TWELVE

Brewster Cortland Payne II had stopped in a service station on City Line Avenue and called his home. Mrs. Newman had told him there had been no call from Violet, the Detweiler maid, telling him to which hospital Penny had been taken.

If she hadn’t been taken to a hospital, he reasoned, there was a chance that the situation wasn’t as bad as initially reported; that Penny might have been unconscious-that sometimes happened when drugs were involved-rather than, as Violet had reported, “gone,” and had regained consciousness.

If that had happened, Dick Detweiler would have been reluctant to have her taken to a hospital; she could be cared for at home by Dr. Dotson, the family physician, or Amy Payne, M.D., and the incident could be kept quiet.

He got back behind the wheel of the Buick station wagon and drove to West Chestnut Hill Avenue.

He realized the moment he drove through the open gates of the estate that the hope that things weren’t as bad as reported had been wishful thinking. There was an ambulance and two police cars parked in front of the house, and a third car, unmarked, but from its black-walled tires and battered appearance almost certainly a police car, pulled in behind him as he was getting out of the station wagon.

The driver got out. Payne saw that he was a police captain.

“Excuse me, sir,” the Captain called to him as Payne started up the stairs to the patio.

Payne stopped and turned.

“I’m Captain O’Connor. Northwest Detectives. May I ask who you are, sir?”

“My name is Payne. I am Mr. Detweiler’s attorney.”

“We’ve got a pretty unpleasant situation here, Mr. Payne,” O’Connor said, offering Payne his hand.

“Just how bad is it?”

“About as bad as it can get, I’m afraid,” O’Connor said, and tilted his head toward the patio.

Payne looked and for the first time saw the blanket-covered body on the stretcher.

“Oh, God!”

“Mr. Payne, Chief Inspector Coughlin is on his way here. Do you happen to know…?”

“I know the Chief,” Payne said softly.

“I don’t have any of the details myself,” O’Connor said. “But I’d like to suggest that you…”

“I’m going to see my client, Captain,” Payne said, softly but firmly. “Unless there is some reason…?”

“I’d guess he’s in the house, sir,” O’Connor said.

“Thank you,” Payne said, and turned and walked onto the patio. The door was closed but unlocked. Payne walked through it and started to cross the foyer. Then he stopped and picked up a telephone mounted in a small alcove beside the door.

He dialed a number from memory.

“Nesfoods International. Good morning.”

“Let me have the Chief of Security, please,” he said.

“Mr. Schraeder’s office.”

“My name is Brewster C. Payne. I’m calling for Mr. Richard Detweiler. Mr. Schraeder, please.”

“Good morning, Mr. Payne. How can I help you?”

“Mr. Schraeder, just as soon as you can, will you please send some security officers to Mr. Detweiler’s home? Six, or eight. I think their services will be required, day and night, for the next four or five days, so I suggest you plan for that.”

“I’ll have someone there in half an hour, Mr. Payne,” Schraeder said. “Would you care to tell me the nature of the problem? Or should I come out there myself?”

“I think it would be helpful if you came here, Mr. Schraeder,” Payne said.

“I’m on my way, sir,” Schraeder said.

Payne put the telephone back in its cradle and turned from the alcove in the wall.

Captain O’Connor was standing there.

“Dr. Amelia Payne is on her way here,” Payne said. “As is my wife. They will wish to be with the Detweilers.”

“I understand, sir. No problem.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Payne said.

“Mr. Detweiler is in there,” O’Connor said, pointing toward the downstairs sitting room. “I believe Mrs. Detweiler is upstairs.”

“Thank you,” Payne said, and walked to the downstairs sitting room and pushed the door open.

H. Richard Detweiler was sitting in a red leather chair-his chair-with his hands folded in his lap, looking at the floor. He raised his eyes.

“Brew,” he said, and smiled.

“Dick.”

“Everything was going just fine, Brew. The night before last, Penny and Matt had dinner with Chad and Daffy to celebrate Chad’s promotion. And last night, they were at Martha Peebles’s. And one day, three, four days ago, Matt came out and the two of them made cheese dogs for us. You know, you slit the hot dog and put cheese inside and then wrap it in bacon. They made them for us on the charcoal thing. And then they went to the movies. She seemed so happy, Brew. And now this.”

“I’m very sorry, Dick.”

“Oh, goddamn it all to hell, Brew,” H. Richard Detweiler said. He started to sob. “When I went in there, her eyes were open, but I knew.”

He started to weep.

Brewster Cortland Payne went to him and put his arms around him.

“Steady, lad,” he said, somewhat brokenly as tears ran down his own cheeks. “Steady.”

The Buick station wagon in which Amelia Payne, M.D., drove through the gates of the Detweiler estate was identical in model, color, and even the Rose Tree Hunt and Merion Cricket Club parking decalcomanias on the rear window to the one her father had driven through the gates five minutes before, except that it was two years older, had a large number of dings and dents on the body, a badly damaged right front fender, and was sorely in need of a passage through a car wash.

The car had, in fact, been Dr. Payne’s father’s car. He had made it available to his daughter at a very good price because, he said, the trade-in allowance on his new car had been grossly inadequate. That was not the whole truth. While Brewster Payne had been quietly incensed at the trade-in price offered for a two-year-old car with less that 15,000 miles on the odometer and in showroom condition, the real reason was that the skillful chauffeuring of an automobile was not among his daughter’s many skills and accomplishments.

“She needs something substantial, like the Buick, something that will survive a crash,” he confided to his wife. “If I could, I’d get her a tank or an armored car. When Amy gets behind the wheel, she reminds me of that comic-strip character with the black cloud of inevitable disaster floating over his head.”

It was not that she was reckless, or had a heavy foot on the accelerator, but rather that she simply didn’t seem to care. Her father had decided that this was because Amy had-always had had-things on her mind far more important than the possibility of a dented fender, hers or someone else’s.

In the third grade when Amy had been sent to see a psychiatrist for her behavior in class (when she wasn’t causing all sorts of trouble, she was in the habit of taking a nap) the psychiatrist quickly determined the cause. She was, according to the three different tests to which he subjected her, a genius. She was bored with the third grade.

At ten, she was admitted to a high school for the intellectually gifted operated by the University of Pennsylvania, and matriculated at the University of Pennsylvania at the age of thirteen, because of her extraordinary mathematical ability.

“Theoretical mathematics, of course,” her father joked to intimate friends. “Double Doctor Payne is absolutely unable to balance a checkbook.”

That was a reference to her two doctoral degrees, the first a Ph. D. earned at twenty with a dissertation on probability, the second an M.D. earned at twenty-three after she had gone through what her father thought of as a dangerous dalliance with a handsome Jesuit priest nearly twice her age. She emerged from this (so far as he knew platonic) relationship with a need to serve God by serving mankind. Her original intention was to become a surgeon, specializing in trauma injuries, but during her internship at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital, she decided to become a psychiatrist. She trained at the Menninger Clinic, then returned to Philadelphia, where she had a private practice and taught at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.