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Jesse nodded. Kelly Cruz glanced at her watch.

“Eleven-fifty,” she said. “They’ll be drinking by the time we get there.”

“Good or bad?” Jesse said.

“Doesn’t seem to have much effect,” Kelly Cruz said.

“We’re expected,” Jesse said.

“We are, if they remember,” Kelly Cruz said.

The valet service knew a cop when they saw one. Nobody offered to take the Crown Vic, and nobody objected when Ortiz parked it right in front of the main entrance and got out. In the lobby, Ortiz showed his badge to the concierge.

She called upstairs, and when they got out of the elevator at the penthouse, the maid was waiting for them at the front door of the Plums’ vast condo. She led them through the un-ruffled living room to the terrace where the drink trolley had been wheeled into place, and a small buffet was set up.

Mrs. Plum, in a frothy ankle-length turquoise dress, was reclining on a chaise. Mr. Plum, wearing a white shirt and white linen slacks, sat erect in his chair near her head. Both were drinking Manhattans. Jesse stared at the father. You son of a bitch.

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O rtiz’s only duty was to add jurisdictional presence where Jesse and Kelly Cruz had

none. They declined to eat. Ortiz accepted a large plateful of assorted tea sandwiches and ate them quietly, leaning his hips against the railing of the terrace, and sipping mango iced tea from a glass he balanced on the top rail. Kelly Cruz sat opposite the Plums in a white satin chair with no arms. Jesse remained standing.

“Chief of police,” Willis Plum said. “That’s quite an achievement.”

Jesse ignored him.

“Mrs. Plum,” he said. “A while ago you told Detective R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

Cruz your husband had taken a trip at the beginning of June, and it appeared that you were mistaken.”

“I often am,” Mrs. Plum said, in a tone that didn’t mean it.

“Good news,” Jesse said. “You were right. He didn’t go to Tallahassee. But he was in the Boston area the first week in June.”

She looked quickly at her husband.

“I knew I was right,” she said.

Mr. Plum shook his head.

“He’s wrong, Mommy,” Plum said gently, “just like you were.”

“He has an E-ZPass transponder on his car,” Jesse said.

“It’s compatible with the Fast Lane system in Massachusetts.

He was driving on the Massachusetts Turnpike the first week in June.”

“Transponder,” she said.

“The car goes through the no-toll lane and is electroni-cally recorded. Toll is charged to your credit card.”

“The thing on the windshield,” Mrs. Plum said.

“It is useful almost everywhere north of Washington,” Mr.

Plum said. “I drive often to New York. It is a great time-saver.”

Jesse showed no sign that Mr. Plum had spoken.

“So when you thought he was off to Tallahassee to open the new store,” Jesse said to Mrs. Plum, “he was, in fact, driving up to Boston to see Florence.”

Mr. Plum spoke in the same gentle voice.

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“What he’s saying is wrong, Mommy.”

She stared at him for a moment. He sat very erect, his ankles together. He drank his Manhattan carefully and patted his lips with a napkin. Jesse thought he looked prim.

“Mommy,” Mr. Plum said.

“Do you have any theory, Mrs. Plum,” Jesse said, “why he went up there?”

“No,” she said.

“Do you have any theory on why he pretends he didn’t?”

“I never went, Mommy.”

Mrs. Plum didn’t look at her husband. She kept her gaze fixed on Jesse.

“No,” Mrs. Plum said. “I don’t.”

The room was silent. The sky was very blue above the terrace. The bay beyond the terrace looked clean and bright.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Mr. Plum said.

Mrs. Plum stared at Jesse. Jesse walked over to the railing and leaned on it beside Ortiz. Mr. Plum poured himself a Manhattan from a silver shaker beaded with moisture. He offered the shaker to Mrs. Plum who shook her head. She sipped from her still-sufficient glass.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Mr. Plum said.

Ortiz ate his sandwiches. Kelly Cruz sat with her legs crossed, her hands clasped over her right knee. Jesse waited.

No one spoke. Slowly Mrs. Plum shifted her gaze from Jesse to her husband. He smiled at her.

He said, “It’s going to be all right, Mommy.”

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She continued to look at him. He sat calmly with his Manhattan delicately held with thumb and forefinger. His face was toward her, but he didn’t appear to be looking at anything.

“You are a monstrous pig of a man,” Mrs. Plum said to him.

Her voice was calm and the tone was simply the assertion of an obvious fact.

“Mommy,” he said, “please. Not in front of guests.”

“You killed her,” Mrs. Plum said. “Didn’t you.”

“Mommy,” he said again in his pleasant detached way,

“please let’s mind our manners.”

“She sent you the tape and you went into a jealous frenzy and drove up there and killed her.”

“Tape?” Mr. Plum said.

“You think I don’t know about the tape? You think I didn’t recognize her handwriting when it came? You think I didn’t find it in your study while you were out? You think I didn’t play it? You think I don’t know about you?”

Her voice went slowly, almost ploddingly, up the scale until she was almost screaming.

“That tape was private,” Mr. Plum said.

“Private?” Mrs. Plum’s voice was down into calm again.

“That is my daughter.”

“And mine,” Mr. Plum said. He seemed still to be looking at nothing. “It was private between me and my daughter.”

“Whom you have been fucking since she was thirteen,”

Mrs. Plum said.

Mr. Plum suddenly looked at her.

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“Mommy,” he said firmly, “don’t be crude.”

She stared at him and then looked at Jesse and Ortiz, then at Kelly Cruz.

“He’s been doing it since they were little girls,” she said to Kelly Cruz. “All three of them. We never talked about it.

Maybe he thought I didn’t know, but I knew.”

“And did nothing?” Kelly Cruz said.

“He had money and we were well situated,” Mrs. Plum said. “He made no demands on me. It was easier to drink.”

“Not for the girls,” Kelly Cruz said.

“I loved those girls,” Mr. Plum said. “And they loved me.”

“And you destroyed them,” Mrs. Plum said. “And now you’ve killed Florence.”

“Betsy,” Mr. Plum said. “Please. Can’t this wait until our guests have departed?”

Mrs. Plum finished her Manhattan. With no apparent thought, Mr. Plum refilled her glass. She began to cry silently.

“See him,” she gasped. “See him? That’s what he’s like.

He’s like a reptile. He doesn’t hear. He doesn’t feel. He has no body warmth.”

Kelly Cruz nodded.

“I am not a reptile, Betsy,” Plum said. “I am a man with the feelings and impulses of my gender.”

“And you killed Florence,” Mrs. Plum said.

Her voice was beginning to soar again.

“You killed Florence because you were jealous that she was having sex with other people.”

“The tape was insulting,” Mr. Plum said.

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“And you killed her.”

“She betrayed me, Betsy.”

“And you killed her,” Mrs. Plum said. “Say it. Say you killed her. Say something for once in your weird reptilian existence, say something true. Say . . . you . . . killed . . . her!”

“You can’t know,” Mr. Plum said. “None of you can know how I loved those girls.”

“Which is . . . why you . . . killed her?”

Mrs. Plum struggled to speak.