Still, she reminded herself, O’Connell wasn’t really their match.

Or, more accurately, he wasn’t a match for her. Scott, she was unsure of. Years of working in the polite society of a small liberal arts college had taken away the edgy toughness that she had been attracted to when they were first married. Back then, he’d been a veteran when it was unpopular to be one, and he’d approached learning and school with a tough-mindedness she’d found compelling. After he’d received his doctorate, and they were married and had Ashley and she had already decided to go to law school herself, she’d been aware that he was growing softer, somehow. As if the impending arrival of middle age affected not only his waistline, but his attitude as well.

“All right, Mr. O’Connell,” she said out loud. “You’ve screwed with the wrong family. Now a little surprise or two for you.”

She turned away and threw herself into her chair and reached for her phone. She had found the number she wanted in her Rolodex, and she dialed it rapidly. She was even patient when she was put on hold by a secretary. When she heard the voice come on the line, she felt reassured.

“Murphy here. What can I do for you, Counselor?”

“Hello, Matthew. I’ve got a problem.”

“Well, Ms. Freeman-Richards, that’s absolutely the only reason in the entire world that folks call this number. Why else talk to a private investigator? So, what’s it to be on this occasion? A divorce case up there in that nice little city of yours? Something that has turned a tiny bit nastier than folks intended, perhaps?”

Sally could picture Matthew Murphy at his desk. His office was in a nondescript and slightly bedraggled old building in Springfield, a couple of blocks away from the federal courthouse, on the edge of a pretty run-down area. Murphy, she assumed, liked the anonymity that the place gave him. Nothing flashy and attention-grabbing for him.

“No, not a divorce, Matthew.”

She could have called some considerably more upscale investigators. But Murphy had a far more checkered background, and a no-nonsense attitude that she thought might come in handy. Also, hiring someone from outside her own city was less likely to create any gossip in the county courthouse.

“Something else, then, Counselor? Perhaps something more, shall I say, tricky?”

He was, she thought, able to read much in the few words she’d spoken.

“How are your connections in the Boston area?” she asked.

“I still have some friends there.”

“What sort of friends?”

He laughed before replying, “Well, some friends on both sides of the great divide, Counselor. Some not-so-nice types always looking for an easy score, and some of the guys looking to arrest them.”

Murphy had been a state police homicide detective for twenty years before taking early retirement, and subsequently opening his own office. Rumors suggested that the severance package he’d received was part of an agreement to keep quiet about some activities of a Worcester narcotics squad that he’d taken an interest in while investigating a couple of drug-related murders. A questionable arena, Sally knew, if only by reputation, and Murphy had retired with a watch and ceremony, when the alternative might have been an indictment of his own or maybe even a bad night ending up at the end of some Latin King gang member’s semiautomatic.

“Can you look into something in the Boston area for me?”

“I’m pretty busy with a couple of other cases. What sort of something?”

Sally took a deep breath. “A personal matter. It involves a member of my family.”

He hesitated before saying, “Well, Counselor, that explains why you called an old warhorse down here, instead of one of those young, slick ex-FBI or -military-CID guys up there in the more rarefied atmosphere where you keep your practice. So, what exactly is it that you want me to, ah, do?”

“My daughter had gotten involved with a young man in Boston.”

“And you don’t like him much?”

“That’s putting it mildly. He keeps telling her he loves her. Won’t leave her alone. Pulled some computer crap that got her fired from her job. Screwed up her graduate-school work. Maybe more. Probably tailing her around. Maybe made some trouble for me, my ex, and a friend of mine, as well. More computer stuff.”

“What sort of trouble?”

“Got into my accounts. Made some anonymous complaints. Generally speaking, screwed a lot of stuff up.”

Sally thought that she was minimizing the damage that O’Connell had probably done.

“So, he’s got some skills, this, what do you want to call him? Ex-boyfriend?”

“That’s good enough. Although it appears that they only had one date.”

“He did all this because of, what? A one-night stand?”

“Seems that way.”

Murphy hesitated, and Sally’s confidence was slightly shaken.

“Okay. I get it. Any way you slice it, sounds like this guy is a bad dude.”

“Do you have any experience in this sort of case? An obsessive type.”

Matthew Murphy was quiet once again. His silence made her feel increasingly uneasy.

“Yeah, Counselor, I do,” he said slowly. “Ran into a couple of guys more or less like the guy you’re describing to me. Back when I was in homicide.”

This was a word that made her throat go dry.

Hope’s mother had just come in from raking leaves when her phone rang. As was her custom, she reached for the receiver with a twinge of uncertainty.

“Hello, dear,” Catherine Frazier said. “This is a surprise. It’s been weeks and weeks since we spoke last.”

“Hello, Mother,” Hope said a little guiltily. “I’ve been busy with school and the team, and time has slipped away. How are you?”

“Why, just fine. Settling in and getting ready for winter. The locals all think we’re in for a long one.”

Hope took a single deep breath. Her relationship with her mother was marred by an underlying tension. While outwardly civil, it was as if it were constantly being tightened, like a knot holding a wind-filled sail, as the gusts around them increased. Catherine Frazier was a lifelong Vermonter, liberal almost to a fault in her political views-save one; the most important one to her daughter. She was a stalwart in the local Catholic church in the small town of Putney, which was adjacent to the more upscale, ex-hippie-populated, whole-wheat-and-granola town of Brattleboro-a woman who had survived the early death of her husband, never thinking about remarrying, who now enjoyed living at the edge of the woods alone. She still harbored considerable doubts about her daughter’s relationship with Sally. She kept these to herself, living in a state that welcomed civil unions between women, but prayed fervently on Sunday mornings for some sort of understanding that had eluded her year in and year out, which had hardened the connections between them. Sometimes, in past years, she had bought up these feelings in the confessional, but she had grown tired of saying Hail Marys and Our Fathers because they rarely made her feel any more comfortable.

Hope thought her failure to be normal and to provide grandchildren was somehow at the root of the tension, which grew in volume both when they did talk and when they didn’t, for the real subject that they should have addressed was never raised between them.

“I need a favor,” Hope said.

“Anything, dear,” Catherine replied.

Hope knew that this was a lie. There were more than a few favors that she might have asked for from her mother that might not have been granted.

“It has to do with Ashley. She needs to get out of Boston for a while.”

“But what could possibly be the matter? She’s not ill, is she? There hasn’t been an accident?”

“No, not precisely, but…”

“Does she need money? I have lots of money and I’d be glad to help out.”

“No, Mother. Let me explain.”

“But what about her graduate studies?”