10

T HE NASH FISHTAILED ON THE SLICK STREET, BUT HE MANAGED TO BRING it back under control and stop without hitting either of the grim-faced officers who were now shining flashlights through the windshield. They wore slickers, but the wind was gusting, and no ducking or turning of their heads prevented the rain from pelting into their faces. When one of them moved to the driver’s side, O’Connor rolled his window down a little more and showed his press pass. Even as the officer took it, O’Connor’s attention was drawn to the Ducanes’ home. The circular drive held a strange combination of vehicles: a battered black Hudson, which O’Connor took to be Todd’s old heap, a dove gray and black Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud, and the coroner’s wagon.

O’Connor felt his stomach lurch.

Along the street there were patrol cars as well, and a T-Bird that O’Connor had seen many times before. The T-Bird belonged to an old friend-Detective Dan Norton.

“It don’t take you creeps any time at all, does it?” the patrolman said, handing the pass back.

“What’s going on, Officer?”

“Why should I tell you?”

“Who is it, Joe?” the other cop asked, walking over to the window. To O’Connor’s relief, it was someone he had met before, an officer named Matt Arden.

“A reporter,” the man called Joe said. “Only there is no such thing as ‘a’ reporter. It’s like one ant or one cockroach. They just don’t come in singles.”

“Officer Arden, we’ve met before,” O’Connor said.

Arden peered in and said, “Oh, it’s you.” He turned to the other officer. “He’s okay, Joe.”

“He’s waiting right here until I get the word. Go up and ask at the house.”

“Matt-what’s happened here?” O’Connor asked.

“Woman got herself killed,” Joe answered, before Matt could reply.

“A woman…my God…”

“Hey, Conn,” Matt said, “you all right?”

“Arden, why are you still here?” Joe said. “I thought I told you to get up to the house.”

Matt gave O’Connor a helpless look and hurried away.

“Now, be a good boy,” Joe said, “and move this jalopy over to the side of the road, so you can wait out of the way. Go on, move it.”

In a daze, O’Connor moved the car, parking beneath a large tree.

Between disbelief and sadness, one thought returned to him again and again:

What am I going to tell Jack?

Jack was in no condition to receive news like this. What might it do to him?

As cool as Lillian had been toward Jack over the years since the accident, she had never prevented Katy from becoming attached to him. That had happened because both Jack and Lillian were friends of Helen Swan.

O’Connor remembered those days. Helen had become angry at Old Man Wrigley not long after Jack’s accident, and she left the paper. To Wrigley’s chagrin, she went to work for his goddaughter, Lillian Vanderveer Linworth, who did everything she could to keep Helen from caving in to his efforts to recruit her back. Lillian even moved to her ski lodge in Arrowhead for a time and took Helen with her.

Eventually, Lillian returned to Las Piernas. Helen went back to work at the newspaper, but by then she was attached to Katy and would often baby-sit her. Jack got to know Katy through his close friendship with Helen. Even as a toddler, Katy took to Jack.

O’Connor recalled, with a mixture of amusement and shame, that he had felt jealous of Katy when he was a young boy. Maureen had helped him get over it, talking to him about Jack being the sort of person who would only stay attached to those who didn’t try to lay claim to him. “Grab on to him too tightly, Conn, and he’ll let go of you.”

When he saw the truth of this, he asked his sister how she had figured that out about Jack, since she had only met him once or twice. She said, “When you told me what happened that night at the diner, when Lillian Vanderveer complained that Jack was spending too much time with you? She was jealous of you. Showing it was her mistake.”

That had sounded like nonsense at the time. It had been many years before he could figure out how Lillian Vanderveer could possibly be jealous of him. But he trusted Maureen and took her advice: he hid his feelings.

Eventually he hid the jealousy of Katy so well it disappeared, perhaps because as he grew a little older he realized he had nothing to fear from her. In time she won him over, as she did almost everyone, and he began to think of her as a lively, if spoiled, younger sister.

For all the wealth of the Linworths, he thought, she might have been better off if she had been part of the O’Connor family. His own mother had never been as reserved as Lillian, and although Kieran had been difficult to live with, O’Connor never doubted his father’s love. Harold Linworth was as much an absentee father as he was an absentee husband.

Linworth had kept his distance, but he was one of the few. Katy was beautiful and young and spirited, and if she wasn’t rich yet, she was destined to inherit a fortune. So was Todd, although hers would be the larger. O’Connor hadn’t seen much of Katy in recent years, and not at all since she had married Todd, a fact that now ladened him with guilt.

A woman got herself killed, the cop said. How? O’Connor knew that the only way he’d find out anything tonight was if Dan Norton would talk to him.

He thought about seeing Todd’s battered Hudson parked next to Dan’s shiny T-Bird. Was Todd home, then? Was he the one who killed Katy? Had she threatened to divorce him over the mistress?

The wind gusted and the rain drummed against the roof of the car, then subsided back to tapping.

He saw Matt Arden return with a figure who hunched into his raincoat and carried a big umbrella. Dan Norton. O’Connor felt something ease in his shoulders-a tension he hadn’t realized he was carrying. Whatever else was going wrong tonight, the best of the best had been assigned to this case. O’Connor put on his hat. He picked up an old newspaper from the seat next to him and sheltered under it as he got out of the car.

Norton smiled and said, “Jesus, O’Connor, they don’t even pay you news-hounds enough to buy umbrellas?”

“Mine’s warm and dry at home, Dan. Haven’t been there in almost a day, so…”

Dan immediately sobered. “How’s Jack?” he asked, moving his umbrella so that O’Connor was a little drier, and he a little more wet.

“He regained consciousness, at least. Too early to say much, but he seems to have his sense of humor.”

“Good sign. I guess you’ve heard what happened here? Although how you did, I’d love to know.”

“Jack asked me to check on Katy-Kathleen. Just a feeling he had, I guess. I didn’t come here knowing she had been murdered.”

“Kathleen? No-Jesus, Conn, who told you that?”

O’Connor stared at him. “But…”

Matt Arden said, “I believe he misunderstood something Joe said, sir.” He explained what had been said when O’Connor arrived.

“Hell, it’s not Kathleen,” Norton said. “It’s one of the maids. The one that looks after the baby. Nursemaid, I guess they call them… Conn, listen, this is a hell of a mess. Are you here to cover this for the Express?”

“No, but-”

“But nothing. If you are, I can’t say another word to you.”

“Ever?”

“You know what I mean.”

“And you know what I mean. If I know something went on here and I don’t let the paper know about it, Mr. Wrigley would have every reason to fire me.”

“He won’t. Not if you mean the old man. He knows what’s going on himself and swore he’d cooperate. But I have to make sure-he didn’t send you out here to cover it?”

“No. I’m here for the reason I told you.”

“All right. Wait here, and as soon as the lab guys finish up, I’ll come back and tell you more. Right now I’m a little busy.”

“Dan-what’s going on?”