I Know a Secret

Twelve

Maura could not remember a Christmas morning so cold. She stood at her kitchen window, a coffee mug cupped in her hands, looking out at the ice that glazed her backyard. The outdoor thermometer registered six degrees, not accounting for windchill, and the flagstone patio was now as slick as a skating rink. This morning when she’d stepped out to pick up her newspaper, she’d slipped on the front walkway and almost fallen, and her back muscles still ached from twisting around to catch herself. This was not a day to leave the house, and she was grateful she didn’t have to. Today her colleague Abe Bristol was on call for the ME’s office, and she could spend a lazy day catching up on her reading and tonight enjoy a quiet meal alone. Already, a lamb shank was defrosting in the sink and a bottle of amarone waited to be uncorked.

She refilled her coffee cup and sat down at the kitchen table to read The Boston Globe. The Christmas Day edition was so thin it was almost not worth paging through it, but this was her morning ritual whenever she had a day off: two cups of coffee, an English muffin, and the newspaper. A real newspaper, not pixels glaring from a laptop. She ignored the gray tabby, who kept mewing and rubbing against her ankles, demanding his second breakfast. A month ago, she’d adopted the greedy animal after finding it wandering at a crime scene, and not a day went by that she didn’t regret bringing the Beast home. Now it was too late; the cat belonged to her. Or she belonged to the cat. Sometimes it was hard to tell who owned whom.

She nudged the Beast away with her foot and turned to a new page of the Globe. Last night’s discovery of the body on the pier had not yet made it into the newspaper, but she saw an update on Cassandra Coyle’s murder.

The cat jumped onto the table and sat down on the newspaper, its rump planted squarely on the article.

“Thank you for your comment,” Maura said, and dropped the Beast back on the floor. It gave her a parting look of disdain and strutted out of the kitchen. So this is what it’s come to, she thought. I’m now talking to my cat. When had she turned into another lonely cat lady, ruled by a feline? She didn’t have to be alone on Christmas. She could have driven up to Maine and visited her seventeen-year-old ward, Julian, at his boarding school. She could have thrown a holiday party for her neighbors, or volunteered at a soup kitchen, or accepted any number of invitations to dinner.

I could have called Daniel.

She thought of the Christmas Eve when she had been so desperate to catch a glimpse of him, even from a distance, that she had slipped into a pew at the back of his church to hear him celebrate the holiday Mass. She, a nonbeliever, had listened to his words about God and love and hope, but their love for each other had led only to heartbreak for them both. On this Christmas morning, as Daniel stood before his congregation, did he scan the pews, hoping to see her again? Or would they grow old in parallel, their lives never again to intersect?

The doorbell rang.

She jerked straight, startled by the sound. She’d been so focused on thoughts of Daniel that of course he was the one she instantly pictured, waiting to see her. Who else would ring her bell on Christmas morning? Hello, Temptation. Do I dare answer?

She went to the foyer, took a deep breath, and opened the door.

It was not Daniel but a middle-aged woman who stood on the porch, holding a large cardboard box. Bundled in a puffy down coat and wool scarf, with a knit cap pulled low over her eyebrows, only part of her face was visible. Maura saw tired brown eyes and wind-chapped cheeks. A few wisps of blond hair had escaped the hat and fluttered in the wind.

“Are you Dr. Maura Isles?” the woman asked.

“Yes.”

“She asked me to bring this to you.” The woman handed the box to Maura. It wasn’t heavy, but whatever it contained gave a clatter.

“What is this?” asked Maura.

“I don’t know. I was just asked to deliver it to your house. Merry Christmas, ma’am.” The woman turned and made her way down the steps, onto the icy walkway.

“Wait. Who asked you to bring it?” Maura called out.

The woman did not answer but headed toward a white van that stood idling at the curb. Perplexed, Maura watched the woman climb into the vehicle and drive away.

The bitter cold drove Maura back into the house, and as she nudged the door closed with her foot, she felt the box’s contents shift and rattle. She carried it into the living room and set it on the coffee table. The top was sealed with weathered packing tape and there were no labels, nothing to identify to whom it belonged or what it might contain.

She went to the kitchen for a pair of scissors, and when she returned she found that the cat had climbed on the coffee table and was now pawing at the sealed box, eager to crawl inside.

She slit the tape and pulled open the flaps.

