He studied the tire tracks on the driveway. There have been a couple of cars here, he thought. But that could be from the guy who rakes the leaves. The garage doors were closed and didn't have windows, so he couldn't check for cars.

He went back up the driveway, crossed the street, and took several more pictures of the front of the house. I guess that'll do it, he thought. I'll go and develop them right away. Then I'll phone Dr. Sheridan and ask her if she remembers which bedroom was Laura's when they were kids.

It would have been more fun to have found Laura Wilcox and Robby Brent holed up here, he thought as he put the camera back in the shopping bag and started down the hill. But what can you do? You can cover a story, but you can't invent one.

83

After her first class, West Point yearling Meredith Buckley rushed to her room for a final review of her notes for the exam in linear algebra, the course that was proving to be the toughest of her second year at West Point.

For twenty minutes she focused intensely on the notes. As she was putting them back in the folder, the phone rang. She was tempted not to answer it, but thinking that it might be her father calling to wish her luck on the exam, she picked it up and then smiled. Before she could speak, a cheerful voice was saying, "May I have the pleasure of inviting Cadet Buckley, daughter of the distinguished General Charles Buckley, to share another weekend with her parents and myself at my home in Palm Beach?"

"You don't know how wonderful that sounds," Meredith said fervently as she thought of the glamorous weekend she had enjoyed with her parents' friend. "I'll come anytime except, of course, when West Point has other plans for me, which is just about always. I hate to seem rude, but I'm heading into an exam."

"I need five, make that three, minutes of your time. Meredith, I was at a class reunion at Stonecroft Academy in Cornwall. I think I mentioned to you I was going to it."

"Yes, you did. I'm so sorry, but I simply can't talk now."

"I'll be fast. Meredith, a classmate of mine who attended the reunion is an intimate friend of Jean, your birth mother, and has written a note to you about her. I promised to deliver the note to you personally. Tell me when to be in the museum parking lot, and I'll be waiting for you with it in hand."

"My birth mother? Someone who was at your reunion knows her?" Meredith could feel her heart pounding as she gripped the phone. She looked at the clock. She absolutely had to get to class. "I'll be finished with my exam at eleven-forty," she said hurriedly. "I could be in the parking lot at ten of twelve."

"That works out for me. Ace your exam, General."

It took all of Cadet Meredith Buckley's training to force herself to put out of her mind the realization that in a little more than an hour she would know something tangible about the girl who at age eighteen had given birth to her. The only information she had so far was that her mother had been about to graduate from high school when she learned she was pregnant and that her father had been a college senior who was killed in a hit-and-run accident before she was born.

Her parents had talked to her about her birth mother. They had promised Meredith that after she was graduated from West Point, they would try to learn her identity and then arrange a meeting between them. "We have no idea who she is, Meri," her father had told her. "We do know, because the doctor who delivered you and arranged the adoption told us, that your birth mother loved you deeply and that giving you up was probably the most unselfish and difficult decision she would ever have to make in her whole life."

All this ran through Meredith's mind as she tried to concentrate on the linear algebra exam. But she could not block out the awareness that every tick of the clock brought her closer to greater knowledge of the mother she now knew as Jean.

As she handed in her exam and rushed toward Thayer Gate and the military academy museum, she realized that the reference to Palm Beach had solved the question her father had asked her yesterday on the phone. That's where I lost my hairbrush, she remembered suddenly.

84

A stony-faced Carter Stewart came into the hotel at ten o'clock, while Sam was sitting in the lobby. Sam made a beeline for him, catching him at the desk. "Mr. Stewart, I'd like to have a word with you if I may."

"In a minute, Mr. Deegan." The clerk with the wood-chip-colored hair was behind the desk. "I need to see the manager, and I need to get into Mr. Brent's room again," Stewart snapped at him. "The production company has received yesterday's package. Apparently there is one more script that is vitally needed, and I have been asked to do the proverbial good deed once more. Since the script was not on top of the desk, it will involve going through the desk."

"I'll summon Mr. Lewis immediately, sir," the clerk said nervously.

Stewart turned to Sam. "If they do refuse to let me go rummaging through Robby's desk, I don't care. I will have paid the debt of gratitude that my agent insists I owe him. He has now agreed that it has been paid in full. He doesn't know it yet, but that gives me the moral right to fire him, which I intend to do this afternoon."

Stewart turned back to the clerk. "Is the manager here, or is he out in the field picking flowers?"

What a nasty human being, Sam thought. "Mr. Stewart," he said, his tone icy, "I have a question, and I need to know the answer to it. A few nights ago, I understand you, Mr. Amory, Mr. Brent, Mr. Emerson, Dr. Fleischman, and Mr. Nieman were joking about working together on the evening cleaning crew of an office building managed by Mr. Emerson's father."

"Yes, yes, something about that came up. That was the spring of our senior year. Another tender memory of my glorious time at Stonecroft."

"Mr. Stewart, this is very important. Did you hear anyone mention that Dr. Sheridan had been a patient of a Dr. Connors who had an office in that building?"

"No, I did not. And, besides, why would Jean have been a patient of Dr. Connors? He was an obstetrician." Stewart's eyes widened. "Oh, my. Have we a little secret about to come out, Mr. Deegan? Was Jeannie a patient of Dr. Connors?"

Sam looked at Stewart with loathing. He wanted to kick himself for the way he had framed the question, and he wanted to punch Stewart for his leering response to it. "I asked you if someone had made that statement," he said. "I did not for one instant suggest that it was true."

Justin Lewis, the manager, had come up behind them. "Mr. Stewart, I understand you wish to go into Mr. Brent's room and go through his desk. I am afraid that I really can't allow that. I spoke to our law firm yesterday after I let you take those scripts, and they were quite upset about it."

"There we are," Stewart said. He turned his back on the manager. "My business here is pretty well wrapped up, Mr. Deegan," he said. "My director and I have completed going over his suggested changes for my play, and I have had quite enough of hotel life. I'm going back to Manhattan this afternoon, and I wish you good luck waiting for Laura and Robby to bob to the surface."

Sam and the hotel manager watched him exit the lobby. "That is one nasty guy," Justin Lewis told Sam. "It's obvious that he hates Mr. Brent."

"Why do you say that?" Sam asked quickly.

"Because a note Mr. Brent left on his desk referring to Mr. Stewart as 'Howie' obviously got under his skin. From what Mr. Stewart said, it was Mr. Brent's idea of a joke, but then Mr. Stewart asked me if I knew that saying about 'he who laughs last laughs best.' "