, back into the den.

He hemmed and hawed and stalled a bit more before coughing up the real answer. Chapman had waited in his car at the parking space at the end of the driveway, thinking he would watch for an hour or so to make sure Jed didn’t stop by and try to see me.

“I walked down to the all-night coffee shop to get a cup of brew to keep me awake. Called the office from a phone booth outside the place to explain the situation to the lieutenant can you believe it, the City of New York is paying me to do this little ”power breakfast“? When I looked up at your apartment – I can always pick it out ‘cause it’s on the corner, and it’s got those fancy-drooped drapes your mother had done for you – your lights were all off. While I stood out there drinking my coffee, I looked up again and every few minutes another light went on, till you got comfy in front of the TV.”

“Geez, you put that much deduction into one of your homicides you might close a case now and then.”

“By that time it was almost three o’clock. Figured I might as well sleep in my car instead of dragging home.” Mike didn’t live very far from my apartment, actually, in a tiny studio off York Avenue near the East River in the Sixties.

He had been in the rent-controlled cubicle – he referred to it as ‘the coffin’ – for almost fifteen years and paid very low rent, but it was a sixth-floor walk-up, which got harder to go home to the later the hour.

“I napped for a while, checked to make sure your lights were still blazing, then decided if neither of us could sleep we might as well be miserable together I beeped Mercer for some inspiration never dreamed the guy would crash my party. But he did have the good sense to find a twenty-four-hour Food Emporium with a great selection of ice cream. Cheers.”

I thought of Nina Baum and how happy it would make her when I told her later that I had not been alone. That two of the most decent guys I had ever known had taken it upon themselves to hang out with me through the last desolate hours of the morning, and tried to entertain me at a time when I was content to wallow in my misery.

We gossiped about prosecutors and cops, we told each other war stories we had told dozens of times before, and we took turns doing impressions of the most outrageous defendants we had encountered.

“Remember the first case I ever brought you?” Mercer asked.

“Of course. The two brothers who assaulted the woman on Lenox Avenue, the rooftop?”

“I was still in uniform, Mike. Got a 911 to the address, civilian holding two in a stairwell. Some guy heard a woman screaming in his building. Started to go toward the noise on the roof and these two teenagers were running down from the top landing, zipping up their pants as they came down. Guy had a licensed gun stopped ‘em in their tracks. Yelled to his wife who called us.”

Mercer went on.

“My partner holds the kids and I go up to the roof to see what happened. Fifty-five-year-old lady, pretty hysterical, tells me these two kids she never saw before followed her onto the elevator, the bigger one pulled out a knife and forced her to the roof. Stripped her and tried to rape her. When the tall one put down the knife to unzip his fly, she began to scream and they ran off.

“I radio for a bus’ police jargon for ambulance ‘to take her to the hospital, and I go back down to cuff the kids.

They’re jivin‘ my partner like crazy.

“That’s our mother, man,” they’re tellin‘ him.

“That’s our mother she’s just mad at us ‘cause she says the rent money is missing. Man, we didn’t do nothin’ to her.”

“So I say, ”What’s her name, your mother?“ For the first time, they’re both real quiet. They look at each other but that’s no help. Finally, the older one looks up at me with one last try, ”I don’t know we jus’ call her Mom.“

It wasn’t his best story but it always made him laugh.

“Not as good as when we almost screwed up that murder trial for Cooper, when you got promoted to the squad,” a case Mike loved to remind both Mercer and me about.

A few years back I had worked on an investigation that involved the discovery of a murder victim who had been sexually assaulted and whose body had been found near the Lower West Side piers, left in an alley in a large packing crate. She hadn’t been identified for weeks, and the detectives working on the case observed their usual tradition of giving an identity of their own to the victim.

Eventually a truck driver was arrested and charged with the crime. I never heard the casual references to the young woman which the cops had dared not make in my presence nor did they appear anywhere in the police reports, so it came as just as much a surprise to me as it did to the jury when the defense attorney drew it out on his cross-examination of Mercer.

Mike played all the parts for us.

“Did you know the name of the deceased when you commenced your investigation on April 10, Detective Wallace?”

“No, sir.”

“And how did the medical examiner refer to the deceased in her report of April 11, Detective Wallace?”

“As Jane Doe, Number 27, 1991.”

“And how did you refer to her in your D.D. 5 of April 12, Detective Wallace?”