Inside was a jumble of random items that might have come from a thrift-store grab bag: An old ladies’ wristwatch, the hands frozen at 4:15. A plastic bag with costume jewelry. A patent-leather clutch purse, cracked and peeling. Deeper down were a dozen photographs of people she didn’t recognize, posing in various locations. She saw an old farmhouse, a small-town street, a picnic under a tree. Judging by the clothing and hairstyles, these photos had been taken sometime during the 1940s or ’50s. Why would someone send these items to her house?

Reaching deeper, she found an envelope containing more loose photos. She shuffled through the images and suddenly stared at a face she recognized. A face that made the hairs stand up on the back of her neck. The photos dropped to the floor, where they lay like a poisonous snake at her feet.

She ran into the kitchen and called Jane.

“Did you see her license plate?” asked Jane. “Can you tell me anything that might help me trace the vehicle?”

“It was a white van,” said Maura, pacing her living room. “That’s all I remember.”

“Old, new? Ford, Chevy?”

“You know I can’t tell the difference! All cars look alike to me!” Maura huffed out a breath and sank onto her sofa. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have called you on Christmas, but I freaked out. I probably overreacted.”

“Overreacted?” Jane gave a disbelieving laugh. “You just got a creepy Christmas gift delivered right to your front door, sent by a serial killer who’s supposed to be locked up in maximum security. That should alarm the hell out of you. It alarms me. The question is, what does Amalthea want from you?”

Maura stared at the photo that had so rattled her. It was a dark-haired woman standing under a spreading oak tree, her eyes gazing at the camera with unflinching directness. Her white dress was sheer as gauze, showing off her slim waist and slender arms. If this were some stranger’s photo, Maura would consider it a charming image, taken on a pretty country road. But she knew who that young woman was. She hugged herself and said softly, “She looked so much like me....”

As Jane slowly shuffled through the photos, Maura sat silent, focusing instead on the Christmas tree that she’d halfheartedly decorated last week. She still hadn’t opened the gifts underneath it, most of them from her colleagues at the ME’s office. Jane’s gift, wrapped in gaudy purple and silver foil, sat front and center. She had planned to open them all this morning, but the arrival of the cardboard box had swept away any Christmas spirit from this house. Was the box intended as some sort of peace offering? Perhaps Amalthea, using her own twisted logic, thought that Maura would want these keepsakes from her birth family. A family Maura wished she’d never heard of. A family of monsters.

The last of those monsters was now dying a slow and painful death from cancer. When Amalthea’s gone, will I finally be free of them? Maura wondered. Can I go back to thinking of myself as Maura Isles, daughter of the respectable Mr. and Mrs. Isles of San Francisco?

“Jesus. Get a load of the happy family,” said Jane, eyeing a photo with Amalthea, her husband, and their son. “Mommy, Daddy, and little Ted Bundy. The kid definitely looked like her.”

The kid. My murderous brother, thought Maura. The first time she’d laid eyes on him was when she’d examined his corpse. Here in this photo was her bloodline, a family whose trade had been murder for profit. Did Amalthea send her these mementos to remind her that she could never escape who she really was?

“She’s just playing head games again,” said Jane, tossing down the photos. “She must’ve had this box stashed away somewhere, maybe in a storage unit. Then she got that woman to deliver it to you, on Christmas, no less. Too bad you can’t tell me more about the van. Help me find out who that woman was.”

“Even if you knew, what could you do about it? It’s not illegal to drop off a box of photos.”

“This is intimidation. Amalthea’s stalking you.”

“From her bed in the hospital?”

“Maura, this must have upset you; otherwise you wouldn’t have called me.”

“I didn’t know who else to call.”

“Like I’m your last resort? Jesus, I’m the first person you should call. You shouldn’t be dealing with this all by yourself. And what is this, spending Christmas alone, just you and that damn cat? I swear, next year I’m gonna drag you to dinner at my mom’s.”

“Gee, that sounds like fun.”

Jane sighed. “Tell me what you’d like me to do about this box.”

Maura looked down at the cat, who was rubbing up against her leg, feigning affection in hopes of another meal. “I don’t know.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what I am gonna do. I’ll make sure Amalthea can’t do this again. Obviously she’s got people on the outside running errands for her. I’m gonna lock that woman down so tight, she won’t ever be able to reach you.”

A sudden thought made Maura freeze, a thought so disturbing it sent a chill up her neck. Even the cat seemed to sense the disturbance, and it watched her with new alertness. “What if Amalthea wasn’t the one who sent this?”

“Who else would send it? Her husband’s dead. Her son’s dead. There’s no one else alive in that family.”

Maura turned to Jane. “Are we sure of that?”