“What did Doug say?”

“Something about her being pulled out of the river after she drove off a boat. And a flood, a long time ago? I remember Doug saying that one of her friends was never found, and the other drowned, with a seatbelt tied around his ankle.”

“Yes,” Abby said. “That was just before the flood of 1972.”

“But Kelsey was rescued, and wasn’t hurt?”

“That’s right.”

“So,” Nicky said, “did anyone ever explain exactly what happened?”

“I remember,” Abby said, “that there was an investigation after the flood. After they gave up searching for the other girl. But no one else saw the car go off the ferry, and Kelsey told the police it was an accident.”

“Including the seatbelt?”

“I think she claimed to have no idea how that happened. The story was in the newspapers for a few days. The dead guy’s family was pointing fingers, but she was never charged.”

“And then Doug said something about her husband dying in a car crash?”

“Right. With a high dose of valium in his blood. Some thought he’d been drugged. She got the house and the money and was involved with another guy a few months later.”

“She seems to have a way of landing on her feet.”

“Yes and no,” Abby said. “She’s set financially. She’s respected as a photographer. But no one has forgotten those strange accidents, and most people keep her at arm’s length. I think she’ll always be a pariah. My advice would be to steer clear. Both you and Vin.”

Nicky thanked her and hung up, then stared at the receiver in her hand. A thread of logic grew hot and began to glow inside her, beneath the level of conscious thought. She pulled out the Potomac phone book and found the entry she wanted. Ainge, K, at 11427 Vera Lane. She tapped out the number, then hesitated before pressing the call button. Vera Lane – that’s only a few miles from here, halfway toward town. Maybe Vin was there now. She put the receiver back in its cradle and wrote the number on a piece of paper, then stashed it in her pocket.

Circling back toward the stairs and foyer, she noticed the topographical atlas lying open on the living-room coffee table. It hadn’t seemed worth scrutiny on her way to the kitchen, but that was before she’d read Vin’s note. Now she detoured to the table and spun the open atlas to face her. She studied the left-hand page, which covered the terrain from the Capital Beltway west to the river, including the town of Potomac and their neighborhood. Vin shouldn’t need a map at this point. So maybe the atlas had something to do with his quest. Then she saw the oval sketched around an island in the middle of the river, about halfway down the page. A straight line that split the oval in half had one endpoint at Riverbend Park on the Virginia shore and the other at Swains Lock on the Maryland side.

Jesus. Was that island really where he planned on going for his “quick investigation”? If so, how did he plan on getting there? Swimming? He and Nicky didn’t have access to a boat. But maybe, she realized, he could rent a canoe. Like they’d done last fall at Swains. He was an experienced canoeist, and she knew it wouldn’t be difficult for him to ferry across to the island if the river wasn’t running too high. Still, if that was his destination, why wouldn’t he have driven to Swains? She shuddered for an instant. Maybe Kelsey drove him there. Or maybe, she forced herself to acknowledge, the circled island had nothing to do with his absence. Maybe it was part of some innocent tangent he’d pursued earlier.

She collected her keys and continued downstairs, realizing as she descended that there was a simple way to assuage her concern. If Vin was planning to canoe to the island, he would certainly take his own paddle. He and Nicky both hated the cheap plastic paddles that rental operations dispensed. At the bottom of the stairs, she crossed the carpet and opened the door to the laundry and storage area. Her gaze settled on the nylon ski bags leaning against the far wall and the snowshoes beside them on the cement floor. Their canoe paddles were usually part of the same cluster. She crossed to the far wall and found her paddle propped upside-down next to the ski bags. Behind it she saw only the iron lock-key that looked like a useless fireplace tool leaning against the wall. The glowing thread in her subconscious burned a shade brighter, and her sense of time and place collapsed as her irises darkened to indigo. Vin’s paddle was gone.

Chapter 36

Joined Sycamores

Friday, September 6, 1996

When Vin glided to a stop on the towpath, slanting sunlight was piercing the pebbled clouds and painting the lockhouse walls at Swains Lock. Past the scattered cars in the lot, two canoe racks stood against the ascending green of the berm. They held inverted aluminum canoes that looked old, with dented hulls and boat numbers stenciled in fading black paint. He locked his bike to a post and straightened his mud-spattered shorts, pushing the contents of his pockets down to secure them. A quick reconnaissance showed a middle-aged couple approaching along the towpath from downstream and a man loading a mountain bike onto his car rack.

Vin walked casually up Swains Lock Road, then stepped into the woods and found his canoe paddle and shovel where he’d left them, leaning against a thick swamp oak. He carried them back to the lot, where the middle-aged couple had reached their car.

He crossed the footbridge and walked down onto the apron between the towpath and the river. Its flat dirt floor was punctuated with old trees and a few campsites that were used regularly in the summer but had been closed by the Park Service yesterday as part of the protocol for a regional hurricane. Now the apron was deserted. He followed a shallow draw that dropped onto a flat mud landing where it met the river. Hopping down to the landing, he laid his shovel and paddle against the wet bank. On his return to the lot he scouted for potential witnesses.

A woman walking her tiny dog was a hundred yards away upstream, headed toward Swains. Even if she’s parked in the lot, he thought, I can cut a canoe loose before she sees me. He jogged across the footbridge, then fell into a frustrated stroll as a Volvo rolled into view. With the dog-walker getting closer, now he’d have to wait another five minutes. At least the gray Audi hadn’t reappeared.

He sat down at a wet picnic table. No point in trying to stay dry, he thought, if I’m going to be hacking my way through the woods. Tapping his foot impatiently, he thought about the best way to search the island. His atlas showed that it was shaped like an almond. If he landed at the tail end, he could approach the island’s head along a path halfway between the center and the Maryland side, then return on a line between the center and the Virginia side. It was narrow enough that Lee Fisher’s clearing should be visible from one of those two routes. And if the clearing were overgrown, he should still be able to spot the joined sycamores.

The man driving the Volvo let two large poodles out of the back, then led them across the footbridge and down the towpath The woman with the Pekingese took forever to towel off her dog and start her car. Vin tapped his foot as his frustration mounted. It was a bit after seven now – how long much longer could he wait? The Audi might creep into the lot at any minute. What if Kelsey Ainge saw him paddle out to Gladys Island? She might follow him, or lie in wait when he returned. The Pekingese-owner crept out of her parking spot and eased away.

He loped back to the towpath. The man with the poodles was receding and no one was approaching from either direction. Adrenaline sent him sprinting to the canoe rack. No cars were visible on Swains Lock Road. He chose the waist-level canoe closest to the berm, then crouched to assess it.