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Chapter 28

Although it was in easy reach, Liz did not remove the bird’s nest from its place. Instead, with delicate movements born of respect for the dead, she pinched a few strands of hair between her fingernails and pulled them gently from the nest. She also used the scissors on the small Swiss Army knife she carried on her key chain to snip off a tiny segment of the synthetic yarn. Carefully folding the evidence into another sheet of paper taken from her reporter’s notebook, she put the little packet into the pocket of her leather jacket.

Next, Liz looked around at the increasingly dim scene. The only outstanding landscape feature was a boulder, looking like a ghostly white mound in the falling light. She would have loved to measure the nest’s distance from the boulder but had nothing except her feet or her notebook to use as a ruler. She was reluctant to pace the distance without having another landmark to find it by in the future. In her mind’s eye, she drew a line from the boulder through the bird’s nest to the first tree beyond the nest. It was the same pitch pine she grasped for support earlier. But, amongst so many other pines, how would she recognize this one later? She could tag the tree with paper but paper is not weatherproof and she did not want to call anyone else’s attention to the spot. Looking fruitlessly for something to mark it with—even a pile of pebbles to place by its trunk—she realized she could bend and break some branches on the tree to mark it. Only after breaking three of them did she pace out the distance to the boulder. Then she used her flashlight to help her find and remove one piece of paper after another until she left the hollow behind her.

As she approached her car, which stood alone in the parking lot, she reproached herself for failing to comb the scene for any dark hairs the police might have left behind. Kinnaird would wish to compare them with the paler strands, she was certain.

In her car, she placed a call to her answering machine in the newsroom, hoping she would find a message on it from Cormac. There was no word from him. Instead, a message from Jan Van Wormer prompted her to phone him immediately.

“Al told me he returned to the topiary garden in Wellesley today,” the piano builder said. “He said it was the first time, since that long-ago incident, that he could bring himself to visit a place he had once loved. When he was there, he saw an older woman tossing things to her dog. She didn’t look particularly familiar, he said, but when he heard the sound of her voice he took another look. It was Ellen’s mother, Olga Swenson.”

“Yes, I know she was there today. I saw her there myself. But I didn’t see Ali. What time of day was this?”

“Around one-thirty.”

“That’s when I was there.”

“You wouldn’t have seen my apprentice anyway. You see, after he looked into the little hidey-hole, he hid.”

“What hidey-hole?”

“The place where he and Ellen—they were friends, you know—used to hide little toys and treasures. It’s in the summerhouse, under a loose board in the floor.”

“What did he find in the hidey-hole?”

“A toy horn I think. He said he blew it, but then, after spitting this much out, he went all tongue-tied on me.”

“Perhaps I can get him to tell me more.”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible. The poor fellow has run off again.”

Overtired from her day and confused in the darkness, Liz made a wrong turn as she attempted to drive back home. The mistake cost her almost an hour, as she found herself winding through sand-edged roads and past several small ponds in Myles Standish State Forest. But the long drive also gave her time to think. Teased by the fact that she and Ali had both been on the edges of the topiary garden at the same time but had not seen one another, she recalled René DeZona’s remark, “My lens often sees things the eyes don’t.”

She recalled how, earlier that day, two students had posed on the hillside leading up to the summerhouse. Liz remembered framing them in the larger scene. Did her photo include the summerhouse, too? Perhaps. It was a long shot, but what if the photo revealed Ali holding the object that had upset him?

Pulling off the road, she dialed the operator and asked for the telephone number for Wellesley College information and then dialed it. She was in luck. The person on information line duty at Wellesley College was a student. Although at first the student told Liz she was not supposed to give out telephone numbers unless the caller knew both first and last names, she relaxed when Liz said, “You know that hot prof Florrie’s nuts about? Well, I’m his TA. He asked me to get in touch with her for him.”

“Oh, well, if you’re his teaching assistant. . .” She supplied the number.

Fortunately, Florrie was thrilled to be contacted by a news reporter. Although the camera was not hers, she knew it was a digital model. She said she’d get in touch with her friend Ellen and ask her to e-mail the image to Liz as soon as possible.

It took almost an hour for Liz to reach the newsroom, where she accessed her e-mail. Sure enough, the Wellesley student had come through. There was the image of the two attractive young women in the topiary garden. Unfortunately, though, the camera angle did not take in the summerhouse. Liz should have remembered this, because when she stood in the shade at the edge of the Pinetum to take a backlit shot, she would have had to point the camera westward, not northward, up the slope. The wider scene Liz had framed included Lake Waban and the balustrade that defined the shore. Exhausted, Liz printed out the image on ordinary paper, folded it into her pocket, and drove home.

Too tired to fuss with the window shades, Liz left them open and went straight to bed. That meant she had a great view of Tom’s legs through her kitchen window when she awoke in the morning. She invited him in and, ruefully, he agreed to give Cormac Kinnaird the packet of evidence Liz had prepared, if the doctor came by to collect it while Tom was still there. Standing at her kitchen counter and gazing at the photo she’d taken in the topiary garden, she left a telephone message for Cormac, telling him about the bird’s nest find and adding, “I’m off to inform Olga about what I’ve discovered. I’d tell Erik in person, too—it seems the civilized thing to do to inform the family personally—but he’s in police custody. Perhaps we can do that together, later,” she added, as Tom’s expression darkened.