about your dad. I'm sorry about his cancer and death and all.'
That certainly was quick-a sudden jab to the heart.
'My mother said she saw the obituary a couple months ago,' he continued. 'It must have been hard for you. I'm really sorry.'
I had received many condolences and had responded graciously to people ranging from Princess Ann to the postman, but all I could do now was stare at my toast.
'Are you there?'
'Yes.'
'I'm sorry about your mother, too,' he said. 'I didn't know anything about that. I can't really understand what it's like to be in your shoes, but it's got to be tough.'
After several months, what I couldn't understand was why I was suddenly close to tears. Sam was no poet, but it was as if I heard his words deeper inside me, as if they reached some part of me that other people's words did not.
Patrick tugged on my sleeve. 'Who is it?' he asked. Sam.
'Sam! Can I talk to him?'
'Thanks for calling,' I said. 'Patrick wants to talk to you.' I handed over the phone with relief.
'Hi. We're eating breakfast,' Patrick told him cheerfully. 'Toast with grape jelly…. Yeah… yeah.' As Sam spoke to him, Patrick began to study my face.
'Well, she's just sitting there No, she hasn't eaten anything yet.
I stuffed a piece of toast in my mouth.
'Now she has-why is that funny?' Patrick asked. 'I think she's okay. Okay, I will.' He hung up. 'Sam said I should be good today and try to make you smile.'
'That's nice,' I said, and swallowed in lumps the rest of my breakfast.
Immediately after I dropped Patrick at school, I drove to Olivia's Antiques, hoping to find Joseph in early. I could have called him on the cell phone Adrian had given me, but I wanted to see Joseph's face when I questioned him. His reaction would guide me in how to proceed with Adrian.
'Just the person I was hoping to see,' Joseph greeted me, when I opened the shop door, making the bells jingle.
'Aren't you supposed to say, 'Shop's closed'?'
He smiled. 'I'm on my way to Crossroads, to see what prices some of these unforgivably ugly objects are fetching at auction. Would you like to come along? Someone told me they have a painting that looks like one of your father's-a retriever with a goose. It seems strange that he would leave such a number of paintings unsigned.'
'He signed only those he was satisfied with,' I explained, 'and he had very high standards. I'd like to have a look.'
'My S.U.V. is around back.'
Joseph drove to Crossroads and I bided my time, wanting a clear view of his face when I told him what I had discovered. He was in a good mood, chatting about his public relations job at the conservatory in Baltimore, fussing about the prima donna attitudes of the visiting musicians.
Crossroads was outside of town, but on the other side of Wisteria from Mason's Choice, north of Oyster Creek. The large building sat at an intersection of Eastern Shore routes, roads that provided easy connections west to Baltimore and Washington, and north to Wilmington, Philadelphia, and New York.
Joseph said that it was one of the three major auctions serving Mid-Atlantic dealers, each one running just one day a week. But it had also kept its old role, having an outdoor auction where local people and flea-market enthusiasts bid on 'the ugly and the useless.'
We parked in an open field, and I soon saw what he meant. Spread on a sandy lot next to the auction house were rows of items that should have been taken to the dump-worn Christmas decorations, old propane tanks, paintings of rock stars on velvet, rusted appliances covered with flowered Con-Tact paper, and furniture that one couldn't imagine buying when new. A motorized cart, manned by an auctioneer, rolled up and down the rows, trailed by bidders.
Joseph and I followed at a distance. 'Maybe Mother left me more than I realized,' Joseph said. 'I'll bring her things here, though I'm going to have to wear a disguise. I wouldn't want anyone to think they're mine.'
We moved slowly in the direction of the auction house, then turned at the head of the next row. I stopped to look at a batch of sports memorabilia, which included a hockey stick.
'You're really into the sport,' Joseph remarked.
'No, Patrick is,' I replied, 'and he needs someone to be into whatever he's into. Joseph, do you remember the guy who came to Olivia's to buy a bracelet last week?'
'The eloquent one who left his fingerprints all over the glass counter?'
'That's right. He plays hockey for the high school. His name is Sam Koscinski.'
I watched for a reaction. Joseph's beard and mustache hid most of his mouth, and the skin around his eyes stayed as smooth as before.
'Do you know the family?' I asked.
'I knew of a man who might have been his father, Mike Koscinski.'
'A private investigator,' I prompted.
Joseph nodded slowly.
I lost patience. 'Why didn't you tell me my mother was a murder suspect?'
Joseph pulled a pen from his pocket and stuck it in his mouth. 'Because I was afraid you'd ask the next question.'
'I'm asking it. Why did Adrian suspect her?'
Joseph chewed on the pen, then drew it out of his mouth like a cigarette and started walking.
'Adrian suspected a lot of people, Katie. He was desperate for someone to blame. People get that way when there has been a terrible accident.' We stopped at the edge of the auction lot, next to a large placard pointing to the building entrance. 'He suspected me, even Mrs. Hopewell. Anyone who wasn't family was looked at askance.'
'Perhaps, but it was my mother whom Mr. Koscinski was hired to investigate-Sam told me. It was my mother who was being chased by him the night we left.'
Joseph clicked the pen in his hand.
'Tell me what you know,' I insisted. 'I'm talking to Adrian this afternoon and I'm going to ask him about it. I will get to the bottom of this, you can count on it.'
He rubbed his perpetually damp brow. 'Katie, let me explain something to you and perhaps you'll understand why I didn't want you to ask too many questions. There was-uh-a connection between your father and Corinne, Trent's wife.'
I steeled myself. 'What kind of connection?'
'You know what I mean-you're almost an adult. They were lovers. It happened before your father met your mother, when Corinne first came to Mason's Choice as Trent's bride and your father came as a very young, very handsome artist. I wasn't around then, of course, but people don't change. Trent is quite intelligent, and probably the most boring, uptight person on the face of the earth. Your father was dashing, dramatic-' I wasn't interested in excuses. 'When Dad came back with my mother and me, did he keep it up?'
'Yes. And he discovered he had fathered two little girls, Katie and Ashley.'
'Ashley.' It was like looking into a convex mirror-I recognized all the objects shown, but everything looked different, their spatial relationships changed.
I wanted to deny what Joseph said, to deny any pain my mother might have felt because of my father's unfaithfulness, which would then require me to feel sorry for her. But I remembered how my father loved to see Ashley and me playing together, how he would do little sketches of us with our arms around each other, how he wept when he was told of the accident. And I remembered the times when Ashley and I came upon my father and her mother together. We were too innocent to figure it out-at least, I was.
