A Wicked Snow

on the shoulder in order to get a better look. She had seen her mother in the gestures of a college professor, in the voice and laugh of a colleague at the crime lab. Once, though she never admitted it to anyone and never would, she had even seen a fleeting glimpse of her mother in her daughter’s laugh.

Veronica Paine had done everything for the law because she loved it. She had never broken the rules. She just didn’t have it in her. Never had. As she sat at her gleaming walnut dining table, warm brandy in hand, cigarette smoldering, she knew that following the law wasn’t always fail-safe. It wasn’t the best course in being a human being. Not really. In front of her was the file she’d stolen from the vault in the basement of Spruce County Courthouse.

She reached for her handheld phone and dialed Hannah Griffin’s phone number in Santa Louisa. Her heart pounded. A man’s voice answered.

“Mr. Griffin?” she asked.

“Yes, this is Ethan Griffin. Who’s calling?”

“This is Veronica Paine. I’m calling for Hannah. Can she come to the phone?”

Ethan sighed. “I wish. She’s not here. She’s away for a couple of days.”

“Oh, I see.”

“I know who you are,” he said, filling in an awkward silence. “And I know who my wife is. What do you want?”

Paine fiddled with her lighter, a habit so old and so bad she used to keep one out of view of the juries whenever she heard a case. The finger-fidgeting calmed her.

“I need to tell her something. It’s important. Where is she?”

Ethan was quiet. “I guess it’s okay for you to know,” he said. “She’s up in Alaska with that FBI agent friend of yours chasing her mother’s ghost.”

“Oh no,” Paine said. “Has there been another Claire Logan sighting?”

“Not exactly.” He glanced down the hall toward Amber’s room, the door shut, the little girl asleep. “Marcus Wheaton said she was up there, living on Kodiak Island.”

Paine gulped her brandy. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I wish I had called sooner. I could have saved her the trip.”

“Nothing would keep her from confronting her mother.”

“That’s just it,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Claire isn’t her mother.”

When the conversation ended some half hour later, Ethan Griffin had to sit down. He was thankful that Amber was asleep and didn’t see him just then. He felt his hands shake a little as his thoughts stayed riveted on Hannah. His eyes watered, but he didn’t allow himself to cry. What Veronica Paine had told him had shaken him deeply, but Hannah would need him more than ever. His last words to the former prosecutor echoed in the air: “Why didn’t you tell her? This could have changed everything for her?”

Veronica Paine hadn’t been able to shake the unsettled feeling she’d had back in the basement of the Spruce County archives. Had the whoosh of the air conditioner been a person lurking somewhere? She’d felt like she’d been watched since then, so even in her own home when she thought she heard the back door creak, she turned with a start. She squinted over the bright light coming from her lamp, into the darkness.

“Abby? Is that you?” Paine asked, calling out her dog’s name.

There was no answer, of course. And no dog came bounding through the house to the study for a treat.

A second later she saw a figure appear in the doorway, then a face.

“So it’s you!” Paine said, turning to reach the top drawer of her desk. A Ruger Blackhawk her husband had given her for their twentieth anniversary lay next to a caddy holding rubber bands and paper clips.

“I remember you,” Paine said, still reaching. A flash of light. The noise of gunfire. It happened so fast.

And then it was over.

Chapter Thirty-seven

Marge Morrison got up a little after midnight and put on the borrowed robe she had placed across the foot of the bed in Louise Wallace’s comfortable guest-room. She didn’t even have to look at her watch or at the alarm clock, so certain she was of the time. She liked to joke that her bladder was the size of a Ping-Pong ball, but it was hardly a laughing matter. Getting up every night had been a routine for years, but it was still bothersome and a little irritating. From a glass on the nightstand she fished out her dentures and put them inside her mouth and walked down the hallway toward the bathroom. When she went past Louise’s bedroom she saw a sharp flood of light leak from under the doorway.

“Lou, are you okay?” Morrison asked after taking care of business and returning from the bathroom.

“Fine, dear. Just couldn’t sleep,” Wallace’s familiar voice called out. “Going to try again.”

The light snapped off, and she could hear what sounded like something sliding across the wooden floor, then a thud.

“Good night then,” Morrison said, thinking little of the sliding noise, “and pleasant dreams.” The friend from First Methodist tucked herself under a billowy eiderdown and fell back asleep.

The following morning, Hannah and Bauer stood in the office of the Northern Lights next to a rack of brochures promising good times on Kodiak Island. They were dressed in blue jeans and buttoned-up shirts, as though they were a pair of tourists contemplating a river-rafting trip or a bear-watching excursion.

“I almost said, just now, ‘We’ve got to stop meeting like this,’” Bauer said, though he barely smiled. “Really. You shouldn’t have come up here.”

Hannah almost laughed. The idea of her not coming up to Alaska to find her mother never entered her mind. “I’m here because I have to be,” she said. “Of all people, you should understand that.”

“Look, I understand your interest. And I understand your obvious need for some closure.” He winced at the word choice because, even to Bauer, it sounded cheesy. “God, I hate that word— closure.”

Hannah stared hard at him, never taking her eyes from his. “So do I.”

“Right,” he said. “But the fact is you’ve had this thing hanging around you like a storm cloud, and whether Louise Wallace is your mother or not, you probably will still have some unresolved feelings. I mean, closure is only a concept, you know.”

“Spoken like someone who doesn’t need any,” she said.

“Not fair,” Bauer said, looking a little hurt. “You know better than that. I don’t compare my part in any of this to what you have suffered, but it has been a big part of my life, too.” He motioned through the window to the restaurant across the parking lot, and a moment later, they took a booth in the back and sat down. It was almost 8 a.m. Over strong, boiled-to-death coffee and a half-foot-high stack of pancakes speckled with mountain huckleberries, Bauer told Hannah she’d better eat up.

“You’re getting thin,” he said. “You have to eat something.”

Hannah picked at the pancakes. “I’m not a kid anymore,” she said, and they both laughed a little.

Early morning sunlight streamed into the windows; it was clear and unfettered, unlike the smog that veiled the mornings in Southern California. She knew no amount of makeup could conceal the exhaustion that had crept over her body and held her like a strangler. Even her brown eyes were dull. Bauer was worried about her and said so several times, but she told him to get on with what he knew about the woman who could be her mother. Bauer complied. He told her what they knew about Mrs. Wallace. How she ran a small fishing resort; how she had hurt her hands in a cannery accident; how she matched Claire Logan in general characteristics such as age and height; and