“Case number two hundred thirty-four of 1991, Counselor.” Mike finally reached the point at which Detective Wallace had admitted that by the end of the first week, when the late-lamented unknown hooker had ceased to interest the editors of the local tabloids and had dropped off the evening news shows, his team had given her the rather callous nickname of “The Fox in the Box.” It had been a very uphill battle to try to restore the jury’s faith in the able young detective as the judge threatened in the presence of the panel to bring the matter to the attention of the commissioner. But somehow, as usual, justice was done.

That led us to a discussion of the nature of the dark humor that seemed to be the province of law enforcement types all over the world.

And that led Chapman to his next attempt to occupy my wandering attention.

“Ya know, I got an idea for you to make a lot of money, Alex, when you’re ready to go private. It came to me last Thursday when I had to go through all the files in your office.”

“Let’s hope it’s not a step I’m going to have to take today, Mike. I’ll bite what is it?”

“A dating service. Now, you take a look at the women first.

You got a twenty-three-year-old receptionist, a Libra. She likes reefer, jazz clubs, and picking up guys in Washington Square Park on weekends. She likes regular intercourse and oral sex, she just doesn’t like-‘

“You’re a pig, Chapman. You are an insensitive, disgusting pig. No wonder you have to work Homicide. You shouldn’t ever be allowed to work with a living, breathing human being who has been traumatized.” I looked at my watch and stood up to go inside to dress for the next battle.

Mike barely missed a beat. He didn’t need my approval – he was content with his audience of one.

“Then you get a perp, Mercer. Not a real violent one. There’s that thirty-five-year-old cook from that restaurant in SoHo who got collared last month. He’s a Capricorn. Are they good together, Mercer, Libra and Capricorns? Anyway he likes reefer, too. Prefers Battery Park City to Washington Square Park, but she might be flexible. He’s also into oral…”

I was out of earshot by then and into the bathroom to shower and wash my hair.

Mike would never understand the cases that Mercer and I liked to handle. He really did prefer working on murder investigations, as he had told me many times. You didn’t have to hold the victims’ hands, as it were, and deal with the emotional struggle of their recovery. You didn’t have to help them manage the pain of reliving the devastating event the pain and torment were long over by the time Chapman got to a crime scene. And you didn’t have to deal with victims who lie on occasion, even when we’re trying to help them convict their assailants. Mike was happiest when he could work on the intricate pieces of a puzzle silent clues, words offered by or cajoled out of occasional bystanders, pathological findings slowly and carefully unraveling the mystery of a brutal, untimely death.

Death. Which brought me back to Isabella Lascar and then to Jed. I finished toweling myself off and began the tedious process of blow-drying my hair as I re-examined the damage of a sleepless night in the bathroom mirror.

I dressed in a navy blazer, red-and-white wide-striped Charvet shirt and red skirt businesslike but not somber.

I refused to look as if I was in mourning for a lost love. Mike and Mercer were sitting at the dining-room table with cups of coffee they had made while I primped for the day. It was just after seven when I rejoined them. “Can I get on the school bus by myself, or do you have to escort me?”

“I’m on this watch for another hour. Mercer’s got the day off. I’ll drop you at your office then go home and crash. I have to be back at the squad for the four to twelve.”

We all walked out together. Mercer saw the two of us into Mike’s car and continued on his way with a wave.

“Do something to make me look good for a change,” I called after him. “Catch that bastard in the serial rape case, will you?” He nodded his head and gave me a thumbs-up.

I spent most of the car ride fumbling for a way to thank Mike for looking out for me the night before.

“Cut it out, blondie. That’s what friends are for. Besides, defenestration is the fuckin‘ worst. I couldn’t bear the sight of your body splashed and splattered all over the sidewalk.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That’s what I was really afraid of last night. What if you threw yourself out of a window because of that asshole? I hate jumpers. Give me shootings, stabbings, bludgeonings, but no defenestration. I was gonna stay down there all night even if the boss didn’t offer to pay me to do it just to make sure you didn’t go out on a ledge.”

“You thought I’d leap out a window over Jed Segal? I will leave you for the morning with the solemn promise that I have no intention of doing anything that would cause Pat McKinney to have such a nice day. You know, Mike, I met Jed less than four months ago. I fell hard and too fast, and never stopped to scrutinize the relationship very deeply. It just felt good and I liked it. But it isn’t the end of my world. Really, you got me through the first night and I am sincerely grateful for that. I’ll be fine I’ve got a very busy day ahead of me.“ Maybe if I said it out loud I’d start to believe it.